{november 15, 1999} ......,........................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
often i find myself performing some menial task, like fixing the vacuum cleaner, up to the elbow in grease and machine bits, and i'll think to myself how peculiarly fashioned this tiny machine is, how essential it has become in my life (miss lu is a shedding queen) and how for years i just took it for granted.
same thing with sponges, and toe nail clippers.
so then i think, well, if i'm taking even the vacuum cleaner for granted, what else have i been blanketing with ambivalent expectation? the cat? my boss? parcheesi? i came home last night after spending time with people that i think i may have been taking for granted, boxed up and didn't allow a change in the weather. judging people is comfortable, easy. once you have defined someone to an acceptable set of mores, you no longer need to question or wonder how they will react. but thank god for the change of tides, and for the wackiness of people.
so i came home and i was drunk (god bless the bloody mary) and i went to take off my dress and i fell into the wall, sending the full length mirror crashing to the floor. it shattered everywhere and i calmly picked each fragment up and thought to myself how painful seven years of bad luck might be......but i break mirrors all the time, i suppose i like to live dangerously. miss lu proceeded to launch a full scale moist-kitten-nose-in-mama's-face-we-need-one-on-one-attention attack and i spent the rest of my drunken early morning hours massaging her into a preening, keening mess.
i mentioned that my nephew alex turned one, for those of you who recall the big day was 11/5/98, and monsieur malapert was in tip top form. beth's grandmother made him a little baby carrot cake and he went into destructo mode, ripping and smearing the cake into every corner of the high chair and all available orifices. he's too fucking cute, that's for damn sure. he knows it, though, or at least has a clue based on the near constant maniacal grinning lavished upon him by every adult present.
i really keep scolding myself that i need to spend more time with him, and all my family. my days pass so quickly, as they do for all of us, and our lives are busy, filled with work and school and attempting to keep it real in the social world. they live fairly close, in the town i grew up in, and so i really have no excuse save that i need to get my shit together and make more of an effort. i want to be closer to my family, it's painful to not have a good relationship with my father, and i don't want it to come into play with my brothers and mother. so much frustration and change for all of us, it has been good, of course, but nerve wracking.
my birthday is coming up, and it's actually bastet75's b-day, too. i'm soon to be 24 and god don't i feel old. the last year has had so many ups and downs, i don't think i've ever been as low and bereft as i have this year, but i have learned so much and i am thankful, above all. all of it ebbs and flows and the perspective, keeping it encompassing all things, has been the most difficult to attain. when you hurt, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, but there always is, and always will be. finite.
on the radio i heard a woman reading a piece of her novel about two french parents whom lose their two daughters at the same time. it was moving to hear such raw, frightening, terrifying pain, and also to know that it will move along and as bitter and disgusting as it feels right now, it will change. because it defines it, death brings about appreciation of life, it seems it should feel more like a gift.
as i read back through the last two years worth of whining and waxin' political/poetical/philosophic/pathetical sometimes i see how much i've changed, but also how much i've stayed the same and i wonder about all of you out there......and wish that i could peek into your diaries over the past couple of years and chart your path to the supposed redemption we're all imaginedly searching for. but, then i'm nosy. or, maybe i just want to see if we're all on the same page......or if i'm a chapter behind. i could use a few....pointers, i'm sure.
or, even better, a more deprecating scribe.
yours, kat
{november 06, 1999} ......,.........................<--ramblings, observations, & mistranslations---
there are places which lend to a recreation of identity, and then there is san francisco, a city which can simultaneously create and annihilate, define and deceive. welcome were the days of 78 degree weather and cloudless, azure skies dipping into my prep-for-hibernation brain.
walking. i love to explore and examine alleys and graffiti, or piers and the buttery light hitting hundreds of shelled prawns, pinkish orange meat exposed to the air, warming scent making some mouths water and other stomachs turn. it isn't difficult to appreciate the carelessness of the breeze nor the ache of the salty stench, dredging up memories old and new.
the mistake of trusting those who cannot bear it is not a new lesson for me, but apparently i have as yet not learned how dangerous it can be. it is painful to find oneself alone in a crowd of 'friends' and frankly i'm so fucking sick and tired of pretending. why spend time with those that criticize and complain in return? i suppose there is a reason for the coined phrase, "with friends like these who needs enemies?" and all the more to lament, perhaps, human relations. i hate thinking i'm not the only one that has been hurt this badly because for some reason, when it is only me, i can bear it. i do not like the idea of so many broken hearts. if it is only me that feels this bad, somehow it seems okay and therefore surmountable. but if all of us do, why can't i take comfort in collective experience?
it seems to me that to attain affinity, one must provide it. within oneself and to everyone else. introspection has been a teasing whore as of late, often i feel so very dampened and self-focused, trapped in an eternal catch-22, an echo snaking through the changing leaves of life. i am by no means perfect and i do not attest to be, nor do i contend that i am anywhere near to an understanding of myself, but i do feel a change coming on. i do feel the altered moon.
an ocean of blank, inky dreams, crashing to the fore. rain pelts the city and my darling nephew just turned one. my mother lost her job and i wonder if i should keep mine. day in and day out, always a choice, i wish it would get a little bit easier. when visiting my friend marna in london, i met her fiancee, typical englishman whom at first i did not understand nor care for. one night while in a bar, the two of them were speaking quite heatedly about their financial situation and marna's betrothed whispered something about how most importantly, they needed to get her some new shoes. rent hasn't been paid, the occupancy of the fridge waning, but the first buck in goes to marna's feet. this made me rethink my assessment and scold myself for judging this man so harshly. no one is perfect, after all, but here my friend had found someone who was worried about whether or not she was comfortable and who the hell was i to slight that? no one when i crave the same thing, someone just giving a damn and wishing i'd do the same.
people pass through my life and leave trinkets in the corners. when i was young and i found pennies or nickels on the floor while tidying up my room, my mother would tell me that the brownies left it for me so that i'd have a prize when i kept my room clean. creative mothering perhaps, but i like to think the brownies are still about, leaving pennies randomly, so that when one goes through their days and cleans through the mayhem of emotion, they occasionally run across these tiny treasures and a smile breaks through the concentration. we're all brownies, i suppose, an unlimited expense account of imagination and affinity.
trust, affinity, solitude, understanding......the never ending spiral. it is not about me, it never has been, it's about us. collected in the doorway, watching the mist coat the hollow orange of the treetops, analyzing the judge whom blinks nervously from too much stress and not enough time, and wrapping gifts that have no shape nor incarnation save for their tiny, vibrant spark of consonant clashing with time.
yours, kat