My ten-year old son and I have got a new addiction. Playing SIMS 2 on PS2. Who needs drugs when you've got game systems that bring out the addict gene in everyone? This particular game is all about creating a virtual world in which you create a character, name her, create her look, give her aspirations, goals, and other things in life to look forward to and then try your best to live a happy SIM life. You start out in a house with 3 roommates and then you have to complete all your tasks in order to advance through the game. Although to the completely uninitiated in game playing it may sound dull it is in fact quite amazing that you are basically playing a cyber-reality of yourself. You have to look for a job, earn money, keep your house clean, take care of your personal hygiene issues, have entertainment, have lots of friends and even, believe it or not, try to bed down as many SIMS as possible, if you choose the romance aspiration that is.
The other night I stayed up until 2am playing it. I couldn't stop. My son stayed up until midnight. All this on a school night when we had to get up the next day and go to work/school. I feel like a bad mom. But a cool one at that because I can get into playing with my kid on his game system.
Even in the SIMS world it's not that easy having a social life, having a job, keeping up with your house, and all that other stuff. Real life and cyber life are just as hard. Personally when I play I like to be a slut-puppy. Why not? It's just a fantasy. No one in the game is going to be calling me names the next day. LOL. It's to make up for the utterly boring life I am now leading. So boring in fact that I wonder just how many people really stumble across my blog and actually read it start to finish? I could talk about politics. World affairs. I could spill my secrets out onto the cyber page. Not that I have any. At least none recently worth keeping a secret. I am in love with a man I can't have. There, that's one not-so-secret. So what? A lot of people are in that boat. I love someone else too and he loves me, I think, but he will never admit it. And though I may love him he's not what I want. So I ask myself what's the point of loving him if we can't even spend one night together because he has to rush off and be in bed by a certain hour so his other girlfriend won't find out about us? That's easy to answer. I love him because I can. Because I want to. But just because I love him doesn't mean I want this particular man for my life-time partner. It's the ultimate paradox.
I could keep on spouting love theories. But better to save it for another blog dedicated to only love.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Things were pretty hairy there for a moment
I was four months behind on my house payments. But I have been saved. Let's not delve into the hows. Let's focus on the positive. Living hand to mouth each day for over a year has taught me so many valuable life lessons that I don't know where to begin to list them. Let's start at the beginning then:
Humility: What is it exactly? Learning to be humble. For a while there I certainly was arrogant. I was knocked off my high horse but have gotten back on. I ride the horse now always looking down on where I step lest I stamp the toes of the people who will help me out tomorrow.
Discipline: Not something I have always had. Especially where my money was concerned. When I had it, I was flying high, not even aware of how badly I was managing it until it was all gone. I live below the national poverty line now, me a degreed professional, and I realize that you should never think you are secure in your finances because tomorrow it could all be gone and what will you have to show for it? I can honestly say that I have no idea where all my money went. But from now on I can tell you exaclty how much I have. Which to some people would make them drop dead from a heart attack in an instant. For me it's just putting up with nightmares.
Love: I know who I love. I know who I want. But it is not for me. So to quote a very old cliche, when you love that person, then let him go. If he comes back then he is yours. If he doesn't then he never was. I can love now which is something I had not been able to do for a long time. My heart was cold. I can love, I can lose him, and I can live with it. I can accept it and move on. I can be happy that I at least had two years with him which is better than not having had any years at all. And I can say that I grew out of that and realized what it is I was missing and what it is that I want.
Action: That was the hardest thing of all. When you are down to the wire, when your feet are bleeding from trying to balance on that razor's edge, and you think it would be better to just fall off, you suddenly get a kick in the rear end and just keep going and take care of all your crap. I always just let things happen to me rather than face them or waited around to see if opportunity would come knocking. The truth is opportunity doesn't come knocking if it doesn't know the address. So to hell with being timid. Time to be bold. Time to be a pest. Time to get off my ass and go get the things I want.
I think tonight I can sleep without the pills. I think the nightmares will abate for a little while. I am not going to lose my house.
P.S. I know I should get a roommate to help me out or a part-time job in the evenings for a little while until my financial situation improves. But I am still stubborn about that. I don't want to give up my precious time or sacred writing space even if it means a few extra dollars a month to help me through the bad times until I find a teaching job. This is also where my unshakable faith has always seen me through the darkest nights. I KNOW I will get through this on my own. The person I let into my house and into my life will be here to stay.
Humility: What is it exactly? Learning to be humble. For a while there I certainly was arrogant. I was knocked off my high horse but have gotten back on. I ride the horse now always looking down on where I step lest I stamp the toes of the people who will help me out tomorrow.
Discipline: Not something I have always had. Especially where my money was concerned. When I had it, I was flying high, not even aware of how badly I was managing it until it was all gone. I live below the national poverty line now, me a degreed professional, and I realize that you should never think you are secure in your finances because tomorrow it could all be gone and what will you have to show for it? I can honestly say that I have no idea where all my money went. But from now on I can tell you exaclty how much I have. Which to some people would make them drop dead from a heart attack in an instant. For me it's just putting up with nightmares.
Love: I know who I love. I know who I want. But it is not for me. So to quote a very old cliche, when you love that person, then let him go. If he comes back then he is yours. If he doesn't then he never was. I can love now which is something I had not been able to do for a long time. My heart was cold. I can love, I can lose him, and I can live with it. I can accept it and move on. I can be happy that I at least had two years with him which is better than not having had any years at all. And I can say that I grew out of that and realized what it is I was missing and what it is that I want.
Action: That was the hardest thing of all. When you are down to the wire, when your feet are bleeding from trying to balance on that razor's edge, and you think it would be better to just fall off, you suddenly get a kick in the rear end and just keep going and take care of all your crap. I always just let things happen to me rather than face them or waited around to see if opportunity would come knocking. The truth is opportunity doesn't come knocking if it doesn't know the address. So to hell with being timid. Time to be bold. Time to be a pest. Time to get off my ass and go get the things I want.
I think tonight I can sleep without the pills. I think the nightmares will abate for a little while. I am not going to lose my house.
P.S. I know I should get a roommate to help me out or a part-time job in the evenings for a little while until my financial situation improves. But I am still stubborn about that. I don't want to give up my precious time or sacred writing space even if it means a few extra dollars a month to help me through the bad times until I find a teaching job. This is also where my unshakable faith has always seen me through the darkest nights. I KNOW I will get through this on my own. The person I let into my house and into my life will be here to stay.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Obsession
No, it isn't simply the name of Calvin Klein's fragrance, although those sleek, glossy, half-naked ads of his from the 80's where so hot I used to sneak my mother's Vogue and Cosmo magazines up to my room just so I could cut out those ads and paste them in my scrap book. Even as a teenage Madonna clone I was always hot-to-trot.
No I am talking obsessions on the order of when you have one thing of something you simply can not rest until you have everything of that one thing. My particular obsessions usually fixate on either authors, musicians, or collecting tarot decks. But let's Talk about musicians since I happen to be listening to a CD from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I have in my collection 15 of his albums. And I am still missing some. But I at least have some of the best albums. Nick Cave once said he wanted to create songs so sad, so full of pain, that it was like breaking a finger in three places. That is how I feel a lot of the time. His songs are full of some the most darkly poetic lyrics in music. Such as this line from "Papa won't leave you Henry" from the album "Henry's Dream" c1992
I went out walking the other day
The wind hung wet around my neck
My head it rung with screams and groans
From the night I spent amongst her bones
And then the song continues for another 4 minutes singing about this walk along a dark road, filled with the most surreal images that could in fact happen and if they do you want to keep running down that road and hope someone hears your screams.
For about a month or two over the summer all I did was listen to Nick Cave day and night. I tore out this picture of him taken in November 2005 from the pages of Vanity Fair. I pinned it to my cork board in my writing room. I stare into those intense icy blue eyes, his black hair flowing down to about chin level, wearing a moustache that hangs down either side of his mouth. He's dressed in an all black 3-piece, pinstripe suit, not smiling, just looking out at the camera, head cocked, hands on his slim hips, and I am thinking "I say goddamn, but this man of 50 still looks %^*@# good, and no way I would ever turn down an invitation to sit at his table, eat, and drink with him." Obsession. If he were in front of me I don't know what I would do. Act like a crazed fan probably. But it's more than that. He is a true poet and author. He wrote a book that I read over the summer called "And the Ass Saw the Angel" It's brilliant but difficult to swallow. Almost like the 100 proof, pure gasoline-whiskey one of his characters drinks. It's not simply breaking your finger in three places. It's crawling into your mind and churning up every black, evil, twisted thought that lurks in your all too human heart. I loved it. But as I read it I wondered "How many other people actually finished it and liked it? And how many of them were women?" Probably not many. None of my friends would ever like it. And my male friends, those that do read, would never get past the prologue. Where are all the Nick Cave fans? Where have they all gone to? Crawled into a ruined gothic mansion, with tattered red curtains, smoked too many cloves, drank too much cheap red wine, and soaked themselves into a stupor of melancholia.
Nick Cave even came out with an album called "Murder Ballads" c1996 in which every song sings about a murder; my absolute favorite song being "Where the Wild Roses Grow".
Nick Cave does not sing to millions in sold out concert venues like Madonna or any of the mainstream Buzz Fest bands that come trouping every year to bombard senseless, angst-ridden teenagers. He sings in dark, smoky lounges, on a hard-wood stage, with purple-velvet curtains sashaying behind him while he hums into a microphone, caressing its slender neck, and his deep baritone voice filling the rafters with music so tragic you just want to cry while making love on a dusty mattress in a run-down motel.
He is truly an icon of 20th century music. And he is still making music well into the 21 century.
No I am talking obsessions on the order of when you have one thing of something you simply can not rest until you have everything of that one thing. My particular obsessions usually fixate on either authors, musicians, or collecting tarot decks. But let's Talk about musicians since I happen to be listening to a CD from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I have in my collection 15 of his albums. And I am still missing some. But I at least have some of the best albums. Nick Cave once said he wanted to create songs so sad, so full of pain, that it was like breaking a finger in three places. That is how I feel a lot of the time. His songs are full of some the most darkly poetic lyrics in music. Such as this line from "Papa won't leave you Henry" from the album "Henry's Dream" c1992
I went out walking the other day
The wind hung wet around my neck
My head it rung with screams and groans
From the night I spent amongst her bones
And then the song continues for another 4 minutes singing about this walk along a dark road, filled with the most surreal images that could in fact happen and if they do you want to keep running down that road and hope someone hears your screams.
For about a month or two over the summer all I did was listen to Nick Cave day and night. I tore out this picture of him taken in November 2005 from the pages of Vanity Fair. I pinned it to my cork board in my writing room. I stare into those intense icy blue eyes, his black hair flowing down to about chin level, wearing a moustache that hangs down either side of his mouth. He's dressed in an all black 3-piece, pinstripe suit, not smiling, just looking out at the camera, head cocked, hands on his slim hips, and I am thinking "I say goddamn, but this man of 50 still looks %^*@# good, and no way I would ever turn down an invitation to sit at his table, eat, and drink with him." Obsession. If he were in front of me I don't know what I would do. Act like a crazed fan probably. But it's more than that. He is a true poet and author. He wrote a book that I read over the summer called "And the Ass Saw the Angel" It's brilliant but difficult to swallow. Almost like the 100 proof, pure gasoline-whiskey one of his characters drinks. It's not simply breaking your finger in three places. It's crawling into your mind and churning up every black, evil, twisted thought that lurks in your all too human heart. I loved it. But as I read it I wondered "How many other people actually finished it and liked it? And how many of them were women?" Probably not many. None of my friends would ever like it. And my male friends, those that do read, would never get past the prologue. Where are all the Nick Cave fans? Where have they all gone to? Crawled into a ruined gothic mansion, with tattered red curtains, smoked too many cloves, drank too much cheap red wine, and soaked themselves into a stupor of melancholia.
Nick Cave even came out with an album called "Murder Ballads" c1996 in which every song sings about a murder; my absolute favorite song being "Where the Wild Roses Grow".
Nick Cave does not sing to millions in sold out concert venues like Madonna or any of the mainstream Buzz Fest bands that come trouping every year to bombard senseless, angst-ridden teenagers. He sings in dark, smoky lounges, on a hard-wood stage, with purple-velvet curtains sashaying behind him while he hums into a microphone, caressing its slender neck, and his deep baritone voice filling the rafters with music so tragic you just want to cry while making love on a dusty mattress in a run-down motel.
He is truly an icon of 20th century music. And he is still making music well into the 21 century.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
First weekend in October
I spent it with my best friend from high-school, Liz, her two little girls, her husband, her sisters, their husbands, her nephew, a friend from her brother-in-law's college days, and her parents at this beautiful, palatial, beachhouse in Galveston. The house was equipped with enough bedrooms, beds, and amenities to hold us all. It was exactly what I needed after basically living like a beggar and a hermit for the last several months. I haven't been out with my regular group of friends in weeks. It sucks being poor. But thankfully I still do have caring friends willing to let me tag along on their family vacations and stay with them at this great place.
I was impressed that Galveston wasn't too filthy this past weekend. I actually enjoyed going out into those chilly Gulf waters and not being afraid to get tangled in seaweed or sink in black, muddy, oozing oil. The weather was perfect, the sun glinted off the surface of the water like a mirror, and the nights on the deck drinking too much red wine, and smoking Marlboroughs was sublime. My very married friends were asking me when I was getting married. When I find the right guy willing to accept every part of me; the good, the bad, the ugly, and the down right frightening. I find myself truly desiring to get married, to throw myself under the yoke once again, and shackle myself to that one person for life.
But then that other part of me rises up and thinks "Why can't I just have a live-in boyfriend? Or better yet, one that lives next door to me? That way he has his house and I have mine and we can just walk in between when we feel the need to be around each other." The aristocrats of the past centuries had the right idea. Build castles with so many different sections that technically the king and queen lived under the same room but each in their own complete wing of the castle. The thing is I sometimes think I should have been born a man. If I were a man I would never be true to one woman and that would be perfectly, socially, and completely acceptable. But I like being a woman, I like having all my womanly parts, curves, and ability to have babies. I just honestly struggle with the whole fidelity and monogamy thing. I have never been faithful to any man I have ever had a relationship with as I told my unfaithful lover last week when we had a huge fight because he came over at his appointed time but left because I was running late and I was furious at him for skipping out.
But I digress. I was talking about my weekend in Galveston with my friends who I love dearly. But deep down, although they have always known me to be the wild one, I don't think they grasp just how far removed I can get from their traditional world views. They are delightfully boring but I sometimes need more.
We all spent most of Saturday in the water and on the sand. I was the only one who dared to go farther out in the waters until I couldn't touch the bottom. I do that every time I go to the beach. I am tempted to sometimes just keep swimming out. I feel the call of the ocean. One of the guys commented later that I was a wild woman going so far out to where all they could see was my head bobbing on the water. I feel free in the water. I always have. I do not feel free in the air. Which is why I hate to fly. I prefer a million times to be in the water. I let all my problems go. I just let the waves crash over my head, I swallowed salty, Gulf water, and just kept floating on my back until I needed to come back in. It would have been nice to have had someone there because seeing everyone of my friends paired off fills me with a longing, a desire to have someone too. I know he will come. Secretly I hold out the hope that a certain someone will come back to me from across the six state lines I indirectly sent him on. Perhaps my problem is that I have never found the right man to be faithful for.
I came home on Sunday very relaxed, sunburned, and quite content. And my lover came to see me on Monday. So life is good. He won't come next week. But the week after that will be good. I can take him in only small doses. Like the drug that he is. I need my fix at least once every two weeks but definitely at least once a month. I would like there to be more but then I ask myself why? He comes over, we talk, he fixes what needs fixing in my house, then he fixes me and then he leaves. It's perfect. Perhaps a little dull sometimes and definitely not within the bounds of a normal relationship. But what is normal anyway? I give myself a headache just thinking about it all sometimes.
Okay. So. Now What? I wonder if I can ever change my nature? I want to continue to be exactly the creature that I am. I am fine with it. But it does get lonely I must admit. HMMM.....Do you think I could advertise for a boyfriend with an open door policy?
I hope to have another weekend like this last one again very soon.
I was impressed that Galveston wasn't too filthy this past weekend. I actually enjoyed going out into those chilly Gulf waters and not being afraid to get tangled in seaweed or sink in black, muddy, oozing oil. The weather was perfect, the sun glinted off the surface of the water like a mirror, and the nights on the deck drinking too much red wine, and smoking Marlboroughs was sublime. My very married friends were asking me when I was getting married. When I find the right guy willing to accept every part of me; the good, the bad, the ugly, and the down right frightening. I find myself truly desiring to get married, to throw myself under the yoke once again, and shackle myself to that one person for life.
But then that other part of me rises up and thinks "Why can't I just have a live-in boyfriend? Or better yet, one that lives next door to me? That way he has his house and I have mine and we can just walk in between when we feel the need to be around each other." The aristocrats of the past centuries had the right idea. Build castles with so many different sections that technically the king and queen lived under the same room but each in their own complete wing of the castle. The thing is I sometimes think I should have been born a man. If I were a man I would never be true to one woman and that would be perfectly, socially, and completely acceptable. But I like being a woman, I like having all my womanly parts, curves, and ability to have babies. I just honestly struggle with the whole fidelity and monogamy thing. I have never been faithful to any man I have ever had a relationship with as I told my unfaithful lover last week when we had a huge fight because he came over at his appointed time but left because I was running late and I was furious at him for skipping out.
But I digress. I was talking about my weekend in Galveston with my friends who I love dearly. But deep down, although they have always known me to be the wild one, I don't think they grasp just how far removed I can get from their traditional world views. They are delightfully boring but I sometimes need more.
We all spent most of Saturday in the water and on the sand. I was the only one who dared to go farther out in the waters until I couldn't touch the bottom. I do that every time I go to the beach. I am tempted to sometimes just keep swimming out. I feel the call of the ocean. One of the guys commented later that I was a wild woman going so far out to where all they could see was my head bobbing on the water. I feel free in the water. I always have. I do not feel free in the air. Which is why I hate to fly. I prefer a million times to be in the water. I let all my problems go. I just let the waves crash over my head, I swallowed salty, Gulf water, and just kept floating on my back until I needed to come back in. It would have been nice to have had someone there because seeing everyone of my friends paired off fills me with a longing, a desire to have someone too. I know he will come. Secretly I hold out the hope that a certain someone will come back to me from across the six state lines I indirectly sent him on. Perhaps my problem is that I have never found the right man to be faithful for.
I came home on Sunday very relaxed, sunburned, and quite content. And my lover came to see me on Monday. So life is good. He won't come next week. But the week after that will be good. I can take him in only small doses. Like the drug that he is. I need my fix at least once every two weeks but definitely at least once a month. I would like there to be more but then I ask myself why? He comes over, we talk, he fixes what needs fixing in my house, then he fixes me and then he leaves. It's perfect. Perhaps a little dull sometimes and definitely not within the bounds of a normal relationship. But what is normal anyway? I give myself a headache just thinking about it all sometimes.
Okay. So. Now What? I wonder if I can ever change my nature? I want to continue to be exactly the creature that I am. I am fine with it. But it does get lonely I must admit. HMMM.....Do you think I could advertise for a boyfriend with an open door policy?
I hope to have another weekend like this last one again very soon.
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