saturday sun

there's nothing for it. what am i thinking? yeah, what.
the scope has become so narrow and my mind so bitter, distrustful, negative. i'm tired of listening to people talk about things. just in general. i'm tired of faning interest. there is so much ugliness just under the surface of my skin, and it keeps building. i want to vomit, i want to swallow a mouthful of poison.

blessed, blessed, blessed is the advice that was given to me! my insides burn and my eyes ache and life has become bleak and nearly unbearable. these wild pendulum swings. counting the minutes between counting my blessings and waiting for the storm cloud to pass overhead. we fall in love too easily, and out. if you think this is about you then it is, and if you second guess yourself every step of the way then you'll never go anywhere. Fyodor Pavlovich only ever cared about himself. O, these infintessimal failures! how, dear lord, do we go about addressing the dichotomies that so plague this existence. nobody really needs a needs analysis statement, where the hell does this robotic sterility come from? who was guarding the front door. you're not greeted in the morning with a "hey, hows it goin," it's a "hello employee let us meet to discuss the current paradigm and how you fit into the bigger picture." fucking run over me.

nick draked killed himself, and so did elliott, you feel your midsection pushing down towards your toes through your loins, there is just absolutely no place for beauty in any of this, you'll just be torn asunder, you'll be eaten if you're soft, you'll be absolutely annihilated.

and that, my friends, is all she wrote about that.

(i miss you.)

the angel from my nightmare.
the unsuspecting victim of darkness in the valley,
we can live like jack and sally, if you'd like to.
and we'll have halloween on crixmas and in the night we'll wish this never ends.

somewhere it's out there. we could be happy, we could really be happy. just don't forget.

Up and Running

And now for something completely different:

I wanna be a photographer when I grow up!

A Cry From The Cold Black Void...

Fighting it, the depression. The wake has not subsided as quickly as first I thought, even with the irrefutable knowledge that lies and deceit were the first ingredients in her recipe to oust me. My feelings about all of this sway to opposite poles from one minute to the next. "It's insurmountable and you'll only come out a fool, emily! Why get yourself tangled up." But I am already tangled up. And the next minute, "everything is easily verified, it's truth, you have simply got to shine light into the black hole of all of this. Former employees who can echo your experience are already contacting you, and they have nothing to gain." And I feel my heart sink a little at these moments, because I know that despite how much this muck-raking and fact finding gives me an ulcer, despite how much I absolutely loathe being the one to hold ugliness up and call everyone's attention to it, I know that this is what I have to do; there's nothing for it but to plunge ahead, ulcer and all.

On the porch my dad said to me, "you've got the Jindra spirit, kid." At times it is a pestilence.

All of my hopes for what life could be feel so laughable. My spirit is so incredibly torn asunder, I feel like I'm seeing the world through Diane Arbus' eyes. I feel like I'll never work again, that I'll never have anything worthwhile to contribute, that I'm crazy and that it's all for nothing. That the thought of making money off of my photography is childish because I couldn't even hack it at a job as straight-forward as this one. God damn these negative thought patterns. That all of this is the result of a conversation about a database is enough to make my gouge my eyes out and flay my own hide, so that I no longer have the ability to experience the absolutely ridiculous level of ugliness that human beings are capable of.

Never fear consequences; hate regrets more than apologies. Be honest, and without malice, and painstakingly deliberate in what you say and how you say it.

I was "laid off" on Thursday morning. The reason that I was given was that the board at my agency decided that there wasn't enough money in the budget to continue to fund my position. My boss broke the news to me; during the meeting in which I was given this news, my boss had a script in her lap from which she read word for word, never making eye contact with me. She was shaking with nervousness and her voice quivered the entire time.

This of itself was hard to take. It gives me a month to find a job with benefits in the county whose unemployment rate is vying for the #1 spot in the country.

The next day I was anonymously given the document that said boss had presented to the board members who supposedly decided to can my job the day before she had her scripted meeting with me. This document slanders my name and my work ethic to the board, and shows that my boss lied to her own board of directors about my work record and attitude in order to be rid of me. And that also she lied to me about the reasoning; the board had nothing to do with it, nor did the budget.

What's interesting is that two weeks ago I finally told her, in a civilized manner and without malice (and in the proper venue -- a small meeting between she and I and one other staff member) that her supervisory style often left me feeling belittled and abused, and that I and many other staff members felt as though our ideas were given little to no clout on the rare occasions that they were entertained at all. I said these things to her from the standpoint of making our working relationship better (I'm the associate director here, for god's sakes! Shouldn't we be able to have a civilized conversation about these things without fear of reprisal? Isn't that why they call this country America, and not, say, Myanmar??), and invited her to add her own concerns. She added none. I was raised to believe that if you're having a problem with someone it can be worked out as long as you're considerate, respectful, and human. O! Let us appraise with clear heads the extent of my innocence. She didn't want to work anything out or even admit that there could be validity in what I was saying; I was a cancer, and she needed to root my out, and she would use whatever means necessary to do so, even if it meant stringing together a pack of lies.

Up until this meeting in which I laid out my concerns, I was assured on a regular basis that my employment here would continue for as long as I wanted it to, funding cuts or no. I find it strange that only two weeks after this meeting, all of a sudden what she has been assuring me of all along has changed. That suddenly there's just no money and no recourse. Sorry, nice knowing you, have a nice day. I feel crazy; I've never been in a situation like this before. To have a boss who would not only lie to you about why you're being laid off, but who would lie to her board of directors, who are her supervisors about why she's decided to get rid of a permanent staff member. To slander this staff member's name solely to maintain her own frightened ego. The board needs to know about all of this.

If anyone out there has any advice about how to deal with a situation like this, PLEASE, please, let me know.

Sheepy

This is what happens when you try to do yoga with a Rugby in the house.

"CAN I DO IT TOOOOOOOO? WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT??"

"Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to two times two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand. There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation. And such certainty is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death."

-FD, Notes From Underground

Not for the Faint-Hearted.

I remembered what she said when I was in the bathroom, trying to cover the stink of cigarette smoke. My thoughts about all of this have mimicked the swing of a pendulum; one day it all feels incredibly futile and ridiculous, and the next I'm ready to pack the car in the quiet of night and head west on route two. I just realized that my analogy doesn't have the upside of the pendulum as I had intended; instead I came up with two low-tide scenarios. I'm not changing it, out of spite! Oh, Dostoevsky. Why did you turn to God in the final moments?

Are we supposed to hope that blindly, is there really anything to be gained from it? What happened.

She had been talking to me about recent marital problems; what it boiled down to was that her husband wanted her to dress and be more sexy. She was bringing home the lions' share of the family income, getting a warm dinner on the table by six, scrubbing shit stains out of underwear and taking care of the bedsores on her disintegrating mother-in-law. She had exasperation in her eyes when she shook her head and told me, "I almost want to say to you girls to just not ever get married. That it's not worth it. But I also wouldn't want you to be alone for the rest of your lives."

And I thought of Terri, all of her stories of relationships winding up as bloated housekeeping jobs. "Girl," she said to me after explaining why she only lived with her current boyfriend for a month, "men will kill ya."

We think ourselves into tiny little boxes, we jam ourselves into perfectly tiny little squares with our thoughts. Expectation. What hope gives birth to. The realization didn't come to me until I arrived back at home: no matter what, we all die alone. Whatever you're looking for, stop. Whatever it is that you think you mean to anyone else, it's folly. Until you realize that, you're living under a delusion. There is no amount of permanence that you can take out of any of this. The curtain rolls back, and at that moment of being alone onstage for the first time, none of the effort you've put forth toward other people's joy or comfort will have any relevance. And you can see the first sprouts of this truth even now. You will squander your youth, your happiness, your thick hair, your very life by trying to make other people happy. Other people will only ever care about themselves. They won't care so much, for instance, that you spent forty-eight hours craving their touch. So what does the craving get you? A dark pit in your stomach.

Learn to put yourself first without being totally selfish.

This philosophy is ferocity, and what I need is more of the constant awareness that it alone lights the path that leads to individual freedom from misery.

Happiness, in other words.

People think they have everything figured out but in reality they're stumbling drunk, through the dark night, swinging wildly with a baseball bat trying to hit a 90 mph curveball that could be coming from any direction.

I'm not happy tonight. Allow me to strain my thoughts through this seive. Discontinue reading if you're already upset with my vitriol.

Here are some things that I loathe.

1. People who think you're blowing things out of proportion when they still have themself listed as single on a popular dating site and who, further, have begun communicating with some chick via said site and keep talking about her, and deep clean the house when they think she's coming over-- and this is the first time in several months that they've touched a sponge or mop.

2. People who think that anger is weakness or rudimentary.

3. People who won't shut the fuck up about the past; the ones who tell you the same boring story about how this one time at this one party this one thing happened... every freaking time you see them. Shut up already, you're not interesting or clever.

4. People who only call you to do stuff when their fuck of the night is otherwise engaged.

5. Yeouch, it's harsh, but it feels good to just be mean right now.

6. People who have only seen XXX but still pontificate about why Vin is a bad actor. FIVE HUNDRED, BITCHES.

7. Maybe he's retarded? I mean, not in an un-PC way, like, really retarded. Missing some chromosomes?

8. Egomaniacs like the lead singer of Metallica. Have you ever seen this guy's videos? Holy shit man, hire a creative consultant. People can go to your concerts to just stare at your mug. See also: Creed, Coldplay, and any of those whiny wanna be punk bands that the kids seem to like these days.

9. Speaking of coldplay, people who give their children ridiculous names. If a kid wants to be named "apple," he'll go to Evergreen and change it upon arrival. Johnny Cash will tell you all about it in "A Boy Named Sue."

10. Old people who just won't fucking retire.

11. My reticence at pointing out his asshole tendencies when they're happening.

If I could be anywhere right now:
Olympia, and I would have taken that Kevin guy's invitation to hear his band play in that seedy ass bar behind King Solomon's Reef. And all the cool guys I knew in Oly would be there, and we'd be drinking fishtail and I'd have my camera, there would be Russian and French in the air, and cigarette smoke, and it would rule. And in the morning we'd wake and really rule the world, Ahniwa-style.

She's A Jar. With A Heavy Lid.

We were doing a late night dog food and movie run. Fat Mike was crooning about the punk rock scene turning lame, the traffic lights winked red and yellow and our clients were the only ones left mulling about the somnambulistic oberlin streets. I thought about how simple it can be, to live, to be unencumbered by stress and moral rectitude, all of these mental contrivances that we create to get in the way and gussy up our thoughts. I wondered how far a life has to break, to get to the point where one is ushering in this created chaos. She is everything that I am not, and everything that I will never be; this statement is enough to provide the solace that is necessary to make it through to... wherever I'm making it through to. There is no reason to be obsequious unless it's all that you have, all that you know. And in that case things are more depressing than anyone can fix.

The light blinked and cross traffic subsided. As I pulled through the intersection nofx wailed on their guitars and Fat Mike yelled over and over into his mic, "I knew you were the one... I knew you were the one...," and I felt a hand on my knee. I looked over and he was mouthing the words and pointing to me between bouts of cheeseball air guitar soloing. It was too touching and I had to look away; it left me wondering why I get so frightened at these moments.

The errand was accomplished and I crawled into bed to read before we watched the movie. The next time my eyes opened it was two in the morning, and there were arms around me and a voice whispering into my ear, "I missed you tonight. I've gotten so used to our evenings together, goofing off and working on projects."

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

Broken.

we don't always make good choices and
sometimes we act like spoiled children
just wanting to be adored
cared for,
appreciated.
we crawl into our caves when things go wrong
and send so much shrapnel as ambassadors
across the spike laden fields
of each other's raw emotion.
why do we do that,
act so obsequious injured alone and afraid
when a little warmth and understanding
is all we were looking for
in the first place.