LaurieWrites

Dear Heart, Wherever You Are

Cross-posted from BlogHer,  as part of our Letter to My Heart project.

Dear Heart –

You really are all over the place.

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.

xo, Laurie White, who writes at LaurieWrites.

Serious

I've had a Myspace account for a long time that I check but I don't use. Turns out I am dumb because clearly my destiny awaits me here:

Hello,
My name is Ken,male, single , I saw your brief profile here and was impressed hence my sending this mail to you to enable us get acquainted to each other.I want us to be good friends so that we will have a long standing relationship that will mature and blossom to a better,intimate and romantic affairs.
I await to hear from you to enable us establish a more cordial relationship. i am new will like to chat with you on my message and get to know each other and written me back here mcdonald1964ken@xxxx or mcdonaldjones1@xxxxx
Much Regards
Ken

A cover letter or a come-on? You decide.

And yes, Tom is his only friend. (Head - meet wall.)

Your Choice Your Voice It Takes Me There.

So I'm walking down the street in DC yesterday, in totally the opposite direction from the National Press Building, although I didn't know that at the time. It was hot as my own personal hell, and I was wearing a dress and I was sweaty and having to go be in a room with people who didn't need to see me looking a literal hot mess.

A cab appeared. I flagged it down. I got in and began inappropriately disclosing information to the cabbie, as is my thinking-out-loud habit and my genetic programming courtesy of my mother.

"WOW I THOUGHT I WAS BARELY GOING TO MAKE IT!" I said, hyperbolically. "It is HOT!"

He looked at me in the rearview.

"OH, you are pregnant?!?"

"No. No, I'm not."

(Please note that the next ten minutes were conducted from him in heavily accented English and from me with an internal monologue of "it's totally okay that I'm discussing fat fetishes with a cab driver who thought I WAS EFFING PREGNANT, which I AM NOT, although it would be NICE to be since I'm OLD AND SINGLE AND CHILDLESS AND ALL AND ISN'T THAT A FINE ENOUGH TORTURE COCKTAIL, WITHOUT BEING MISTAKEN FOR BEING PREGNANT ON TOP OF THESE HORRIBLE CURSES???????" Just sayin'.)

"Oh, haha, I think you are pregnant because you say you can barely make it."

(Nice save. Try again.)

"No, I say I can't make it because...I am hot and out of breath. There are likely pregnant women who can run circles around me. I am just fat. And out of shape."

"OHHHHH, haha, I LIKE THE FAT WOMEN. My wife is fat!"

He giggled, honestly - I'd say it was joyful on some level.

"Really?" (Insert conflict here between nervousness that I am complicit in the actions of a man calling his wife fat, and my own sense of solidarity with this perhaps-imaginary-fat-wife-of-cabdriver whom I've never met.)

"OHHHHHHH (ed. he was really loud, sorry for going all Owen Meany on your asses.) she is SOO fat. (ed. My wife is sooo fat she sits AROUND THE HOUSE. Sorry again.) She is 280 pounds!"

(I begin using outside, oxymoronic voice.) "That is a LITTLE big. Is she okay with it? IS she healthy? Does she have trouble getting around in this heat too?"

WHAT? WHO AM I????

"She is a nurse! It is a myth! The myth that you are fat and lazy!"

PREACH IT DUDE. Oh Christ, where is my money? God I hope I can pay him after all of this nonsense and don't need to go wheezing off in search of provisions AND cash while he wastes away, all 120 pounds of him.

"IS A myth! She walks all day! She walks and walks! And the thin people, THEY are unhealthy!"

This really got me going.

"YEAH! Like, I don't even SMOKE anymore. I used to smoke! You can be thin and smoke! And be all SICK. I have to be on a diet to MAINTAIN my weight!"

"MY WIFE TOO! Yes. Your numbers. It is all your other numbers. If your BLOOD PRESSURE is GOOD..."

At this point the gospel choir from the "Like a Prayer" video busted out somewhere in the universe with "Your choice your voice can take me there!" and there was witnessing and praise from my several subconscious selves, me and this tiny little cab driver and his fat wife who I'd never met, but who I imagined I would soon, at a beautiful pastry-laden table.

"And your SUGAR! My sugar is FINE!" I interrupted, compelled by the power of the choir.

He continued.

"I have ALWAYS like the fat women. It does not matter to me, but people say to me, 'Why? Why do you like them?' And I say, 'I do not know.'

"Yeah, there are men who seem to prefer larger women. How long have you been married?"

"38 years! It is no problem for me. It is the FAT men who like the thin women, you see them? The big fat men with these little tiny women?"

"Um, yeah. Must admit I do see that sometimes. Do you think it's because they have money?"

I step into this man's car and I become prejudiced against everyone in my fat solidarity all of a sudden. What can I say? It was like a wrinkle in time.

More continuing. "They have SOMETHING, those men, of course they must have the money too. They have the something something. WHAT DOES IT MATTER? THE PERSON MAKE YOU HAPPY IN BED, THEY LOOK HOWEVER YOU LIKE THEM TO LOOK."

Should have seen that one coming maybe?

"I guess so, yes. Well, your wife is very lucky that you see her so positively, because in my experience many men don't. Or is that just because she could beat you up at this point?"

Look at the jolly fat jokes with a side of domestic violence all of a sudden! Nice! I have no idea what happens to me sometimes.

He thought that was hilarious.

"Haha, she could beat me up ONE time, but oh, she is disabled now, she is fine but another story for another time, not enough time, but you know we are all okay with whoever, whatever we like."

Yes, I hope so. And I'm not sure what I said when I got out of the cab, since cab arrivals are times for my synapses to collide in a frenzy of making sure I have my camera and my wallet and my keys and to figure out how many dollars I let him keep from a twenty, which more or less prevents any other rational thought.

I do remember thanking him for making me laugh, because he totally did, and too many people don't. Right or wrong, I have to admit that although validation from random strangers really doesn't factor into my daily bread, it was kind of cool that fat was where it was at in his cab.

*I don't disclose my weight just because I don't, but if you've arrived here for the first time or haven't ever seen me, it should be noted that I am not and have not been since the age of 10 a small girl, and in fact have recently reached a weight that for me is a personal high. I'm cool with it on lots of levels, and don't take any political stance on fat acceptance other than believing that whatever's healthy and comfortable for you, that's what you should do and be and handle. I'm a reporter at the moment, so forgive me my need for background. ;)

Crazy Like A Monkey

Let me get this straight. You stop your car, get out, and try to capture a monkey standing in diaper, on a leash, by the side of the road because you think "it'll make a nice pet." The monkey chases your ass, because you've pissed it off, and it can sense your messed up intentions.

And the MONKEY'S crazy? Do you see that monkey? That monkey is laughing at you, dude. Because you're an idiot, and monkey's are really quite smart.

This is what happens when you google "Boston Terrier tattoo"

Why? WHY????

Random.

Speaking of which, I had no idea Herve sang. 

How stupid ARE PEOPLE?

So I'm still dealing with the story that's slammed headfirst into DC-area news for the past month, about Banita Jacks, the woman who killed her daughters and lived with them in the house until the Federal marshals came in to evict her and found them all and she said the devil made them do it. Not her, them. This might lead to the conclusion that you even have to watch out for your mother, but I'm still more afraid of the devil I DON'T know.

That said, I do not have children, but if I did, I am ever more certain that I would never hire a stranger to watch my child. I've never been the type to think I'd say it, because I've always thought I'd be open to babysitters outside of my family if it was someone I trusted, but what the HELL?????

But after more questioning, police said Torres said Elijah was injured in a game in which she bundled him in a closed sleeping bag and she jogged through her apartment with the bag slung over her shoulder.

Going through one doorway, Torres lost her balance and the bag struck the door frame twice, police said. When she opened the bag, Elijah was pale and not breathing, according to the police report.

God bless you, Elijah, first of all, because this was not fair or right or just on any level, and this is why when people say "everything happens for a reason" to me it makes me want to smoke or drink heavily or lay inert on my couch watching Rock of Love marathons for the rest of my days, because EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, RIGHT? Who CARES? I'm watching Bret Michaels kiss 15 women for a REASON. Leave me alone.

It's just the wrong thing to say to me, as it is patently illogical. Sure it happens for a reason, but it needs to be amended. "Everything happens for a (sometimes shitty, totally nonsensical, overtly upsetting) reason." If my baby died in a sleeping bag because someone else was an idiot, if anyone mentioned anything about God's will or a reason to me, I'd probably be in jail, and the reason would be aggravated assault.

Anyway, this was NOT A GAME. Games are fun. Games do not involve you being shut up in something that makes you NOT ABLE TO BREATHE. Had she never heard of PLAY-DOH? GO FUCKING FISH? Sorry I'm yelling, but this little kid will never be ABLE TO YELL AGAIN. Consider it one for him.

This sucks and I don't know why this one stuck out for me amid the sea of bad news on MSNBC and CNN and in the local paper and everywhere else. But the thing is that I just do not understand grown people who don't have any possible level of sense or intellectual functioning, to the point that babies die because of it. It is quite possible, as the article stated, that this woman didn't mean to kill this child, and "initially lied about the boy's injuries because people would think she intentionally hurt the boy if she told the truth." Perhaps she is too stupid to have any idea that putting a baby in a BAG, and then swinging him AROUND, and JOGGING inside, is a bad idea, and therefore didn't have the capacity to reason. I don't know. I could never sit on the jury to decide it though, because I don't know how I'd be unbiased. Um, hi Ms. Torres. Let's have you climb into this bag right here, and I'm going to demonstrate how I throw you over my shoulder. Really hard. Like into a door jamb.

The story is also notable for this part, which interests me the journalist and not just me the hater of fools who kill children:

The arraignment was televised under a new state program designed to make the courts more open. It was believed to be the first arraignment in the state at which cameras were permitted. The state previously allowed cameras during a few criminal trials.

That is a big deal. Minuscule compared to the loss this family suffered, and the knowledge of how he died, but still notable.

I don't even know what to do anymore. But I do know it's the stuff you can never foresee that's the most frightening, which in and of itself isn't terribly comforting. And I also understand nanny cameras, totally. As opposed to surveillance as I've been in the past, I'd say it's a worthy investment because as the commercials blather on about, peoples' kids? Priceless.

I don't know how this whole business started.

Watch it. Ambrosia will fuck you UP.

HAHAHAHAHA.

(That picture courtesy HeavyHarmonies.com. Hi guys.)

No, seriously. You don't want to meet this crew in a dark alley. See?

(Photo courtesy inertron.com who must accept my deepest apologies. And if you want to see it in its original glory, which you really should, plus watch David Pack LIP-SYNC the damned song I've had trapped in my head for 48 hours now, go here. Ashlee Simpson lip-syncs the pants off this guy, is all I can say.)

Could I call Burleigh Drummond's hat a bonnet? Or more appropriately a tam-o-shanter. A top 'o the mornin' tam-o-shanter, matey, but I'd still prefer to call it a  bonnet.

See, I decided to confront this Ambrosia madness head-on, so I searched for the images and decided to, you know, snark it up around here a little bit. It's been too warm and fuzzy lately (yeesh) plus I need a new post today since every time the site pulls up so I can delete one of the million spam comments I'm getting I see my big old head and that's more shock than I need. It's like I'm staring at myself. Weird. And when I did the search, I realized that Ambrosia ALSO did that creepy "I see your face when I have sex with my wife" song, "How Much I Feel". So now they're doing battle in my brain. Because like I said, Ambrosia will fuck you UP. And don't even get me started on England Dan and John Ford Coley.

It's one of the two busiest times of the year at work for me, this one coming conveniently right after "holiday" exhaustion. I'm also in terrible chronic pain from falling in the yard of the house I just moved out of, and altogether this means that laughing at stuff like this and Aleve are just about the only things getting me through right now. Good thing, because I know no one really wants to hear about pain. It's the most boring thing to talk about, which is challenging when you hurt constantly and you're a verbal person and you just want to keep commenting on it. Like when it's 100 degrees outside and everyone knows it but you keep on saying, "My GOD it's so HOT. Stop the MADNESS." It's kind of like that. I might capitulate and go get a heating pad. Sad sad sad.

Should be a good weekend, though. I'm joining the sheep on the last day of the Annie Liebovitz show in DC (I don't like going on the last day of anything but...but...yeah) and the Ansel Adams show is still there, so I'll have time to see that too. too. Such different photographers, so the contrast alone should be interesting. I hope the rain stops and the weather's nice, because today sucked. If it is maybe I'll resurrect my SLR and do some old-school film shooting. I really want to do some Polaroid work. And I also need to spiff things up around here. So much, so much I want to do.

May all your weekendy dreams come true. : )

Freaking leave EVERYONE alone

I was going to make some kind of lame, ironic comment on the whole pitiful, abusive, depressing situation involving a certain young celebrity from Louisiana (I know, you're like, 'Which one?', right? Where the hell is Hannah Montana from anyway?). To do so I was going to link to this dude, which I did several months ago when Britney's life began to completely fall apart.

But then, as is YouTube's way, I got sidetracked, and found something probably even more appropriate, so meta it hurts. Because this is just...just beautiful.

My favorite commentary on this whole mess is still Craig Ferguson's. You want truth about something of this nature with no bullshit? Ask an addict. Also, next time your life is fucked up, even if you went and made a public figure of yourself or maybe have acted out in a major way to call attention to it, ask yourself if you'd like someone to take several pictures of it happening. Because I don't know about you, but my friends try to grab my camera to delete pictures of themselves for much less serious reasons. I just think that anyone in pain is a sad, sad thing.  I didn't think the videos of Anna Nicole were funny, and I don't think that the Britney coverage is funny or even particularly interesting. It's just another life, messed up and painful, it just happens to belong to a young woman who went a very peculiar path.

I haven't been around any 12-step meetings for many, many years, but one thing I did take away from that experience was "there but for the grace of God go I." Call it karma, whatever, but it just isn't cool.
Leave her alone. And please make that K-Fed lawyer SHUT IT. He's even invading the pages of the Washington Post (please stop it, Washington Post, with the celebritology overload) and I just can't stand it. Write another 1,000 words on the caucus(es). Tell me something I don't already know. Please.

ohmibod

I mean, really. Electrocution city. I am SO lucky someone just gave me the new Prince cd. Plug that into the this thing and the top of your head should just FLY OFF YOUR NECK. Happy NEW YEAR BABY.

(I'm laughing out loud and saying "Ohmidbod" over and over right now. Why do I come across this stuff?)

Man shoes

I've so far avoided any comment on the Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy story, because honestly I just don't care. It seems that the media and the public at large (at least on the Internet) are trying to turn Britney's downturn in fortune and now her sister's admittedly likely problematic but NOT completely unheard of early pregnancy into some kind of commentary on how we're all doing out here.

Not so, not so at all. And have you ever heard the phrase "None of your business"? It's nicely applied here. But, and this is where I got on board with paying any bit of attention to this at all, when Uncle Odus speaks, I simply have to stop and pay attention. Thanks to People for the headline that grabbed me and wouldn't let go:

"Uncle: Time for Casey to Put On 'Man Shoes'"

I presume those aren't shoes that glow in the dark? Or Pumas? Or Chucks? I'm thinking a nice, solid pair of loafers. Man shoes. Yes. Loafers for Christmas.