perpetuating thursday

I feel sad today. Can I just say that?

It started with the news report on the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. I was in the locker room covering my face with my hands. I hate what we do to the sea. I hate it so much I could cry. Such beautiful worlds under water, and because they are out of sight out of mind to us, we drill and blast without regard. It's such a horrible mess, and so devastating to our collective soul, I think, that I don't know how we recover or unravel. We need the oil for our system. We need the sea for our soul. I want to cry about it for a very long time.

When I have kids, I will make sure they understand the power of soul, and that every living thing has one and every living thing is precious and sacred and holy. And you must not trample them for your gain. And should you find yourself tempted to trample, you should immediately question the value you are placing on the thing to be gained.

(Except spiders. Fuck spiders, I say.)

(I'm kidding. More or less. But I really dislike them. I'm sorry. I know they serve purpose. I just want them to serve their purposes elsewhere. I could say the same about a few people. Please understand I am innately hypocritical.)

The fact that the Louisiana alarm is sounding only because the spill is creeping so close to shore makes me sad. "Well, at least if the devastation is far away, we won't see it, so it won't matter. But oh my, look, now it's close! Now, it's a tragedy!" I don't understand our collectively short sight. That we have to see and touch to feel the poignancy. I don't get why loss has to knock on our back door before we understand grief. We are so lost.

I feel sad about our systems, and how they perpetuate illness and dysfunction. That a low socioeconomic status puts you at greater risk of countless health complications and nutritional deficiencies and educational failure and psychiatric disorders. And that those health complications and nutritional deficiencies and educational failures and psychiatric disorders nudge you into a revolving door of continued complication, deficiency, failure, and disorder.

I drive down E. 9th every morning. Just north of University, I don't understand the neighborhood. One side of the street Asian. The other side, Hispanic? A small business on the corner -- Latino Realtors? -- gets tagged by the latest Gangsta King every week -- sometimes multiple times. And every week, the owner paints over the latest territorial marking in another neutral color. There are at least 5 different shades of white and tan on the side of this building. God bless the owners for keeping up, but when does it stop, and to what end? The tags are getting larger, more bold.

I did not walk to the plaza today. Too windy. Mama Earth blew my hair and knocked me sideways. She is not pleased. I sat in the grass under a tree near the capitol and let the ants crawl up my arms. I took a book, but I didn't read it. I watched the cars and listened to the discordant scales howled by the wind. I felt small and like I didn't matter, but in a way that was okay.

urban tumbleweed

I watched four young teenage boys skateboard in Nollen Plaza today. One brought a video camera to record all of their sweet moves. Too bad they didn't have any. But I rooted for them. I wanted them to land a jump (small hop) without falling down. But they didn't.

I noticed the tulips along Locust were leaning toward the street. "Toward the street" is also "away from the buildings." They are stretching forward for light or leaning back in unison. Should they sprout legs or wheels, they will crush under a tire for their greed for sun.

The plaza was littered with tumbleweed. I don't know where this brown fringey stuff comes from, but it tangles in oblong blobs and rolls around with the breeze. At first I thought there had been a large rodent massacre. Then I thought a bunch of birds nests had fallen out of the trees. It looked like a tent city for birds. It was neither -- just urban tumbleweed. I wanted to touch it, but I was too comfortable on my bench.

I saw a woman dancing; at least, I thought she was dancing. She was actually just looking for a trashcan while trying to keep her hair out of her face. She looked silly, and it made me like her.

sound proof soul

I wish I didn't mind the sound of chewing. But I do. It is very high on my pet peeve list. I don't like that I have such ordinary pet peeves. Seems like a shameful waste to spend so much energy getting irritated by another person nourishing himself, enjoying his meal, partaking of the fruits of the land. Shit like that. I should be moved to rage by poverty and injustice and harm to children. Not chewing. Ridiculous.

I am listening to my mate, my love, the future father of my children, scrape his bowl with his spoon and slosh his chicken chili around with his tongue, and as much as I love him, I want to punch him square in the face. I want to punch him hard.

His mouth is closed. He isn't being rude.

So sound sensitive. Like my brain and my body have limited space. Sound consumes too much, and I am cranky as all get out. Quiet, please. I need bigger ears. Or smaller ears. I need a sound-proof soul and an impenetrable mood.

Maybe I just need wine.

Dynamic Duos and Trios and Quartets

If I could sit and observe the dynamics between Other People all day long, all week long, I would. I would do it. It's the craziest, most interesting thing to me -- our social animal-ness. We are livestock dressed in pants. Dogs in dresses. Horses in halter tops. Monkeys flying kites and driving cars.

Lots of times I forget I'm just a bird in a tree crapping on cars, and then I take myself too seriously. I always feel a little embarrassed once I remember.

But I love to watch Other People forget they are elephants and cats. I love to watch them buy things and conspire and preen in mirrors. I love to see them unwittingly validate one another and project onto each other and quietly, subtly sabotage the other preening parrots in the cage over something as lame as the biggest seed or the highest perch.

It's not that I love sabotage and reckless projections and conspiracies; I just find the human-animal process kind of fascinating. Don't even get me started on what a thrill I get from mapping out co-dependent relationships. That's so juicy I could faint.

When I was a school psych, my favorite thing about all the meetings I had to go to was observing the relationships between students and parents. I was really just there to talk about reading scores and behavioral plans, but those meetings were very clarifying. I thought I would miss that when I left.

But it turns out I'm not missing a thing. People are everywhere, having goofy relationships all the time, in all contexts. And I love them for it (mostly).

tangerine queen

I'm sitting in my new purple room.

I don't remember the technical name for this particular hue: Queen's Robe, Majesty's Pearl, Fantasy Punch Bowl, Bedouin Bejeweled. It doesn't matter. It's a rich, bright, and vibrant purple.

This shade reminds me of my hair, kinda sorta. I don't have purple hair. But I did once. Closer to maroon, maybe. It used to be that I saw no sense in going to the salon to get a trim. I had to do something new and different every 6 weeks. New cut, new color, New bangs, new whatever. I think I was cataloging identities by hair length.

I think I'm still cataloging, but no longer by my hair.

I don't see the point of white walls. Don't really see the point in ecru or eggshell or beige, either. Feels like a waste. So many colors in buckets, unused. My husband is tolerant. He has quietly brushed on 2 different shades of red, navy, turquoise, 3 shades of green, chocolate. He likes the white. I don't get it. It seems that if you are going to paint everything white, you might also choose to sit in a basement when the sun is out.

I'll try an orange or a yellow next. Luscious Lemon. Tangerine Queen.

too many people

I like to people watch at Nollen Plaza over lunch. Today I sat on a bench by the war protestors. One of them was a woman in a straw hat and she wouldn't stop talking. I don't know what she was talking about, only that the timbre of her voice accompanied every other sound in the plaza. I wondered if she was annoying the other war protestors. I thought it would be funny if they all got into a fist fight. You know that's happened somewhere -- peace activists getting into a big ruckusy fist fight with each other in the middle of a protest.

But it would also be unfortunate (the peace activist fisticuffs), because I bet opposing groups would really work themselves into a froth over the hypocrisy.

And then I thought a lot about how it's likely impossible not to be a hypocrite at one point or another, so we should really give each other a break. We're too many people rolled into one body. We can't be consistent and true at the same time. Actually, sometimes I wonder if maybe we're all just the split personalities of one being, trying to assimilate. Like that John Cusack movie where all the people met up at the creepy motel and discovered they had the same birthday. I liked that movie.

And I thought about what a bleeding heart I can be one minute, and then how much I want to punch someone in the face for breathing loudly the next. And I thought, "Well, I'm not terribly unique, so I bet a lot of people who are mean and irrational some times are actually kind and good other times." So I decided to just start assuming that everyone who is a jerk to me isn't really a jerk all the time, so I should forgive them. Maybe if I do that, then when I'm a jerk, people will recognize that I'm not always a jerk and forgive me, too.

I walked back to work and entered the building a few steps behind a woman who has been overtly rude to me since the day I started. (I don't actually work with her. She's just on the same floor.) A custodian was cleaning the glass on the door and didn't like that we were interrupting his work. The woman and I rode different elevators upstairs.

She walked in the door to our cube farm one arm length in front of me, looked behind her, and then let the door slam in my face. I had to catch the door before it hit me in the face, and it jammed my finger.

I walked to my cubicle and she came over and said something to the effect of, "Can you believe how rude the custodian was?" I thanked the universe for the illustration, had a private chuckle and reminded myself to give her a break. She can't help it. She's too many people fighting for space in one skin.

restructuring.

Today's theme: Restructuring.

Dear Crazy Lady:

As a former mental health professional, I will now think of you as a client. Diagnosis(es): Narcissistic Personality Disorder for sure, possibly complicated by Borderline Personality Disorder. Either way, your personality is in disorder, and that has likely caused a bigger headache for you than you have caused for me.

(But please stop asking people at the gym where I work, because that's psycho and creepy.)

Gratitude:

I will be grateful for crazy ladies and for opportunities to identify and work on my most disagreeable character flaws. Even though it sucks ass and makes me tired.

Also, gratitude for the other more charmingly looney man at the gym who runs around leaping into the air. I know it's creative exercise for you, but for me it's just joy. Every time you leap into the air, I say "Whoopee!" in my head, and it makes me smile.

Perspective:

Over lunch, I rode the bus with a homeless woman, and I watched her watch the streets outside the bus windows. I tried to notice what she noticed. We drove past the swanky shops in the East Village, and we drove past men in suits unlocking BMWs, and people in shorts running on their lunch breaks... and I wondered what they looked like to her. I imagined she and I lived in very different worlds and nothing looked the same.

It seems like an important thing to do -- to wonder what the world looks like to other people.

(I know this post is disjointed. I'm okay with that today.)

the narcissistic nutter butter

I was assaulted by a crazy person today. She's a relatively pretty woman who oozes menace. The juxtaposition of pretty vs. crazy makes her almost diabolical, like I'm witnessing the manifestation of the devil (the devil is bleach blonde, wears colored blue contacts, and always puts on make-up before she works out... in case you are wondering). I may be exaggerating a little bit -- but only a little bit. The woman is a narcissistic nutter butter.

I've been a crazy magnet for a long time (apologies to my therapist friends for the insensitive language). Crazy people pick me out of throngs and tell me things about their old lovers, recite passages from the Bible, remark on my aura, ask me to marry them (4 separate occasions; 4 true stories). It's always made me worry I'm crazy, too, and just haven't caught on, yet.

And this assault came at a weird time, anyway. Commonly accepted image of myself as pleasant and likeable has been put to question over the last 8 months of newness. I guess it's easy to think of yourself as an easy going peace lover when you work by yourself in a classroom or spend your day doing assessments in a school supply closet for so long. The noise of other people is forcing me to exercise bits of self I didn't know were sleeping.

I've been feeling a buzz growing, and the crazy lady, I kind of felt, was spewing this crescendoing collective of anti-P sentiments. This made me feel crazier than I did before, and I really fought the urge to hide under my desk for most of the day.

But I'm not crazy. I just need to keep my mouth shut.

That's all.

we may or may not be tulips.

I've been noticing the tulips along Locust. Red and yellow. Tall and short and full and skinny. Some are taller than the others, and I don't understand why. They are competing for light, and some are winning. All things uniform: soil, exposure to sun. protection from environmental toxins -- why are they not of equal height?

Originally, I thought this was an argument for genetics and predestination. All this stuff about free will made garbage by the unpredictable appearance of perennials. "Of course we are tulips," I told myself. We are of disproportionate bulbs packed in unequal soil -- tulips.

Because I think that. Not tulips, necessarily -- sometimes trees, birds, creeping charlie, and river weeds. I think we are nature--sprouting bits competing for light--and we flail when we forget what we are. (I don't ever want to believe I am better or more evolved than an oak tree.) In the moments I pass tulips on Locust, I think our success and failure must be predestined, and all plans are for naught. All that time I spent practicing the piano was silly. I was already as good as I would get.

Then, I notice that I am thinking, and I doubt that the tulips are. They aren't making choices about their health, aren't choosing to increase their intake of chlorophyll and deliberating over root calisthenics. They do as they do what they do. I don't.

And so I wonder why we've brains at all, as much as they muck up the joint -- needle with the natural, convince us we are separate, unique, the evolutionary supreme. I think my life purpose must be to quiet the brain, and just grow to the light.