A Wolf at the Table

I just finished A Wolf at the Table. I've been googling my dad's name and e-mail address and the name of his girlfriend with the words "New Mexico" or "Santa Fe" or their names and any combination of information about them that I know. Nothing comes up except for two posts by him on two different message boards, from 2006 and 2008, looking for some used auto parts. A third forum post by him is asking for a picture of Christ healing a deaf person. I guess I have to get this sorted out. This step-dad/dad thing. Whenever M brings up my dad she brings up the fact that maybe I will regret not talking to him and it makes me feel extremely angry. But tonight, on Christmas, when L told me he was leaving an hour before I thought he was going to, I dissolved into a huge sobbing mess for an hour, saying things like "no one cares about me." That is embarrassing when it is typed out. I have to figure some of this stuff out.

Hollly shittt...
no dinner,
diet can of starbucks espresso+one coca cola+tortilla chips+disgusting 7 layer dip with greasy ground beef+like 6 dark chocolate whitman chocolate sampler things+dollar tree peanut butter cups+energizer medicine==barfing at 6am and intense heartburn.
before that... weird day. thai food and one beer and mocha at logan's, taking a nap at m's but smell of cat pee everywhere.
I CANNOT WAIT TO GO HOME.

Christmas is such a weird time. I have complicated feelings about it. In one sense... I hate it and can never wait for it to be over. I feel like Christmas is one of those times when it's really obvious if your family is "normal" or not-- there is lots of pressure... and the indication of normality is whatever ritual, but really it just seems to come down to money-- who can afford to see their family, whose family has enough money to send nice gifts. Which mine doesn't. Then I get mad and compare myself to other's and feel sorry for myself. Then I work in a homeless shelter and see what's really important.

It's hard to outgrow the little girl inside of me, excited by everything, but also greedy and materialistic and jealous.

Weird conversation with Logan today about his parent's not buying me something... like it means anything. I am obsessed with the idea of being "unwanted"--and I try to prove it all the time, by the smallest actions of others.

I read The Other Boleyn Girl Tonight. And now I am feeling frightened. Yesterday and today I knew Logan and I would hang out, it's the holidays. After this, I don't know.

I feel embarrassed, all the time, about how I've behaved.



God, mostly though... I just feel really sick and still have heartburn. Or I guess acid reflex. I don't know. 40 minutes.

Haven't heard from L all night. Wonder if he had other plans? Realized we don't see each other or talk much now... maybe it's sinking in that we're broken up. Don't want it to be. Wish I didn't feel sick. I hope the drive home goes okay. I'm reminded of the horrible times in college i would stay up all night and I was so sick all the time for various reasons. I'm getting too old to be like this. Need some dignity! Some class! Some grace!

It's never too late, right? And things will be okay, right? I hate the idea of living in a time that I won't really be able to understand until it's gone by... doing and saying things that later I will know were probably the wrong things to do or say. But I don't have that clarity now.

I haven't written anything in this blog for a long time.

It's Christmas Eve Eve. I haven't done anything for the holidays this year. It's felt kind of great. Also, detached.

Lately I've been thinking I wish I could not belong to facebook, not text message, not have a cell phone, without being totally left out of things. Without missing something. It's not worth it to me to give that part of it up, because all of my peers have it/the world has it. I just wish I could go back to speaking. Making plans ahead of time and then showing up. Can you imagine that? Walking into a place to meet someone without saying "I'm on my way" or "are you there?" over text.

This year was incredibly fucking weird.

My grandma died, I met my dad, I quit my job, Logan and I broke up, I drove across the country. Among many many other things. I'm not sure what I've learned. I know that I grew a lot from my job. The saddest part about being broken up with Logan is I don't say "I love you" to him anymore because I don't want him to feel uncomfortable.

I don't know what to do with a lot of what happened this year.

Mary, Amanda, and I went to the coast for the lunar eclipse/winter solstice. We made an altar. We wrote down things we wanted to get rid of and leave behind. We burned herbs. We burned our pieces of paper. We wrote down things we wanted and burned them to. We asked for things and got them. We remembered the power of positive thinking/visualization/asking for what you want.

The eclipse was so beautiful. We stared at the moon as it disappeared until our eyes burned. I went back into the yurt and read TS Eliot for comfort. When I came out the moon was completely gone. An hour later, it was completely full again. I fell asleep to the sound of the ocean, and I could see the once again full moon shining down from the sky light.

Every winter I get really really depressed and this one is much harder because of the break-up.

I think that everything will be okay.

i miss what never was.

list of things i don't want to do

1. check my bank account balance.

2. go to the airport on wednesday at 5:30am.

3. figure out how to get to the airport.

4. go to my grandma's funeral.

5. go to work tomorrow.

6. go to work on saturday.

7. get up in the morning.

list of things i want:

1. to smoke a cigarette.

2. to stay in bed.

coming home songs

Songs with lyrics about coming home and forgiveness are extra poignant to me, for whatever reason.

Pedro the Lion-Of Minor Prophets and Their Prostitute Wives

Bright Eyes-First Day of My Life

are both good "coming home" songs..

I like M. Ward's Poison Cup, because I thought the lyrics said "I'll forgive you everything" which I thought was the most amazing sentiment. Apparently he's actually saying "I'm gonna give you everything" which isn't as good.

There's also Phantom Planet-West Coast.

Anyways, imaginary readers, use lala and listen to those. And pay attention to the lines about coming home. And understand what I'm talking about and feel the same way.

patterns

Kepler's self-authored epitaph:
Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras
Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure
Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law
http://herz-fischler.ca/ARTICLES/articles.html
http://www.lumen.nu/rekveld/wp/?page_id=340
http://thefloatinglibrary.com/2009/02/13/a-new-refutation-of-time-selections-j-l-borges/

grotto party oscars

I worked from 8-1:30 on Saturday, after not much sleep on Friday. Afterwards I walked around Hawthorne in the sunshine and went to the Red Light to search for a costume. Logan met me there and I took him to Broder for a date. Broder is adorably Scandinavian... all the servers were stylish and they played Belle and Sebastian and things like that from someone's iphone, at one point during a song it received a text message.
Afterwards I drove us like a lunatic to the Grotto, stressed out in the parking lot over details, eventually went in. We walked around and read about the saints and Logan took pictures of flowers.
Party afterwards, Sunday brunch, nap, TV watching.

i miss la playa!

hoy

all over the place today.

great day! brunch, birthday hats and cakes, piano playing, game of hearts at the waypost, friends, cranium, tons of laughing and sunshine.

plus fighting with logan and no sleep.

was asking about my theme at brunch and someone suggested y2k, generator jokes. i didn't say anything. thought about earl when i was laying in bed, the layout of that house. thought about how scared i was all the time. living in a house full of loaded guns. including one in the car and one under the bed. wanted a hug. kept thinking logan was coming up the stairs but it was always my roommates. blahblahblah.

found carla morrison. obsessed with her. thought in spanish a little today. talked a lot in spanish yesterday.

beautiful day, beautiful sky. clear night.

gushing happiness

This weekend L and I stayed in a bed and breakfast right outside of Mt Rainier National Park.
It was incredibly relaxing and reinvigorating. The place was perfect. Perks of a hotel (restaurant, maid service, sense of anonymity) but with a homey common area and yard that made it feel like I was on vacation at my grandparents.
It was nice being lifted out of our daily routine, and remembering how good we are together, no matter where we are.
It gave us the peace and quiet and privacy that I've been craving, so we could have some really amazing heart to hearts. We were able to talk about things that we've needed to talk about for about a year. And even before the heart-to-hearts, I had such a good time getting drunk together and having rambling and enthusiastic conversations.

I kept telling my brain to memorize what it was like to stand in the sun and look at the mountains and trees. So when the day-to-day gets to me I can go back there.

Bursting with epiphanies all weekend: about my childhood, being an adult now, my future as a nudist, the negative thoughts that creep into my brain. The barbed wire I wrap my feelings in.

A supreme tranquility washed over my soul. I know I can't keep it, but I hope recording it helps.

I'm going to stop cutting my hair.

I've decided on a wildly ambitious Lent.
This Lent I am giving up chocolate and lattes in to-go cups. And I have to not use my car one day a week. And I have to do the couch potato to 5k program.
OHMYGODCANTWAITTILEASTER

february

I turned my computer on to write something, but I've just been looking at facebook.

I felt a lot today. And thought of lots of things I wanted to write down. Now trying to look back and remember...

I've been feeling depressed, horrible... in a rut. Staying in bed. Being mean.

And now I feel better.

It's like that, I guess. Ups and downs.

Today was beautiful. Sunny, some rain, warm. It's an awkward time of year. I saw some tiny little blossoms poking up out of the dirt today. And then drove passed a house that still had Christmas lights on.

Spring!, but the Winter Reminder. Light at the end of the tunnel. Time for resolutions. New resolutions, all the time. New Resolutions All the Time that I always Mean. That I will Keep.

Sophie suggested that I write about the dad-facebook thing so instead I signed up to work eight days in a row. Home at midnight, back to work by 8am. No time..

The transition to confessional blog from "keep track of fun activities I'm doing!" was pretty short. But I'm okay with that.

I'm worried that I'm going to waste my life being mean.

exdads on facebook and rd laing

I guess I feel like, if they have time to have a facebook, why don't they have time to send me a card or an email or a message? Am I supposed to add them? Message them? Email my stepdad and ask, why did you stop talking to me. Email my dad and ask, why did you leave and never talk to me again. You obviously talk to other people. I can see a list of them, on that website we're both on. It seems so High Fidelity, but with family members. Do I just get over it?

The other person's behavior is an experience of mine. My behavior is an experience of the other. The task of social phenomenology is to relate my experience of the other's behavior to the other's experience of my behavior.

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience is man's invisibility to man.

from “Song of Myself”

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

failure to thrive

i could have lived without all that and bought myself an ipod nano.

why not spend $200+ in a day

job interview

walgreens:
two rolls of developed film
miniature composition notebook
schick quattro refill cartridges
mechanical pencils

whole foods:
non fat soy latte
electric aromatherapy
birthday card
almond milk
tortilla chips

library

vegethai:
sweet and sour soy chicken
thai iced tea

vogue nails:
manicure
pedicure
eyebrow wax
lip wax

swirl:
creme brulee frozen yogurt

peet's:
jasmine pearl tea

dalo's:
red stripe beer
vegan platter
ethiopian honey wine

what would i want

This weekend I have felt horrible and inferior.
Listening to this song on repeat, tonight:

youth

I'm struggling.

George Phillips Bond

George Phillips Bond (May 20, 1825 – February 17, 1865) was an American astronomer. His early interest was in nature and birds, but after his elder brother William Cranch Bond Jr. died, he felt obliged to follow his father into the field of astronomy. Bond took the first photograph of a star in 1850.

etc

Some cool stuff has happened! But I haven't been putting it in here.

Things:
went to the art museum!
ate at ladybug restaurant in st johns!
ate at proper eats in st johns!
saw up in the air!
saw youth in revolt!
went on a city walk from the book portland city walks (with my cute drunk boyfriend)!
have been reading 'eating animals'!
have been going out to bars and having fun

lamebook

Well, this past week I have found my dad (who I haven't spoken to since 1989) and my ex-stepdad (who I haven't seen since 1999) on facebook. It was a shock seeing pictures of my dad for the first time in twenty years.
Seeing my stepdad after so long made me feel kind of stupid about my weird stupid issues that I have been blaming him about for so long. Facebook just makes everyone (even your estranged family) seem like any old dude. He's just some dude that is a fan of "sleeping in tents" and "slapping dick cheney", and this is the person I've let ruin so much of my life, YEARS after even living with him or knowing him. He was this weird phantom/creator of my neuroses... facebook really shrunk him down to size for me.

Also, finding estranged family on that website has made me reevaluate putting my pictures and stuff like that on there. I think it would be better to be a lot more removed than I am. I guess if you're actually removed from stuff you don't talk about it anymore.

Weird week though. As far as facebook stalking men that fucked me up as a child and then bailed.

sometimes breaking taboos make life feel a little easier.

I want to go to Paris.

endgame

The protagonists of the play are Hamm, an aged master who is blind and not able to stand up, and his servant Clov, who cannot sit down. They exist in a tiny house by the sea, although the dialogue suggests that there is nothing left outside—no sea, no sun, no clouds. The two characters, mutually dependent, have been fighting for years and continue to do so as the play progresses. Clov always wants to leave but never seems to be able. Also present are Hamm's legless parents Nagg and Nell, who live in rubbish bins downstage and initially request food or argue inanely.

"Beckett's favorite line in the play is Hamm's deduction from Clov's observation that Nagg is crying: 'Then he's living.' But in Berlin he felt that the most important sentence is Nell's 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' And he directed his play to show the fun of unhappiness."

http://www.samuel-beckett.net/hugill.html

The implication in the play is that the characters live in an unchanging, static state. Each day contains the actions and reactions of the day before, until each event takes on an almost ritualistic quality. It is made clear, through the text, that the characters have a past. However, there is no indication that they may have a future.

I broke my resolution. Everything I wrote about is a big joke. Sam said a long time ago if you're not having a good time you're doing something wrong. It's easy to write that off and say, maybe life isn't that simple. But, fuck-- it should be. I am doing something wrong.
Sade has a new song that I'm listening to for the first time as I write this and I like it.

Did you ever hear that Peter and the Wolf song Strange Machines? I can't find it anywhere but it's a good one. "Life could be so easy, why do you have to make it so hard... what strange machines we are" it says. Basically.

What do I want?
To travel and feel free. To spontaneously take a train somewhere and to sleep in a field. I've been reading about Kepler and I love him and I want to talk excitedly about him and try and listen to the planets as they orbit the sun. You know?

From the Mahabharata, Book Sixteen: Tell me what is good for me. I am a wanderer with a hollow heart.

Whatever happens is a sign of something that will happen.
-Seneca

august 2008

I want to break my resolution.

oregon city

Logan and I went to the first city in the United States west of the Rockies to be incorporated (thanks wikipedia)... Oregon City!

On the drive there we saw lots of adult arcades and then we walked around and saw lots of historic homes. We read a lot of about John McLoughlin, the "father of Oregon."

He looks pretty intense.


Apparently in the late 1840s his general store was famous for being the last stop on the Oregon Trail. Also, I read this story on wikipedia and thought it was funny: When three Japanese fishermen, among them Otokichi, were shipwrecked on the Olympic Peninsula in 1834, McLoughlin, envisioning an opportunity to use them to open trade with Japan, sent the trio to London on the Eagle to try to convince the Crown of his plan. They reached London in 1835, probably the first Japanese to do so since the 16th century Christopher and Cosmas. The British Government finally did not show interest, and the castaways were sent to Macau so that they could be returned to Japan.

And he gave aid to American settlers. Probably more for his sake then theirs, but who knows.

When we were driving away from Oregon City I felt funny looking around at Michaels and Safeway and Starbucks and stuff, considering less than 200 years ago it was supposed to be the final frontier or something. Either way it was a fun day!

current favorite bar in portland

Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive.

Dear Grace,
Get Out Of Bed. Take a shower. Go to work.

sometimes too tired to keep trying. tired of trying. sometimes.

on to the next one

I feel good about this decade being over.
I ended 1999, the 90s, sitting in a single wide trailer that was on five acres of land in a canyon in southern Idaho. I watched Body Heat with my stepfather, my mother, my brother, and my brother's ex-girlfriend. My stepdad paused the movie to check y2k forums. But nothing happened in Australia. And then nothing happened here. And then we went to bed.
A day later and still nothing had happened. We took my brother and my brother's ex-girlfriend to the airport. My stepdad, Earl, drank cocktail after cocktail in the airport bar. He made a joke about putting cyanide in our drinks. He joked about group suicide. On the drive home, the car kept drifting into the other lane as semi-trucks passed us. When we stopped for gas I asked my mother to drive the rest of the way instead of Earl.
What followed? Earl stopped showering and started baking a lot of bread. There were some bad fights between my mother and Earl, but I don't remember if they were pre or post December 31st 1999. I went back to school. I smoked pot out of an aluminum can. I talked to my brother about moving in with him.
And then Earl left. He went back to Florida to work as a commercial photographer. He said he couldn't work in Idaho. He was supposed to come back and he never did.
My mom started crying when we were in public and stopped wanting to get out of bed. But she got us out of there. We drove to Colorado together, and I can still picture the red dirt and red rocks as we crossed into Colorado from Wyoming. It was raining, and I swear I remember a rainbow when we got there.
My mom got us a house and painted the walls. She had to declare bankruptcy and she filed for divorce. She made me noodles with pesto and salad a lot and I tried to do my homework.
I did okay for awhile, kept it together for a year and got okay grades. And then I started skipping school and failing classes. Experimenting with drugs. Sometimes my mom would tell me I was the only reason she was still alive, and sometimes I would stay up nights wishing the next day would never come.
I made friends and I lost friends and I kissed a boy for the first time. I graduated high school. I got accepted into college, and I went back to Idaho.
In college I joined a sorority and started binge drinking for the first time. I lived with a man (a boy, really) for the first time. We made a nice house together for awhile. Our relationship ended when I was just 19, and I stayed single for a long time. I learned things. My mother moved to Idaho, and later my brother moved to Idaho too. I spent time with them. I graduated college and moved to Portland. And I learned how to ride the bus, how to walk around in crowds by myself.
During this decade I gained 50 pounds and lost 50 pounds. I worked for a national park for a weekend before I quit without telling anyone. I flew to Florida. I drove from Colorado Springs to Boise a lot, and from Boise to Portland a lot. One weekend I spontaneously drove to the address I had for my biological father, which turned out to be a huge apartment complex. I slept in a city park with a friend. I hung out in Seattle. I moved 15 times. I visited Peru and Bolivia. I moved to Argentina by myself and took a boat to Uruguay. I saw New York for the first time. I ran from the cops. I watched a lot of sunrises with friends. I went swimming with my mom and my brother and we walked our dog together. I saw my grandparents. I tried to celebrate things. I struggled.
It took me a long time to realize any of the impact the 90s had on me. I'm ready for it to be in the past. I've spent ten years trying to process and recover. Ten years reacting.
On December 31st 2009 I watched tv on my computer and napped. I fought with my boyfriend, and then we talked to each other. We worked it out and treated each other with respect. We drank champagne. I went to work, which is a shelter for teenage girls. I watched the ball drop with them and we drank sparkling apple cider. I talked to them about their boyfriends and their families and I gave one medicine and one chocolate.
I let them go outside to look at fireworks and they cheered along with the neighbors. We watched the premiere of the Jay-Z video for "On to the Next One."
I planned on writing in detail about each year of the decade. Instead I google chatted with Logan and Dave and I watched TV.
Dave asked me what resolutions I made. I said that I wouldn't look at Logan's exgirlfriend on facebook anymore. It's more than that, though. It's vague. It has to do with how I spend my time. It has to do with knocking some of the bullshit off, and growing up. I work with teenagers for forty hours a week, I can't act like them. It's still about celebrating and struggling. And it's about being ready to let go of the past.
Ten years is a big deal when you're 24. I'm excited to get older. I'm excited to learn how to do more things.
Happy 2010.