One of the eskimos at work has to write a list of everything that pisses her off. I told her I'd do the same, so here goes, in no particular order:
1. Ann Coulter
2. People throwing snowballs at me
3. Holland America cruiselines
4. Deaf culture
5. That particular aspect of Mormon culture that leads us to believe that men are responsible for women's righteousness
6. cops
7. dollar coins
8. cheating in board games
9. uses different parts of speech in a list
10. pregnant women drinking
11. racism (when you're not joking)
12. potato bugs (the Jerusalem Cricket)
Well, that's about it. I guess I'm not a very angry person. At least not compared to the girls at work. Oh, speaking of which,
13. getting kicked in the nuts by a stupid angry girl right before she rips my shirt.
Showing posts with label my brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my brain. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Other Thoughts
K, here's a poem I wrote a while back. The last line is something odd that someone odd actually said to me, and the rest of the poem grew out of there. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think this might be about. I am wondering if it's clear enough.
Have to find something else to think about
That man has a hook arm
Metal, impenetrable arms
Wait—How does he pick his nose?
Dead fish in the marketplace, grey, cold, dead
Almost out of money; have to return to work soon
Razor blade, poisonous, keen
Where are my house keys!?
Okay, they're in my pocket
I can’t do this
No drinking fountain on this damned bus
Blood, worms, dust
Forever unused bottles of nail polish and perfume
Our little bridge over the Napa River going by
A stop, and there goes Captain Hook
More Mexicans get on
The barren future
Getting sleepy
My headrest is gone
You
Awake again
Where are we!?
Downtown, all the people, moving, unmoved
So thirsty, always now
Foamy, spongy food; all I get anymore
Is that Tina Davidson? Has she heard?
Just look away--Can she see?
Uncomfortable bench, no seatbelts
Rusted, sinking nobody
Mouth dry, needing kisses
Have to pee, have to hold it
Always, always, have to hold the liquids in
Time to clip my nails again; no reminder
Last month is swallowing me
Train of thought slipping
You
Quickly, anything else
Scientific advances within the last hundred years
(not ENOUGH!)
Mom's meatballs
A kitten, and fleas sucking the life out of it
Frowning Arabian crossing guard, sweaty
Should have seen the signs
STOP
A bit ill; no more corn flakes at home
Chuck's baptism, creepy, necessary?
Guy across the aisle looks like a turtle, wizened
Cracking world made of solid ice
A bell, a light, a lurch!
Now down the stairs, left, right, left
Yellowing, lumpy mayonnaise spilt on the counter last night
No one to clean it up
No one to clean it up for
Cold, insensitive smiley faces, like stars
Distorted by the atmosphere, rushing blindly past
Gamma rays on my head, hungrily biting my face and neck
Raining that day, not like today
Powdered misery, just add water
Shouldn't have eaten those microwaveable nachos for breakfast
Pushing the pavement with my feet
Should have learned to cook for myself
You
Have to let go
I waste too much time
What does despair taste like? Does it taste ugly?
Gouging blade in a dying wrist
Spiral checkerboard in my eyelids, hell
Here at last; the grass looks nice, green
Need to call Mom back
The empty spot of ceiling over our bed
Linoleum composure, easily wiped off
No one to clean it up for, either
How sad the caretaker woman must feel, no teeth
All her friends deep in plots against her
How do you spell resolution? How do you do it?
My shadow is being midgety right now
Falling across the erect slabs of marble
I can’t help but step on him, on you
Veins pumping black tarry sadness
Here I am, here.
Can't ever make some people happy
But I still bring flowers
You
I only think of you when I run out of other thoughts
Have to find something else to think about
That man has a hook arm
Metal, impenetrable arms
Wait—How does he pick his nose?
Dead fish in the marketplace, grey, cold, dead
Almost out of money; have to return to work soon
Razor blade, poisonous, keen
Where are my house keys!?
Okay, they're in my pocket
I can’t do this
No drinking fountain on this damned bus
Blood, worms, dust
Forever unused bottles of nail polish and perfume
Our little bridge over the Napa River going by
A stop, and there goes Captain Hook
More Mexicans get on
The barren future
Getting sleepy
My headrest is gone
You
Awake again
Where are we!?
Downtown, all the people, moving, unmoved
So thirsty, always now
Foamy, spongy food; all I get anymore
Is that Tina Davidson? Has she heard?
Just look away--Can she see?
Uncomfortable bench, no seatbelts
Rusted, sinking nobody
Mouth dry, needing kisses
Have to pee, have to hold it
Always, always, have to hold the liquids in
Time to clip my nails again; no reminder
Last month is swallowing me
Train of thought slipping
You
Quickly, anything else
Scientific advances within the last hundred years
(not ENOUGH!)
Mom's meatballs
A kitten, and fleas sucking the life out of it
Frowning Arabian crossing guard, sweaty
Should have seen the signs
STOP
A bit ill; no more corn flakes at home
Chuck's baptism, creepy, necessary?
Guy across the aisle looks like a turtle, wizened
Cracking world made of solid ice
A bell, a light, a lurch!
Now down the stairs, left, right, left
Yellowing, lumpy mayonnaise spilt on the counter last night
No one to clean it up
No one to clean it up for
Cold, insensitive smiley faces, like stars
Distorted by the atmosphere, rushing blindly past
Gamma rays on my head, hungrily biting my face and neck
Raining that day, not like today
Powdered misery, just add water
Shouldn't have eaten those microwaveable nachos for breakfast
Pushing the pavement with my feet
Should have learned to cook for myself
You
Have to let go
I waste too much time
What does despair taste like? Does it taste ugly?
Gouging blade in a dying wrist
Spiral checkerboard in my eyelids, hell
Here at last; the grass looks nice, green
Need to call Mom back
The empty spot of ceiling over our bed
Linoleum composure, easily wiped off
No one to clean it up for, either
How sad the caretaker woman must feel, no teeth
All her friends deep in plots against her
How do you spell resolution? How do you do it?
My shadow is being midgety right now
Falling across the erect slabs of marble
I can’t help but step on him, on you
Veins pumping black tarry sadness
Here I am, here.
Can't ever make some people happy
But I still bring flowers
You
I only think of you when I run out of other thoughts
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A Rude Awakening and a Golden Moment
Despite the causticity of my previous post, the days of drudgery have been interspersed with life-affirming moments. One of those I feel acutely this morning (afternoon? There is no “time of day” here). This post will probably erode instantly into abstraction, which might effect a fine juxtaposition when coupled with the minutiae of the last post. This one’s more about my feelings, a topic about which I have much less writing experience. Deep breath.
I’ve never really liked myself. I can see all the things that other people like about me, sure, but I can see all the other things as well. Now don’t worry, folks, this isn’t some sort of suicide note. I’ve actually never had suicidal thoughts. I don’t hate or pity myself; I just find that I usually prefer other people. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who’s amusing but insubstantial to have around. If life were a TV show, I’d be the wacky neighbor, popping in and out randomly, leaving people shaking their heads affectionately. “That Robbie!” they’d all intone upon my departure, turning to clean up whatever mess I’ve made and return to their normal lives.
Now, for all of my preaching about not basing one’s sense of self on the opinions of others, that’s exactly what I do. One of my greatest strengths is my adaptability. I feel very natural taking on the characteristics of those in my vicinity. Many people would see this as “fake.” But it’s something else with me. I simply admire the people I choose to have around me, and genuinely want to be more like them. This is especially true of my closest friends. People like Caitie, Evan , and Glade are so amazing to me, that I start to try to emulate them and soon forget who I am besides a patchwork of them. This would probably be fine if a) it weren’t a bit unsettling to the people I’m Single-White Female-ing, and b) I hadn’t realized that I’m doing this when I woke up this aftermorn.
At this current crossroads in my life, I have many forks in the not-too-distant future. Do I buy a car? Do I go back to school in September? What job should I get? This sort of thing normally stresses me out, and I find myself wishing for some sort of Life Consultant who could look at my monetary situation, my dreams and aspirations, my whole life, and tell me what to do next. And sure, it’s obvious to YOU, the reader, that that person should be God, especially when I go and capitalize “life Consultant” like that. But when you’re IN that life, it’s a little more difficult to constantly remember that. And so I find myself trying to weasel my friends’ opinions out of them, since these issues overwhelm me. I really do operate with a whole support system made up of people whose opinions I value more than my own. But if I take a couple of steps back, I see that I’m an adult, just like my friends, and I DO have a relationship with God, and while I love my friends and would do anything for them, and trust they would do anything for me, I need to be functional enough that if those friends were to suddenly go away, I’d be sure to remain stable. I’m not far off from that already, and I’m not talking about severing my attachments to my friends, but I’m talking about giving them breathing room. Letting them love me for who I am instead of how well I can emulate them. I still want to cultivate the best things I see in these people. Caitie’s ability to make everyone around her feel loved. Glade’s scrutinizing and analytical mind. Evan’s solidarity in doing only those things in which he believes. Ben’s refusal to back down from a deep-felt conviction. Kaylene’s expression of gratitude and excitement about life. Wiggle’s unflagging loyalty toward her friends. Rachel’s graceful compassion for those in need. Brett’s ability to find humor in any situation. Jon and Sara’s utter faith in the people they love. And this list goes on, with more people and more traits from the folks I’ve mentioned. What I don’t need is to adopt, say, Caitie’s taste in music, Evan’s choice in schools, Glade’s political stances, etc. Not that I disagree with any of these things. This is the fine point above which I’m hovering: I can love these people without desiring to be just like them or have them be just like me. The things that are right for me are not necessarily right for them too, and I can love that Ben loves computers without having to love computers, too.
An example, in the form of an initially seemingly unrelated story, which I hope you find funnier than offensive:
A Rude Awakening
One day I was mistakenly quarantined on the train. I’d vomited, you see, which is pretty normal for me, but scary in the tourism industry because of something called the Norwalk Virus, which they had to be sure I hadn’t contracted before letting me continue to serve food to the crustomers. Normally there are no witnesses when I puke at work, and I just go about my day as usual afterward. This instance was different, though. As I felt the glands under my jow throbbing, and knew my lunch of pasta primavera was about to force itself back out of my digestive system, I ran for the bathroom and threw the door open. There was Kate, the car manager, wearing gloves and a smile on her face. “I JUST finished cleaning the bathroom!“ she exclaimed proudly.”
“Oh!” I tried to make my panic look like enthusiasm.
“I cleaned out the toilets, took out the trash, wiped up the whole floor--”
That’s when I puked (mostly) into the trashcan. I swear it was exactly like that. In one ghastly second, her pride at having accomplished something unpleasant was squashed. Poor lady; she’s very nice.
So they put me on a car that had no passengers on it, and I promptly fell asleep. I was awakened to a bizarrely surreal experience.
A portly bald black man in his late thirties was shouting. “Boy, it is NICE up in here!” He took a seat across the aisle from me as I sat up, stunned and a bit unnerved. And then he started to tell me his story. He was the manager of the cars for Royal Celebrity Cruises, and he’d had a girl disobey him after he told her to do something mildly illegal to save himself some paperwork. And he’d been so angry, he’d come to our car to cool off. The thing is, his language was the foulest of any human being I’ve ever encountered. He described explicitly his wish to inflict oral sex upon the girl in order to teach her a lesson, his possible future sexual encounter with another of his female employees in the restroom of our empty car, and the problems posed by the stains the bodily fluids would leave on his uniform. He even began to act out a sexual encounter with an imaginary woman who was under the table where he was sitting. I just sat there, still in a daze from having just awakened. Eventually he stopped talking and jauntily tromped back down the stairs and out of my life. The end.
Now, I know that story doesn’t quite fit in yet, but I’m getting there.
My plan had always been to be a teacher when I grow up. I really love working with people, and explaining things, and having my summers free to go do whatever I want. So teaching sounds like the perfect job. In fact, one huge lesson I’ve learned from this Alaskan summer is that I need to be doing something I actually love. I’m considering trying to get a job as a substitute teacher or at a school for troubled youth when I get back to Provo. Now, I know the latter is what Evan does, which is actually why I haven’t done it in the past; I didn’t want to end up copying him. But the more I consider it, the more I realize that my favorite job I’ve ever had was as a youth counselor at efy. I loved teaching the kids and being an example and friend and moderator for them.
But I also really love to be creative, to write, to make films, to be funny. And with Evan’s express interest in going to film school and Rachel‘s suggestion I become a writer for television, it has been easy for me to stoke my enthusiasm for that creative outlet. I’m not copying Evan, but I’m finding in myself the things that I see in him. And we work very well together. In just about a month I expect to have finished editing parts two and three of our film project, which I believe is a hilarious success and is due in large part to the successful creative synergy that exists between us. And it’s reassuring for me to link the next few years of my future to another person, to think, I’ll just go to school where Evan goes. These sorts of decisions make perfect sense when you remember that I’ve been esteeming Evan’s opinions and judgments as having more value than my own.
A man named Christopher came to see me one evening before I could get off the train. He works for Royal Celebrity and wanted me to visit his office the next morning. I had told my own manager in very brief terms about my encounter with that crazy black man, and I suppose the word had gotten over to RCT’s office, and they had fired the fellow and were building a legal case against him, and wanted my testimony for the record. So the next morning I went down there, and told them ALL the disgusting things the man had said to me, and they thanked me very much for my time and candor and promised appropriate actions would be taken I was mostly indifferent about the man’s fate, but wanted to help the company if I could. Christopher offered to drive me home. He asked me what I was studying and I told him I’d been studying English and was considering switching to film. He was a film enthusiast himself, he told me, and had recently been working on short films with the scout troop he leads. Which of course begs the question is he LDS?, which it turns out he is. And he told me he took classes in film at BYU, and has enjoyed film as a hobby ever since, on top of his career working on the railroad, which he enjoys immensely. This information was really important to me. I can’t say why, but I felt an unnamed impact from these words, and pondered them for a while afterward. And what I’ve realized is that I don’t have to give my life to film just to feel fulfillment from it. I don’t need to earn money from a movie I’ve made to be able to enjoy the effort.
So the new plan is this: I’ll try to hurry and finish school (I earned enough money to be able to get back into that now), meanwhile working in some sort of teaching capacity. I’ll get my English Language degree, as previously planned, and if I find I’m enjoying teaching, I will go in that direction, and if I find it lacks the creative outlet I need after all, I can use that degree and the few films we’ve made to pursue the job as a TV writer after all. Maybe I can do both. And if Evan and I can continue to work on video projects in the future, I’ll be ecstatic, but if our paths eventually diverge, I’ll be ok, and I’ll still love the kid just like I still love Brett, though I get to see him too infrequently.
What cracks me up is that this recent self-discovery, the whole new plan for my future, would not have lighted in my mind had that perverted old man not awakened me from my slumber, had I not been puking on the train that evening, had I not been in Alaska in the first place. So at least one good thing has come from all of this. And I use this story about film school and Evan as an example of the new mindset I’m going to try to employ. There’s one more story that helps to explain why this has all come to a head this morning, why I awoke today with a feeling that I need to be more myself.
A Golden Moment
The day after my surreal experience with Nasty McNasterson, I had to get back to Anchorage, but I was still quarantined. So they put me back on the empty train car and didn’t let me out. Luckily, the kindly, overworked lady who arranges our housing arrangements in Fairbanks provided me with snacks for the long ride. Among these treats was a carton of something I’ve never tried. Cherries. I don’t know why I’ve never eaten cherries before, but I never have. And here was a whole carton of sweet black cherries.
Anyway, I admit I slept for most of the trip. In the “evening” I woke up, stretched, and dug my book out of my backpack. Thus began one of the most serene and beautiful experiences of my life.
The sunlight came in relaxed and lazy, lounging sideways, as the sunlight is prone to do in Alaska. The birch and alder and spruce whirred by in a strobe-like blur of white and green and brown. The cottonwood trees had released a flurry of white cotton pixies, swarming and whizzing silently and gleefully past the windows in millions, lending a snow-globe effect to the afternoon. Crystal clear ponds reflected the blue of the sky and the white of the cumulus clouds stacked up above the horizon in all directions. My eyes could scarcely take in all of the beauty, and a peace settled over me. My attention turned to the interior of the train car, to the bowl of ripe cherries, and I ate one. Delicious! The juices burst into my mouth, ripe and sweet and unexpected, like a show of affection from a child. I realized that the blackest cherries were the most delicious, and I soon had a cup full of their pits. Amid the sensual beauty, I turned back to my book. The sunlight cut a sharp angle across the pages, the fibers of the paper casting shadows, tiny and definite, on each other.
Then I looked at my hand, which was holding the book open. My skin is a honey beige, more golden than most people’s, and in the yellow sunlight it looked healthy and warm. I turned to look at my reflection in a nearby mirrored panel on the wall, and the sun again cast a favorable light on me, entering my eyes at a slant and seeming to illuminate my irises from inside; they glowed like electrified amber. And for the first time I can ever remember, I thought, “I am beautiful.” Such an astonishing thought! I have never seen beauty in myself like this. I’ve grown up wishing for lighter skin like my friends, blue or green eyes like the kind I personally find more attractive, a different body altogether. But in that moment of peace and beauty and spirit, I was able to see myself through different, more fiery and perceptive eyes. I was able to see myself as an essential part of a whole wide beautiful world, inhabited by astoundingly good human beings and remarkably brilliant ideas and preposterously delightful nature. There is beauty in places I’d never thought to look. In cherries, in trees, in myself.
And this is the big thing I’m bringing home from Alaska: a recognition of my own worth and beauty. A new-found respect for my own desires and dreams and abilities. A love as deep as ever for the friends who have helped me to become who I am so far. And a determination to forge a path forward to that unique person that I, and no one else, is meant to become. I love you all.
--Robbie
another picture i took....
I’ve never really liked myself. I can see all the things that other people like about me, sure, but I can see all the other things as well. Now don’t worry, folks, this isn’t some sort of suicide note. I’ve actually never had suicidal thoughts. I don’t hate or pity myself; I just find that I usually prefer other people. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who’s amusing but insubstantial to have around. If life were a TV show, I’d be the wacky neighbor, popping in and out randomly, leaving people shaking their heads affectionately. “That Robbie!” they’d all intone upon my departure, turning to clean up whatever mess I’ve made and return to their normal lives.
Now, for all of my preaching about not basing one’s sense of self on the opinions of others, that’s exactly what I do. One of my greatest strengths is my adaptability. I feel very natural taking on the characteristics of those in my vicinity. Many people would see this as “fake.” But it’s something else with me. I simply admire the people I choose to have around me, and genuinely want to be more like them. This is especially true of my closest friends. People like Caitie, Evan , and Glade are so amazing to me, that I start to try to emulate them and soon forget who I am besides a patchwork of them. This would probably be fine if a) it weren’t a bit unsettling to the people I’m Single-White Female-ing, and b) I hadn’t realized that I’m doing this when I woke up this aftermorn.
At this current crossroads in my life, I have many forks in the not-too-distant future. Do I buy a car? Do I go back to school in September? What job should I get? This sort of thing normally stresses me out, and I find myself wishing for some sort of Life Consultant who could look at my monetary situation, my dreams and aspirations, my whole life, and tell me what to do next. And sure, it’s obvious to YOU, the reader, that that person should be God, especially when I go and capitalize “life Consultant” like that. But when you’re IN that life, it’s a little more difficult to constantly remember that. And so I find myself trying to weasel my friends’ opinions out of them, since these issues overwhelm me. I really do operate with a whole support system made up of people whose opinions I value more than my own. But if I take a couple of steps back, I see that I’m an adult, just like my friends, and I DO have a relationship with God, and while I love my friends and would do anything for them, and trust they would do anything for me, I need to be functional enough that if those friends were to suddenly go away, I’d be sure to remain stable. I’m not far off from that already, and I’m not talking about severing my attachments to my friends, but I’m talking about giving them breathing room. Letting them love me for who I am instead of how well I can emulate them. I still want to cultivate the best things I see in these people. Caitie’s ability to make everyone around her feel loved. Glade’s scrutinizing and analytical mind. Evan’s solidarity in doing only those things in which he believes. Ben’s refusal to back down from a deep-felt conviction. Kaylene’s expression of gratitude and excitement about life. Wiggle’s unflagging loyalty toward her friends. Rachel’s graceful compassion for those in need. Brett’s ability to find humor in any situation. Jon and Sara’s utter faith in the people they love. And this list goes on, with more people and more traits from the folks I’ve mentioned. What I don’t need is to adopt, say, Caitie’s taste in music, Evan’s choice in schools, Glade’s political stances, etc. Not that I disagree with any of these things. This is the fine point above which I’m hovering: I can love these people without desiring to be just like them or have them be just like me. The things that are right for me are not necessarily right for them too, and I can love that Ben loves computers without having to love computers, too.
An example, in the form of an initially seemingly unrelated story, which I hope you find funnier than offensive:
A Rude Awakening
One day I was mistakenly quarantined on the train. I’d vomited, you see, which is pretty normal for me, but scary in the tourism industry because of something called the Norwalk Virus, which they had to be sure I hadn’t contracted before letting me continue to serve food to the crustomers. Normally there are no witnesses when I puke at work, and I just go about my day as usual afterward. This instance was different, though. As I felt the glands under my jow throbbing, and knew my lunch of pasta primavera was about to force itself back out of my digestive system, I ran for the bathroom and threw the door open. There was Kate, the car manager, wearing gloves and a smile on her face. “I JUST finished cleaning the bathroom!“ she exclaimed proudly.”
“Oh!” I tried to make my panic look like enthusiasm.
“I cleaned out the toilets, took out the trash, wiped up the whole floor--”
That’s when I puked (mostly) into the trashcan. I swear it was exactly like that. In one ghastly second, her pride at having accomplished something unpleasant was squashed. Poor lady; she’s very nice.
So they put me on a car that had no passengers on it, and I promptly fell asleep. I was awakened to a bizarrely surreal experience.
A portly bald black man in his late thirties was shouting. “Boy, it is NICE up in here!” He took a seat across the aisle from me as I sat up, stunned and a bit unnerved. And then he started to tell me his story. He was the manager of the cars for Royal Celebrity Cruises, and he’d had a girl disobey him after he told her to do something mildly illegal to save himself some paperwork. And he’d been so angry, he’d come to our car to cool off. The thing is, his language was the foulest of any human being I’ve ever encountered. He described explicitly his wish to inflict oral sex upon the girl in order to teach her a lesson, his possible future sexual encounter with another of his female employees in the restroom of our empty car, and the problems posed by the stains the bodily fluids would leave on his uniform. He even began to act out a sexual encounter with an imaginary woman who was under the table where he was sitting. I just sat there, still in a daze from having just awakened. Eventually he stopped talking and jauntily tromped back down the stairs and out of my life. The end.
Now, I know that story doesn’t quite fit in yet, but I’m getting there.
My plan had always been to be a teacher when I grow up. I really love working with people, and explaining things, and having my summers free to go do whatever I want. So teaching sounds like the perfect job. In fact, one huge lesson I’ve learned from this Alaskan summer is that I need to be doing something I actually love. I’m considering trying to get a job as a substitute teacher or at a school for troubled youth when I get back to Provo. Now, I know the latter is what Evan does, which is actually why I haven’t done it in the past; I didn’t want to end up copying him. But the more I consider it, the more I realize that my favorite job I’ve ever had was as a youth counselor at efy. I loved teaching the kids and being an example and friend and moderator for them.
But I also really love to be creative, to write, to make films, to be funny. And with Evan’s express interest in going to film school and Rachel‘s suggestion I become a writer for television, it has been easy for me to stoke my enthusiasm for that creative outlet. I’m not copying Evan, but I’m finding in myself the things that I see in him. And we work very well together. In just about a month I expect to have finished editing parts two and three of our film project, which I believe is a hilarious success and is due in large part to the successful creative synergy that exists between us. And it’s reassuring for me to link the next few years of my future to another person, to think, I’ll just go to school where Evan goes. These sorts of decisions make perfect sense when you remember that I’ve been esteeming Evan’s opinions and judgments as having more value than my own.
A man named Christopher came to see me one evening before I could get off the train. He works for Royal Celebrity and wanted me to visit his office the next morning. I had told my own manager in very brief terms about my encounter with that crazy black man, and I suppose the word had gotten over to RCT’s office, and they had fired the fellow and were building a legal case against him, and wanted my testimony for the record. So the next morning I went down there, and told them ALL the disgusting things the man had said to me, and they thanked me very much for my time and candor and promised appropriate actions would be taken I was mostly indifferent about the man’s fate, but wanted to help the company if I could. Christopher offered to drive me home. He asked me what I was studying and I told him I’d been studying English and was considering switching to film. He was a film enthusiast himself, he told me, and had recently been working on short films with the scout troop he leads. Which of course begs the question is he LDS?, which it turns out he is. And he told me he took classes in film at BYU, and has enjoyed film as a hobby ever since, on top of his career working on the railroad, which he enjoys immensely. This information was really important to me. I can’t say why, but I felt an unnamed impact from these words, and pondered them for a while afterward. And what I’ve realized is that I don’t have to give my life to film just to feel fulfillment from it. I don’t need to earn money from a movie I’ve made to be able to enjoy the effort.
So the new plan is this: I’ll try to hurry and finish school (I earned enough money to be able to get back into that now), meanwhile working in some sort of teaching capacity. I’ll get my English Language degree, as previously planned, and if I find I’m enjoying teaching, I will go in that direction, and if I find it lacks the creative outlet I need after all, I can use that degree and the few films we’ve made to pursue the job as a TV writer after all. Maybe I can do both. And if Evan and I can continue to work on video projects in the future, I’ll be ecstatic, but if our paths eventually diverge, I’ll be ok, and I’ll still love the kid just like I still love Brett, though I get to see him too infrequently.
What cracks me up is that this recent self-discovery, the whole new plan for my future, would not have lighted in my mind had that perverted old man not awakened me from my slumber, had I not been puking on the train that evening, had I not been in Alaska in the first place. So at least one good thing has come from all of this. And I use this story about film school and Evan as an example of the new mindset I’m going to try to employ. There’s one more story that helps to explain why this has all come to a head this morning, why I awoke today with a feeling that I need to be more myself.
A Golden Moment
The day after my surreal experience with Nasty McNasterson, I had to get back to Anchorage, but I was still quarantined. So they put me back on the empty train car and didn’t let me out. Luckily, the kindly, overworked lady who arranges our housing arrangements in Fairbanks provided me with snacks for the long ride. Among these treats was a carton of something I’ve never tried. Cherries. I don’t know why I’ve never eaten cherries before, but I never have. And here was a whole carton of sweet black cherries.
Anyway, I admit I slept for most of the trip. In the “evening” I woke up, stretched, and dug my book out of my backpack. Thus began one of the most serene and beautiful experiences of my life.
The sunlight came in relaxed and lazy, lounging sideways, as the sunlight is prone to do in Alaska. The birch and alder and spruce whirred by in a strobe-like blur of white and green and brown. The cottonwood trees had released a flurry of white cotton pixies, swarming and whizzing silently and gleefully past the windows in millions, lending a snow-globe effect to the afternoon. Crystal clear ponds reflected the blue of the sky and the white of the cumulus clouds stacked up above the horizon in all directions. My eyes could scarcely take in all of the beauty, and a peace settled over me. My attention turned to the interior of the train car, to the bowl of ripe cherries, and I ate one. Delicious! The juices burst into my mouth, ripe and sweet and unexpected, like a show of affection from a child. I realized that the blackest cherries were the most delicious, and I soon had a cup full of their pits. Amid the sensual beauty, I turned back to my book. The sunlight cut a sharp angle across the pages, the fibers of the paper casting shadows, tiny and definite, on each other.
Then I looked at my hand, which was holding the book open. My skin is a honey beige, more golden than most people’s, and in the yellow sunlight it looked healthy and warm. I turned to look at my reflection in a nearby mirrored panel on the wall, and the sun again cast a favorable light on me, entering my eyes at a slant and seeming to illuminate my irises from inside; they glowed like electrified amber. And for the first time I can ever remember, I thought, “I am beautiful.” Such an astonishing thought! I have never seen beauty in myself like this. I’ve grown up wishing for lighter skin like my friends, blue or green eyes like the kind I personally find more attractive, a different body altogether. But in that moment of peace and beauty and spirit, I was able to see myself through different, more fiery and perceptive eyes. I was able to see myself as an essential part of a whole wide beautiful world, inhabited by astoundingly good human beings and remarkably brilliant ideas and preposterously delightful nature. There is beauty in places I’d never thought to look. In cherries, in trees, in myself.
And this is the big thing I’m bringing home from Alaska: a recognition of my own worth and beauty. A new-found respect for my own desires and dreams and abilities. A love as deep as ever for the friends who have helped me to become who I am so far. And a determination to forge a path forward to that unique person that I, and no one else, is meant to become. I love you all.
--Robbie
another picture i took....
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Double Feature
Part One: Homemaking Night
So Pinetree has this roommate. He's a nice guy, but he has some questionable taste. Like, for instance this poster that he puts up in their living room. It's all, "Marines: liberators, protectors, warriors." And it shows this marine all gussied up in his killing gear and it looks kinda like this, only nighttime:
And so naturally, Pinetree hates the poster, right? I mean, besides being flagrant propaganda, it's not like it's even a cool picture. Seriously it's lots lamer than the above picture. So anyway, Pinetree comes up with this ingenious plan. We're gonna steal the poster. Only we can't just take it down, because then it will be totally obvious that he did it, because who else cares what posters are up in somebody's house? So Pinetree decides to make up some girls and then we can frame them.
So I borrow some pink and yellow construction papers from Wiggle and write in my stupid-girl handwriting a message that's all, "If you ever want to see your poster again come to apartment 9 tomorrow at 7" or something. And then I cut it up in little puzzle pieces.
Then we decide to make some cookies to sweeten the deal, with a little note that's like, "There's more where this came from." But we also decide to make the cookies really nasty just because that's funny, right?
Well, a few days pass, and before we can get in there to do it we end up at Denny's at midnight with a buncha friends, including Vero Awesome. And she's all, "Time for frivolity, yo." So we're all, yeah, let's go make cookies. And somebody has the sweet idea to just buy some cookies at the store and then frost them with something nasty. So we choose toothpaste. The only problem with toothpaste is it might not be nasty enough, and there's a little note on the box that goes, "If more than the normal amount used for brushing is swallowed, contact a physician or a poison control center immediately." So we're worried they'll be all, "Mmmm, minty cookies" and eat 'em all and totally croak, as opposed to them being all, "Blech! Aquafresh cookies! Angry!" and then we all laugh. So we go to the store, and we open one container to see if it's nasty enough, but it's blue stripes, so before we even try it, we decide to close it back up and put it back on the shelf. But it's not staying closed, see, so we go to the tape aisle and get some tape and tape it shut and put it back. And the tape. We put them both back.
And then we decide on the Pepsodent and it's white, and it's me and Vero and Wiggle and Pinetree, and Wiggle says we need sprinkles to heighten the effect, and she's right of course. S owe get those too, and Vero wants to also give cookies to these two dudes we work with named Ryan and Greg who are roommates, so we get more cookies and we get cards for them. And we sit around in the parking lot, frosting the cookies with ghetto plastic knives I horked from the deli part of the store, even though it was closed and all these break-taking employees were sitting over there looking at me like, "What the? Did that Arabian dude just walk in here and steal plastic knives?" And yes, yes I did.
So we frost the cookies, and the womenfolk sign the cards (which are perfect to begin with because they talk about "more love where these come from" or some crap), and Vero gives us two wonderfully horrible long dyed-red hairs to frost into the cookies (one for each plate). Then we are still a bit worried about, like, what if the guy eats the cookies and is all, "mmm, like thin mints, delish!" and eats them all and dies. After all, the box the paste came in has that little warning on the bottom for a reason, I point out. So Wiggle suggests we just cut that thing out and tape it on the bottom of the plate of cookies. Good thinking, Wiggle! So we do, thus assuaging our guilt in a very legally permissible way.
And we go to Greg and Ryan's first, and Racherella tells us where they keep their key, and I go, but I can't find the key, so I doorbell ditch it and go running out of there like a rabbit from a dog show. But on the way out Vero notices that we got the wrong apartment, so I go back, and fortunately the plate and the card are still sitting there, and we take it to the right apartment and I go in and leave it on their counter and this time sneak out like a mouse at a, um, nother dog show.
And then we go to Pinetree's, and Vero Awesome takes the cookies and the feminine puzzle and comes back out with the poster (remember that's why we did all this in the first place?) and we give it to Dice and we go home and go to bed. It was frickin' awesome, and it reminded me that I can have mischievous fun without getting the police involved.
Part Two: Connections
I have been to see Dr. Robinson four times now. He's incredible. He talks to me for forty-five minutes, asking questions and taking these big long pauses as he considers what to say next. When I speak, he writes everything down, scribble scribble scribble, on his clipboard. He goes through several sheets of paper each time, because I can be quite loquacious. I told him next time I'm bringing a clipboard and writing down everything he says, and then pausing for a few minutes and sighing before responding every time, and see how HE likes it. I don't know if he even understood what I was talking about on that one. After the forty-five minutes he starts telling ME things, and the pieces click together, and I feel like I have been tricked into learning so much.
Anyway, the first time we were together, he taught me something cool that I had thought I already knew about myself and the way brains work.
He gave me an example. He said we take the word "cat." And we take the spelling of the word. He drew this all out for me on paper. He said we can take a baby and teach it that the word means the spelling, and it will learn it. You say the word, the baby will pick out the spelling. He said that we can then take the cat itself and teach the baby that the word means the cat. Then he said that we can also teach these things to animals. A dolphin or a dog or a bird can learn to pick the right one from among misleading choices. You say "cat" and the monkey will point to the cat.
The difference, he said, is that the baby will also automatically learn that the spelling means the word, as well. He will learn it both ways. He will also learn that the cat means the word. And then he will learn that the spelling means the actual cat and vice versa. Humans make six automatic connections where the animals will learn only two. It's what sets us apart as humans, he said. Our ability to make connections. Our minds become a web of connections and it's how we learn and deal with the world.
The cool thing is that I am well aware that my mind forms these connections. I assign everything a color, I spell it out in my head. I alphabetize all items in groups. Like you say "colors," and I start to think "amethyst, apricot, azure, black, blue, brown, burgundy, burnt orange, etc...." And that's just now off the top of my head. The Human mind is amazing. Given a minute or two, we can eventually find a specific link, no matter how feeble between any two given things. For instance, if you had to say how turnips are the opposite of marbles, you could. Or you could find a way in which carpets are the parent of Puff Daddy.
Anyway, the good Dr. R. next drew the word "Rob." That's my dad's name, as well as a variant of my own, since we technically have the same name. So then he wrote "Dad" and draws an arrow between the two. Then he wrote "me" and drew an arrow from "Rob" to "me." Are you picturing this? then he draws all the other arrows, back from "me" to "Rob" and from "Dad to "Rob" and between "me and "Dad" both ways. No wonder I balk at anyone's calling me "Rob," he says. I immediately connect myself to my dad, and his failures. He next wrote "disaster" and drew the arrow from "Dad" to that. And then all kinds of other scary things my dad has done. And all of it connected to me and my dad through arrows.
I'd always known my brain does that, you see. I just had only been paying attention to the aspect of the connection building that helps me to win board games. I wasn't aware that it was also leading to problems in my life.
So the goal is not to break down those connections, but rather to loosen them, and to build up stronger connections that will supersede those other ones.
This last time we talked about prayer, among other things. Dr. Robinson said he has some patients whom he can't cajole into praying, and that he thinks that's a major factor for success. And on the way home (I always walk home so I can process what I've learned), a thought struck me. On my mission I worked very hard to actually "pray always," as Second Nephi suggests. I spent a lot of time studying and pondering how to actually do that. And I learned some helpful methods. One has simply to direct his thoughts, whatever they be about, to God, keeping Him in the forefront of the mind at all times. One can in this way be sure that his actions are in step, as well. It's the idea behind the CTR ring. Every time you see it there on your finger, you remember the good that you need to be doing. On my mission I met a man named Elías, who was trying to quit smoking. This is not a happy mission story where we helped him to quit smoking and he got baptized and is now first counselor in the branch presidency. It's just a time that I learned an important lesson. One day Elías had a piece of string tied around his finger. He said it was to help him remember to not smoke. When asked about the efficacy of the string, he replied that it didn't work because it kept coming off, and he'd forget. So I gave him my CTR ring. I told him that every time he saw it or felt it or noticed it, he was to pray for the strength he'd need to quit smoking. And I promised him that every time I noticed that the ring was gone or my finger felt naked, I'd pray for him as well. And it worked, as far as reminding me went. I didn't need the ring to remember to choose the right. The absence of the ring could serve the exact same function.
So on this walk home from my weekly session with the therapist, I came to realize that praying always was simply a matter of making everything remind me to choose the right. I had to make ALL the connections connect back to God. I looked around me at the mountains and the sun and the long straight stretch of University Avenue and saw gospel symbolism and turned my thoughts to God. But it's easy with roads and mountains. I needed to connect EVERYTHING. Turnips and carpet and cats and Puff Daddy and my own daddy all need to make me think of God and the things with which he has blessed me and the things he requires of me.
And when I do spiritual things, like going to church or the temple or reading my scriptures, I need to relate them back to the rest of my life, so that those connections already exist when I go out into the world. I realized that's why Nephi also tells us to liken the scriptures to ourselves. It's why Christ taught his parables using images from the people's daily lives. Not just because those are the things they could understand, but also because those are the images the people would be seeing every day after Christ was no longer in their presence.
At one point this last week, Dr. Robinson just leaned back, sighed contemplatively, and said, "You're very weird." That has to make you feel great, right? When a guy whose job it is to deal with crazy people tells you you're very weird? Anyway, the week before he'd been telling me I needed to cut out everything gay in my life, because it could become a trigger. But this last time he said he wasn't so sure any more. I could tell he was struggling to reconcile this with his hard fast rules he'd (until then) entertained. At any rate, we both left there wondering what to do, but by the time I got home I knew. I need to consecrate myself a little more. I need to keep saying my prayers throughout the day, every time I need something or am thankful for something or thinking of someone. I need to connect my life and my surroundings to my God, so that all things point more directly toward him, because I owe him, and I love him.
So Pinetree has this roommate. He's a nice guy, but he has some questionable taste. Like, for instance this poster that he puts up in their living room. It's all, "Marines: liberators, protectors, warriors." And it shows this marine all gussied up in his killing gear and it looks kinda like this, only nighttime:
And so naturally, Pinetree hates the poster, right? I mean, besides being flagrant propaganda, it's not like it's even a cool picture. Seriously it's lots lamer than the above picture. So anyway, Pinetree comes up with this ingenious plan. We're gonna steal the poster. Only we can't just take it down, because then it will be totally obvious that he did it, because who else cares what posters are up in somebody's house? So Pinetree decides to make up some girls and then we can frame them.
So I borrow some pink and yellow construction papers from Wiggle and write in my stupid-girl handwriting a message that's all, "If you ever want to see your poster again come to apartment 9 tomorrow at 7" or something. And then I cut it up in little puzzle pieces.
Then we decide to make some cookies to sweeten the deal, with a little note that's like, "There's more where this came from." But we also decide to make the cookies really nasty just because that's funny, right?
Well, a few days pass, and before we can get in there to do it we end up at Denny's at midnight with a buncha friends, including Vero Awesome. And she's all, "Time for frivolity, yo." So we're all, yeah, let's go make cookies. And somebody has the sweet idea to just buy some cookies at the store and then frost them with something nasty. So we choose toothpaste. The only problem with toothpaste is it might not be nasty enough, and there's a little note on the box that goes, "If more than the normal amount used for brushing is swallowed, contact a physician or a poison control center immediately." So we're worried they'll be all, "Mmmm, minty cookies" and eat 'em all and totally croak, as opposed to them being all, "Blech! Aquafresh cookies! Angry!" and then we all laugh. So we go to the store, and we open one container to see if it's nasty enough, but it's blue stripes, so before we even try it, we decide to close it back up and put it back on the shelf. But it's not staying closed, see, so we go to the tape aisle and get some tape and tape it shut and put it back. And the tape. We put them both back.
And then we decide on the Pepsodent and it's white, and it's me and Vero and Wiggle and Pinetree, and Wiggle says we need sprinkles to heighten the effect, and she's right of course. S owe get those too, and Vero wants to also give cookies to these two dudes we work with named Ryan and Greg who are roommates, so we get more cookies and we get cards for them. And we sit around in the parking lot, frosting the cookies with ghetto plastic knives I horked from the deli part of the store, even though it was closed and all these break-taking employees were sitting over there looking at me like, "What the? Did that Arabian dude just walk in here and steal plastic knives?" And yes, yes I did.
So we frost the cookies, and the womenfolk sign the cards (which are perfect to begin with because they talk about "more love where these come from" or some crap), and Vero gives us two wonderfully horrible long dyed-red hairs to frost into the cookies (one for each plate). Then we are still a bit worried about, like, what if the guy eats the cookies and is all, "mmm, like thin mints, delish!" and eats them all and dies. After all, the box the paste came in has that little warning on the bottom for a reason, I point out. So Wiggle suggests we just cut that thing out and tape it on the bottom of the plate of cookies. Good thinking, Wiggle! So we do, thus assuaging our guilt in a very legally permissible way.
And we go to Greg and Ryan's first, and Racherella tells us where they keep their key, and I go, but I can't find the key, so I doorbell ditch it and go running out of there like a rabbit from a dog show. But on the way out Vero notices that we got the wrong apartment, so I go back, and fortunately the plate and the card are still sitting there, and we take it to the right apartment and I go in and leave it on their counter and this time sneak out like a mouse at a, um, nother dog show.
And then we go to Pinetree's, and Vero Awesome takes the cookies and the feminine puzzle and comes back out with the poster (remember that's why we did all this in the first place?) and we give it to Dice and we go home and go to bed. It was frickin' awesome, and it reminded me that I can have mischievous fun without getting the police involved.
Part Two: Connections
I have been to see Dr. Robinson four times now. He's incredible. He talks to me for forty-five minutes, asking questions and taking these big long pauses as he considers what to say next. When I speak, he writes everything down, scribble scribble scribble, on his clipboard. He goes through several sheets of paper each time, because I can be quite loquacious. I told him next time I'm bringing a clipboard and writing down everything he says, and then pausing for a few minutes and sighing before responding every time, and see how HE likes it. I don't know if he even understood what I was talking about on that one. After the forty-five minutes he starts telling ME things, and the pieces click together, and I feel like I have been tricked into learning so much.
Anyway, the first time we were together, he taught me something cool that I had thought I already knew about myself and the way brains work.
He gave me an example. He said we take the word "cat." And we take the spelling of the word. He drew this all out for me on paper. He said we can take a baby and teach it that the word means the spelling, and it will learn it. You say the word, the baby will pick out the spelling. He said that we can then take the cat itself and teach the baby that the word means the cat. Then he said that we can also teach these things to animals. A dolphin or a dog or a bird can learn to pick the right one from among misleading choices. You say "cat" and the monkey will point to the cat.
The difference, he said, is that the baby will also automatically learn that the spelling means the word, as well. He will learn it both ways. He will also learn that the cat means the word. And then he will learn that the spelling means the actual cat and vice versa. Humans make six automatic connections where the animals will learn only two. It's what sets us apart as humans, he said. Our ability to make connections. Our minds become a web of connections and it's how we learn and deal with the world.
The cool thing is that I am well aware that my mind forms these connections. I assign everything a color, I spell it out in my head. I alphabetize all items in groups. Like you say "colors," and I start to think "amethyst, apricot, azure, black, blue, brown, burgundy, burnt orange, etc...." And that's just now off the top of my head. The Human mind is amazing. Given a minute or two, we can eventually find a specific link, no matter how feeble between any two given things. For instance, if you had to say how turnips are the opposite of marbles, you could. Or you could find a way in which carpets are the parent of Puff Daddy.
Anyway, the good Dr. R. next drew the word "Rob." That's my dad's name, as well as a variant of my own, since we technically have the same name. So then he wrote "Dad" and draws an arrow between the two. Then he wrote "me" and drew an arrow from "Rob" to "me." Are you picturing this? then he draws all the other arrows, back from "me" to "Rob" and from "Dad to "Rob" and between "me and "Dad" both ways. No wonder I balk at anyone's calling me "Rob," he says. I immediately connect myself to my dad, and his failures. He next wrote "disaster" and drew the arrow from "Dad" to that. And then all kinds of other scary things my dad has done. And all of it connected to me and my dad through arrows.
I'd always known my brain does that, you see. I just had only been paying attention to the aspect of the connection building that helps me to win board games. I wasn't aware that it was also leading to problems in my life.
So the goal is not to break down those connections, but rather to loosen them, and to build up stronger connections that will supersede those other ones.
This last time we talked about prayer, among other things. Dr. Robinson said he has some patients whom he can't cajole into praying, and that he thinks that's a major factor for success. And on the way home (I always walk home so I can process what I've learned), a thought struck me. On my mission I worked very hard to actually "pray always," as Second Nephi suggests. I spent a lot of time studying and pondering how to actually do that. And I learned some helpful methods. One has simply to direct his thoughts, whatever they be about, to God, keeping Him in the forefront of the mind at all times. One can in this way be sure that his actions are in step, as well. It's the idea behind the CTR ring. Every time you see it there on your finger, you remember the good that you need to be doing. On my mission I met a man named Elías, who was trying to quit smoking. This is not a happy mission story where we helped him to quit smoking and he got baptized and is now first counselor in the branch presidency. It's just a time that I learned an important lesson. One day Elías had a piece of string tied around his finger. He said it was to help him remember to not smoke. When asked about the efficacy of the string, he replied that it didn't work because it kept coming off, and he'd forget. So I gave him my CTR ring. I told him that every time he saw it or felt it or noticed it, he was to pray for the strength he'd need to quit smoking. And I promised him that every time I noticed that the ring was gone or my finger felt naked, I'd pray for him as well. And it worked, as far as reminding me went. I didn't need the ring to remember to choose the right. The absence of the ring could serve the exact same function.
So on this walk home from my weekly session with the therapist, I came to realize that praying always was simply a matter of making everything remind me to choose the right. I had to make ALL the connections connect back to God. I looked around me at the mountains and the sun and the long straight stretch of University Avenue and saw gospel symbolism and turned my thoughts to God. But it's easy with roads and mountains. I needed to connect EVERYTHING. Turnips and carpet and cats and Puff Daddy and my own daddy all need to make me think of God and the things with which he has blessed me and the things he requires of me.
And when I do spiritual things, like going to church or the temple or reading my scriptures, I need to relate them back to the rest of my life, so that those connections already exist when I go out into the world. I realized that's why Nephi also tells us to liken the scriptures to ourselves. It's why Christ taught his parables using images from the people's daily lives. Not just because those are the things they could understand, but also because those are the images the people would be seeing every day after Christ was no longer in their presence.
At one point this last week, Dr. Robinson just leaned back, sighed contemplatively, and said, "You're very weird." That has to make you feel great, right? When a guy whose job it is to deal with crazy people tells you you're very weird? Anyway, the week before he'd been telling me I needed to cut out everything gay in my life, because it could become a trigger. But this last time he said he wasn't so sure any more. I could tell he was struggling to reconcile this with his hard fast rules he'd (until then) entertained. At any rate, we both left there wondering what to do, but by the time I got home I knew. I need to consecrate myself a little more. I need to keep saying my prayers throughout the day, every time I need something or am thankful for something or thinking of someone. I need to connect my life and my surroundings to my God, so that all things point more directly toward him, because I owe him, and I love him.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Q as in Coupon
A lady said that to me on the phone once. You know how people always say "V as in Victor?" This black lady was giving me her password for her website when I worked at Tahitian Noni International, and she said "S as in syphilis, E as in eye, and Q as in Coupon." I couldn't tell if she was stupid or hilarious.
So Chris tells me I need to write something amazing to make up for my not having written for the last week while the internet was on the blink. The problem is, I never know what to write about. I wish my blog could illuminate the entire human experience. I wish people could read it and know in that moment exactly what it's like to be me. But I can't even write about things as fast as new things are happening to me. There's just no way. Like what Ed Harris' character says in "The Hours":
"I wanted to write about it all, everything that happens in a moment. Way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread, all our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it. Who we once were, everything in the world, everything all mixed up. Like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed... no matter what you start with, it ends up being so much less... "
I was told by a friend today that I am hard to read. I get told that by my friends all the time. How can that be? I spend most of my social energy on being straightforward. Have I failed so completely? Even my best friends tell me that I'm hard to read. Possible reasons why:
1. I spent so much time in my youth hiding "who I really was" that now I've become inaccessible.
2. (This is my guess) I am so interested in other people and how they think and feel and exist that I forget to let thim into my world, as well. I feel like such an alien in the world. Sometimes people realize that I'm cutting them open and seeing how they work, that I've got them tied down in my spaceship, and it disconcerts them. Sorry, folks.
3. I'm just so open that I actually say all the things I'm thinking and people just assume there must be more.
4. I am shielding you all from the bizarre and banal thoughts in my head. We're sitting there having a conversation, and while I'm talking to you about how delicious the spaghetti is you think "I wonder what he is really thinking about, and whether he likes this spaghetti or he's just saying that, and if he's lying then is he doing it because he likes me or because he's trying to avoid having to talk to me about it?" and I'm thinking, "Man, I wonder why there aren't really any colors that start with 'D.' I mean, I guess there's 'dandelion,' but that seems like a stretch, and Crayola only carried that color for less than ten years, anyway. And it's kinda cheap to count colors that are just named after some flower. I wonder whether violets were named after the color, or whether the color got its name from the flower. Maybe it was just 'purple' before that. Man, this is good spaghetti."
I have a feeling it's a bit of all four.
...................................................................................
Those of you who read my blog and saw my concert last week can tell the rest how great it was. Lend me some credibility so next time I invite people top something, they come. Some really hot girls from my ward came, actually. That made me swell with happiness.
I made friends with the first chair violinist afterward. The kid is really cool. I introduced myself at Pinetree's behest, and we ended up hanging out after both nights of the concert. After the Friday concert we went on a nice little hike with Wiggle and Blue Shorts and Pinetree and everybody. We also had pizza at an underground place called "The Pie." That pizza was incredible. The Violinist invited me to do the whole conference thing at his cabin. So I did.
We drove up on Saturday morning. The cabin is at Sundance. We(when I say we I am including two other strangers who were there; there was nothing illicit going on, dirty people) listened to the Saturday morning session on the radio. It was pretty cold up there, so we sat with quilts, and then when the sun hit the porch I moved outside to the deck. The air was redolent with the smells of decaying leaves and pine smoke, and carried the sounds of the nearby stream and the wind through the aspen trees. Every time the chilly breeze picked up at all, the golden maple leaves would come tumbling all around us as though we were in a giant mystical snow globe. White and orange butterflies intermingled with the leaves. The trees themselves were yellow with a sun-kissed red spot at the top, exactly like a peach. I basked in the warm sunlight and the warmer spirit, listening to the words of the speakers. President Faust's words struck me particularly, as he spoke of gaining the image of Christ in our countenance and surrounding ourselves with those who have the light of Christ in their eyes. And about how the lord leaves us alone for a while to see if we will be righteous in the dark. I have always thought that: that maybe the good I do while the sun is high and the days are long just gets stored up for the long winters I invariably encounter from time to time--a sort of spiritual hibernation. Now I have to go read "The Ant and the Grasshopper" again. I think there might be more to that story. Maybe it's just the Greek version of the ten virgins.
Well, after that session, we hiked up to the waterfall. At one point, as we were crossing the logs over the stream that meanders through the meadow up there, a stiff wind came up and the motley forest to our left came ablaze with millions of tiny leaves flying high up to the sky and raining down all around us. We got up to the waterfall and I ran into my old friends Josh and Megan, and their baby. That was strange, since they live in California, but I was very happy to see them. My new friends and I sat around and sang hymns in four-part harmony over the roar of the falls and amid the flecks of white water that surrounded us like a mist.
We went back to the cabin, and listened to the rest of Saturday's conference (I must say I loved the tag-team combo if Elders Oaks and Holland--my two favorite apostles--on the whole woman issue). The Violinist made whole-wheat spaghetti (the new friends are hippies, by the way), and it was great to sit and be nourished physically and spiritually.
Sunday we had even more friends, and so we baked biscuits and cinnamon rolls with home-made lemon glaze and we had fresh-baked bread with home-made apricot jam, and mango juice, and pine nuts and yogurt. It was incredible. Sunday followed the same pattern as Saturday had, except that this time we lit a fire in the huge two-story fireplace, and sat in the couches in front of it as we listened, looking out the humongous single-pane windows that stretched from floor to ceiling on either side. There were stellar jays on the deck, and the leaves continued to shed themselves for our benefit.
When conference had ended, we listend to classical music and read books. The cabin was chock-full of bookshelves, which held, between the candles and teddy bears and model sailboats and pine cones and other bric-a-brac, tons of books. There were Caldecott winners and classics and camic books and religious books. We all sat there serenely, sanguinely reading and looking at nature and listening to the music and smelling the fire and feeling the glow of happiness and friendship. The entire experience was sublime.
Once upon a time I would have felt antsy about not doing anything, and not talking, but I think I am past that now. I just sat there and enjoyed the feeling I was having, and the knowledge that it was okay for me to feel that happy.
Anyway, if you find yourself wondering what's really happening in my head these days, it's probably a lot of this stuff, recycling through.
I have to go to work now, but one more story for the benefit of some ladies in Colorado:
I got home from work the other day and my roommate said, "Someone called for you. It sounded like Satan."
I laughed. "How do you know what Satan sounds like?" I chided.
"No, she said her name, and it sounded like she said 'Satan.'"
"Oh. That makes sense."
Sure enough, the message said, "Hey, smurf, this is Satan Satan Satan," and then faded out. Then back in the chirpy voice, "Call me back!"
"So how do you know Satan?" retorted my roommate.
"Oh. It's my mom." Thanks, mom. It's nice to have characters like you in my life so I can write about them. You're so weird. Elder Oaks says we can't get released from our families, so I guess there will be a lot more stories like this one in the future. Weirdo.
So Chris tells me I need to write something amazing to make up for my not having written for the last week while the internet was on the blink. The problem is, I never know what to write about. I wish my blog could illuminate the entire human experience. I wish people could read it and know in that moment exactly what it's like to be me. But I can't even write about things as fast as new things are happening to me. There's just no way. Like what Ed Harris' character says in "The Hours":
"I wanted to write about it all, everything that happens in a moment. Way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread, all our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it. Who we once were, everything in the world, everything all mixed up. Like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed... no matter what you start with, it ends up being so much less... "
I was told by a friend today that I am hard to read. I get told that by my friends all the time. How can that be? I spend most of my social energy on being straightforward. Have I failed so completely? Even my best friends tell me that I'm hard to read. Possible reasons why:
1. I spent so much time in my youth hiding "who I really was" that now I've become inaccessible.
2. (This is my guess) I am so interested in other people and how they think and feel and exist that I forget to let thim into my world, as well. I feel like such an alien in the world. Sometimes people realize that I'm cutting them open and seeing how they work, that I've got them tied down in my spaceship, and it disconcerts them. Sorry, folks.
3. I'm just so open that I actually say all the things I'm thinking and people just assume there must be more.
4. I am shielding you all from the bizarre and banal thoughts in my head. We're sitting there having a conversation, and while I'm talking to you about how delicious the spaghetti is you think "I wonder what he is really thinking about, and whether he likes this spaghetti or he's just saying that, and if he's lying then is he doing it because he likes me or because he's trying to avoid having to talk to me about it?" and I'm thinking, "Man, I wonder why there aren't really any colors that start with 'D.' I mean, I guess there's 'dandelion,' but that seems like a stretch, and Crayola only carried that color for less than ten years, anyway. And it's kinda cheap to count colors that are just named after some flower. I wonder whether violets were named after the color, or whether the color got its name from the flower. Maybe it was just 'purple' before that. Man, this is good spaghetti."
I have a feeling it's a bit of all four.
...................................................................................
Those of you who read my blog and saw my concert last week can tell the rest how great it was. Lend me some credibility so next time I invite people top something, they come. Some really hot girls from my ward came, actually. That made me swell with happiness.
I made friends with the first chair violinist afterward. The kid is really cool. I introduced myself at Pinetree's behest, and we ended up hanging out after both nights of the concert. After the Friday concert we went on a nice little hike with Wiggle and Blue Shorts and Pinetree and everybody. We also had pizza at an underground place called "The Pie." That pizza was incredible. The Violinist invited me to do the whole conference thing at his cabin. So I did.
We drove up on Saturday morning. The cabin is at Sundance. We(when I say we I am including two other strangers who were there; there was nothing illicit going on, dirty people) listened to the Saturday morning session on the radio. It was pretty cold up there, so we sat with quilts, and then when the sun hit the porch I moved outside to the deck. The air was redolent with the smells of decaying leaves and pine smoke, and carried the sounds of the nearby stream and the wind through the aspen trees. Every time the chilly breeze picked up at all, the golden maple leaves would come tumbling all around us as though we were in a giant mystical snow globe. White and orange butterflies intermingled with the leaves. The trees themselves were yellow with a sun-kissed red spot at the top, exactly like a peach. I basked in the warm sunlight and the warmer spirit, listening to the words of the speakers. President Faust's words struck me particularly, as he spoke of gaining the image of Christ in our countenance and surrounding ourselves with those who have the light of Christ in their eyes. And about how the lord leaves us alone for a while to see if we will be righteous in the dark. I have always thought that: that maybe the good I do while the sun is high and the days are long just gets stored up for the long winters I invariably encounter from time to time--a sort of spiritual hibernation. Now I have to go read "The Ant and the Grasshopper" again. I think there might be more to that story. Maybe it's just the Greek version of the ten virgins.
Well, after that session, we hiked up to the waterfall. At one point, as we were crossing the logs over the stream that meanders through the meadow up there, a stiff wind came up and the motley forest to our left came ablaze with millions of tiny leaves flying high up to the sky and raining down all around us. We got up to the waterfall and I ran into my old friends Josh and Megan, and their baby. That was strange, since they live in California, but I was very happy to see them. My new friends and I sat around and sang hymns in four-part harmony over the roar of the falls and amid the flecks of white water that surrounded us like a mist.
We went back to the cabin, and listened to the rest of Saturday's conference (I must say I loved the tag-team combo if Elders Oaks and Holland--my two favorite apostles--on the whole woman issue). The Violinist made whole-wheat spaghetti (the new friends are hippies, by the way), and it was great to sit and be nourished physically and spiritually.
Sunday we had even more friends, and so we baked biscuits and cinnamon rolls with home-made lemon glaze and we had fresh-baked bread with home-made apricot jam, and mango juice, and pine nuts and yogurt. It was incredible. Sunday followed the same pattern as Saturday had, except that this time we lit a fire in the huge two-story fireplace, and sat in the couches in front of it as we listened, looking out the humongous single-pane windows that stretched from floor to ceiling on either side. There were stellar jays on the deck, and the leaves continued to shed themselves for our benefit.
When conference had ended, we listend to classical music and read books. The cabin was chock-full of bookshelves, which held, between the candles and teddy bears and model sailboats and pine cones and other bric-a-brac, tons of books. There were Caldecott winners and classics and camic books and religious books. We all sat there serenely, sanguinely reading and looking at nature and listening to the music and smelling the fire and feeling the glow of happiness and friendship. The entire experience was sublime.
Once upon a time I would have felt antsy about not doing anything, and not talking, but I think I am past that now. I just sat there and enjoyed the feeling I was having, and the knowledge that it was okay for me to feel that happy.
Anyway, if you find yourself wondering what's really happening in my head these days, it's probably a lot of this stuff, recycling through.
I have to go to work now, but one more story for the benefit of some ladies in Colorado:
I got home from work the other day and my roommate said, "Someone called for you. It sounded like Satan."
I laughed. "How do you know what Satan sounds like?" I chided.
"No, she said her name, and it sounded like she said 'Satan.'"
"Oh. That makes sense."
Sure enough, the message said, "Hey, smurf, this is Satan Satan Satan," and then faded out. Then back in the chirpy voice, "Call me back!"
"So how do you know Satan?" retorted my roommate.
"Oh. It's my mom." Thanks, mom. It's nice to have characters like you in my life so I can write about them. You're so weird. Elder Oaks says we can't get released from our families, so I guess there will be a lot more stories like this one in the future. Weirdo.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Reflections
Why is it so hard to make straight male friends? I thought I was doing a great job of it until everybody just up and jumped out of the closet at the same time like some kind of twisted surprise party. It's been very strange. This leaves me in a weird place. I don't want to pigeonhole myself here. I really do feel like I should be hanging out with straight guys. I don't feel weird or even different around them, and I think it's good for me to have all sorts of friends.
I hate the labels, in a way. Labels are useful when we need a name for something, granted. But they should not become the definitions of things. I am tall. That doesn't mean that tall is me. Tall is not my definition. I have a feeling that when certain people learn that a guy is attracted to members of the same sex, they build up a whole world around him in their minds to explain what he's like. I hate that. I really feel like I'm just like anyone else except for that one small thing. It's nowhere near being the most important thing in my life, but it's also not something I'm afraid of. It's more like something I'm beyond. I'm more of a PoMosexual.
From wordspy: PoMosexual (poh.moh.SEK.shoo.ul) n. A person who shuns labels such as heterosexual and homosexual that define individuals by their sexual preferences. This word combines pomo, shorthand for postmodern, with the suffix -sexual.
Take, for example, when we went 80's clubbing with everyone the other day. There were all these gay guys there, dancing dirty and grinding and stuff. One of them came up to me and tried to get all up ons. I wasn't having it. I just moved right away. Then we have Daniel, my quondam co-worker, who refuses to admit to anybody that he likes boys. It's fine with me if he wants to be like that, but what irks me is that he was gyrating lasciviously with all these skanky guys all night, and then right at closing time he grabbed some girl and sucked on her face ostentatiously right in front of all the co-workers. He had been overheard asking her to make out with him so that his friends wouldn't think him gay. Well, Daniel, your stunt didn't convince anybody that you're not gay. It just showed them that you are a whore.
[Did you know there are certain buildings on campus where you can't pull up my blog because of the content? And now I've added "whore" to the list of naughty words I've used.]
Now here's what bothers me about Daniel and the rest of the guys: I am not like that. My refusal to allow Garet to rub his pelvic region all over my body was due to an actual lack of desire and to an existence of self-respect and restraint, not merely some pretentious desire to win people over or fit in the Mormon crowd. The problem is that the casual observer may have a hard time making that distinction. There are so many gay sluts around that sensible people like me and Pinetree and the Ring Bearer could easily be haphazardly classified as one of "them." Well, I'm not, and I was just as disgusted by their behaviour (if not more so) as anybody else.
I went to Evergreen with Pinetree the other day. This is a place where the "strugglers" go. Evergreen is the church-affiliated support group for men who struggle with "same-sex attraction." Due to the notion that we shouldn't label ourselves according to our sins and temptations, the Evergreenies have abandoned the words "gay" and "homosexual" and, ironically, merely replaced them with the terms "struggler" and "SSA (Same Sex Attraction)."
I used to attend Evergreen regularly. I stopped around Christmas of last year due to an increasing amount of lechery between other "strugglers" outside of meetings and a disturbing tendency the others had to try to get me to feel guilty for not being on the brink of suicide all the time. Here's a typical week at Evergreen, in screenplay form:
"Struggler" #1: Well, I guess I'll go first. This week was really bad. Remember how last week was really bad for me? This week was worse. I "acted out" [a conveniently undefined and ambiguous term that I've learned can mean anything from "logging onto a gay website" to "having anonymous sex in public restrooms"] on Thursday. My life is falling apart. I don't have any friends who I think would accept me if they knew Who I Really Am [Did anyone else catch the logical fallacy in that statement?]. My car broke down, my grades are bad, my wife's Prozac prescription just got more expensive so we're trying to wean her off that, and all I do is sit at my computer for seventeen hours a day chatting with strangers in a gay Nebraska chat room so that I know there's no chance of my meeting them and "hooking up." Other than that I'm good. I know we're supposed to set a goal at the end of this, but I haven't met my goal of the last two months to say my prayers every day, so I'm just not going to set a goal this time. I pass the torch.
"Struggler" #2: Well, I guess it's my turn. I just want to say that this might be my last week coming here to Evergreen [of course, it's not really]. I've noticed that you guys are all a bunch of hypocrites. You come here on Evergreen night and talk about how you want to be all spiritual [very few of them actually remember to get around to the whole spiritual side] and then I see the exact same people at the Club Sound on Gay Night [not me--never been, never will]. Anyway, it's partly that and partly that I don't feel I get the validation I need from you guys anymore. There used to be a time when I could come here and feel loved, and that really helped me to stop from acting out, but lately I feel that I've been abandoned and that nobody is there to stop me from making bad decisions. Anyway, my goal is to maybe forgive you guys and come back next week.
"Struggler" #3: Well, looks like I'm up. It's been a hard week for me. I don't feel attractive. I wish I looked like one of you guys.
"Struggler" #2: Whatever, buddy. You're a very attractive guy, if I may say so.
"Struggler" #1: Yeah, definitely. If I weren't trying so hard to keep the commandments I'd ask you out.
"Struggler" #3: Well, thanks, guys. Anyway, my goal is to start feeling better about myself, even when I do bad things. Over to you, Smurf.
Smurf: Well, my life is great. I've come out to my parents, and there were no problems there. I got accepted as an EFY counselor for this summer, so that's good. I've been reading my scriptures and saying my prayers and I'm all-around very happy. I'm going to cut this short because I have a date with a girl.
"Struggler" whichever: I think you're just bottling up your emotions. You should really let that out. It doesn't seem healthy to me to be in so much denial.
"Struggler" somebody else: I think you're just focusing in on one part of your life and basing your emotions around that. That's not fair to the rest of us who are trying really hard to actually deal with insurmountable struggles.
"Struggler" the last: You are different from the rest of us.
Smurf: Gee, guys. I'm sorry I'm so happy. I didn't realize it could make the rest of you so sad.
"Struggler" #1: That's ok. You'll learn to deal with these things the way the rest of us do soon enough. Anyway, let's have a closing prayer. Oh, and who's coming to the sleepover on Saturday night at my place? I need to know so I can get enough floating coasters for everyone to have a drink in the hot tub.
The End
Okay, so maybe there was a smidgen of hyperbole in the above screenplay, and I also fixed up everybody's grammar, but the general feelings I get at those meetings should come across, I hope. The point is, these are supposed to be the two opposing camps in the gay Mormon underworld. Either I love the sin (and the scene), or I hate myself. Well, they both sound pretty sucky to me. Evergreen saps me (pun intended). I go for one reason: I feel that this is an especial group of people whom I've been specifically primed to help out. They would probably be okay if I stayed away, but there are very few opportunities for me to do such meaningful service.
At any rate, I don't see my sexuality as a major driving force in my life or my personality. I'm not going to cave in, and I'm not going to rewrite my psychological framework to effect some Cathoholic self-castigation, either. I'm just me, and I fancy I have a pretty perspicacious view of the world. I don't really care about keeping up appearances.
Except that I do care. This fall I'll be left bereft of where to live. I don't reckon it would be a good idea for me to move in with someone who's "family" (as we fondly refer to each other in our own microcommunity). Maybe it could work with Pinetree or someone else of such a logical and sagacious nature. But I'm thinking it might be better for me to move in with a "non-struggler," as our Evergreen friends refer to our "straight," or "breeder" friends. The problem is, I really don't know any. I seriously thought I had some lined up, but like I said, they've all come out. Such a bizarre world we inhabit, huh?
I've made friends with co-workers Ben and Chris. I'm hoping that one of them will be right for me to share a place with. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. Here's where that dilemma comes in, though. Do I inform them of my attractions, thus possibly making things too awkward for the perpetuation of friendship, or do I stay silent at the risk of having the truth later leak out and paint me a liar or coward?
When I first talked to my mom after she read my blog and my original post on my sexuality, she likened it to her deal with being a divorced woman in the church and an adult survivor of childhood incest. For a while after she opened up about her experiences, it became her crusade. She was ensign and bastion for divorced and molested Mormon women wherever she went. After a while, though, she had to just put all that on the altar and mellow out a bit. She predicted during that phone call that I would reach a similar vista some day. Maybe that day is here. I've found tons and tons of friends through my openness here on my blog, and that has been a prodigious blessing. Now it's time, though, to just quietly lean against the wall next to the closet door instead of waving a big banner around and announcing through a megaphone that I'm not in it anymore. There are bigger things in my life, and I'm happy, and I have great friends, and that's what matters right now.
I hate the labels, in a way. Labels are useful when we need a name for something, granted. But they should not become the definitions of things. I am tall. That doesn't mean that tall is me. Tall is not my definition. I have a feeling that when certain people learn that a guy is attracted to members of the same sex, they build up a whole world around him in their minds to explain what he's like. I hate that. I really feel like I'm just like anyone else except for that one small thing. It's nowhere near being the most important thing in my life, but it's also not something I'm afraid of. It's more like something I'm beyond. I'm more of a PoMosexual.
From wordspy: PoMosexual (poh.moh.SEK.shoo.ul) n. A person who shuns labels such as heterosexual and homosexual that define individuals by their sexual preferences. This word combines pomo, shorthand for postmodern, with the suffix -sexual.
Take, for example, when we went 80's clubbing with everyone the other day. There were all these gay guys there, dancing dirty and grinding and stuff. One of them came up to me and tried to get all up ons. I wasn't having it. I just moved right away. Then we have Daniel, my quondam co-worker, who refuses to admit to anybody that he likes boys. It's fine with me if he wants to be like that, but what irks me is that he was gyrating lasciviously with all these skanky guys all night, and then right at closing time he grabbed some girl and sucked on her face ostentatiously right in front of all the co-workers. He had been overheard asking her to make out with him so that his friends wouldn't think him gay. Well, Daniel, your stunt didn't convince anybody that you're not gay. It just showed them that you are a whore.
[Did you know there are certain buildings on campus where you can't pull up my blog because of the content? And now I've added "whore" to the list of naughty words I've used.]
Now here's what bothers me about Daniel and the rest of the guys: I am not like that. My refusal to allow Garet to rub his pelvic region all over my body was due to an actual lack of desire and to an existence of self-respect and restraint, not merely some pretentious desire to win people over or fit in the Mormon crowd. The problem is that the casual observer may have a hard time making that distinction. There are so many gay sluts around that sensible people like me and Pinetree and the Ring Bearer could easily be haphazardly classified as one of "them." Well, I'm not, and I was just as disgusted by their behaviour (if not more so) as anybody else.
I went to Evergreen with Pinetree the other day. This is a place where the "strugglers" go. Evergreen is the church-affiliated support group for men who struggle with "same-sex attraction." Due to the notion that we shouldn't label ourselves according to our sins and temptations, the Evergreenies have abandoned the words "gay" and "homosexual" and, ironically, merely replaced them with the terms "struggler" and "SSA (Same Sex Attraction)."
I used to attend Evergreen regularly. I stopped around Christmas of last year due to an increasing amount of lechery between other "strugglers" outside of meetings and a disturbing tendency the others had to try to get me to feel guilty for not being on the brink of suicide all the time. Here's a typical week at Evergreen, in screenplay form:
"Struggler" #1: Well, I guess I'll go first. This week was really bad. Remember how last week was really bad for me? This week was worse. I "acted out" [a conveniently undefined and ambiguous term that I've learned can mean anything from "logging onto a gay website" to "having anonymous sex in public restrooms"] on Thursday. My life is falling apart. I don't have any friends who I think would accept me if they knew Who I Really Am [Did anyone else catch the logical fallacy in that statement?]. My car broke down, my grades are bad, my wife's Prozac prescription just got more expensive so we're trying to wean her off that, and all I do is sit at my computer for seventeen hours a day chatting with strangers in a gay Nebraska chat room so that I know there's no chance of my meeting them and "hooking up." Other than that I'm good. I know we're supposed to set a goal at the end of this, but I haven't met my goal of the last two months to say my prayers every day, so I'm just not going to set a goal this time. I pass the torch.
"Struggler" #2: Well, I guess it's my turn. I just want to say that this might be my last week coming here to Evergreen [of course, it's not really]. I've noticed that you guys are all a bunch of hypocrites. You come here on Evergreen night and talk about how you want to be all spiritual [very few of them actually remember to get around to the whole spiritual side] and then I see the exact same people at the Club Sound on Gay Night [not me--never been, never will]. Anyway, it's partly that and partly that I don't feel I get the validation I need from you guys anymore. There used to be a time when I could come here and feel loved, and that really helped me to stop from acting out, but lately I feel that I've been abandoned and that nobody is there to stop me from making bad decisions. Anyway, my goal is to maybe forgive you guys and come back next week.
"Struggler" #3: Well, looks like I'm up. It's been a hard week for me. I don't feel attractive. I wish I looked like one of you guys.
"Struggler" #2: Whatever, buddy. You're a very attractive guy, if I may say so.
"Struggler" #1: Yeah, definitely. If I weren't trying so hard to keep the commandments I'd ask you out.
"Struggler" #3: Well, thanks, guys. Anyway, my goal is to start feeling better about myself, even when I do bad things. Over to you, Smurf.
Smurf: Well, my life is great. I've come out to my parents, and there were no problems there. I got accepted as an EFY counselor for this summer, so that's good. I've been reading my scriptures and saying my prayers and I'm all-around very happy. I'm going to cut this short because I have a date with a girl.
"Struggler" whichever: I think you're just bottling up your emotions. You should really let that out. It doesn't seem healthy to me to be in so much denial.
"Struggler" somebody else: I think you're just focusing in on one part of your life and basing your emotions around that. That's not fair to the rest of us who are trying really hard to actually deal with insurmountable struggles.
"Struggler" the last: You are different from the rest of us.
Smurf: Gee, guys. I'm sorry I'm so happy. I didn't realize it could make the rest of you so sad.
"Struggler" #1: That's ok. You'll learn to deal with these things the way the rest of us do soon enough. Anyway, let's have a closing prayer. Oh, and who's coming to the sleepover on Saturday night at my place? I need to know so I can get enough floating coasters for everyone to have a drink in the hot tub.
The End
Okay, so maybe there was a smidgen of hyperbole in the above screenplay, and I also fixed up everybody's grammar, but the general feelings I get at those meetings should come across, I hope. The point is, these are supposed to be the two opposing camps in the gay Mormon underworld. Either I love the sin (and the scene), or I hate myself. Well, they both sound pretty sucky to me. Evergreen saps me (pun intended). I go for one reason: I feel that this is an especial group of people whom I've been specifically primed to help out. They would probably be okay if I stayed away, but there are very few opportunities for me to do such meaningful service.
At any rate, I don't see my sexuality as a major driving force in my life or my personality. I'm not going to cave in, and I'm not going to rewrite my psychological framework to effect some Cathoholic self-castigation, either. I'm just me, and I fancy I have a pretty perspicacious view of the world. I don't really care about keeping up appearances.
Except that I do care. This fall I'll be left bereft of where to live. I don't reckon it would be a good idea for me to move in with someone who's "family" (as we fondly refer to each other in our own microcommunity). Maybe it could work with Pinetree or someone else of such a logical and sagacious nature. But I'm thinking it might be better for me to move in with a "non-struggler," as our Evergreen friends refer to our "straight," or "breeder" friends. The problem is, I really don't know any. I seriously thought I had some lined up, but like I said, they've all come out. Such a bizarre world we inhabit, huh?
I've made friends with co-workers Ben and Chris. I'm hoping that one of them will be right for me to share a place with. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. Here's where that dilemma comes in, though. Do I inform them of my attractions, thus possibly making things too awkward for the perpetuation of friendship, or do I stay silent at the risk of having the truth later leak out and paint me a liar or coward?
When I first talked to my mom after she read my blog and my original post on my sexuality, she likened it to her deal with being a divorced woman in the church and an adult survivor of childhood incest. For a while after she opened up about her experiences, it became her crusade. She was ensign and bastion for divorced and molested Mormon women wherever she went. After a while, though, she had to just put all that on the altar and mellow out a bit. She predicted during that phone call that I would reach a similar vista some day. Maybe that day is here. I've found tons and tons of friends through my openness here on my blog, and that has been a prodigious blessing. Now it's time, though, to just quietly lean against the wall next to the closet door instead of waving a big banner around and announcing through a megaphone that I'm not in it anymore. There are bigger things in my life, and I'm happy, and I have great friends, and that's what matters right now.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Heavenbound
Here's something Poet Smurf wrote while I was at work:
Earthbound/Heavenbound
It’s overcast
And there are children playing tetherball in the recesses of my brain,
Skinning knees and making noise.
Everyone's aware that soon:
A bell will ring,
A dog will salivate,
And recess will come to an end.
By the fence
In my mind, a creepy stinky tinker rolls his creaky clinking cart,
Feared and sneered by children
For his beard and weird appearance
At the corner of the schoolyard.
He sends an oath to heaven:
He will get them all.
Up the valley,
Beneath the thick black clouds of doubt and in the wafting smell of dairy air,
Is a factory where they make the children’s toys.
Doll makers make dollars,
Exploiting girls and boys,
Building a skyscraper to heaven
So they can put themselves in better hospitals
When they are old.
In the hospitals,
Senti-
Mental patients
Welcome newbies with their open arms and wounds.
They have been (for our
Sake) forgotten,
God-forsaken,
Sleeping in their urine.
They never go outside or see the sky.
We don’t have to think about them anymore.
On the playground
Of my brain, the tetherball comes ‘round too hard and smacks a child upside his head.
He cries and lies upon the blacktop,
Looking at the distant sky,
Holding his small hands up to the swelling
Of the other children’s laughter
In his ear.
In the teacher’s lounge,
Miss Cavenaugh sits righteously at a desk in a chamber reserved for her alone,
Sipping her virgin Bloody Mary,
Praying to the bloody Virgin Mary
That she’ll die married, not a bloody virgin,
That God will open up the heavens
And shower down the blessings of a man
And purpose for her life.
Behind the jungle gym,
Young Prometheus coldly lies on jagged rocks behind my eyes,
Yearning for the skies
Yet tied to earth
With no rhyme or reason,
For no crime or treason,
Bound for heaven for his intrinsic godhood,
Bound to earth for his weak compassion for humanity.
In the chapel,
The priest is locked in his confessional and won’t come out until he’s found the perfect prayer.
He hunts for (and preys on) words,
Prays in words,
The plays on words go on and on
And fly to God or whatever lies beyond the stratus clouds.
He’ll have to wait to see if anything comes back.
On the hill,
Burdened Atlas holds the heavens out of reach from all the rest of them,
And maybe some young Heracles
Should climb the hill and tickle him,
Let the heavens come crash down upon the wretched children
And the slinking tinker and the priest, the makers of the dolls
And the poor young tortured titan and the teacher and the patients
And the rest.
Everywhere,
The folks are stuck to earth because the gravity of their desires and sins is just too much.
If one is ever meant to reach the sky,
He’ll have to bring the sky to him
And to the whole damned world,
Toppling gods and beating odds
And falling to the deep blue way up high.
Why then, oh why can’t I?
The bell rings.
An angel gets its wings and wings away from us.
The children will play no more
And it finally starts to rain
At the end of the recesses of my brain.
Earthbound/Heavenbound
It’s overcast
And there are children playing tetherball in the recesses of my brain,
Skinning knees and making noise.
Everyone's aware that soon:
A bell will ring,
A dog will salivate,
And recess will come to an end.
By the fence
In my mind, a creepy stinky tinker rolls his creaky clinking cart,
Feared and sneered by children
For his beard and weird appearance
At the corner of the schoolyard.
He sends an oath to heaven:
He will get them all.
Up the valley,
Beneath the thick black clouds of doubt and in the wafting smell of dairy air,
Is a factory where they make the children’s toys.
Doll makers make dollars,
Exploiting girls and boys,
Building a skyscraper to heaven
So they can put themselves in better hospitals
When they are old.
In the hospitals,
Senti-
Mental patients
Welcome newbies with their open arms and wounds.
They have been (for our
Sake) forgotten,
God-forsaken,
Sleeping in their urine.
They never go outside or see the sky.
We don’t have to think about them anymore.
On the playground
Of my brain, the tetherball comes ‘round too hard and smacks a child upside his head.
He cries and lies upon the blacktop,
Looking at the distant sky,
Holding his small hands up to the swelling
Of the other children’s laughter
In his ear.
In the teacher’s lounge,
Miss Cavenaugh sits righteously at a desk in a chamber reserved for her alone,
Sipping her virgin Bloody Mary,
Praying to the bloody Virgin Mary
That she’ll die married, not a bloody virgin,
That God will open up the heavens
And shower down the blessings of a man
And purpose for her life.
Behind the jungle gym,
Young Prometheus coldly lies on jagged rocks behind my eyes,
Yearning for the skies
Yet tied to earth
With no rhyme or reason,
For no crime or treason,
Bound for heaven for his intrinsic godhood,
Bound to earth for his weak compassion for humanity.
In the chapel,
The priest is locked in his confessional and won’t come out until he’s found the perfect prayer.
He hunts for (and preys on) words,
Prays in words,
The plays on words go on and on
And fly to God or whatever lies beyond the stratus clouds.
He’ll have to wait to see if anything comes back.
On the hill,
Burdened Atlas holds the heavens out of reach from all the rest of them,
And maybe some young Heracles
Should climb the hill and tickle him,
Let the heavens come crash down upon the wretched children
And the slinking tinker and the priest, the makers of the dolls
And the poor young tortured titan and the teacher and the patients
And the rest.
Everywhere,
The folks are stuck to earth because the gravity of their desires and sins is just too much.
If one is ever meant to reach the sky,
He’ll have to bring the sky to him
And to the whole damned world,
Toppling gods and beating odds
And falling to the deep blue way up high.
Why then, oh why can’t I?
The bell rings.
An angel gets its wings and wings away from us.
The children will play no more
And it finally starts to rain
At the end of the recesses of my brain.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Warm Chip Lady
There's a lady who has shaken my faith in my ability to read people. She's called the "Warm Chip Lady. "
Several times a week the warm chip lady and her pre-teen daughter come into the restaurant where I work and request their favorite server. If he's not there they have a back-up list. When they've been seated, she requests "just a warm snack. Just a little snackety today," all the while scrunching up her nose like some marsupial mating call. She requests warm chips and a Diet Coke and asks for refill after refill and never orders a real meal. She leaves a fifty cent tip.
During the time the server was helping her, he could have been helping someone else who would have left a real tip. The thing that is so terrible to me is that she thinks the servers are delighted to be requested. And sure, that's nice, but no waiter cares whether you like him if you don't tip. So the question is one of whether I do this to people, whether, in fact, we all do it to each other all the time. Do I think I'm being nice by dropping in on friends, when really all they want is some quiet time? Et cetera.
Several times a week the warm chip lady and her pre-teen daughter come into the restaurant where I work and request their favorite server. If he's not there they have a back-up list. When they've been seated, she requests "just a warm snack. Just a little snackety today," all the while scrunching up her nose like some marsupial mating call. She requests warm chips and a Diet Coke and asks for refill after refill and never orders a real meal. She leaves a fifty cent tip.
During the time the server was helping her, he could have been helping someone else who would have left a real tip. The thing that is so terrible to me is that she thinks the servers are delighted to be requested. And sure, that's nice, but no waiter cares whether you like him if you don't tip. So the question is one of whether I do this to people, whether, in fact, we all do it to each other all the time. Do I think I'm being nice by dropping in on friends, when really all they want is some quiet time? Et cetera.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
My Native Cheery Temperament.
Sometimes I feel bad about feeling so good all the time.
Don't get me wrong; my life has its challenges, and I've been through a lot af rather serious crap. It's just that that stuff never seems to get me down for too long. My default is set to "cheerful," I think. I know what you're thinking now: He just suppresses those negative feelings. I promise it's not like that, though. I never swing to the other end of the pendulum or get depressed or anything. My dad and my grandma are the same way. They both seem to approach life with a certain uncommon zeal.
So why should I be unhappy with this inexplicable happiness? Well, it makes things a bit awkward for me in a few different circumstances.
Sometimes I'm talking to people who have had similar trials to mine. They all seem pretty depressed about it. I feel like they feel like I'm rubbing something in their faces by being happy in spite of the situation.
Also, I have several friends who struggle with depression, and I fear (and have been told) that I come off insensitive to their feelings. It's true that I don't put much stock in feelings (other than the fruits of the spirit), but I have to admit that the only times I truly feel sad are the times when someone I care about is sad, and I can't fix it, and I can't even sympathize with it. Those are some of the saddest times of my life. It's true that I was sad when I had to come home sick from my mission, but even that was easier because I am used to accepting bad things that happen to me as the Lord's will. I was over that in about a day or two. But I can't accept my friends being so miserable that I can't reach them. I wish I could find some way to dive into the muck with them, but I can't. I'm just so dang happy all the time.
Like right now, after twelve and a half hours at work, I'm sitting here typing and smilin' to myself like a little boy whose teacher doesn't know about the frog in the boy's pocket. Just loving life. I just don't feel justified in doing so, when there are so many sad people out there. Oh, well. At least everyone believes it's just a facade.
Don't get me wrong; my life has its challenges, and I've been through a lot af rather serious crap. It's just that that stuff never seems to get me down for too long. My default is set to "cheerful," I think. I know what you're thinking now: He just suppresses those negative feelings. I promise it's not like that, though. I never swing to the other end of the pendulum or get depressed or anything. My dad and my grandma are the same way. They both seem to approach life with a certain uncommon zeal.
So why should I be unhappy with this inexplicable happiness? Well, it makes things a bit awkward for me in a few different circumstances.
Sometimes I'm talking to people who have had similar trials to mine. They all seem pretty depressed about it. I feel like they feel like I'm rubbing something in their faces by being happy in spite of the situation.
Also, I have several friends who struggle with depression, and I fear (and have been told) that I come off insensitive to their feelings. It's true that I don't put much stock in feelings (other than the fruits of the spirit), but I have to admit that the only times I truly feel sad are the times when someone I care about is sad, and I can't fix it, and I can't even sympathize with it. Those are some of the saddest times of my life. It's true that I was sad when I had to come home sick from my mission, but even that was easier because I am used to accepting bad things that happen to me as the Lord's will. I was over that in about a day or two. But I can't accept my friends being so miserable that I can't reach them. I wish I could find some way to dive into the muck with them, but I can't. I'm just so dang happy all the time.
Like right now, after twelve and a half hours at work, I'm sitting here typing and smilin' to myself like a little boy whose teacher doesn't know about the frog in the boy's pocket. Just loving life. I just don't feel justified in doing so, when there are so many sad people out there. Oh, well. At least everyone believes it's just a facade.
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