Books I've Never Read

Hi. 
I realize that I have not updated this in several months. Formal complaints have been lodged*. And you have my sincerest apologies, Seven People Who Honestly Care**, but I just haven't been struck by the bloggiest thoughts of late. Which is probably a good thing, considering the archival abundance of sad-blogging. 
I am super not-sad right now. 

But never fear! This one's totally got sad. Even if it's not totally true. Parts are completely true in that they happened. Parts are completely true in that I just re-read about them in an old dream journal***.  And parts are completely made up. 

Anyway, I might do more of this. Stories about books I've never read. We'll see.

*******

I've never ready any Jane Austen.

I told that to someone I thought I loved once, and they whispered 'me, neither', and I thought that meant something. 

There's a cultural assumption that women love Jane Austen, and that's probably why I never bothered. Besides, plucky heroines aggravate, pining is a bore, matchmaking is gruesome. I gave Bridget Jones a shot, but watching someone whimper their way between a snooze and a sleazeball tries the nerves. Of course no one likes the singles table.

At a reception I regretted attending as soon as I arrived, a woman spent twenty minutes complaining: “I am so hungry. I might literally faint. Do you think they have any bread? Honey?”

Because of course there was a Honey, a dead-eyed hunk starting into his beer, counting the seconds until he could have another without her asking if he shouldn’t slow it down some. She pawed at his elbow. “Honey? Can you ask if there’s bread?”

I signaled the waiter for another and told them about my morning: While emptying the bathroom wastebasket into a larger bag, a roach tumbled out. A giant roach, with what looked like a second roach emerging from its rear end. By the time I realized what it was: a giant egg sac, engorged with a billion little pre-roaches - it had maneuvered its way to the outside of the metal basket, which I tapped against the toilet until it fell into the bowl, and I flushed it away.

Hungry Woman was silent for a gorgeous moment before she asked why I would tell a story like that. I finished my wine. It was really good wine. The waiter appeared at my shoulder. Honey got up to get another beer.

I said: “I bet you’re not as hungry now.”

Do you want me to tell you that’s where I met the man I thought I loved? Of course it wasn’t. I didn’t make a single new friend that night. I don't live in a very Austen world.

One night, I told the man I thought I loved that I loved him. He'd said it first. I thought that meant something, too.

But then I started having these dreams.

In the dreams, we: myself, the man I thought I loved, and my dog, ran through absurd, Dali-esque airports, everything melting or turning into mountains. We were trying to find something: the gate, the plane, help. In the end, someone had to choose: the flight, my dog, each other - the situations varied. But every time, he left on his own.  

It is probably unreasonable to hold someone accountable for things they did in your subconscious. But he left us, every time. So maybe I got a little cold after that. Maybe I let things get a little strange.

He moved. Not far, but far enough.  

A friend told me, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

I said: “Bullshit. Absence only abstracts.”

I wondered if any of Ms. Austen’s characters understood that love can exist, yet mean absolutely nothing at the same time.

A few months after I was pretty sure it was over - mostly over, at least - I started having a different dream. We’d be in a classroom, or a prairie house: me, some other people, and my dog. We’d pass a lovely afternoon until funnel clouds appeared on the horizon. Everyone scattered. Some took off through the fields, some went in search of a basement. Other people stayed in the classroom, the prairie house. My dog and I always stayed. We hid under a table, he laid across my chest and I covered his head with my arms, his eyes with my hands. When it was over, we crawled out through the wreckage together, to see who else we could find.

There’s a lot of love in a life, in a person. I don’t think we’ll always know what to do with it all. You might have to let some of it pass. Like books you’ll never read. Pining’s such a waste of time.

*Seriously. Three people have lodged sincere, formal complaints.

** I really really do appreciate anyone who reads this, ever. Even if you only hate-read it just to be able to tell me to shut up in your head, that is still totally cool and I recognize it is a legitimate vital brain function and am honored by your selection.

***Of course I did.

Recycling for the Reluctant Adult

Do you ever think about the new people in your old spaces?

I do. Mostly in the fall. Winter, too. Mostly at night. Mostly in regard to boys I used to love - some of them I still love, but differently; will always love, but differently.

Their roofs, their balconies, their fire escapes. Stoops, backyards. Private outdoor spaces, places that make the universe seem like maybe it belongs to you. Walls covered in graffiti. Tree tops. Twinkly blankets of stars overhead; skies so clouded with people and their lights, it's all a dappled purple above. Radios playing, rain falling, sirens squealing. Or quiet. So quiet you can hear the breath move through your lungs.

Places you will never go again. Places that would never look the same, even if you could. Perspectives shift, they do not play.

New people on those balconies now, occupying those barely-outside spaces; drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, considering the bricks across the alley. Hearts breaking out of their chests, bored out of their minds. Lost to everything, desperate for anything. Falling in love, falling out of love, hiding from love entirely. Always feeling like they are on the verge of something.

Just like you, just like you, just like you. Just like you.

Girls you will never meet. You're all connected, though, right through. Through the railings you've held, the stairs you've climbed. The tears you've shed in bathrooms; the smiles that come when there's not even a reason, the moment just takes you, it's too perfect, it's fleeting, and you know it. We miss those moments all the time, sometimes just seconds after it's too late. But when you manage to catch one....I don't surf, of course, but I imagine it must be something like catching a wave. I can see how they might be transcendental the same way.

Memory is a double edged sword. It can be sharp on one side, dull on the other. It cannot be trusted. But it is infinitely valuable. A moment you couldn't wait to get out of ends up being one you return to over and over again. The lessons you didn't enjoy learning: how to admit to yourself that you're wrong, how to recognize you're making a mistake in the middle of it. That's probably the shit that makes us better able to jump up and catch the next one. To see it coming, to appreciate it while it's happening. Metaphorically speaking.

I don't know what even made me think of all this. Other than it's winter, and I started writing this at night, and I'm thinking of people I've loved.

A Post Apocalyptic Year In Review

"That's all right. I like to have my heart broken." - Kurt Vonnegut

***

"Getting my heart broken was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

I said that to a friend last night. We were standing in the kitchen, talking about boys*. Technically, I was crouching in front of the fridge, trying to find a spot to shove the broccoli, so she didn't see my face. I'd had the thought before, but I'd never said it out loud. And I'm glad it was a weirdly semi-private moment of revelation, just me staring down some hummus and a giant rogue beet, because it almost bowled me over, how true it was. I didn't say it to comfort, or provide perspective. I said it because it was goddamn true. I don't think I could have made it through the last twelve months otherwise.

It's a storm at first, of course, and you're just one tiny person alone on the open ocean, in a terribly leaky raft. In the dark. Shit looks pretty dire. It's like all the scary parts of 'The Odyssey', but with cheaper wine. It's fine, though. You'll get through it. Because you can get through anything, you know. And once the sky clears, and the churning stops, there's a gratitude: I didn't know I could do that. A clarity: you can see again. It looks different, everything's been rearranged, this new landscape is totally unfamiliar, but all these new things: caves and craters, majestic gnarly trees along the shoreline, sea boulders baked in the sun - they've been there all along. All this upheaval has simply allowed them to reveal themselves. Get acquainted. Explore it all. You'll only get better for it.
Here's what I found:

Tardy Hardy: Sometime in April, while scrambling to make an early morning appointment in Brooklyn, I realized my perpetual lateness (understand that I am referring to not only PERPETUAL tardiness, but also, in many cases, extremely exaggerated tardiness. Sometimes I show up literally hours late for shit, and no one is surprised) was a primarily a twisted attempt at keeping a stranglehold on youth. Via staggering immaturity. That it was sort of complete bullshit to be all 'Oh, I just don't understand how clocks work' (WHAT? I know! I SERIOUSLY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME) while actually never having missed a flight in my life**. Including morning flights. And those early morning appointments in Brooklyn. Because I apparently do understand levels of consequences, and if I can navigate those, I can probably figure out rudimentary time management, right? All this dallying to way-beyond-the-last-minute, followed by tizzies and scrambling was just ME creating unnecessary hoops to jump through, with the sole purpose of making myself crazy, because youthful people are harried and crazy, and old people are calm and boring. Then I was like 'LOOK AT THAT CRAZY TRAIN OF ILLOGIC, YOU PROBABLY DON'T HAVE TO PUT MUCH EXTRA EFFORT INTO KEEPING THINGS NUTTY AROUND HERE, ALSO, WHY ARE YOU YELLING, THERE IS NO REASON TO YELL. CALM DOWN.'

Then I remembered that I like being really calm and I sort of hate young people. That a hundred times in the last six months I've said "You could not pay me to relive my twenties" and meant it all the way down to my core***. That my constant commitment to unreliability is not proving anything to anyone. That it's actually pretty selfish. Not that I've actually done anything about this, but it was a new perspective to consider: I can hang on to my immaturity as long as I'd like****. It will leave my youth in the dust. And I get to be completely calm about it.

Puff Puff Pass: Related, I quit smoking. Considering I will basically hold you down and slather you in sunscreen if you so much as think about exposing your bare face to a UV ray, it started feeling hypocritical to be so actively contributing to my own dermal wrinkling*. It's the same misguided immaturity bullshit. Again, my rampant disrespect for my own little lung sacs is not proving anything to anyone. No one cares. Why does this need to be part of my identity? Because when I got down to it, that was the whole attachment: 'This is something I do'. That's an ivy-and-vines way of thinking: such a nice contrast at first, a highlight to the whole, some lovely organic decoration that will, if left unchecked, eventually obscure everything underneath. That will, eventually, tear apart the very thing it's anchored to. Cut it off, man. There's nothing to be scared of. You're still you under there. So, yeah. I quit smoking. Cigarettes**.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, In the Summertime: That was my mother's personal jingle for summer vacations when I was a kid. She'd start singing it before we even pulled out of the driveway, before we'd even packed up the car. She was so excited. My mother is not exactly the emotionally effusive sort, so it just kind of radiated out of her, this sincere joy. On the highway, my brother and I would cast semi-withering glances at each other across the backseat: Calm down, lady. We are not even close to there yet.

It wasn't until this year, this grindy year of work travel, emotional mountain climbing, coupled with the steadily amplifying atmospheric DC grime, and the undeniable reality that I am getting fucking OLD and all this shit tires me out in ways no one adequately prepares you for... Of course we did not understand my mother's elation back then, I'm pretty sure I only have the most basic comprehension of it now, considering she was like, a full-time nurse with two full-time children and car payments and shit, and I take pictures of pretty houses, and am responsible for solely my astonishingly well-behaved dog. I have a SmarTrip card. That like, never has money on it. And yet - the weeks leading up to vacation were like the first three weeks of December when you still believe in Santa. I might be old now, but I can still recognize that sort of anticipation, the kind that oozes all through you, drips over your heart like honey.

And goddamn if it wasn't one of the best vacations I've ever had. I have a habit of tempering my expectations, lest I be disappointed by the end result, but I didn't here, and I'm glad - because I wasn't. Fuck man, Maine. That whole 'Vacationland' motto is NOT hyperbole. I've been to Maine before, I've loved Maine before, but not like this. This was like a balm. In the kayak, collecting mussels off the rocks, water so blue it was black in places, cold like only ancient things can be, I told Kyle: "Whatever is wrong with me, this makes better." It is a simple thing to say, a tremendous thing to realize. And it's inside me now, I can go back any time I want.

Later that week, after midnight, sitting around a table with two of my favorite people in the world, I laughed so hard I cried (for a variety of reasons), so hard I had to get up and leave the table. I walked the five steps to the bathroom, slid my spine down along the door frame until I was laughing and crying on the linoleum, sitting and rocking and laughing and crying and eventually just straight up crying, these pure love tears, straight from this well of joy I can't always get to on my own. I wish I'd thought to taste them at the time - I know it's impossible, but part of me believes they wouldn't even have been salty. Then I pulled myself together and rejoined the boys at the table. We went outside and sat on the dock and watched for fireworks - there were fireworks almost every night that week, like exclamation points, like confetti, like even the sky was as happy as we were and had to let us know. We were quiet, and we sat in a row, and looked up at the stars until we almost fell asleep.

So I get it, Momma. I get the song now.

Love you guys.



*'Standing in Kitchens, Talking About Boys' is an alternate working subtitle for 'The Katie Neuner Story'.
** ...because I got there too late. I've never missed a flight because I got there too late. I have missed two flights due to distractions in the airport bar. Statistically, this is sort of amazing.
***Unless we're talking about a LOT of money, and only my late twenties. What? I've got loans, bitches.
****Boom Pow Surprise! That probably wasn't the conclusion you were hoping for. Whatever, it's honest. 

* Remember that early 90s PSA where these girls get their friend to quit by appealing to her vanity and crumpling up a photo of her face? That works, PSA people! It just takes like, 16 years.
**The caveat to this being: if I lose any of this hard-earned smoky vocal seasoning, I will suck down packs of Parliaments until it returns. I mean, duh, it was sort of the whole point. That, and being able to duck out of any social interaction whenever I got bored.

Dive Bars and Door Handles

A hundred years ago, I dated a guy who worked at my favorite dive bar.

I met him on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon. I was with M and F, we'd come from brunch to kill time before a movie. Or maybe to stretch out the day. I don't really remember. We just wanted someplace dark and cheap.

Inside it was empty, save a scatter of professional drinkers who'd been there so long you took them in like the wallpaper, or the pool table, all part of the whole. This place opens at 8:00 in the morning; aside from vending machine snacks sporting last-generation packaging, it never serves food.

The Wire was playing on the television behind the bar. I can talk about The Wire all day, and that's what I did, or would have done, if it wasn't time for the movie before I knew it*. He told me to come back for trivia night and I did. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

He was smart and funny and weird and probably not quite as outstandingly handsome as I remember. And best of all: he was wholly, resoundingly, viscerally damaged. The first night we hung out, he told me, on the way to buy papers, about his terrible adoption, concluding with "so I really can't trust anyone". At 31, I'm yelling 'Oh, honey, NO' at the computer. At 25...you might as well draw in cartoon hearts for my eyes in whatever mental picture you're painting.

Our schedules were entirely incompatible. We'd meet for breakfast dates in the middle of the week, lovely suspended early mornings in fancy restaurants, playing pretend, baby grown-ups in leather booths surrounded by people on real business.

On weekend nights I went over to his place after the bar closed. We'd lie in bed smoking, watching the clouds float silvery across a navy ceiling. I'd think about the ocean at night, trace the outlines of tattoos on his arm while he told me things that made me sad, made me feel bad that inside my head all I saw was a glorious sleeping ocean. We could do this for a very, very long time. He'd talk over the movie playing as background noise, some 80s romantic comedy he'd act offended I hadn't seen, before putting it on purely for pretense. I've seen Lover Boy half a dozen times; I have no idea what that movie's about**.

In the mornings, I'd walk him to the bar, where there'd already be at least one greasy-haired man in a rough cloth army jacket leaning against the wall outside. It felt weird to kiss goodbye in front of them, we'd both laugh and he'd get his keys. I'd walk home, across the Common, picking my way over the loose bricks in City Hall Plaza. I'd go home to get Bay and we'd wander North End side streets, and I wouldn't feel happy, exactly, but like I'd helped someone else be less sad, and maybe that was important.

There were some red flags. I mean, in addition to the four paragraphs of red flags preceding this one. I didn't even notice. It's almost charming, in a nostalgic, Horror Home Movies sort of way. In the end, I learned some important things about myself, about life. I learned that any conversation beginning with the words "Baby, I have a third job I haven't told you about" is not ending any place good.

It really didn't last long. One weird thing happened, then another. We both acted like children. Like I said, it was a hundred years ago - we practically were. It was over by the summer, and I never saw him again.

The job I started a few months later involved a new commute, one that required me to walk by that bar. (Of course, it wasn't a requirement, just the simplest way to get from the T to the office.) It was three months before I took the direct route in the morning, six months before I'd walk by at night. I'd duck my head, scurry by the green door, try to steal a peek through the window. It was almost a full year before I worked up the courage to go inside. Of course, once I finally did, he wasn't there.

It's been a long time. I still go back to that bar when I'm in town, it's still one of my favorites. The same woman owns it, and she's always behind the bar. Every time I'm there, at least a little part of me wants to ask 'whatever happened to...' I'll never ask, though. He's vanished, essentially, the kind of person you can't even find on the internet. Who's nowhere on the internet? It doesn't seem like a great sign. I've made up my own ending to that story, and I hope it's close enough to the truth.

I don't have a lot of regrets, but I do think about that green door sometimes. The one I skittered past in the evenings. I think about what would have happened if I'd opened the door earlier, if he'd still been there. I've had the conversation in my head a hundred times, a hundred different ways, but the core is still the same. Nothing changes - there was nothing to fix, and no way to fix it, it was just the end. But we both say 'I'm sorry' and we hug. Then we laugh about something, and he makes fun of me and I swat at his arm, and then we're both quiet for a second, and then we smile. And then I say 'I have to go', and I go. And it's better than it is now, and it's better than the other way it ended.

Q: Wherever you are, I hope it's wonderful.

Everyone else: Open those green doors.


*I remember now, it was before the movie. We saw 'No Country for Old Men'.
**Patrick Dempsey's a teenage gigilo, right? I'm pretty sure that's what it's about.

Fuck You February Part Eleven Million

A big part of achieving my goal of 'not falling apart in the face of every fucking thing in my life' this year has been 'being uncomfortably honest about some personal shit on the Internets'. My parents seem to be okay with it, and the only person whose real name I use is Kyle's (dude, I don't know why I have like, no concern for your privacy? I'm so sorry. Love you!) so I suppose I'll just continue in this vein.

Most of my time in the next 30 days will be consumed by The February Project. The February Project consists of 'not getting completely, utterly, soul-crushingly depressed in the month of February'. Which is REALLY HARD, guys. I know, 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...but the dread leading up to this month is unreal. Stuff REALLY DOES GO TO SHIT. In the last 90 hours I've had fights with two of my closest friends, and another is MIA, when I really need them not to be. Another one flipped our shit completely. My computer keeps threatening to die. I don't fight with friends! Friends don't disappear on me! (I disappear on them...recognizing a taste of your own medicine makes it no less bitter going down.) Flipped shit makes me cry a whole bunch. And computer, I need you. I need you to watch television shows I steal with my brother's HBO.GO password when I literally cannot work up the mental strength to do anything else.

Two of the hardest things to describe to people who've never experienced them are depression and anxiety. Normal people get sad, and normal people get nervous, but they don't seem to get the cloud that penetrates every pore, all the way into your bones, pumps through your blood, chanting; 'don't, don't, don't' when you should, should, should; 'it's not worth it' when it most definitely is; 'why bother', when there are so many reasons; and 'you are, forever, undeniably, a piece of shit', when that is certainly deniable, and nothing is forever.

Depression is a heaviness that settles into every crevice of you, your body, your brain. It makes everything simple seem impossible: getting out of bed, getting in the shower. You actually congratulate yourself for walking the dog, and this makes you feel worse, although he seems to appreciate it. Food loses its taste in your mouth. You think 'maybe seeing people will make me feel better' but then you don't want to see anyone, anyway, because you are just a little grey cloud personified, and there's a yogurt stain on these sweatpants, and oh my goodness, just the idea of finding other, relatively clean sweatpants is too much, please can I just hide in bed and find a marathon of some HBO programming that I've already watched twice? Yes? Okay.

In no way is this relaxing. Because the entire time you're submerged in your little foxhole of dread, currents of anxiety zap you at irregular, unpredictable moments. And anxiety demons are judgmental as shit. Anxiety is like a spider. She spins webs all through your body, settling wherever she sees fit. She never commits, never announces. She likes to make sure you're as uncomfortable as possible, always, right in your own skin.

The worst part is knowing not everyone feels this way. Lots of people do, but not enough so you can call in: 'I can't come into the office today because the world is too awful'. So you take a lot of deep breaths, and try not to cry at the bus when it's late. Try not to cry in the bathroom at work when you can't find a file. Try not to cry on the walk home for no reason at all.

I always want to go back to New Orleans when I'm like this. Isn't that strange? Maybe it's not strange at all. I suppose it's a place I associate with being crazy, and a place where being not-quite-right is okay. A lot more okay than it is here. Here: 'there's medication for that'. I know there is. Meds are a good thing - a great thing, the best thing - for a lot of people with wacko brain chemistry, but they aren't for me. So instead I'll peruse Craig's List every day, finding all the adorable apartments I could rent for so much cheaper than anything here. I'll watch Treme and cry a bunch, because they're always in my favorite bars (but why is no one ever in the park?) and David Simon can make you miss a place like you miss a person, the heart, the soul, the good parts, the terrible bits.

And for perspective, I'll read 'The Awakening' again, because as long as I don't feel like my only option is walking into the ocean forever, I must be doing something okay.

The Middle

I've told you about the beginning.

Now we're in the middle.

The middle is okay.

The middle is the part where you write new things. You re-write old things. You find new songs. You find new meaning in old songs. You see new people. Otis and Aretha have never been more relevant. You still drink too much and eat too little. You wear old, stolen shirts to walk the dog at 1:00 in the morning, asking him if he has too much energy to sleep. It's all you, though. You know.

The middle is when you have days you wake up smiling, so full of life even when it's raining, especially when it's raining. Your life is full of more love than you ever could have believed.

The middle is when you have days of sadness that knock you out so hard, you can barely leave your room.

The middle is when those sad days have you calling people you love, and they fill you in ways you couldn't have imagined. You call crying, you hang up smiling.

Maybe the middle is what it's all about. I have dozens of unfinished stories: perfect beginnings, heartbreaking endings, but they're empty because I've never figured out the middle.

The middle. The middle is the hardest part.

On Heartbreak

I've been sitting on this one for a long time. I was actually mostly out of the woods by the time I wrote it - these emotions are so last season - but I didn't have the guts to post it, and then it felt like it had been too long...but the Olympics ended yesterday? And I am like, legitimately sad about it. Sad enough that it reminded me of this. I know - I care way too much about the Olympics. Anyway - people much smarter than me have said that to write well you have to write bravely. Consider this splitting the difference. (Note, DAD: this was a long time ago! I'm totally okay now! Promise! I just left it in the present tense for effect.)
....

For most of my life, I didn't really believe in heartbreak. People get upset when things are over, sure, but let's not blow it out of proportion with hyperbole and vaguely Victorian medicalesque nonsense. You're sad. Deal with it. (I'm sure most of you see where this is going.)

I'll admit now, I did have the tiniest feeling, deep down, that an experience that seemingly universal probably had some foundation in truth. It must have happened to someone, sometime, somewhere. I just thought it had to be huge. You cheated on me with your secretary after I had all your babies! I gave you my bone marrow! And my youth! You know. Like 'Waiting to Exhale'. Or that really sad Dixie Chicks song from their first album. Oh, don't pretend like you don't know the one I'm talking about.

I didn't realize how small it could be: I am not where you are. I love you, but. A dozen tiny truths. I guess it only takes one kind of heartbreak to recognize all the others.

I'm not so great with feelings. I would prefer we not talk about my own. Yours? Are healthy and valid and we can discuss them all day and all night. I want to hear the deepest darkest stuff that you've never told anyone. I want to tell you how beautiful and wonderful and human and okay it all is. Because it is. But me? No, really. You don't want to hear about any of that.

But here I am, with all these feelings, and I don't know where to put any of them. This would probably be better suited to a journal, but I try to be honest here; I might as well tell you what I've learned.

What I've learned: There are good things and bad things about heartbreak.

The Bad Things:

Crying. There is so much crying! Even in the morning, when everything should be fine! The day is fresh, bitches! But I'm randomly crying too hard to make eyeliner work and I NEED TO BRIGHTEN THESE WHITES UP, GODDAMNIT. Or everyone will think that I'm stoned. Which... I'm so sad, okay! No judging.

Insecurity. If I were better, everything else would be, too. Negative self-thought takes on a heightened, vicious intensity that I wish I didn't remember. Those, fun, constant reminders that I will never be pretty, skinny, funny, smart, clever, kind, whatever, whatever, whatever enough, and this is just one more example. Dear kk, you will never be enough, so sorry. Go ahead and cry some more.

Drinking. I was drinking a lot, kids. I like my grapes as it is, right, but this is a lot. As someone with an acute family history of alcoholism, I try to pay attention to the amount I drink, and when I drink, and where I drink, and, most importantly, why I drink. The why is pretty clear here. The good news is that I'm mostly drinking wine, at home, after work. One of the very few times I've appreciated my 9-to-5: I have to hold it together. If I were already living the bohemian writer's life of my dreams, I'd be spending all day in my gothic-monstrous bed, leaving only to replace the box of wine when the bladder's drained, or to stew myself in tears (and more wine) in my giant clawfoot bathtub, or to go outside and throw the fruit of my lemon tree against the wall. Fuck lemonade.

Stress and It's Hormonal By-Products. Look at this stress! Fantasy-Me is down in my garden throwing fucking lemons against a wall! I love lemons, what am I doing! Combine that with a stress-atrophied-appetite (a week of watermelon salad for dinner?), and you get...a period clocking in well over a week late. Oh yeah, THAT was fun.

Anger. I'm angry. And I hate it so much. I'm sure it's not unique to me, and I'm willing to bet it's a pretty common female thing: this deep, soul-core level of discomfort with being angry.  I would turn anger anywhere but out. Self-destruction is eminently appealing. It's actually my default mechanism.Which, brings me to:

The Good Things:

I Am So Much Better Than I Used To Be. I'm not quite wired correctly, and that default set to 'self-destruct' is the trickiest of my electrical misfirings. It goes a little something like this: get handed a disappointment, swallow every feeling, emotion, all the real things, pack those down. Now, go seek validation from people who don't care about you while poisoning yourself as quickly and thoroughly as possible. In the face of every decision, make the one that will, in the end, hurt you the most. Frame it like you're having fun, like you're happy, like this is what you want, because you're a 'free spirit*' who lives on their own terms! Ignore that everyone who knows more than three facts about you can see through that bullshit entirely. In fact, ignore those people, those ones who know you and actually give a shit about you. They're not going to be any help with this.

That didn't happen this time. This time...I talked about it. This time I stayed home and thought about it, about me, about life, about how so often the things we want, immediately, now, are not the things we most need, are not things we'd know how to handle if they were handed to us. This time I didn't run for strangers to tell me things I wanted to hear, I didn't black out to forget the things I didn't. And that may seem like old hat for those of you who've figured out how to process your emotions without wanting to tear your own skin off, but it's huge for me. So how'd I get here? I have no idea, really. But I try to remember the following:

Long Walks and Deep Breaths. I've mentioned this favorite trinket from Pops's Cabinet of Curiosities and Coping Methods. There is nothing you do not feel - if not better, at least more settled - about after a long walk. I rely on this to the point where I don't understand how anyone's able to think if they don't walk around, by themselves, for at least an hour a day. Seriously, get a dog, and just do this. (I suppose you don't need the dog, but it helps, trust me.)

Love...Kinda Fixes Everything. So, so fucking tragically cheesy, but it's true. I don't mean 'Romantic Love' because that noise is bullshit, clearly, but as Virginia Woolf said (oh yeah, I am going to quote V.Woolf in an essay with 'heartbreak' in the title. Vaginal checkmate!) "Love has a thousand shapes." So try them all on. Push aside the anger and the stress and the sad, and you are - I promise you - still capable of tremendous, limitless love. Apply that shit to everything like a balm. Love what you're going through, love what you're learning, love all the people who come into your life, and love them no less when they go away. And don't forget yourself. Even if you don't want to, because maybe part of you even likes wallowing in the shit, because you deserve that! It's your RIGHT to feel like a bag of run-over kiwi fruit: just the happiest, sunniest little treat until BAM, and it's pathetic, squishy guts are splattered all over the road. But if you just love everything instead, you realize...

It's All Going To Be Okay. Also! Cheese City up in here! This one should be printed on the bottom of a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree. Oh, that's 'Hang In There'. Either way, under the tree, the part of the poster you can't always see, is a field of wild flowers where the kitty can drop down and take a nap. Bonus points if they're poppies and the kitten gets a quick opium high for their troubles. That's what I mean, though! Like 'Ahh, fuck I'm falling out of this tree!!!! SHIT. HANG ON. FREAK OUT. Or, wait. Or -- how about I not dislocate my shoulder and just drop down here take a quick snooze in this expanse of brightly colored narcotic flower plants? Awesome.' So - just let go. 

It's all going to be okay, I promise. Somewhere there's a sunny field of sleeping kittens just waiting to give you cool drugs. Give them all hugs for me.

Loves, 
kk

And ps, go eat something. I promise a vague terror about suspected stowaways in your uterus is NOT going to make this shit better.


*I hate - hate hate hate - being called a 'free spirit'. It's dismissive. It's infantilizing. I know, nice person who is trying to give me a compliment, sort-of, that you don't mean insult here, but please, think of the tone of voice you use, what you're trying to convey when you refer to someone as a 'free-spirit' in conversation. Just because I don't care about owning a house or a car and I want to talk about your emotional health does not mean I'm a woodland sprite who lives in a magical forest in a quirked-out glitter dimension. I am a relatively wealth-poor person who lives in a city and thinks we're all just a little too divorced from our actual Selves. Some people probably don't mind at all. Just - avoid it, with me. Please. Thank you. 

A Dear James Letter

Dear James,

Maybe you remember me. It's okay if you don't. We met last year: a Sunday afternoon in early April, on the train from New York to DC. You sat near the front of the Quiet Car, by the window. By the time I boarded, it was one of the only open seats left. You indicated no one was sitting there, and did not seem at all alarmed when I collapsed shoulder-hauls of duffel bag and camera bag and giant purse and a plastic shopper of extra shit I could not manage to cram into my suitcase onto the seat next to you, then rustled through it all for ten minutes until I found what I was looking for and settled the fuck down.

I was about halfway through Anthony Doerr's 'Memory Wall'. There are those among us who feel very strongly about Mr. Doerr's stories. Specifically, we feel like 'keep small-talking at me while I'm in one of his worlds and I will fucking cut you.' I'm one of those people.

You did seem like a legitimately nice guy, what with the nice questions and the offering to get me something from the cafe car every time you got up. Even though I declined (politely, the manners don't waver easily, trust), and I tried to really shut it down by getting my own wine at one point, I still appreciated that you brought me back a water and a bag of pita chips. I am human. Pita chips are always nice.

So James, thank you for your lovely manners - buying a girl a water is actually quite chivalrous. Rare when a man meets a woman and doesn't immediately encourage her to drink. I was about to start drinking, but you couldn't have known that. I also wanted to thank you for the book recommendation. And apologize, a little.

When you noticed what I was reading, you made a thoughtful comment and mentioned you worked for...the publisher? I don't know, so sorry, I was straight-up half-listening to you. There's this thing, about being a woman travelling alone: creepy dudes are always out there, waiting to mack on you. And the best way to deal with this is by being totally aloof and writing in your beat-to-shit journal or like, crying over short stories or something that makes you look kind of too-intense and crazy. It's like - if you're a raccoon trying to make it through a field of coyotes, sometimes your best ploy is to pretend like you have rabies or some shit. Walk right through that coyote field in broad daylight wearing something insane. Coyote's be like 'woah, why is that raccoon out in the daylight wearing a long t-shirt and rain boots? Raccoons are nocturnal, bro! That rac's got the R for sure.' And the other coyotes are all 'Word. Leave that crazy ass alone. Also, we congregate in fields now? A whole field of coyotes? This is threatening as shit.'

Anyways. It had been a long week, and I was in Rabid Raccoon mode. It's a self-preservation thing. But my interest in self-preservation does not eclipse my interest in book recommendations, so when you mentioned Karen Russel's novel 'Swamplandia!' I asked you to write it down. And you did. And I ignored you for the rest of the trip, aside from exchanging a giggle over the old man being MAD DRACONIAN about the Quiet Car rules. You got off at the stop before Union Station. That must be someplace in Maryland. After you left, and said something lovely about meeting me, the woman across the aisle asked me if I knew you. I said no, and she proceeded to recap everything you'd done to her seat-mate, who'd boarded the train in Baltimore, closing with "I've never seen anyone be so nice." Then I kind of felt like a dick.

'Swamplandia!' followed me around for the next year. We must have met right before it's release, and Ms. Russell got mad press all through 2011. I kept running across it, and I kept not buying it. A book and I need to have a moment. I need to feel something, or find it someplace random, I don't know. I buy books compulsively, so I've set up really vague criteria that prevents me from buying too many, and allows a purchase when I really want it.

A few weeks ago - it had been almost exactly a year - I was in New York again, killing time between site visits when I wandered into the Strand. And there it was, a half-off Staff Pick, paperback and everything. I wasn't convinced - I carried it around the store to see if we bonded, like I do with a dress I'm not 100% sure about. Next thing I knew, I'd lost 75 minutes in there, and I just had to commit to whatever was in my arms and cash out.

I forgot all about it until I unpacked back in DC. I didn't start reading it until last week.  And...I tore through it in like, two days. That book was so amazing, James, thank you! I did love it! Exactly as much as you told me I would! And it's made me think about you, a little. I probably should have been nicer. I probably shouldn't treat everyone like they're part of a band of highly organized coyotes trying to maul my face off. I should probably be open and accepting and engaging, because there's all this love in my heart, and I should remember that people can enrich my life in myriad unexpected ways.

But really, James, fuck it. Whatever. It's fine. Because maybe if I'd talked to you, really talked to you, we would have become the best of friends, and you'd be a real and trusted source of perspective and love in my life. Or, maybe, you'd be one of those guys who texts me at 11.00 on Sunday night all 'what are you up to?' and I'm like 'Listening to New Edition and GChatting with D in my sweatpants, why?' and you, terrifyingly, respond 'I'm outside your apartment...I was in the neighborhood for a completely bullshit reason, because no one is ever in this neighborhood, but want to hang out?' and then we have to walk through why drop-bys are unacceptable, and no, the fact that you're 'already here' doesn't invalidate that. Ever. No. You have to go home. Unless...wait. Did you bring anything cool? Like a really fancy brownie with ganache from one of those pretty yuppie bakeries I pretend to hate? Season Two of the Sopranos? Xanax? Chai? Seriously, you didn't bring anything cool? Go home. And then I ignore your texts for two months, and you leave these really mean 2am voicemails about what a bitch I am. For not abandoning an evening of looking at pictures of crazy unicorn dresses on the internets with Miss D for your rude ass. It is Sunday goddamn night, bitch, please, the Amazing Race is on.
And then everything's awful.

This way, I write you a sort-of nice letter on my insane blog and thank you for bringing this amazing book into my life, and I'm totally going to read her short story collection now, too. See, James? Aren't you glad I didn't give you my number? We could have done this in person.

Seriously, though, everyone. Read 'Swamplandia!'

Sweat It Out

For Halloween 2008, I was Amy Winehouse. It was the illest costume ever. On seeing photos, my own brother was like 'You make an incredibly convincing crackhead'. (Also, no hate here. I am a huge huge huge Amy Winehouse fan, this was a tribute costume. It just happened to be an uncanny one.)

Kyle took all the pictures of the night, and I'm glad he took approximately five minutes longer than I wanted to wait to post the pictures on Facebook, because I had a fortunate realization, leading me to send him the following message - on Facebook.

Yo,

I was going to be like 'PLEASE PUT UP THE HALLOWEEN PICTURES ALREADY' but then I was like 'wait, in the 'morning after' photos I'm totally wearing sweatpants that I stole from some dude I hooked up with this summer and we're facebook friends and I don't want him to see those pictures and be like 'OH, NOW I REMEMBER WHAT I DID WITH THOSE PANTS' because they're absolutely the kind of pants that a person would drive themselves nuts trying to find, because they're the most perfect sweatpants ever, and I don't want to give them back.

And I actually only thought of this because that guy just called and I think God sort of text-messaged my brain like "MAKE SURE KYLE KNOWS TO TELL YOU BEFORE HE POSTS THE PICTURES SO YOU CAN UN-TAG YOURSELF" because I don't know if I'm going to see this guy again, but if I do, I definitely don't want him to bring up the pants, because he's a Republican, so I don't see it going anywhere, but I foresee a long, happy life for those pants, and I am TOTALLY IN IT.

Guess what happened?

And remember, the life of kk is sort of an inverted romantic comedy, so everything works out in the end. By which, I mean:

I still rock those sweatpants on the regular - and now they're all shrunken and frayed and perfect and a wonderful part of my home life. And I have no idea what happened to that Republican guy. Although we probably are still Facebook friends.

Winter 2010, Nutshellized

"Right behind lack of confidence, and right before lack of knowledge about general American History, lack of manners is one of my ultimate turn-offs." - March 10, 2010

One of my favorite things about GMail is how easy it is to play 'One year Ago Today'.

Last winter was so weird. I wrote that to J + S (our on-going three-way journal, coming up on it's second anniversary) after cutting off relations with one gentleman companion after he displayed an egregious intellectual error. A few weeks later, I was sort-of email dumped by a guy I hadn't really been dating.

The first incident occurred after Gentleman #1 made the mistake of asking whether the Pilgrims and Columbus were contemporary travelers. No, he didn't say it like that. I think he said 'didn't they happen at the same time?' Which, I guess if you look at them both like diseases, isn't completely off base. We were driving down the highway, and I don't even know what inspired the comment. I just remember being really, really startled. Like, dude, we grew up in Massachusetts. It's like, Pilgrim Central. And Columbus? Did you not attend elementary school? You didn't learn the rhyme about 1492? No?

It wasn't like I demanded that he pull the car over right then and there. But I never saw him again after that weekend - and we had been hanging out a lot. In retrospect, it was a pretty shitty way to handle the whole situation.

A few weeks later, I went out with a friend-of-a-friend. He wasn't much like the dudes I usually hung out with, and I figured it was worth a shot. We had two of the chastest dates I've ever been on. Tuesday night dates with plenty of beer and zero sparks. This was in early February. I'm forever getting involved with people at the beginning of February, and making that whole Valentine's Dilemma all the more awkward. Anyway, a week or so after our last date he sent me this relatively convoluted, totally indirect email about how 'something happened' with someone else and how he hoped I wouldn't be mad at our mutual friend, because 'he was the dud'. Dude, obviously you're the dud. You're referring to people as 'duds'.

Then I started sleeping with my roommate. That was actually the least awkward of all of the above situations. There was a while where I felt like I should teach a class on How to Sleep With Your Roommate and Have It Not Be Awkward. One time we even high-fived over the not-awkwardness. Lesson One: Make sure your roommate is someone you're cool high-fiving over vague social relations concepts. Lesson Two: Make sure there's a shelf-life on the roommate situation. Preferably, one of you should move out of the house (and the city, and the state) within three or four months. Lesson Three: Have other roommates. Lesson Four: Don't tell them.

Anyway, that's what was happening one year ago today. 2010 was crazy.