One For the Road

Something odd has been going on with my body. Or rather, the habits that effect it. As anyone who reads this blog even a little regularly knows, I like to drink. To the point where I would say it usually feels like a necessity to have some sort of booze - beer, wine, vodka, whiskey - in that order - in my home at all times. I drink every night. Not necessarily a lot - though I realize that's a relative amount, a lot. I have some friends who are practically tee-totalers who probably secretly think I have a drinking problem. I have other friends who are definitely drunks who probably think I am the image of moderation. I took some online quizzes a few weeks ago to satisfy my curiosity about how closely I resembled an alcoholic. Surprisingly, not that closely. And yes, I was very honest with my answers. The jist of the results was something like, "You're not a drunk, but you need to watch it."

How much do I drink? Well, it depends. On a work night, I try to drink only beer, because I can easily put away a bottle of wine in one evening, and if I'm mixing vodka with something it's usually something really fucking good, and before I know it I've had 4 vodka drinks, and trust me, that's enough to start making me really stupid. But anyway, work nights - 3 drinks. Weekends - 3 to 7 drinks. Second shift nights, when I get home at 12:30 a.m., usually a beer and a little whiskey or Baileys, 'cause 2 beers will make me need to get up and pee.

As I said, I drink every single night, the amounts described above, and have for awhile. That changed this week. And I don't know why. But I know there's some intuitive reason. I haven't tee-totaled, just rather than drinking close to a botttle of wine I've had a scant, nearly half glass. The other night I split a beer with someone. Or I've had nothing.

I think I feel better. And I'm gonna see how long this lasts. What's weird is that I'm not making a conscious effort to not drink. My body just doesn't seem to want it. It's like it just decided, "We're going to do something else for awhile." The whole experience has been bending my thinking in weird ways. Not bad ways, just - strange. I also have more money in my wallet. Not spending $30 or so a week will do that.

Thinking. And thinking. And curiously, not drinking.

Drama

About an hour ago there was some arguing going on outside the house - fighting - a lot of fucking swearing and a lot of use of the words "fucking" and "cheated" and "lied" and "bitch". This went on for about five or ten minutes before being punctuated by a *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* *BANG*. It took me all of five seconds to dial 911 and report in a quavering voice,
"I just heard gunshots fired outside my house."
"How many?"
"Four."
"Are you sure it wasn't fireworks?"
"I don't know. There was a lot of swearing and yelling."
"Thank you for the information."

OK. I still have no idea what happened, the cops did come within a few minutes, but the melee had dispersed, at least audibly. I can't see the front of the house from my apartment, and initially I was too shaky and scared to go outside. About 1/2 hour into it I decided to go out and poke my head around the side of the house. Cops were talking to several people, I heard someone talk about hearing 4 shots, which made me feel at least a little less reactionary and slightly more sane. Ah, the genteel life of Connecticut.

So now I'm totally wired. Not crying anymore, as I did for just a few minutes in the thick of all that, just letting off some nervous energy as well as some sadness that had been hanging over me all night, anyway. I'm slowly sipping at some coconut flavored rum and it's pretty good.

My mind has been in a brooding way all day and night. Had plans to go to the casino again to meet up with my lovely bartender friend, but my girlfriend cancelled, and I don't do bars, especially dance clubs, alone. I've been thinking a lot about my family today. That I love them, but don't love my relationship with them. That I have deep, unresolved wounds that I worry about getting around. That those wounds are working against me, keeping me in a place I don't want or need to be in - one where a facade of closeness, maintained by regular, almost daily contact with them, is substituted for a deeper understanding and acceptance and communication. One where I find myself looking to others to create the sense of safety, freedom, love and acceptance I seem to be craving. One where moving on becomes difficult, and at its worst can feel like a betrayal.

Everyone's family is dysfunctional on a certain level, of course. My own feels so mired in past patterns, expectations, and roles that at times it feels utterly suffocating. I have tremendous compassion and empathy for the dysfunction - nobody means to harm anyone else - but it doesn't mean they don't. And the overall empathy - enabling - becomes a quicksand-like trap. My mother is the closest thing to a fucking saint I will ever know in this lifetime, I mean it, and this has served many well, but in some ways this has backfired when it comes to family.

You see? You see how difficult it becomes to criticize, not empathize? The thought of harming others in any way destroys her, torments her, and I have heard her wonder aloud what she did wrong when there happens to be a crisis at the house. She raised nine children, worked full-time for years, served and continues to serve her community and church with vigor.

The truth is, at times I find myself impatient, even angry with her. She had me at age 40, I was number eight. My relationship with her has always had some distance and some strain. Perhaps I was given less attention - I'm fairly certain I was - which in turn made any attention I did receive, especially negative or "intervention-ary" sort of attention - extremely unwelcome and uncomfortable. I do not now, and never did, have "heart-to-heart" talks with my mother. My eldest sister took on that mantle. I know the distance that still exists burdens my mother. I see it almost every day in the way she looks at me.

This is the shit I'm talking about. I don't know how to heal this breach, and a big part of me will never be open to her. As a child I would always cry behind the locked bathroom door, trying to hide my vulnerability, pressing cold cloths over my eyes when I was done so no-one would see the redness and the swelling. Some critical part of me never felt safe.

Lately I keep talking about what I think I need in a relationship. And safety feels like a big word, and maybe a heavy word, too. But I don't want a blanket or even a fortress. I want someone who is strong enough to bear witness to my pain, my aloneness, and not carry me, or cover me, or fix me - I just want them to look at me plainly, with neutrality, and let this darkness be, and still walk with me, trusting me to walk through it, and meeting my smile and desire on the other side of it with the same smile and desire. I don't just want safety. I want transcendance.

And I'm still totally wired off rum and gunshots.

Awake

when I asked you to meet me
down here in the clear brine
did you wonder about the coordinates
of this shipwreck?
descending with purpose,
sure and determined as sea mammals,
the hulking ghost
came into view
sails miraculously billowing,
gesturing,
inviting,
smiling,
we slipped through a porthole
blue light piercing our eyes,
bright enough to illuminate
every past sin and dream,
mapping them through the tangle
of our hands and limbs
our every utterance
be it sigh
or word
or name
yours or mine,
or even the unstoppable, mysterious
cry out to a divinity.
we recognized each other in this tangle,
we searched and groped some more,
kicking up seaweed and rotten wood.
stumbling, a game,
upon the treasure resting palpably
at the base of all this,
and as we do,
linking arms and eyes across
the unassuming vault
agreeing it has value
before swimming towards the sun.

Work & Sex

Those are probably the two main things keeping me from writing productive posts lately. To be fair, work has been better than usual, I guess. I can say the same regarding the second topic, though of course, I'm describing nothing but the fact and the act of it, when the soul and implications are far more complex. The problem with both is perhaps my failure to simply take both as they come. The problem is the future.

He's still leaving. And now it looks like it will be soon after the new year. I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I actively setting myself up for near certain heartbreak and disappointment? Does being conscious about it make it any less dangerous? I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to move through it like a damned bird, existing magically on drops of dew and mysterious nourishment from dusty soil. I feel a bit more like a horse, needing a stable water and food source, solid ground. Responding to touch, developing trust.

What are the other analagous things I want to be or become? A carpenter. A cat. A garden. A temple. A beekeeper. A library. A stonemason. An ocean. A sip of 6o year-old scotch, with memories that burn and breathe. A crazy quilt. A pure and fluid note, its vibration rippling out despite all interference, never stopping, keeping pace with time itself.

I want too much.

I'm sliding and slouching down the pillows, the bed pulls me in, accomodating me when I don't quite want its accomodation, but can't quite refuse it.

Another Meme...

I tried posting this yesterday, but when I copied my results they automatically turned into hyperlinks (annoying) and when they posted, they were spaced out really funky (also annoying.) I was too tired to mess with it, but anyway, here it is now, my list of careers that are supposed to suit me. Most interesting to me was the dramatic change that occurred to the list when I added the extra "filter" I guess, of level of schooling, in my case university. Pipefitter fell off the list. Artist was added. Artist? I just thought it was interesting that they felt more schooling somehow makes you more qualified as an artist. I mean, I sorta get it, but mostly not. I should've saved the first list, because in many ways, it was more interesting. Anyway...

1. Go Here: http://www.careercruising.com/default.asp

2. Put in username: nycareers password: landmark
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top twenty results.
5. Bold (or italicize if the background is black!) preferences.
6. Cross off non-possibilities. (Or, as in my case, since I can't figure out how to do that on blogger, 'splain why they are impossible in parentheses.)

1.Industrial Designer
2.Psychologist
3.Model Maker
4.Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator
5.Desktop Publisher
6.Addictions Counselor (umm...kettle. pot. black.)
7.Zookeeper (I don't like zoos. Actually sort of hate them.)
8.Print Journalist
9.Artist
10.Sport Psychology Consultant (wtf is that?)
11.Humanitarian Aid Worker
12.Medical Illustrator
13.Translator (unless they're talking about decoding euphemisms etc.)
14.Professional Athlete (weird-ass muscular disorder gets in the way.)
15.Writer
16.Home Inspector
17.Marriage and Family Therapist (I'm not really in a position to judge.)
18.Veterinarian
19.Technical Writer
20.Gerontologist

Anchors Aweigh

Spiraling downwards, and I'm trying to deflect it, stop it dead, but it lives. A voice that makes me still and small. Pooling somewhere within my ribcage, leaden. A voice that makes me run from you, and towards darkness. I try to kill it every night. But up and down the stairs it trails me, shapeshifting, and terribly alive.

Who would want this? Who would take this on? This darkness that drives me from you, a wreck of a truck gaining momentum and speed, lights twinkle and blur, branches and skylines twist by, sirens draw me nearer, their voices thin and watery. Trusting nothing but gravity. Gravity.

The humidity is like sorrow, stuck to everything, oblivious.

I can't escape.

A Meme

Copy this list.
Leave in the bands you've seen perform live.
Delete the ones you haven't and add new ones that you have seen until you reach 25.
An asterisk means the previous person had it on their list.
Two asterisks means the last two people who did this before you had that band on their list.

1. Dirty Three
2. Cat Power
3. Metallica
4. The Cure
5. 10,000 Maniacs
6. The Ramones
7. Ani DiFranco*
8. Danzig
9. Fugazi
10. Sonic Youth
11. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
12. Morphine*
13. Neko Case
14. Busta Rhymes
15. Arlo Guthrie
16. Neil Young & Crazy Horse*
17. Beck*
18. The Cult
19. Tom Jones
20. Eartha Kitt
21. Cheap Trick
22. George Jones
23. Rolling Stones
24. Throwing Muses
25. Iron & Wine

Yeah, there's some more, but these came to mind.

Structural Integrity

Friday I'm going to look at a house. You know, like one to buy. With a mortgage. And taxes. And water and sewer bills. My assumption was that it was at least a two family, if not three, based on the fact that almost every single mill house (yes! it's a mill house! two doors down from me, in fact!) is a multi-family dwelling. But as I walked by the house yesterday in the early evening, examining it even more closely than usual, I spied a single electric meter mounted ominously on the side of the house. There was simply a metallic circle where the other meter used to be. Dangit.

This morning the realtor returned my call of inquiry from yesterday, and confirmed that indeed it had been converted into a one family, "However, it could easily be reconverted into a two family." I don't have a hard time believing this, as I am intimately familiar with the basic layout of these 127 year old houses. And so I now have my brother the carpenter/ independent contractor onboard to go with me and tell me truthfully how easy or difficult it would be.

The property is a decent size - more than enough back yard for my purposes, also a three-bay garage. As I think about my motivations for considering buying... I guess the word stability comes to mind. I think I sometimes pretend I don't need or want it, but I think that's being a bit dishonest on my part. I truly am a lover of home, and I fucking love taking on home projects, even when I don't own the property, this apartment being a case in point. So I'm itching to invest time in something about which I can honestly say, "That's mine."

Also, if I'm being honest... I have no intentions of moving from this area. I don't feel trapped here. I feel rooted here. For me, deepening my roots actually gives me more of a sense of freedom, if that makes any sense. Who knows what will pan out with this particular property. I'll take my brother's advice. If he thinks it looks good, I'll be hiring him to do the work.

Changing the subject, I went to my first Rolfing session on Friday. I loved it. Intuitively, I know this is the level of intensity my body has been craving. Have definitely never had any massage or bodywork that has even come close to addressing what this is addressing. It deals with the body's structure and alignment in a very different way than say, chiropractic, though doing both together is supposed to be good. The effects after that one session were very noticeable, and I still feel the difference as I sit typing this. It's pretty damned expensive, but I feel it will be worth it. It's not pain-free, but the pain was short-lived. I'm excited for my next session!

That's all I've got... oh, wait! This may be the last second shift Sunday I have to work, hopefully ever! I'm switching for a month and a half with the first shift gal, but I suspect she actually wants second shift on a regular basis, as she's a DJ and also in a pool league, so her Saturday nights tend to be late (as do mine, but I have few issues with dragging my ass out of bed early, especially if it means getting out at 4:00.) Yeah, I'm still looking for another job, but for now this is a good thing at the current job!

Gotta run - I hope anyone reading this had a great weekend!

Periphery

Thanks for being around.
Seeing you for three hours
is more than I can say for a lot of people,
still.
I watched you watch yourself,
remarkably un-self-conscious,
for such a self-conscious act.
Referring to yourself in the third person,
yes, I suppose, in you, it can be forgiven,
still.
Is it my mask or yours?
When I look at you,
and you look at me,
when I'm fucking you,
and you're fucking me,
how deep in are you?
Yes, you know how I like it,
there's no question there,
but when you're deep in,
do you stop just shy,
do you glance to the side
when I take you in,
do you take me in?
Tomorrow, I'll see you, again
and again
my soul and body will open,
but tonight
my soul and body recede,
a wraith in the night
a hand raised, ambiguous
as my face traces back
to before we pretended
to know each other.

Hush

"I have a secret."

"What color?"

"Black. Blackish-blue. Gray. Gray as the thickest fog on a salty beach."

"Salt?"

"Salty, I guess it's salty. But it might be in my head."

"Some crazy shit in your head."

"There's a lot in my head. Too much stuff. Seaweed thrown over a retaining wall by a wild storm. Now it's stuck behind the retaining wall. It's a tangle, dry and wet and dark, going nowhere."

"Until it goes somewhere."

"I suppose it has to go somewhere."

"What is the shape of the secret?"

"Heart shaped. Dog shaped. House shaped. Whatever feels safe. Whatever feels inviolable."

"What is the shape?"

"A Rorschach Blot, and that is all."

"Then what do you see?"

"Evil."

"That's too simple."

"Innocence and purity, mangled."

"You're paranoid."

"I'm mangled."

Gimme a Sign

Oh god, this beer is good. It's like a blessing. Just got home from working second shift, I stayed late, talking to one of my favorite co-workers about the fact that I am officially going to start looking for a new job. I've been pushing the thought left, right, up, down, back... but it keeps pushing forward. Today, as I started to talk to my sister about it, it became hard. It became real. It crystallized, like a symmetrical snowflake. "I can't do it anymore."

And so, yup, the search is on, and I have to accept it may be really tangled and weird and may involve keeping a tether tied to this particular program, and will in all probability involve maintaining employment within the same agency, just something with less... accountability? No, that's not really it, because I'm a highly accountable person, and a prideful worker. No. Ok... it could be this simple: paperwork? I have never been a paperwork person. And I have soooooo frickin' much of it here, and every speck of it is intimately tied to a person. And this stresses me out. To hell.

So I may end up trying to find a position as a residential assistant, which is still very hands-on with clients but with about 90% less paperwork. And the same rate of pay. Another brainstorm I had two days ago was to look into starting my own cleaning business. Office and maybe residential. Just work for myself to start, get it all legal and insured etc., set my own hours (!) etc., be my own boss (!!!) etc. It's a definite maybe and something I plan to do a lot of research on in the coming days and weeks.

Last night two of my (male) buddies were over, and as we talked about this proposed plan, of course the talk quickly turned in the direction of offering "special services", and what sort of attire would be appropriate (mini-skirts etc.) At one point my friend suggests that my motto should be "We'll do what your wife won't." We all obviously erupted in loud cackling after that. But seriously, I'm serious. I feel stuck, trapped, and not very much in control of my time, and it's bugging me, to put it mildly. So often I come home from work totally drained, depleted, and feeling guilty that I couldn't /can't:
a. do more at work and/or
b. do more at home.

I just realized the appropriateness of this post, considering the holiday. I really do believe in the value of work, and of a certain amount of structured time. I obviously need money to live, but money does not, and has never, motivated me. I'm finding what I am craving is simplicity in vocation. I want a job that I can complete, in a set time, and see a result. I love physical work, but have felt cursed most of my adult life by having to dance around this muscular disorder that prevents me from pursuing many things I think I would really enjoy and excel at. It's so hard to explain without going into great detail, I mean, the many subtle ways the disorder affects me, but suffice to say I know my limitations, and they're not insignificant. I am willing to push myself, but not in the service of other people, people who are relying on me and paying me to perform.

This conflict is like a centerpiece, a keystone to not just my working life, but my life. It's a psychological and phsyiological puzzle, and not one that can be answered with platitudes or feel-good mantras. There's nothing obvious about it, not to me, and anyone else that thinks they know, well they simply don't. Where am I going with this? Just trying to sort some shit out, that's all.

On a completely unrelated note, I did take some naked upside down pics on the batgirl device. They're, um... interesting. But very naked. But not very, very naked. The device covers the pelvic region. I might post one. If anyone has a problem with boobs let me know. I just read that men who stare at them for 10 minutes a day live an average of 5 years longer than men who... I dunno, navel-gaze?

Happy Labor Day!