Dear Internet,
It's not you, it's me. I'm just not feeling it right now. I couldn't really pinpoint when our priorities first diverged, but it seems like we've just been into different things these days. It's not that I'm breaking up with you, I just think we should cool out for a while. Okay? Let's take a little break. It will be good for both of us.
Love always,
Em
I find Joanna Newsom almost endlessly make-fun-of-able for her singing. I recall mornings cleaning up after big parties cleaning up with the girlfriends and wailing frustratedly back at Joanna about how she was exacerbating my hangover. But even I have to admit there are moments when the girl just gets the job done. One such example being rainy mornings in a wooden house on a tree-blanketed hillside with a bowl of cranberry and toasted-pecan oatmeal, a cup of dandelion tea and a small, sympathetic dog in your lap. I am a modern-day lady of the canyon and Newsom is my indie Joni Mitchell. It's been such a rare feeling lately that I'm caught off guard by my own contentment.
I'm exited about it because I never did huv one a' them before. Used to be that I was too tech-tarded to figure out how to make one. Since then a combination of my not having the right image and my just plain laziness has kept me from joining ranks. But a timely trip to Brooklyn presented me with the spleen graffiti which I took as a message from the universe that this was meant to be. I can get a bit of the mystic going on from time to time, you betcha.
Well, I'm fighting the good fight. And it's going... okay, some of the time. It’s just the damn seasonal depression has got me so down. The thing is: I really wanted it to not get me this time, not here, not here in our exciting new town, not here in our new life. But here I am and here It is, and it's the same as all the other years- insidious and gripping- and it reminds me of all the other years, which makes me feel even more shitty because I have this insane idea that I should have gotten over it by now, that it's something I should naturally grow out of. I thought this tendency in me must be diminishing a little each year, going the way of my collagen, but boy did I have another think coming. Now I’m left with just as much angst, but significantly less of the plump-faced youth that helped me pull off angst so poetically in the past. At my age the cancerous, obese, hypertensive reality of depression starts to set in, and it’s not a very pleasant aspect.
Not that it was ever so rad, before, the depression. Looking back now it is woefully apparent how major a role the seasonal blues played in my dropping out of school all those times. At the time I was just taking it day by day, not recognizing my own patterns, but now it seems so clear- if I had only been on a quarter system and skipped the middle quarters, or if I only I had gone to college in southern
Last year I didn’t get the depression so bad. I got it, but I was so busy with work and family and social engagements and so distracted by all the righteous fury I was building up toward my insane, abusive boss that I didn’t have time to sink into the usual ennui. Instead I just developed general anxiety and routine bouts of irritable bowels. Also I was out in the daylight birding or on the farm almost every weekend and I have to consider that that helped a whole giant lot at the time.
This year I’m mad because the shit sneaked up on me in a mean, sudden way. I was doing fine, we were all fine, it was a fun year, I liked our town and we had a lot of visitors and everything was moving along and then I had this desultory Christmas and I just couldn’t get feeling festive. By the time we went to
On Monday It began to affect my work, and that was the final straw. I cannot be low-functioning at this job. I cannot be slow or cloudy or God forbid cry- ever- at this job. Not at this firm. Not in this atmosphere of hyper-educated, highly ambitious, workaholic overachievers; I just can’t. Not only will it not fly; it’s not even conceivable. So if there’s not room for me to be foggy on the job, there is certainly not room for me to be abjectly miserable and weeping, or to think seriously every day about calling in sick, or to find I am speaking aloud without realizing it, saying things like, “I have no joy in me now,” because not only is that unacceptable at work but it’s also just really fucking embarrassing.
To be continued...
I never knew you were my neighbor until I heard a loud crash, followed by wailing through my open window on a hot Kansas night. All night. It was like a song; like a chant, peppered with further crashes, pounding of fists and stamping of feet for percussive effect at key points of emphasis. My Mormon self was very disturbed, but the pre-post-Mormon self I was already nurturing understood you somehow. I'm sure you don't remember what you said that night, but I'll never be able to forget. It was this:
I don't want to live like this no more.
I don't want to live like this no more.
I don't want to LIVE like this no more.
I don't want to live like this no more.I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...
I don't want to live like this no more.
I don't want to live like THIS no more.. . .
I don't want to live like this no more!
I don't want to live like this no more!
I want my FAMILY!
I want my WIFE!
I want everything!
I want my LIFE!I don't want to live like this no more.
Idon'twanttolivelikethisnomoreIdon'twanttolivelikethisnomore.I'm sorry I'm sorry.
I'm SORRY I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.... . .
I don't want to live like this no more.
I DON'T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS NO MORE!I.
DON'T.
WANT.
TO.
LIVE.
LIKE.
THIS.
NO.
MORE!I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.I don't want to live like this no more.
I don't want to live like this no more...
The next morning I saw you come out your front door and cross the street straight into the liquor store. I never begrudged you that. It was too artistic to be held against you.
I suppose a lot of people will find this tale tragic, but my vote's for it being a comedy. Maybe a tragicomedy.
So, how's your Christmas guilt coming along? I'll tell you, mine is totally banging. I've only procured/shipped maybe a third of the gifts on my list so naturally I'm furiously self-flagellating because, you know, it's all about the presents. How will folks know I love them if not via a mountain of UPS boxes piled up at their doors? I don't know when I developed the deep urge I have to go overboard for birthdays and holidays. I do recall Christmases and birthdays of my childhood feeling like periods of glorious excess, so I suppose my urge is partly to uphold the tradition, but there's also a component of guilty overcompensation. I start feeling compelled to give objects to people for deep emotional reasons entirely unrelated to objects: I will never be able to repay my parents and Stan's for all they've done for me = I should at least try to buy them stuff; I am awful about returning calls and emails from friends and family = I need to host the birthday party, make the decorations, buy a beautiful gift and bake the cake from scratch; I am selfish and think about myself too much = I need to give socially responsible presents like locally-produced goods or, better yet, my own artily handcrafted items. This guilty need to give has resulted in some occasions of buying my way into a financial problem; other times, finances being prohibitive from the get-go, I've overdone it with little "amplifier" gifts that wind up feeling totally meaningless once given. Of course, finances are always prohibitive so that is a special reason to feel guilty in and of itself.
My partner has the same problem, both with the guilt and the finances, but he has a very different way of dealing. Whereas I tend to want to overdo for holidays, Stan prefers to pretend they don't exist. Thus I am able to adopt additional Team Guilt in virtue of our affiliation, and assume responsibility for wanting to overdo on his behalf, as well as my own. So obviously the only way to assuage all this guilt is to make hand printed, ribbon-festooned, sequined, origami pop-up Christmas village holiday cards with a gorgeous picture of us wearing beautiful white-toothed smiles and get them all out in the mail with an eloquent personal message to every single person I've ever met for delivery no later than October 17th. Everyone knows the most heartfelt greeting card will be rendered null if the sender didn't have it together enough to make sure her good wishes for a joyful holiday and a happy New Year were delivered before Christmas Eve.
This is a very time-sensitive season, you know. I believe Hallmark has actually patented a design that causes any cards still in the mail on or after December 26 to spontaneously combust. Same goes for gifts, you can buy your nephew a Wii but if it doesn't arrive in time for Christmas you will find him calling you up on Boxing Day, with your sister prodding him in the background as he grumbles, "ThankyoufortheLincolnLogs."
Alas, timeliness has never been my strong suit. I am the guy who buys all the materials to make the cards, then either gets too busy to make them or becomes paralyzed by the prospect of so overwhelming an ambition. And so every year I grind along in this awesomely self-propelled guilt cycle: a year/lifetime of guilt makes me want to go overboard for holidays, I get stalled up by trying to be a perfectionist to make up for all the reasons I'm guilty and next thing I know I'm out of time, Christmas is over and I never got my shit together, thereby planting the first seed for fresh guilt that will bloom in the New Year. Happy Holidays!
Lieutenant Dieter Dengler has turned out to be a very nice fish. He's a peppy little guy and I have him sort of "trained" (you could almost call it that) to know that food will follow when I/someone approach/es his bowl. So whenever I walk up to check him out he goes ape shit swimming really fast back and forth at the side of the bowl and gaping his mouth like MAW MAW MAW. Thus I am able to semi-deceive myself that he is capable of such cognitive feats as facial feature recognition and, you know, enthusiasm and such so I can pretend that we have a mutually adoring relationship. I've tried to make giving him a happy home my chief preoccupation; I check on him first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed at night, and when I come home from work I call out to him, like so, "YOO-HOO! DEE-ter DEH-ngler!" and then reward him with food for losing his mind while I coo and drool over him as though he has any awareness of it.
You can see I'm well overdue for getting a dog, already.
Anyway thanks to Chris for her suggestion of including a title in Lt. Dieter Dengler's name; Stan seems to have a lot more respect for the little guy now that he holds rank. Also my mom says to tell that his theme song is this old military running cadence that my Grandpa always used to sing, only substituting the words, "dingle dangle," with you know what. I'll let you in on something, though, his real theme song is this one:
P.S. Can I just say thanks Ann Wilson in this video for helping me establish an Official Hair Goal 2008? Now I know exactly what I want to be aiming for.
P.P.S. Sorry I don't have a great picture to show of Lt. Dieter Dengler. I've been trying to photograph him but he's too swimmy.
Ever since the loss of our two ladybugs, Jumbo and [the other one], I have been thinking nonstop about getting a pet. I've been thinking how I need a living thing around the house to take care of. Something besides Stan. A small thing. This weekend the urge really peaked and all I could think about was how I really needed a pet; how much more settled I would feel and how my life would be improved if we were a pet-having household with a little angibal to care for, now. So yesterday after work I mounted an expedition across the newly dangerous black ice-slick sidewalks of Porter Square and (after a rather anti-climactic experience in what is possibly the dingiest, most dismal pet store run by the most depressing pet store owners ever) came home with someone very special-
His name's Dieter Dengler.
Unless we decide on a different name. Those who are clever at devising names for fish and such (you know who you are) are welcome to enter submissions for consideration. It seems like it would be fun to have a contest or prize or something, but I think we've learned that I'm not so great with the follow-though in this type of event. Plus I'm not hating the name I've come up with, yet, so let's say the contest is this: anybody who comes up with a fish name that is undeniably better than Dieter Dengler may win the prize of naming a fish from somebody's blog one time.
I will furnish a few facts about Dieter to abet your creative processes:
Okay? Good luck everybody!
* Snout-scale abnormalities? Bacterial infestations? Scabrous lesions?
Hello you.
I've missed you over the past couple of days.
My but you're looking good to me right now.
Indeed, you're smashing!
I've really been enjoying our time together you know.
I'd like to keep seeing you- to see more of you, even.
I guess what I'm trying to say is
I think we should take it to the next level.
I'm going to try to keep blogging at a
higher rate of production than I was before the BloMe challenge.
I know it's going to be rough sometimes,
but I will do this, knowing that
for Us
it will all be worth it.
That's how much you've grown to mean to me.
So I want to thank you, honey.
Shit yeah.
