I'm at my most emotionally vulnerable on airplanes, it seems. I fly a lot, although it unfailingly scares me, because the thought of never seeing as much of the world as I can, which is pretty much all of it, scares me more. I have pretty significant crash paranoia and I'm just about the most satisfied when I land and get in the car that's statistically much more likely to kill me. Our brains are funny.
On the plane home from SXSW Interactive in Austin last week, I sat down in my usual aisle seat, close to the front, next to two jackass guys who had been at the conference too, talking about their iPhones and inappropriate texting with girls named Ashley while married, and pointedly ignoring me. I was exhausted.
I had spent five days in a bubble of weird, frenetic activity, learning a lot and seeing and hearing some very interesting things, but not for a minute of it feeling cool enough, or connected enough, or where-I-wanted-to-be-in-the-world enough. I struggled to focus, to repeatedly answer the "what do you you do?" question with some kind of solidity that stayed elusive.
I had been surrounded by nice people (who actually in a few amazing cases gave quite of a bit of a damn about me, as it turned out, and were very kind and generous.) and great ideas and good food and also a lot of bullshit, quite frankly. A lot of chatter. A lot of social and status whatever. Oh and I also broke my computer and my camera was long-dead, and as it turned out I still loved Shiner Bock and barbecue and was utterly hungover from both.
When I sank into my seat, I opened up my notebook to get some of the stuff out of my head, because time trapped on a plane is often some of the best for purging my brain. The notebook is the daily calendar/Moleskine variety, and I had marked January 2nd with a prayer card for that lady holding me in that baptism picture up there (that is imprinted on my heart such that I can see it when I close my eyes,) who died on that day this year. The card fell out on my lap. I picked it up, noted the date and was oddly shocked that it had only been two months and some change, mostly because I don't like to think of her as gone and never will and it's better if I don't think of the time that's passed since in such concrete terms.
Trapped on that plane, I left my sunglasses on and cried as inconspicuously as possible. I wrote some things down about her. I remembered for the countless time since she had her stroke 12 years ago how much this loss sucked. In spite of my pretty serious grounding in reality, I believed it ought to never happen, that I didn't want a life without her somewhere in it, so basically I intended to skip over the whole mortality concept when it came to this person who was in and of herself so much of my backstory, who frequently gave me uncommon amounts of resolve when my own so dependably shattered, who at her frailest and weakest only gave a shit about how I was doing, who never, ever let me down. I thought about how I could explain where I'd been and what I'd been doing in Texas to her if I had the chance and how she wouldn't have understood it at all but would have only wished aloud that it was a good experience for me, and it must have been if I'd chosen to spend my time there, and that I likely was working too hard again, and where the hell had I gone again anyway?
I missed her again like knives through my chest and I realized that still, no matter how much I run, no matter how much I try awkwardly to get through this phase to the next, no matter how much I dress myself up and take myself out, at my core I am a 5 year old who wants the dog and the grandma back that the last year took away. (And were I not on an honesty kick I'd have erased that already but that's the way things are right now, and the way the writing may go for awhile too, to see if it will help.) And since neither of them are going to show back up anytime soon all I can do is keep moving through what is still a weird and unpredictable river of grief that I can't believe I had the audacity to think might be more manageable this time around, until I get to a more peaceful place that "she's in a better place" has never provided for me.
Death sucks. I hate it. And good grandmas, as I was lucky for a good number of years to learn firsthand, are magic.
Well, I didn't actually see it. I almost missed it entirely. I walked out of my last panel on the last day smack into a table that had piles of Operation Smile stickers and buttons on it (I was tired, and it turns out when you buy an iPhone you can spend a lot of stupid time looking at the ground.) It kind of hurt my knee, but it got my attention. And after a little bit of research into the project that brought a nonprofit organization like this one to a huge tech conference, I kicked myself harder than usual for not paying attention before.
There's a lot to pay attention to at this conference, but this is one more thing that given my love for this organization's mission of providing surgical repair for facial differences - primarily cleft lips and/or palates - around the world, I feel like the universe should have put in my scattered, hurried path. (And the universe is like, "Hi, pay attention to the important stuff, thanks.") So I am now, and I hope you will too.
Renee Alexander Hamilton, Operation Smile's Social Media Strategist who represented the project at SXSW Interactive, tells the story on her blog, SXSW Smiles Journal.
-I told her about my new role and how now I am trying to do the same
thing we do in Donor Relations online and in person at events. I
explained that while in the past social networking tools like chat
rooms were thought to divide people and keep them at home in a dark
corner having "virtual relationships'. Now with Facebook and Twitter,
these interactions are actually driving in-person meet-ups and beyond
that they are inspiring ACTION.
So I guess you could say I'm in Austin for a little Smile Action!
SXSW Smiles set up shop outside the very cool Beacon Lounge for nonprofits and social change organizations in the Austin Convention Center, with the goal of enough donations for 10 new "smiles" - repair surgeries for kids with cleft lips and/or palates- each estimated at $240.
Directions were simple. First, pick up or download a "Make Me Smile" sign, and write whatever makes you smile on it. Upload a photo of yourself with the sign to Flickr with the "sxswsmiles" tag. Donate by texting "smile" to 90999, or dropping it off in the Beacon Lounge.
Check out the Operation Smile SXSW Flickr set here, hosted on Alexander aka Entropy Art's photostream. The answers are fun to read - "Bhangra," "our absurdly clingy dog", "hot salsa"- and you'll also get a peek at some of the folks roaming the halls of SXSW, if that's a draw. I would include them for you here, but "all rights reserved" is what it is.
The SXSWSmiles project is part of a larger $240 Smile Challenge March (aka Smile Month.) The cause's Facebook page says that $4203 has been donated so far and $3710 is still needed to reach their goal of providing 20 repair surgeries to children. Check it out.
And why? I'm as idealistic as I am hardcore about photography, and that's a lot. Photos can change lives, I will boldly, idealistically, perhaps overdramatically say - whether they're photos of people talking about what makes them smile or, maybe more importantly, photos taken before and after cleft lip and/or palate repair. No pictures exist of me prior to my lip repair at six weeks old. Hospitals didn't take photos of babies with facial differences then. I'm not sure what the deal was in my family, honestly - I do know my mother was never ashamed of me, in fact saw beyond my flaws as mothers most often do. Who knows what pressures existed on a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, in the days before cameras were omnipresent, everywhere, where images were immediately available.
But photos are essential and I wish there were some. I would love to see what I looked like before this repair, to see the reality of this situation that has affected my life like no other. And I like seeing the impact a simple repair surgery can make on a child who may otherwise walk around in their impoverished town or village with a gaping whole where there ought not to be one. Photos can inform and change perceptions and raise awareness just like, and sometimes even more than, words can. It can be difficult to see if you're unaccustomed, but just like with many things that present challenges that can't be easily solved, or aren't so pretty, or disturb on some level, they don't go away just because we don't pay attention.
When its in a picture in front of your face, it's hard to ignore, so may there always be pictures of important things in front of our faces.
Me, exhausted, at the end of a harrowing trip, happy nonetheless to be spending time with the very important kids at Hanoi Medical University, March, 2008. Many had just received their first dental exam. Photo kindly taken by their teacher. (The whole set is here. I love these pictures.)
Beth Kanter was a fixture in the Beacon Lounge and wrote prolifically about the nonprofit presence at SXSW and in social media communities. Her post on the Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam is a good place to start, but scroll around for lots more. <
My friend on Ash Wednesday: My friend is an atheist and she said she was giving up sugar for Lent. Me: Does she know what Lent is? Friend: Yeah. I told her she was actually just going on a diet.
I try so hard, so very very hard every day, not to judge, but that is just silly. It's the silliest thing I've heard among a number of comments I've heard this past week about what thing to give up for Lent, whether it's the usual chocolate or swearing or something more of-the-moment like Facebook. (Sorry, I think giving up Facebook for Lent is silly too.)
I was raised Catholic, significantly, seriously so, and I don't practice anymore beyond the fact that I still own a rosary and use repetitive Hail Marys on occasion when I'm really freaked out or need comforting. Because I don't practice, I DON'T GIVE UP anything for Lent. I'm totally aware that it's happening, but I don't engage with it on a daily sacrificial level. Because guess what? It is not a fitness challenge or an internet meme - it's a religious observance and a spiritual practice, arguably the most serious in the Christian calendar. And while I don't practice Catholicism anymore, I have much respect for the genuinely faithful people who use this time as an attempt to better themselves either by giving something up (more traditionally) or working more mindfully on improving something about themselves.
My strong feelings about this are tied up in the deepest stuff of my life and my heart, namely my grandparents and how seriously they took Lent, among all the things they took seriously about living a committed Catholic life. My remaining attachments to the church - which are many and varied in my heart in spite of my political and ethical differences of opinion with the Vatican - have to do with them, for the most part, and the way they lived their lives in the most faithfully Catholic of ways, on a daily basis and in times of religious observance. One did not eat much on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, as they were fasting days, and certainly not any meat. There was no consuming meat on any Friday in their house, because when they were young you didn't eat meat on Friday, all year long. It was the night for little glass bowls of egg and tuna salad, for toast and soup and cottage cheese. It was a time to pray more and to go to church more. It was serious Jesus business, it was, and just reading this I cry because they were just that good, and that good to me. I cry a little bit because this memory makes me wish I still believed.
It was so not the life I have now, the life where I eat steak on Ash Wednesday.
The past I lived and the present I'm struggling through combined with my weird hybrid belief system make me cranky about people grabbing onto Lent as a time to shred with Jillian Michaels (Yes it's 40 days. No, it's not the same.) or to whine to their friends about how hard it is to give up some first world convenience or the other. I'm sorry. I'm a total Facebook crackhead like many of my brothers and sisters in Internet addiction, but giving it up is no kind of real sacrifice. It's irritating, sure, because who in the hell wants to miss out on 40 days of fake pokes and little green plants and wall posts going "Hey. What's up?" But a real, true sacrifice? I think not. Ask a kid in Darfur, loser.
I'm sorry I'm so rude about this, but I rarely rant anymore and this is just...GETTING TO ME. It's driving me to caps, because people just don't seem to get it. Lent is supposed to commemorate the spiritual crisis of the Christian MESSIAH and, oh, SAVIOR OF THE WORLD, undertaken as he wandered in the desert for 40 days. Call me crazy, but if I don't believe in that and I latch onto it as an excuse to lower my cholesterol or look better in a bridesmaid dress? That's just creepy. And yeah, in my lapsed Catholic way, maybe even a bit karmically frightening.And even if I do believe in Jesus and the benefit of a spiritual test, I have to wonder if giving up a social networking service is good enough.
I guess I look at it in a context of other religions and what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't borrow elements of Ramadan that might work for me, or Passover, because I don't know shit about either one of those important holidays and quite frankly, they're none of my business. They are not my cultural practices so until invited to participate I just need to observe.
There is so much I need to work on in my life, so much I need to improve and lose and gain, weight and attitude and brain cells and what have you. If I'm going to do it I need to to tie it to what makes sense for me and my life. If that isn't Christianity on a daily basis - which right now it's not - I need to keep my hands off the traditions associated with it, mind my business and head to therapy or Weight Watchers or the gym.
And in my peculiar, particular catechism, an atheist wanting to give up sugar needs to do it without any help from God, because - well - to attach it to Him, for them, just misses the point.
You had an innocent murmur at birth, which more or less means you made an extra sound, a breather between beats. And now you’re oddly palpitating such that I can feel you in my chest, which I really wish you’d stop.
Always a risk-taker with impossible depths, you took off running a long time ago, and it takes some backwards tracing to figure out all the places you’ve landed. You’re down the hall at my parents' house, for sure, and in the two wooden boxes of dogs' ashes downstairs. You split time and space between California, Delaware, Georgia and Virginia, because that's where my people have gone, and you’re in more places in Maryland - my home - than I can track.
You've stayed behind in places where I've lost things. There are shards of you frozen in mid-air in Boston, in the southwest corner of Ohio and hanging in an apartment hallway and a cemetery, both a few miles away in either direction from where I sit. You’re in Vietnam and New Orleans, places where I've seen love and pain, and I'll cop to feeling you big time in a Denver stadium last summer. You're in the songs that make me cry. I unfailingly keep records, so you’re between the covers of many journals and all over the place in the crazy attic of the Internet. You’re in thousands of photographs, in the stories of vacations, birthday parties, sunsets, and self-portraits.
A lot of times I don't like you. You're difficult and stubborn, and you're also, in case you were wondering, not funny at all. Sometimes I (really do) think I lost you along the way. Never lucky in love, nine years - an eternity - ago, you fell in it with an utterly compelling, fairly odd, equally defensive person who seemed like the counterpart you'd been looking for since you started looking. You trusted, planned and dreamed a life when you had no business doing so, and then you sold me out. Once you met him, you were done, in spite of my need to never lose you again for no good reason. You stayed in, way over your head, for way too long. You ignored alarms, stuck your fingers in your ears and went "lalalalalala," seriously. You refused to see the obvious.
And while that’s all thoroughly and completely over now, it cost me so much for far too long. You went with him when he left, you would have crawled into his pocket if I'd let you, in spite of my best efforts to keep my center, to be okay, to stay safe and happy. I can’t forgive you yet for this. It still doesn't make any sense and it still pisses me off.
Worst of all, as a result, even if I had a reason, I can't trust your judgment and I don't know when, or if, I want to again. I can use you for the no-brainers and the necessities, for the puppies who suck you in and the family and friends who give me so much that I need whatever you can dredge up to reciprocate it. I use you for my work, for my students, for my stories, for the sheer will it takes sometimes to get through the day alongside other human beings in all the places we find ourselves together.
I use up a lot of your reserves for the news, for what I see of the world that isn't kind, and is in too many cases unbearable. I feel you. Because I still produce tears on a regular basis even though I really don't want to, I know you're there. I rely on you for awareness of what others experience, for freedom from the self-centeredness that would, if it took me over, make my life a nightmare and my value questionable.
I admit, I've wondered over the past few years how much you
can take before you shut down entirely. Some big losses have piled up, the inevitable surrender of loved ones and the crushing exhaustion that I've learned goes with it. I've had to be stronger than I felt like being most of the time, because along with the loss there's been an absence of true joy, of anything solid to replace everyone and everything that checked out. I feel sorry for you, because a lot of times you're lonely, and often you feel like your chance is past. And the effort to think that's not true, that you just have to do this or that thing to get it back, to still believe in magic and the power of possibility, sometimes feels like a little too damned much.
What I've learned is that while it may look messy in the moment, given the choice between feeling and the absence of it, I'll still try to take you, as messed up as you are. A lot of times it doesn't look very graceful. I have to ride out those hours where it feels like the black hole's opening up again, where I don't feel at all like being a team player or a good sport. Even when it doesn't look like I'm trying, I am - to reach out, to be grateful maybe, to shut up the panicky thoughts that what I've got's not enough, that what I lost was the best there was, that everything poured out through your senseless holes and nothing can and will ever patch them. And I guess even though sometimes things feel dire and old and over, together we try to foster something, anything, better than that.
I still hear the faint whoosh of an innocent murmur, pushing 40 now. An idealist and a romantic in spite of myself, I wish this were a
different letter, a love song or a poem or God help me a valentine
even, but that's just not how it's played out. I'm keeping an eye on you, and in spite of the lack of warm fuzziness lately there must be a reason I still sign my notes "xo" like my mother has since she left notes on napkins in our school lunch bags. I feel a little bit of hope, in spite of all evidence and every reason to dismiss it. Because like it or not, from what I understand of biology and other things not at all scientific, I really do need you, wild and random as you are, to survive.
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Everything remains as it was.
The old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no sorrow in your tone.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effort
Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around
the corner.
All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting, when we meet again.
My sister found that awesome poem while planning my grandmother's funeral program, so we put it on there. It has been comforting to me, challenged as I am by Catholic concepts of the resurrection and death in general, in this 15-month span of time where it has confronted me on a few occasions and colored my experience so much.
It was my grandmother's time to die, yes, I truly believe. Her body was exhausted and she was exhausted. She was in pain there for the last few days and pain was nothing any of us wanted for her for one minute. She died after the first dose of hospice-administered morphine, she calmed down enough to slip away.
My grandmother and I were best friends and I've written about that before. This was her birthday post from last year, when we all went to lunch and she started eating her brownie sundae without a utensil because there were no utensils on the table.
This year I left for California on Thanksgiving on morning and was out there for her birthday, so I stopped by the day before the holiday to spend time with her and bring her a little jacket. She was very spruced up, pearls and all, and we had a great visit. I took some video of her and only got one on YouTube yet. I'll post more when my heart can take it.
I'm going through my archives, so grateful I kept a record of her last few years. Case in point, Valentine's Day, 2007. I was so blessed with her. She was my babysitter and my roommate and my friend, my friend, my friend. She loved me unconditionally and whereas it is a beautiful thing to live for a good long time and have so much love in your life, it is still so difficult to lose that life, for you and for the people who shared it with you. That's where the grief comes in.
My life has been coming at me at such a rapid pace in the past nine days, populated with so many people from the past 40 years. I have never felt this tired, wrung out, which my sister and my mother and I reminded ourselves last night was due to the holiday season, graduation, a family reunion we planned for 125 people the last week in December, and for me a bout with the flu that started the week before Christmas.
Besides, my grandmother and I had a lot of preliminary conversation that in many ways prepared us for the possibility that she would eventually not be here, but that was pretty much intellectual. The reality of it is so weird, and so emotionally draining I can't even explain it. The aftermath was full of seeing all the people who cared so much for all of us through the various stages of our life, watching the priest who baptized me lead prayers at the funeral home, putting her sunglasses (see above) on for the two-hour break between viewing times and making my dad's cousins laugh who got there before we got back, watching my little cousins watch their father lose his mother, watching my father lose his mother, walking through this with my sister and my parents like I walk through pretty much everything, sitting like a stone in the funeral home so that the last person there would not be a person who didn't have a close tie, because I'm overly protective of some people and situations.
I've cried a lot. When I saw her for the last time on Dec. 28, we had some important time together and I told her that there were not enough tears in the world for her. There aren't, although they're slowing down. I believer very much in celebrating life, but gratitude and joy will need to learn to share space with sadness and loss, because that's just the way I am, the way people are, if we're honest with ourselves. I feel, in this most significant loss of my life so far, that I am in some ways grown. It keeps coming into my mind, that thought, and I don't really like it as much sense as it makes. I'll never be the same, in some good ways and some bad.
In that last talk, she held my hand as I cried, she comforted me, saying "Whatsa matter? Whatsa matter?" over and over as I told her I was so worried about her, I didn't know what to do, and she knew there was nothing to do, but for us to be there together. I wish I'd spent more time, but I'm grateful for the years of it, for the time we spent and the time we appreciated, because honestly I don't know of many pairs who appreciated each other more. What more can you ask, from this world or from anyone?
I wrote this for my father to read at her funeral, because I could not:
There are some people who will fix games so their grandchildren will win. They’ll pick the bad cards or count up the points wrong on purpose. Sis White was not one of those people. If she got a hole in one at mini-golf, which she was prone to doing, and beat you, she'd throw her club in the air and laugh out loud, and only then give you a pep talk about it if she wasn’t already on to the next hole. If she got Yahtzee first and, again, beat you, she yelled YAHTZEE annoyingly loud and you had to settle for her making you something to eat to soften the blow.
It was nothing personal. It was a game, and the objective, as she saw it, was to win. If you did, great, and if she did, that was greater. And as those of us who have witnessed her fight to continue drawing breath for the past 12 years against often very difficult physical circumstances can attest, she approached her earthly experience with the same fighting spirit. She may have believed with all her heart in a heaven, but she was determined to wait until the last possible second to get there. There is some comfort in the knowledge that she achieved this goal
And years later, it may have occurred to those of us on the losing end of those games to thank her for teaching us that as many times as you might win in life, a lot of times you lose. It’s helpful to know how to handle it, and better that she should have been one of the first ones to teach you how to deal.
Born 87 years ago to an Irish-German Catholic family in Washington, D.C. Marie McGrath White’s life was service – to her home, to her family and to her God. She found necessity and happiness in the every day – her hands in the dirt in the yard, in the sink, in the washing machine, in the sand – wherever she happened to be. She was the rare person who never did anything, to my knowledge, with an expectation of reward or gratitude. If it was there to do and it needed to be done, she did it, the majority of the time for the benefit of other people.
She enjoyed her life. She liked Maryland basketball, Orioles baseball and church, going to the beach and dancing. She liked dogs and for many years she watched All My Children every single day. But regardless of what she was doing, her primary interest was people. First of all her kids, and then her grandchildren, daughters in law, nieces and nephews and friends. She wanted to know what you were doing and when, certainly who you were doing it with and how long you expected it to take. She wanted to know if you’d done it before and if you planned to do it again, and if you’d be stopping back by the house when you were done. She was extremely interested in your physical condition, whether you were sick or well, and what you might need to either make you better or keep you in good shape. Most of all, and ironically for someone who showed so little interest in her own food, she wanted to know if you were hungry, and if she could feed you, repeatedly.
She liked things to have a point and she liked action. Not much of a recreational reader herself, she was a self-taught children’s book expert and an uncertified preschool teacher who could pack a kid off to kindergarten with all the basics well in hand. She was, for a number of years, an unofficial Channel 4 Bob Ryan weather watcher, and at the New Hampshire Avenue house and then later through other screen doors and windows, she spent countless hours predicting whether or not it would storm, estimating humidity levels, and checking on the condition of vehicles in the service road. Many, many nights in the winter she’d announce to Bill that there was ice on the car, for no reason than to keep everyone apprised of the situation, because the vehicles were one of few things she didn’t handle.
Through the many happy years of parenting and grandparenting, of beach trips and church functions up to the last decade of other things not so fun and much more painful, what she had was a faith in the unknown and the unseen that carried her through personal losses and finally the loss of her own physical abilities. She somehow knew where she was going even when she nor anyone else had any idea, and in those times she trusted only that around the next bend she'd have a hallway to maneuver her wheelchair down, heading to dining rooms where she wouldn't eat the food but would poke around for some conversation and maybe even stir something up at a couple of the tables.
And even though the last 12 years with her “bad side” as she called it, were difficult, she, like many people of faith, saw it as part of the program, something to be handled. She rebounded not only from a debilitating stroke but several bouts with illness that many in her life thought there was no way she could possibly survive.
It has been our privilege to see her through it, to turn her over to the Jesus, Mary and Joseph she called upon every day, and now to be grateful that she watches over us and has given us all that we need to live our lives with even a fraction of the grace and spirit that she brought to the proceedings.
The hardest people to let go of, no matter what their age or physical condition, are the people for whom it is unthinkable that they will go anywhere, and the hardest people to thank are the people who don’t want it or ask for it. And they are the ones who deserve it the most.
I was afraid of you. I met you and immediately I saw something in your face, felt something in your heart, and I didn't want it as much as I did want it far, far away from my wounded self, the self that just packed up a bunch of shit in a truck and left a man who wore decorated ties daily crying through the window panes on the apartment building door on a cloudy day in an Ohio apartment with only a dining room table left. The self that put my precious dogs in that impossibly large Budget rental truck and drove with them standing shotgun on hind legs peering out at mountains we'd driven over twenty times, this time back to a state and a life that seemed like the right thing to reclaim.
Once there, my drunken uncle came out of the house, as happy to see me as I was horrified, and I sat down on the stoop and cried, overwhelmed as I can often be by a surplus of stuff, by a surplus of feeling.
"Why don't you just go back if you're happy there and going to be miserable here?" she said. "You have the truck til tomorrow. You can just turn it around, turn it right around."
Two unreturned weeks later, only two, scant, unfair weeks, you were there in that room with your words and your ideas and your directives. Your hair was long and you were loud and I cry as I write this, I CRY, the memory still so strong of someone that it still seems so unfair and so not right in the scheme of things was not meant to be my lobster, my person. All this evidence piled up at my feet to the contrary and yet I don't buy it, refuse to.
I hate you as I write through this as I promised myself on the plane I would, to maybe relieve this ache behind my eyes, this adrenaline pumping out of the souls of my feet, this weirdness that won't leave. You don't read so I'm free. I hate you as I love you, hate my own pathetic e-mails and cards, hate the fact that we didn't get it right even though we tried so fucking hard (I mean, really? To fail at something at which you try so fucking hard? That's sad.), hate that it took me eight years too long to find a balance in my chemistry and my bloodstream and my soul, to find the path that is somehow saving me even though I don't really know what it is most days, even though as I know things are coming together as I've wanted them to forever, that feel like they're falling apart at a rapid pace. Hate that you left me. Hate that you love someone else in spite of my efforts to send good thoughts in that direction. Hate that I went left instead of right, on that first crucial day and so many others.
Hate that you left me. Hate that you are not here.
I told the truth, my only consolation, and it's not entirely small. You were my best friend in the weirdest sense of that term and my mirror, someone I never got bored of or sick of or worse yet felt that loathing of sameness, of why are you here and why are you why are you doing or saying that thing? I just waited for what came next and it was always better if you were there than if you weren't. This is why I no longer trust my heart. I'd looked for you in so many corners and in so many smoky stupid rooms with people who didn't understand, who played the wrong songs and gave away my presents. You called to me from a crowd of thousands, in a room with three other people. You scared me to death and you made me so happy. I don't know where you are, which was the plan. You still make me cry.
I finally wrote the BlogHer post about V to the 10th in New Orleans. It was such a heavy experience that I had trouble getting it down, honestly, but I couldn't let it go. Herewith, the second time in my life I've worn a boa in public for an extended period of time. This was one of the best days of my life, no question.
"The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way." -diane arbus
So last night I ended up on a dance floor at the W Hotel in New Orleans, dancing my ass off next to Jane. Fonda. I said JaneFonda. And also Eve Ensler.
Before that, I stood next to my sister and acknowledged the pain and suffering of women, including our own, at an event that I wish every woman in the world could have attended or watched via satellite or just experienced for themselves in some way. Oprah didn't show up but I didn't care. I have a new heroine in Liz Mikel, who is a phenomenal force of nature. We met her later, too.
Finally, I sent very abbreviated love letters to people who crossed my mind, because to me that is what this event was all about. I was inspired. In the light of day, not so much, but you know how that goes. You channel what you can and move on. Some nights the possibilities just seem so awesome.
I've always liked that one. Lay-a-bed. Anyway, I hate headlines that make me work. And in this case, the fact that I didn't automatically know they meant "liberal" either makes me completely stupid, burnt out on all things Obama, or...something.
And yes, this does mean I'm back, deconstructing American mainstream media so you don't have to, and now you'll have more time to peruse People.com. Relieved? I know, me too. 15 hours of sleep since 4 p.m. yesterday and I think I'm pretty much ready to rock and roll, until sometime tonight when I pass out again.
But first, tonight, a welcome home Girlyman show! I can't think of a better way to come back home than two days of sleep and one of my favorite bands playing live. It takes away an infinitesimal (which is to say almost nonexistent) bit of the sting of walking in the door completely wired and exhausted to a dogless house and a beautiful package from Heavenly Days that includes what remains of my little guy. My feelings about this are the size of the world, shrunk down to the reentry lunch with my mother when we talked about it so I'd understand exactly what happened, and the half hour I spent sitting at the dining room table with him as soon as I got home. I have lots of tears for him, it turns out, 13 years of memories worth, I guess, which makes them the most essential kind.
As much as I knew it was true, I still can't believe it. I can't believe that's him in there, topped off with a sympathy note and a guardian angel pin of a dog with a halo and wings. My mother made all of his stuff go away because my parents couldn't stand it (I can't imagine what it was like, being here) and didn't want me to have to either, but it's still terrible, either way. I came downstairs when I finally woke up to the sun shining through the screen door and call me crazy, but because it's early spring and the perfect slice of light was hitting the entry way, I was genuinely surprised not to see him stretched out all Punkin-yoga style in it. It's really quiet around here.
Universe & U KT Tunstall: She remains in my heavy rotation.
Pretty in Pink Psychedelic Furs: Sometimes it's good for me to hear this song. I don't know why. This is it, that's the end of the joke.
I Won't Gamble With Your Love Patty Loveless: I'm back with Patty right now. This was one of the first songs I sang as competently as I'm capable of, with respect to my secret desire to be an add-on member of the Carter Family. She's amazing. Country when it wasn't cool, and still. I can own it.
Up to the Mountain Patty Griffin: This is a song for Martin Luther King and it's absolutely beautiful lyrically and musically, which is expected from Patty of course...but my God. I just can't get past her voice, it brings me to the same place every time, somewhere I'm glad I go even though sometimes it's hard.
Word Up Cameo: The Best of Cameo Haha, one of my favorite songs to ever sing EVER. IT'S THE CODE WORDDDD. (Clearly I'm watching a lot of VH1 Classic - currently my favorite channel.)
I Need to Wake Up Melissa Etheridge: Sitting in the coffee shop with my sister in San Diego, this song just came on, and I fell in love with Melissa Etheridge and music all over again. Thank God for today, seriously.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World Tears For Fears: Welcome to your life. There's no turning back. NO JOKE.
Beautiful Wreck Shawn Mullins: Honeydew In my dreams The Thorns get together for another album but it's probably not going to happen, so I'll settle for the solo stuff. Good thing it's all so good.
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