Words

I get to see the boys this weekend. I haven't for awhile. This song ties with "Walls of Time and "Tonight I'll be Staying Here With You" as my favorite.

It is, however, one of my favorite songs to hear live, period.

I love this song. It's my first 2007 anthem.

Laura Love is charming, and a crazy-good bass player.

I've been on a Springsteen kick since I recently read an essay about a guy who met him at the movies in the 70s when he was on tour, and invited him home to meet his family. Bruce went.

It was a great essay. Check out the current issue of Sun Magazine in the chi-chi lit section of your local overpriced chain bookstore. This song is itself a sad short story, so it fits.

That verse about the wedding is a doozy. I'd love to hear Mary's response to it all.

Heavenly Day
Patty Griffin:
New record February 6th!

Yay! I love Patty so much. She's one of the greats, which means I forgive her for making me cry when she sings.

All of her songs are rated "explicit" on iTunes. This is just..

.strange. One would expect a George Carlin comedy record, which one does not get.

Awesome voice...

wonderful songwriter, and one of the best "new" artists in recent memory.

These girls did a nice job with this cd, which makes the stops on their upcoming tour way curious to me. A garlic festival and a casino golf resort in Iowa?

Weird. But I do enjoy the little cowgirl on their show listing. That's a new one.

I finally bought this cd for six dollars. I've had it on repeat for two months, which makes me laugh for so many reasons, but it's just kind of crawled into my head and won't leave. I'm not really sure how that happened, and it's a bit disturbing.

I'll be dealing with it soon.

It's on the Freedom Writers soundtrack, which I would say was dope if I didn't sound like a total ass saying it.

Because I can be pretend-hip with the best of them, sister.

(Seriously, this is a good song.)

It's noteable not just for the content, but for the fact that I've spent the last two totally aggravating weeks trying to make the computer at home actually work, long enough to get any work done. Internet Explorer is the devil, and if you EVER see any popup on your screen that says amaena dot com, do not go anywhere near it, and in fact save what you can on your machine at that point, go out and get drunk, and buy a Mac while you're out.

Save yourself the trouble. This is horrible, horrible hell. The machine has been invaded with Spyware that won't leave no matter what tool I use to get rid of it.

The other night I spent a half hour on the phone with a man somewhere around the world, repping Norton Antivirus, who sold me my upgrade. And when I finally got it installed, I came back to one of those scary, DOS-like screens, again. And it was all, Uninstall recently installed software or hardware, and basically pray the rosary, lest your computer explode in a blaze of bytes right in front of your face.

And this was antivirus software! Like the mother of all antivirus software. If Norton Antivirus fucks up your machine, it's safe to say it's your machine's fault.

It's like David Spade breaking up with Heather Locklear. Please. We know whose decision THAT is.

And I don't even really want to talk about Gateway.
Because 2007 is the year of immediate technological suckage, apparently, a virus has also invaded my e-mail, one of the ones that mimics my address with different prefixes (like, totalfuckingasshole atlauriewrites.com, or nogirlwouldsleepwithmeincollegesonowisit
annoyinnocentpeopleatlauriewrites.

com...

youknow, those kind.) And the Yahoo geniuses talk big talk in the help section about the possibility of virus removal, but they don't actually, you know, tell you how to do it. So I'm faced with the possibility of having to totally change all of my contact information, including my main e-mail, again, and the reason I went with the one I went with was because of it's IMPERVIOUSNESS (haha) to spam.

I hate this shit. I've taught myself how to fix so many things on the computer in the last two years. I know how to install memory.

I can put new chips and cards in in under fifteen minutes. I've considered getting certified as a technician just to make some extra money. I mean, I've been fancying myself a burgeoning geek.

And the fact that I can't get my mind or my keyboard around this in the right configuration to fix either thing is really, really pissing me off.
I installed Firefox last night, which seems resistant to everything that Explorer is not. Whereas Explorer is Swiss cheese, Firefox is like a freaking fortress of speed.

So far. I have no confidence in anything with this machine at all, and in fact approach it as I would an armed gunman. I speak to it quietly, in melodious tones, and will it work, because for now I need it.

And I also don't like not knowing how to fix things, so I don't want it to know this, but I'm going to win. I'm totally going to win.
So yeah, the was hard-won.

And it's about self-portraits, which is fun. So go read it. Thanks.

Posted on January 09, 2007 in , | “The Sunrise Ruby,” Rumi
In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.
She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.

”
He says, “There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness?

It has no resistance
to sunlight.”
This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!
The ruby and the sunrise are one.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear,
and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
Work.

Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.

Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.

Finished. Finis. Completed.

Cashing it in. Done. Over.

Fat lady (hey, watch it...

) singing. No mas. Tapped out.

Breathing. Ahhhhh..

...

...

Yes. Lest I be killed in a freak buggy accident while trying to get out of Pennsylvania Dutch country, I'd like to note that I have posted every single day in this .
I don't feel any smarter, really, and I'd wager you wouldn't either, if you read back over the 30-odd posts that comprise this effort.

But dammit, I can still meet a goal, and since no one will play word games with me anymore (bastards!) I apparently need some kind of competitive outlet. And now that I've done that, let's get down to those brass tacks, (and the dreadful image that phrase always creates in my head.

..much like a day late and a dollar short, which is quite a sucky thing to be, I think.

) The brass tacks of December may or may not include the divulging of interesting ideas and activities, so allow me to build suspense over that which may amount to absolutely nothing.
Or maybe I'll just copy and paste quotes from The Office to get me through 'til the new year. I just never know where my day will take me.

Where this one is taking me is on to December, the month containing a birthday that will include minimal focus on digits but only, possibly, cake, (and oh yes, NYC!) and in which I might post every day but might not..

.as I return to that delicious ambiguity which so defines my life. And also a month in which I hope to be forced to hear Mariah Carey's delightful (really, I love it) All I Want for Christmas Is You and also Elton's Step Into Christmas while shopping in return for every time I have to hear another holiday tune that I loathe and despise.

And on that note, tune in tomorrow to learn just how many times Jose Feliciano wants to wish YOU a merry Christmas...

or count it yourself if you're obsessive-compulsive like I am. It definitely wasn't as many times as I thought it would be. I don't feel that he adequately conveyed the sentiment now.

As I say (poorly) in Spanglish, Feliz Thursday - and December. Almost another year. Can you believe it?

I'm not sure that anything profound will fly from these fingers tonight (which is assuming that it does on a regular basis, hmm? ) because I'm so tired that I'm yawning my way through the only night of television that I watch, and making it through ER isn't looking so promising. So I think I'll take this opportunity to mention that I've shifted gears over at , where I'm and .

I'm really happy about this change, and it seems to have reinvigorated both my desire to post, and my content when I actually do. I enjoyed travel, and do a lot of it, in fact, but I spend way more time exploring visual art, with a focus on photography, so this feels much more natural for me. And writing about people and their pets is just fun, not to mention that it gives rise to questions like, Is a horse a pet?

Thank God I have stellar friends like who take me seriously when I drop such questions via chat, and actually answer. ; )
Anyway, drop by and check out the site. There is fresh content everyday, and good stuff at that.

I'm really looking forward to the Chicago conference next summer, and if you're interested in the business side of blogging, you may want to check out the in NYC next March.
When you don't think your life can change, that's when you need to change your life.
This phrase popped into my head yesterday, and I keep thinking it, over and over.

Not very original, I know, but hey - my brain made it up on the fly. I didn't work for it or anything, or ask it to appear. I pay attention to that kind of shit, though - the little woowoo magic mental phrases that appear out of seemingly NOWHERE, cause man, it kind of freaks me out when that happens.

Way back in 1993 when I met my erstwhile cutiepie slacker genius pothead boyfriend, like, the minute I laid eyes on him, I heard a voice in my head. I was standing in the kitchen at the restaurant where we worked, and I saw him behind the steam table, and all of a sudden, in the recesses of my mind, I heard, or sensed, or transmitted from the Bugaloo spaceship, I'm going to hang out with this guy for a long time. I looked around, like, What?

and he continued to silently slice the sandwiches. So I looked at him for a minute and nothing happened. And then I went out and found my best friend who was waitressing with me that night and told her what had just happened to me, and she said, I guess you'd better ask him out, then.

Long story short, eight months later I had packed all my crap in my teal Cavalier and moved to Ohio, and now, 13 years later, he's married to someone else and has three kids. Finis. Yes.

Kind of sad. Still, I heard no voices until the last ex-boy, who I met and instantly, well, I didn't really hear any cogent phrases, exactly, I just had this sort of cataclysmic mental conniption fit. I don't even know what happened, but just know that it's hard to cover up by saying, Hello, nice to meet you.

Could you pass the register tape? But I did it. And that little bit of tragic foreshadowing turned out to be pretty accurate as well, as now, some six years later, he's at a rave somewhere, maybe even twirling or wearing funny boots, and I'm here talking to you.

The return of the voice (and nice that it doesn't involve a man this time, huh Virginia? Refreshing.) makes a little bit of sense, too, because I'm making some plans, finally, that don't feel like just a flailing reaction to pain, and I feel really happy about that.

I've finally realized that most of what I've built things on for the past several years is shifting sand, because it's had nothing at all to do with me and who I really am and what I enjoy. It's mostly had to do with what other people were going to do or were doing or might do in five minutes if I didn't do or say the exactly right thing or play the right sport or work the right way or play an instrument or show up on time. It had to do with who they were - what their gifts and talents were - what they enjoyed.

..and how I felt, standing in their light.

I was convinced that my happiness hung in the balance of someone else's, and since I could never make them happy because they weren't meant to be happy with me, I was always in the badlands of that particular prairie. And when that person checked out, it meant that I wasn't going to be happy, ever, just because I'd been so happy when they were there, and convinced of the absolute rightness of their presence. That's kind of scary now in retrospect, I think, but it's true - and a huge reason why I don't really bank on the absolute rightness of anything anymore, having been so wrong about a topic about which I believed I was so absolutely right.

(And yes, I'm fully aware that that's kind of crazy talk. I got a kick out of it, myself.)
I've been doing some rewinding lately because I've gotten so sick of myself, and some thinking about stuff that should change, and what I can do to make that happen.

I'm hesitant to say this because if I'm wrong I'll feel like even more of a fool, but I think for the first time in a very long time I can see a path beginning to emerge that doesn't suck at all, and in fact might turn out to be very cool, if not the best damned path ever invented. I'm not foolish enough to think that it'll turn out even close to the way I envision. I've lived a little too long to believe in that sort of thing, and that mostly things can turn out better if you put your best intentions and effort forward and try not to draw too many mental or worse, emotional pictures of the ideal outcome.

But it's entirely possible that this time next year I'll be in an entirely different space and I think that, unless it's Baghdad, because I don't want to go there, could really be the best possible thing.
I still move forward with much pain in my heart, just to be clear. When it comes down to it, I'm less trusting now than I have ever been, and certainly maintain very little belief in the role of love in my life, especially (REALLY.

ESPECIALLY.) for the long haul. I'm not bitter but I'm jaded, if a distinction can be made, and very, very wary.

I over-gave, and it still kind of embarrasses me and makes me want to reach back through the pensieve of the past decade and yank me even further back, so I could turn different corners and tell people to fuck off when actually I said, Yes, baby. Anything for you.
But in spite of this shift inside of me, the one thing that makes a difference is my refusal to succumb to inertia, because even if I'm sitting on my very own single settee for the rest of my days, I want it to be in a cool spot.

And I want to say that in the process of getting to be the rotten, hilarious-to-myself, intellectually overstimulated and completely batty yet endearing old woman I know I'll be some day, that I did not stop exercising my capacity to do cool shit, or to push myself to create or to make something better out of where I've ended up. I've been lagging for the past couple years, but it's safe to say that it'll get better from here. And thank God.

I'm so on my own nerves.

Things not to say to me, Part One

Person One: Well, at least I hope she's older than you.
Person Two: Oh no, she's YOUNGER.

Laurie screwed up.
Me: If you want some new music, I'm sure he'd be happy to send you some mp3s.
A: Yeah, but it wouldn't be the ambient metal bands that I really want to hear.

It'd be some emotional singer-songwriter shit. It's everywhere. (Sings) 'I want a relationship.

..' I don't give a fuck.

I need to rock.
Posted on August 13, 2006 in , , | So I call my grandma tonight because I haven't talked to her in a while. She lives in an assisted living that is totally pissing me off right now, and it's after 8 so I figure she's already in bed, but she's still awake.

Herewith, evidence in dialogue of why I am - even partially - the way I am. Note also the basic journalistic style, which is a genetic thing. (This is snippets from a longer conversation, unedited.

I really hate the word snippets , by the way, and cannot believe I just used it. Tool. And yes, I do swear in conversation with my grandmother.

I lived partially with her during my high school and college years, in which she looked the other way when I stole her Salem Lights from the back cabinent. And checked on me periodically as I lay on the bathroom floor on my 21st birthday, following several Long Island Iced Teas/aka Glasses of Death, while my best friend slept in the bathtub. She will criticize me, but if you do, she'll rip your face off.

We are road dawgs.)
G: How are ya?
M: Okay.

I have a headache.
G: Why?
M: I hit my head on a metal pole at the Chicago airport on Tuesday, and my head still hurts.

G: What'd you do that for?
M: It was a calculated attempt at self-injury.
G: Oh.

Well, you should have complained.
M: It was my fault. I stood up and banged into the pole.

G: Yeah, well, they should have moved the pole.
G: How's your love life?
M: Oh, no.

Please.
G: So how is it?
M: A possibility, but not a boyfriend.

G: Where's the old one?
M: Gone, for years.
G: Which one?

M: The one you always ask about.
G: What'd he do that for?
M: He had shit to do.

Let it go.
G: Oh well. You have to scratch him off then, I guess.

G: Oh boy, life is awful.
M: Why? Your life is awful?

G: No. Is yours?
M: No, not particularly.

I mean, why did you say that?
G: I just feel..

.stupid. That's how I feel.

I'll feel different in the morning.
M: So you just feel stupid at night?
G: Right.

Just at night.
M: Well, so what about short? Granddaddy was short.

G: Yeah. So?
M: So you married him.

G: Well yes, yes I did. So?
M: So if you hadn't married him, I wouldn't be here.

G: Oh, right. Thank God you're here.
Posted on August 03, 2006 in , | Here's some final words from a couple of street guys, before I forget.

First, a really dirty, Grizzly Adams-looking guy getting on the most crowded bus I've ever been on in my life, on Sunday in San Francisco. If I lived there I'd probably try to ride his bus on purpose, I'm that starved for 50-cent words, it seems. I'm also stealing his first line, and may credit him if I'm in the mood:
Oh, a stupid look!

Stupid looks are free all day. It's Sunday! Move on back!

OH look, it's a refugee flotilla! What country am I moving to? Mr.

Castro, may I join you? Move it on back.
And last night, near the Santa Cruz boardwalk, another sort of scary looking little man had a problem with the ladies, apparently:
Shame on your mother!

I'll bitchslap that lesbian. I'll send her a text message!
Goin' on home.

hearing - Ode to a Butterfly , and the rest of Nickel Creek , Nickel Creek. I'm in love with their voices right now.
drinking - Coffee that desperately needs to be reheated.

Really, it's so gross that it's surpassed the usual level of grossness that I can tolerate in a leftover cup of coffee. (And just a note: fat-free half and half has no purpose. It is poison and the people who invented it and those who manufacture it should be jailed, because I really believe it is worse for you than drinking ground water outside of a car wash.

Use a little of the real stuff and walk around the fucking block, for God's sake. Fat free also seems to equal obscene amounts of sugar and cellulose (talk about scary, yo) added to mimic consistency of food acceptable on a planet not yet discovered, to be consumed by people with mouths on their foreheads. Whatever, dude.

)
holding - Just held a catalog to swat this scary flying insect out of the room. It always scares me when I see things that can bite that I don't recognize as indigenous to the East Coast. That's all I need is some strange disease from an insect bite.

I tried to catch him peacefully so I could let him out the door with all limbs intact, but he wouldn't capitulate. I did what I could, and he finally got out but I'm not sure he'll be flying for long.
eating - My leftover crabcake from last night's dinner.

It was really, really good. You should be so jealous, if you're into shellfish in any way.

As stolen from (and added to) c.

I'm going to play along...

twisted my arm! ; )
1. When did you start blogging and why?

Or talk about your blog. What can I learn about you in under 5 minutes?
I started blogging last year.

.. .

It's a dumb post, and so are the next few, actually, ( God bless the lord God bird ? What the hell??

? This is why I live in fear of people judging me from one thing that I write or say) but I really didn't know what I was doing or thinking or saying at the time. I still don't, really, but I seem to have stuck with it long enough to catch a groove.

As far as why, eh...

There were a couple of reasons. First, the acute cause: (God, I hope this doesn't sound too dramatic or ridiculous, but it really is the truth, which is sometimes dramatic and ridiculous. I'm a terrible self-editor; it's a wonder I ever get anything written) I had a bad year.

My job was pretty harsh, and my living situation was about to change in a way that I really didn't want it to. I was in a long-term relationship that ended, with someone I talked to constantly who I'm pretty sure was usually actually interested..

.the stereotypical (although not at all, in fact) best friend that you're supposed to hook up with..

.sort of like Lucy and Ethel, except for I liked to kiss him a lot. ; ) The communication and best friend deals are good relationship traits in theory.

I still highly recommend them, but I learned that if Ethel (or...

Dirk. Or Max. Jack?

I'm not thinking of a good manly name all of a sudden. Haha.) splits, THIS Lucy needs to have all personal means of creative expression and everyday interaction basically intact, and I hadn't paid too much attention to those for a variety of reasons.

Therefore, I was unhappy. I felt boring and bored inside, as well as sad (cue cello..

.no violins, please) and if you know anything about me, it's that that is death. It kills me slowly and it will annoy the hell out of you, because I'll be miserable to be around and you won't want to be my friend anymore.

So I did a few things. I stepped away from Extreme Home Makeover long enough to get a Typepad account, and I started to post things in it. I hadn't written much for any reason for a while, except for reviews of freezers and only mildly interesting features about restaurants.

Hence the CHRONIC reason for the blog: I needed a writing practice back, and somehow I got one. I didn't want to go to therapy and talk about stuff I already knew about from before. I didn't want to talk or even write that much specifically about my God-blessed FEELINGS, but I did want to talk and write.

I found out that occasionally I was still funny, and that sometimes when I'm depressed or pissed off, I can be a riot, at least to myself. Regardless of who was reading, I got sort of a cheap thrill out of being able to slap stuff up on the web at a moment's notice. It was a concrete activity at a time when I needed some.

The blog got me interested in my own photography again, so I started taking classes and learning how to do it better, and I just...

kept going.
I am not a mommyblogger. I am not specifically a doggie blogger, although I do post pictures of my dog and love him like he's my kid, although I don't talk about him every day.

I'm a multipurpose writer and whatever interests me is fair game. I focus a lot on pop culture because I think it's fascinating and funny. I write about music because it fuels me and language because it's my orientation.

I'm often amazed by what seem to be very minute details to other people, and a 30-second interaction might get airtime because I think it's interesting, or mind-boggling, or whatever. I think too much, and therefore I write it down.
Apparenly in five minutes you can learn that I have no problem conceiving of a past boyfriend as a middle-aged white woman on a situation comedy, and this probably sums me up fairly well.

The rest varies depending on the weather, my mood, and frankly, what kind of effect you have on me - but hopefully you'll catch me on a good day and learn that I'm fairly articulate (except for I swear a lot. I try not to, but fuck if I can help it. ; )) I care about most things a lot, and a few things a REALLY lot.

I listen to a lot of music, and love traveling, excellent food, and cool people. That's it in a clam shell. (It's summer.

Eat some seafood. ; ) )
2. How do you use blogging to build friendships?

Besides paying people to read my page and tell other people about it? No, really..

.My real-life friends laugh at some of the stuff I write, so they tell me. That makes me happy because I enjoy making people laugh, and because they suck up to me I buy them presents and consider making them beneficiaries on my life insurance.

I've also connected with a few interesting people through this page, although nothing terribly deep as of yet. I've also come to appreciate several very cool women who also write online, who I don't consider friends because we don't know each other, but I wish we were. I read them on a regular basis and am constantly amazed at how many talented women (and the occasional guy, yes.

; ) ) have found outlets in this medium.
3. Who do you read every day, rain or shine?

I'm a . is someone I just discovered and need to read every day. I read the brilliantly funny every day, who would totally be my friend if we met in real life (or so I like to think), even though she's way hipper than I am.

I read because she's hilarious too, , and Maggie at , like the rest of the world. I read my friend Erin's livejournal without fail, and a few of my friends who have MySpace sites. I love photography and links.

and is also a Boston Terrier person, which is an obvious draw. I like funny. I need funny.

Life is too stressful sometimes and if you don't laugh, it becomes a daily eight-hour bath and you walk around all shriveled.
4. (We're supposed to put a picture of a piece of ourselves here.

I'll spare you my echocardiogram shots...

)
Ummmm...

Typepad will not currently allow me to insert a photo, but the one I was GOING to put here was a reflection of myself in a street-level window in Boston earlier this year. Here, I'll try to copy and paste it and see if it works:
Hmm.

Seems to have worked, but it may show up as a red x in a box when I try to save. Anyway..

.carrying on..

.
Why did you choose to share that piece of yourself in a photograph?
That's my legs in a window in Cambridge, Massachusetts in April of this year.

It was taken almost at the one-year anniversary of this site, and if there's anything to be said for the past year...

and all of them, really, regardless of circumstance, it's that I keep on moving. Plus I like my stance in this shot. The motto for this year (besides, Damn, how much was that plane ticket?

) is bring it and that's what that stance suggests. At the time I took it I was also walking way far to pick up a light meter - longer than I have ever walked in a new city, or any city, for that matter, to pick up ANY sort of equipment, and I have to admit that I've been proud of my commitment to the photo stuff. So yeah, it kind of pulls a bunch of stuff together.

..which is what good photos do, regardless of the quality of the shot.

I also leave the same photo at the top of this page all the time, even though it's not been adequately Photoshopped and my dog's crazy eye is still crazy, because I like my left eye, I love my dog, and I think this is a pretty typical expression for me. I'm Laurie Left Eye not-Lopes (may Lisa rest in peace. I loved TLC.

)
5. How would you describe your writing style?
I don't know.

How would you describe it? If you met me you'd probably say that I write like I talk - effusively, sarcastically, occasionally sentimental, often goofy, but very rarely without intent. Sometimes I write about serious things, and sometimes I want to talk about how much I dislike Shakira's new song (see below.

) Depends. But my ultimate goal is not to sound like a total idiot, so if that's met then I'm doing okay, I guess.
6.

If you could spend time with one person (other than your spouse, because really, let’s not rack up the suck up points here) who would it be?
I don't think I've met him or her yet, because honestly if I want to hang out with people I generally do, unless they don't want to and in that case, well, oh snap. It would be nice to see my Nanny again.

I won't at all say John Cusack because his handlers are probably monitoring the net for stalkerish activity at this point and I AM NOT A STALKER! I swear! I don't even own a screwdriver!

. ; ) (But since you mentioned it, I'll get disgustingly preachy for a minute and note that if you've got a spouse, you should likely want to spend time with them more than anyone - even IF you do the right thing and have lots of other friends and interests - because that's the person who never. goes.

away. So you should be fine with it if they don't. This is what's guiding my choices in this endeavor anyway - abject terror of the alternative.

)
7. What don’t you write about? Anything considered a no-no in your book?

I steer clear of anything I feel may embarrass anyone I know personally, or embarrass ME should they ever see it, because nothing is a secret when you splash it on the Internets. God, you wouldn't BELIEVE the people who have found me on here. ; ) I'm even pretty nice about public figures who should be beyond embarrassment.

I don't name names very often and I think that's fair. I don't write about specifics of my friends and family members' lives, except for in pictures, which might be their least favorite, come to think of it, but I can't help that part. The only crushes you'll hear about are celebrities, because I'm not a total idiot.

(Just a half of one.) I don't write about work specifics because although crazy and story-worthy stuff happens there ALL THE TIME, I like my job. Plus, my work involves the lives of other people, which, as interesting as that can be, is no one's business.

A shame, I know.
8. How do you feel about meeting bloggers in real life?

Are you nervous? Will you have great expectations? What do you home to take away from the BlogHer experience?

I'm generally not nervous about meeting anyone, in a non-dating situation (that's a whole 'nother pile of cupcakes right there.) And one thing I've learned at this point is that expectations are generally not useful. With the amount of time and effort that's gone into the planning of this shindig, and the relative She-Ra strength and talents that I've seen in the women involved, I'm quite sure it will knock my socks off.

I'm hoping to meet some cool people, learn a lot, and have a great time. I've never been to California so I'm really looking forward to that also. Bring it on!

9. So soon we’re going to meet each other at BlogHer. Important question.

How do you party?
With a glass of red wine (or maybe a margarita?), good music, good people, and a smile.

That's all you need.
10. What is your favorite thing that you wrote?

What got a strong reaction from readers? Links please?
My psychic powers are not for sale.

And by that I mean they totally are for sale.
I don't know that I have a favorite thing, although . My hit numbers are pretty good, so I know I have readers, I just don't get that many comments, so either people think I'm boring as hell, or.

..oh.

Maybe I am! Oh. Oh well.

11. Have you written anything controversial? Is blogging controversial?

I don't think I've written anything terribly controversial, unless you consider the possibility that liberal politics are bound to offend someone every now and then. Anything can be controversial, and certainly blogging can be at times - or rather the opinions that are expressed and the ability of others to comment and agree or disagree. Just check out People write some mad shit on the Web in the name of freedom and patriotism, it seems.

12. Are you and your blogging persona the same person?
I am unavoidably myself.

Another blogging persona would make it fiction...

entirely possible but not my thing.
13. Have you ever anonymously posted on a site to flame them?

Nope. I hate the whole concept and psychology of flaming. If I want to argue with someone I'll do it live, and I don't get much out of that anymore either.

14. If you had a super power, what would it be?
I consider prodigious musical talent a super power, so right now I'd like to be able to play any instrument I wanted.

..but I guess unless it helps people it's not really a super power?

In that case I'd like to be able to control the weather. I was watching a special last night about Bill and Melinda Gates and Bill Clinton in Africa, sobbing watching the kids and people in the clinics, so I'd like to bring them some rain, at least. Plus the tsunamis need to be bitchslapped, and of course the hurricanes too.

..That would actually be an interesting human interest comic book, I think.

Timely, too. If I could draw I'd totally do it.
I went to a diner by the university today to get some very late lunch and try to get my head together about this wreck of a Dixie Chicks paper before I had to go to class.

Today was a strange day, which I feel like I've been saying quite a bit lately but I don't know...

It's raining so much that it's like there's this oppressive cloud over everything. Because, well, duh. There is.

(And I call myself a writer...

) I bought some cds to try to counteract this general cloudiness (any excuse for retail therapy, these days.) I got the Nanci Griffiths with the London Symphony Orchestra cd for 1.99, which was cool, and an old YoYo Ma cd because I'm perpetually in love with the cello and with YoYo by association (this guy is a recording, cello-playing MA-CHINE), and another copy of Tift Merritt's Bramble Rose, because I can't find mine and I want to take her on vacation with me.

Oh, and I got a Nickel Creek cd and another one that's called Mutual Admiration Society which is Nickel Creek along with Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket. The last one is a really chill record. I've been having so much trouble sleeping that I think I'm going to play it when I go to bed.

It's not that Glen Phillips's voice is that stupefying...

it's just very familiar, for lack of a better term, and on this record, he doesn't so much sing the songs as he does think them aloud, if that makes any sense. Which it probably doesn't, because the way I hear things is sometimes oddly abstract. Anyway, I love anything Toad, since that witch Dawn played Fear in the UD office over and over and over.

And now I'm thinking about the Gin Blossoms, and I shall have to download Until I Fall Away ...

February, 1994, baby. Some music is a time capsule.
All of this musical purchasing was hours after I asked How are you?

for the first time today, and the person said, My soul is well with God. This was kind of trippy, but what else could I say to that but, Well, I guess it doesn't get much better than that. And it was also after my new doctor was all, So, you're having a (whisper) pelvic exam today?

And I said, Uhhhh...

.I wasn't aware of that. And she said, Let's go ahead and take care of that for you.

And she did. So from now on I'm highly recommending that these exercises in weirdness and humiliation come as a surprise, because having two minutes to think about the sucker vs. like, two weeks, was awesome.

I mean, not really awesome at all. I can't even believe I thought of the word awesome in that context..

.It was still awkward and weird, although if you think for a minute that MY comedy schtick STOPS during this ridiculous enterprise, you've got another think coming.
Me to her: The joys of being a woman are neverending.

Although, I guess from what I've heard of the prostate situation, we get off easy.
Her: Oh, I don't know, at least they've just got ONE orifice.
ROCK!

My new doctor can hang! My new doctor has a sense of humor! So, I now highly recommend the.

..surprise factor of such intrusions, to be all Victorian about it.

(And I can't apologize for T.M.I.

, because, well, I can't. If Katie Couric can bring this stuff to light on the network news, I can surely yap about it on my tiny little offramp on the information superhighway. Be strong and know that I doubt I'll bring it up again for.

..oh, at least another year.

; ) )
Anyway, wow, I didn't mean to write about that. And if I wasn't fundamentally opposed to erasing stuff that I write on here, I'd probably get rid of it..

.
But whatever. What I was really going to write about was how when I was sitting there in the diner, a little girl at the table across from me said to the waiter:
ARE YOU A LADY OR A MAN PERSON?

And the waiter, who was probably about 19, and had the moppy Beatle hair that ALL THE KIDS ARE SPORTING these days ( ; ) ) said,
Me, oh. I am a man. A YOUNG MAN.

It was funny, and sweet, because he had to think about the whole man thing there for a minute, and I actually saw the options flit across his face before he settled, very resolutely, on YOUNG MAN.
Posted on July 06, 2006 in , | I have been writing and posting pictures on this site for a year. .

Since it'll be April for another hour, I thought perhaps I should commemorate this in some fashion, although I'm likely the only one who cares. And this is appropriate in this world of navel-gazing, I suppose.
In many ways, this site was the best possible gift I could have given myself last year, which just sucked for me, in a bottom line sort of way.

It was just not good. There were little glimmers of happiness (mostly the Arizona trip, which was amazing, and Vegas too), but overall it was some tough terrain. Doors closed.

I lost friends. Love ended. I worked really hard and felt like I wasn't getting anywhere I wanted to go.

Projects tanked. Necessary transitions occurred, but I didn't want them and I clung to those closing doors like Dorothy in the Kansas tornado, because dammit, if there's anything I was in charge of, while everything around me was shape-shifting at a ridiculous clip, it was . And really, that was true.

I'd been walking around in its rooms for so long that I knew it like the back of my hand (which I don't really know as well as I know other things. I love cliches. ; ) ) It was so comfortable - such familiar pain - and without it I found that I really didn't have much of a center.

Even my had been rooted in a sense of loss and fear for so long that I thought that was normal, and I really, really didn't want it to stop, because that meant I would lose something essential and never get it back. Never mind that I hadn't thought for a while about whether or not it was something that really worked for me. That was kind of secondary.

Anyway, that didn't work so well. Duh. Stuff was ending and changing , and it really didn't much matter how I felt about it.

No one consulted me. It was just mine to swallow. That was my amateur-Zen conclusion.

So I did what I could do. . I cried more than I thought it was possible for me to still cry after years of dealing with some of the same painful things that .

Old news, right? On one particularly hellish and empty day, I left work, got in my car, and felt this weird sense of being in a bottomless pit that I would never ever get out of. I honestly don't believe that I'm capable of suicide in an unaltered state, but I felt a feeling of despair that nearly equals what I imagine must be experienced by people who end their lives.

The parking lot was empty, and so was my heart. The only person who I thought could possibly make me feel better was unavailable. I started crying so hard that by the time I got on my eyes needed tiny little windshield wipers, and I almost wrecked my car.

I couldn't stop. Those sobs came welling up from this evil, pathetic place, and just when I thought I'd felt as bad as a could feel, I'd feel worse. Usually if I look at myself in the mirror when I'm crying I see how stupid I look and it makes me stop.

Sometimes it even makes me laugh, I look so stupid. This time it just made me cry more. It was for real.

And then one day, my eyes exploded and I had to pop them back in, so I stopped for a while. This was good - it got me through June. Then I started crying again in July when some other bad and unfortunate thing happened that wrecked me with a whole mess of other emotional pain, and there went the rest of the summer.

Goddamn, I must have really needed to . And it should be noted, based on suggestions that were made and unsolicited, if well-meaning, advice given, that I really did try not to feel this bad. Many days, I adopted a simple little prayer when I woke up or went to sleep, that amounted to Help.

Make it stop. Please get me past this. If an individual could truly decide to get over something, that would have been me, because I got sick of myself after while, and sick of several other people and situations in the process.

But some things just have to work themselves out, regardless of what you or someone else or some stupid Web site or self-help tome tells you. Suggestions or comments about how you shouldn't feel so bad, or how it wasn't such a big deal, or he's just not that into you, or how anti-depressants would help, or online dating, or hypnotherapy, or whatever, should be taken with my preferred grain of cinnamon, since salt causes massive water retention. None of it really matters, and generally doesn't help.

Only time - which I've come once again to see is the best and most effective healer going (along with awesome friends, music, and red wine...

in varying doses) - does that. Frustrating, but true.
That said, in because I'm an eternal student and the first day of school is kind of like New Year's it's so rife with empty notebooks and awesome possibilities, I pulled my shit together a little bit.

Moving home with my parents in August was horrible. No offense to them, but . Most days we all barely tolerate it.

My sister has my cute little dining room set, and my pictures are in boxes. I have no idea where half of my books are, and I rarely cook in this kitchen. My life just doesn't flow the same, but of course this is temporary, and I really don't think about it so much right now.

It's just the current state of affairs.
Last September, though, it made me feel like I really had to do something, because I was tired of having my head and my heart so focused on what I wasn't doing, and the fabulous things that someone else was or might be or could have given the chance. I also needed to get out of the damned house.

I was bored - bored of thinking obsessively about and whining about things I couldn't change. Bored of pondering a that wasn't working, I think because I really didn't care at the time whether it did or not. Bored of refreshing my e-mail for magical messages that weren't coming.

, on a cellular level. I wanted something so, so different. I wanted something that I didn't already assume I could do with my eyes closed.

I wanted to have some fun - a novel concept.
I picked photography. I thought it'd be an interesting diversion, and I'd always been into pictures.

(little did I know that all of my disposable income would go for . Hmm..

.) It was convenient. It was new.

And I thought it would be fun.
The best thing was that it was mandatory that I in order to participate in this activity. It's hard to cry when you're composing a shot.

It's even harder to cry when you have to suffer through group work work with people to get projects done, and you'd like it if they don't think you're completely nuts. I worked my ass off in my first class, and interestingly enough, I started to get good feedback from my teacher and my peers. I drove everywhere to take pictures, like LaJimmy Olson, cub reporter.

I started noticing the light, how it changed and impacted shots depending on the time of day or the season. I scared my mother by alone, totally oblivious to everything but the way the lights hit the buildings and the water. It's like magic!

I said, and my professor said, See, that's what I want to hear. And I really think that if I hadn't been done in at that point, that that would have clinched it. I liked the dim silence of the darkroom, and the fact that my friend Aya could work alongside me with her iPod on and we could develop a weird sort of sign language that told her when I needed her input on a print and when she needed to move her stuff from one step to the next.

It really helped me. I started to refocus, with the lens and without it. It got me through the , and a milestone birthday that bummed me out more than I thought it would.

It was a little bit like people who go to AA and because they can't drink, they smoke or . I didn't have any of my old stuff - the space, the boy, , even. I had my car, and a camera, and a computer - enough tools to be completely dangerous and keep plugging along.

And as the year turned, my job did change, and that was excellent too. I won't write about it here, for fear of being , but I wish I could. I wish I could write, most of all, about the people who make me smile there - colleagues and students.

I'd also tell you about how even the things that jerk my chain are okay, because overall I'm blessed to be in the space I'm in, and I find myself quite often to be in some kind of flow here, where I lose track of time, and that's a good thing. Just, anyway..

.it's a good change.
NOT that everything is all sunshine and .

Far from it. I still come with my built-in special feature of occasional emotional ups and downs. I still get disappointed and aggravated on occasion, and have to deal with stuff that I'd rather not.

Last weekend, someone I trust hurt my feelings, very very badly. I have a ton of work to do and can barely keep up. I can't get my sonnet and my villanelle written.

I still worry about the living space issue, and have been subject to several unsolicited comments lately about babies and motherhood that have left me in an occasional weird headspace about that.
In fact, I cried the other day. I listened to this Patty Griffin song called, no kidding, Nobody's Crying, and it caught me off-guard.

The whole 1,000 Kisses record, in fact, is a wonderful choice for days when you have that pressure in your head that means you need to cry, but don't realize it until something stupid and random trips the cord and the tears come. This song (and Makin' Pies . Wow.

What a song.) kind of summed up some stuff for me and for some other people who I care about. It sort of punched me in the head and by the time I got to the parking lot at work, my makeup was a disaster and my eyes were red.

But it was good - I had a sense of release for the rest of the day, felt what I felt and moved on. Life is challenging. There are things about it that don't make sense, that resonate with fear, that leave me wondering what all the fuss is about, and whether things will start to make better sense in some of the categories of my life at some point.

But overall, in spite of all of this stuff, I'm good. I'm lucky. I'm singing more, surrounding myself with music, trying new things, and enjoying every minute of hanging out with some very wonderful people.

And I'm still taking pictures, and this semester my class has been really cool. I love the people I've met because of this, and we have a good time. I haven't done as much shooting outdoors as I did last year, but the spring is showing things to me in literally a different light than fall did.

I'm headed to a few different destinations between now and the summer, and everywhere I go, I take my cameras, and record what I see differently than I did when I was just into tourist shots.
I hope to keep writing about it all, either here or in other places, because for me that seems to keep things a little bit straighter. It keeps me honest, it really makes me feel better, and sometimes it even makes me laugh at myself.

In my first post, I said,
I'm hoping to collect some thoughts and things I love here, and maybe someone will stumble upon them and be none the worse for wear after clicking away.
I know that the first part has been the case, and I hope the second part has been too. I am really grateful to have had a place to store the history of the past year.

(If you're new, read June. : ) It was particularly fun to write.)
I'll sign off with the lyric of that song from the other day, because it is nice, although parts of it are sad.

It kind of sums up where the past twelve months of writing and praying and taking pictures and putting one foot in front of the other each day have brought me, and where I hope the next twelve will bring you too.
May you dream you are dreaming, in a warm soft bed
And may the voices inside you that fill you with dread
make the sound of thousands of angels instead,
tonight where you might be laying your head.

But darling, I wish you well
on your way to the wishing well,
swinging off of those gates of hell
but I can tell how hard you're trying.

Just have that secret hope -
sometimes all we do is cope
Somewhere on the steepest slope
there'll be an endless rope
and nobody crying.
After I told him that, on the first true shorts weather day of the year, there were lots of people rocking some garments that really didn't suit their pasty selves (including a young lady who was walking by me in some Daisy Dukes, although she more appropriately resembled Uncle Jesse)
I think it's high time we brought back the concept of shame. - The Smrz
Me: You know, Lisa, I like people, but in limited doses.

Increasingly more limited doses.
Lisa: Yeah, you mean, like half a person at a time? That's generally my preference.

J: You better talk to the professor and tell him you think that's fucked up.
Me: Me? Why me?

You're the one standing there complaining about it.

J: (Using his extra large shovel to dig an even bigger hole) Well, because, you're a girl, and you're a LITTLE bit older, and I'm like this young kid, and he'll just be like, whatever.
Me: Nice.

Very nice.
Man in photo class, after making random inane suggestive comment about women: Oh, you weren't supposed to hear that.
Me: Oh no, it's fine.

I already heard another one from the other guys earlier. I'm used to it.
MIPC: Oh, was it more shocking?

Me: Actually, no. His too was disappointingly trite. I was hoping for something a little more creative, but both of y'all let me down.

So today I told one of my students, when he said I'm terrible at art, that I can't imagine you'd be terrible at anything. He said, Wow. Thanks, and then other people started talking, and he said, more quietly, almost to himself, Thanks.

That's really a compliment.
It should be noted that I'm just as likely to say the wrong thing that upsets or worries someone as the wrong thing that makes them happy. Still, I realized again how it's so important to say these good things, even when they just fly out of our mouths unbidden, unfiltered.

I felt good about it. Happy, even - kind of in flow. It's important to remember that when we're in a position to help someone, or lead them, or teach them, (which is really a position we're all in every day at some point, whether we know it or not) that they're probably paying attention, even if they don't seem to be.

Words matter - and so do gestures. I hope the guy in the RIDICULOUS, TAILGATING SUV who I flipped off on the way home is aware of this. It's a very delicate balance of good and evil, this life.

Speaking of Easter, what I want to know is, what does a damned bunny have to do with the ascension of Jesus Christ? - Professor G
Remember, that which can be fixed is no one's fault. That's a little something I learned in Okinawa.

But you still know I'm going to choke you, right? It's not your fault, but I'm still gonna choke you.
- Wild William Jones, after I burned a print onto the dryer drum.

Professor G.: Jorge, do you want this pizza?
Jorge: Sure, I'll take it.

My people are hungry. And by that I don't mean my Spanish people. I mean my people at home.

They're always freakin' hungry.
Posted on April 15, 2006 in , , , , , | I'd love it if you'd check out my new gig at You know..

if you feel like it.
I'm a contributing editor for travel and recreation, which means that I keep tabs on blogs written by women in these categories, and post links to them on blogher along with some (hopefully) intelligent and entertaining commentary. Travel I've got down, but I'm still figuring out exactly what recreation means in this context.

Stuff like , maybe?
Anyway, once you get to the site, if you click on the travel and recreation link on the left-hand side, you'll get to my category. You'll know it's me because of the teeny-tiny picture of my smiling face that goes alongside my posts.

It looks like this:
And you know, whenever you see my smiling face, you'll have to smile yourself, because...

Well, James Taylor says to.
This site is designed to be a collection of the best writing by women on the Web, specifically in blogs. It just launched today as a , which in English means it's still really new, might have some problems, and will likely see some changes in layout and functionality.

(GAH! I said ) But so far it looks pretty good to me, tech whiz that I am. ; ) I am so impressed with the women who started this group and who DO have the technological and entrepreneurial skills to build it into an even cooler situation.

I'm jazzed to be a part of it - also because I get to go to this summer to meet many of the people involved. Can't wait!
If you get a chance to check the site out, thanks.

I really hope to do more professional writing work this year, and it's encouraging that I got to do something fun to kick it off in January. And please pass along any travel blogs you come across (or even Web sites - I'm a link junkie). As much as I aspire to, I can't be .

I just learned about today, through a succession of links, of course, and I have been so profoundly moved by the reaction to her death two years ago. She was a young writer, killed in a plane crash, and a contributor to , which is still one of the most interesting sites on the Web. Her last book was titled, interestingly, Wonder When You'll Miss Me .

and her boyfriend wrote this introductory piece the year after her death when the first one was awarded. It is breathtaking and heartbreaking, everything about what a writer, a human being, and a loved and loving woman should and can be. Messy.

Essential. In the moment. Missed.

A friend beyond measure. I never met her, and I cannot get her off of my mind. I'm looking forward to reading her books.

The amazon.com reviews say things like a fresh new voice, and look forward to hearing more from her - people with no idea that she died. That alone struck me as both sad and terribly hopeful.

I bookmarked it. I sent my friend an article the other day that Maureen Dowd, the NYT columnist, wrote about her mother, who had just passed away. My friend said she'd better get busy, if she wanted to be remembered half as well.

I had the same feeling reading the page about Amanda Davis. The vibrancy is what gets me, the here-and-now of the memories, the sheer power of the writing - no doubt helped along by the fact that she hung out with people like Dave Eggers and Susan Orlean. But the remembrances aren't all hip and glittery, New York and Bread Loaf literati.

They were real. The people who wrote expected her to hear what they were saying, at least a little bit. You can tell from their words.

One of her friends wondered, quite frankly, when she'd receive an e-mail from her, even though she'd died in a plane crash a few days earlier, because with computer glitches, and people with her magic touch, stuff like this tended to happen.
One of her friends said, and I love this: When I was blue she'd say to me, 'Lady, I am going to take care of you. I am coming over there in my big white truck and I'm going to give you a Vicodin and take you out for food you'll have to eat with your hands.

'
I have exactly one friend like that, and I can testify that it can save your life - a friend like that. In these troubled times we all need more - people to see beyond and inside, to take us to the Peruvian chicken place without asking, to listen to the same story one more time, to help us tape up boxes and wade through the next seemingly impossible, quite possibly possible, thing. They ignore - and aren't afraid of - the tears that come unbidden, and would never, never, try to fill the uncomfortable silence until the silent cue from us that it's time to say something stupid and go get some more chicken.

I find myself wondering if I'm that friend to anyone - minus the Vicodin, because my prescription expired. I think I used to be, more of the time, and for more people. It's a good goal for the next chapter.

I'm not so sure why good people die in plane crashes. Unfair, too early, cruel and unusual. However, may we all live as well as this woman of words, and friends, while we can.

So I started to post my essay about Roxie here, but I moved it to the new , which I'm only calling the writing page for lack of a better term. I'm figuring this all out as I go..

.trying to figure out what goes where. And maybe it doesn't matter, but for now I like the idea of putting poetry and essay stuff there.

And I think this piece qualifies. No links. Just talking.

Not in any way more creative (this looking stuff up on Google and actually coming up with it in my tired little brain is harder than it looks!)
It was a very good day. I wish my photos had turned out AT ALL.

Counting the days 'til Although, there is something to be said for
So I was a reader in my cousin's wedding weekend before last, which is fine. I am the go-to wedding reader.

I'm not sure why, but it's something that I always get asked to do. If I hired myself out to do this, it would probably be very lucrative. Hmmm.

There's an idea - especially as one can be ordained in the for 50 bucks. It really couldn't be simpler.
But it probably helps to actually be on time if you're going to run around marrying people. I arrived in Delaware too late on Friday for the rehearsal, but not the dinner. My ability to arrive on time for dinner is legendary.

In this case, the beach traffic just sucked and I was lucky I made it as early as I did.
After dinner, my cousin announced that the priest - who is married, which in my lapsed but still oddly traditional Catholic mind does NOT allow him to be a priest, but whatever he wants to call himeslf is fine with me - wanted to talk to me about my reading situation.

I don't know what he's worried about, she said.