Hah!

I Post in my Head, You Know

I post a lot to you in my head. 

Just so you know.

So here's a conversation.

My little girl and best friend (boy) go to the circus. Ringling Bros. I've never taken her to Ringling Bros. but parents of the boy wanted to go.

So many magic tricks. They were the best. She loves magic.

They had a picnic in the living room today. It was very sweet. Butter sandwiches that they made themselves--using all available bread--and chocolate chips and cider. Our best plates. I eavesdropped.

Boy: Magic isn't real, you know.

Girl: But love is real. And love is like magic.

She comes up with these sorts of things all the time. I want to follow her around with a camera and make a movie that is required viewing for all nihilists and those on the point of utter despair.

Of course, that describes me most of the time.

Her chuckle alone refutes Schopenhauer. 

Her sweetness kills. It is like wasabi in my nose. So overwhelming in its power I think my heart might explode. (That analogy is not original to me. I stole it from Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti.)

I am back to my grumbly self. It is October and I'm back to morose with a side of despair and an aoli of anxiety.

Once I went to dinner with someone who is fluent in French and I complained about the word aoli and the word 'plat' for plate. I sort of horrified him, I think. He was just visiting the US and wasn't familiar with our anti-intellectual stubbornly monolingual ways.

As far as the posting in my head goes: I am doing so many things in my head. I have relationships with people in my head and don't bother speaking to them some of the time. It's like texting but even more convenient. 

 

 

 

Here. Go Buy Yourself Somethin' Pretty

So I was thinking about this question someone asked me below: Why do you want to be anonymous.

And that is an amazing question in that it is both easy and difficult to answer.

Answering questions, really, is a peculiar experience because all answers have levels. I can answer it very generally: People are somewhat evil and vindictive and it would be a rather hazardous thing for anyone who doesn't love one in one's life to actually know much about one--personal stuff--You know what I mean?

Knowledge is power and all that.

And I was thinking about the sorts of things I'd write about. And realizing that blogging became boring at exactly the moment blogs rarely became anonymous and the bloggers became 'personalities.'  Because before that, you got to hear about their favorite sexual positions and horribly embarrassing moments of their college years and their vindictive fantasies and all sorts of unsavory things.

Yet this is all silly, when applied to me, because my life is atrociously boring. So I think it is really my controversial opinions that I fear having tracked back to the flesh 'n blood me.

Example: It's so sad that people have to live in the Midwest.

I mean, I know we are supposed to feel sorry for people in a poor place, the third world y'know--but right now there's a kid living in Indiana and the only thing he knows about the world comes from television and he thinks Ortega tacos are Mexican food. Plus, he doesn't understand that absolutely everyone that surrounds him is disturbingly passive aggressive. And I can't help it...I just feel so bad for that kid.

No one should ever have to live in Southern Ohio.

I guess some of my observations are the sort of thing it might be better not to have traced back to me. E.g., I observed, after receiving some discount cards in the mail for Ann Taylor, that I had this sudden desire to shop at Ann Taylor. And then I realized that the desire to shop at Ann Taylor is really a desire to have sex with Naomi Watts, whose radiant beauty shone from the postcard like the sun.

I wonder about that--about all the women shopping at Ann Taylor this week. Maybe they all secretly want to have sex with Naomi Watts. You can have this desire and not really know it. For example, I thought I just wanted Namoi Watts' shirt. But actually, I wanted Naomi Watts naked, in my bed, so that I could have my way with her.

Realizing this saved me a lot of money. Even if it made me sad, because I also realized I'm never going to get to have sex with Naomi Watts. 

See what I mean though? This non-anonymity thing is going to be difficult. It will take practice. I'd have to change in one of two rather challenging ways. Either I'd have to stop mentioning things like my overwhelming urge to rip off Naomi Watts' Ann Taylor clothing which somehow concealed itself as a desire to buy Ann Taylor clothing.

Or I'd just have to suck it up and face the fact that the nosy people at work might find out that, in spite of my apparent heterosexual marriage, I lust after Naomi Watts. In spite of my eschewing of stereotypes and apparent kindness to all, I hide a shameful loathing for the Midwest and think we should give it back to the bison to graze freely in peace. 

I weep for the innocent children of Iowa who are forced to live in Iowa.

The world is a haven of bourgeois disapproval. (My non-anonymous blog will also have tips. Among these tips--'bourgeois' is such an excellent put down. And at the moment, it is sadly under-used.)

See what I mean? If I put that on my blog then this put down won't be effective against the people at work. 

Is it just me or are most of the things passing through your head not fit for public consumption unless you conceal your identity, as I attempt to?

Is there anything good to write about that one can admit openly to others, those bourgeois others we tend to be saddled with in this most provincial of countries?

My husband is the only one I can tell anything to that is not under the cover of darkness, it seems. People on the internet don't get my jokes. He would understand why I want to make sweet, sweet love to Naomi Watts in spite of our vows of lifelong fidelity, but they broke the  mold when they made that guy.

So Hey There Look See

I'm trying to decide if I should try to become an uber-blogger of the non-anonymous sort.

And make some fancy-ass website. Pay Schmutzie all my pennies to make something pretty for me, if she's still doing that. 

Or something.

OR: Stay my lame anonymous self.

OR: Change my lame anonymous self to something more fabulous and glamorous. At least, provide a website of fab and glam for your perusal. 

I like the freedom of leaving the internet. I cannot do the internet in moderation. 

This blog is over 5 years old. I've been blogging for over 8 years. 

And what the hell do I do about Twitter, since that shit is crack to me?

There are only so many hours in the day. I don't like the way the internet takes up my time but I must say sometimes it is fun.

I am ridiculous.

I'm all about WE'RE GOING TO SIMPLIFY OUR LIVES!!!

Now I'm heading for some kind of fertility madness next year that has the risk of twins. But even...two kids! How is that simplicity?

One kid is rational. Why can't I be rational? I think two kids is irrational.

I'm spending my kid's college money to have another kid. Well, actually, I'm only spending about $2,000.

I really am crazy. However, I often do slightly crazy things like this and they work out in the end. I'm very much a leap before looking person. Most of the choices I've made in life haven't been so wise or far sighted. But then weird things happen and it turns out OK.

If I'd been far sighted I would have been a lawyer. And that would have sucked so bad. So I think this put me off being far sighted.

INTERNET FREE SUMMER!

Except for book club. The first rule of Book Club is you don't talk about Book Club.

Hard to start and maintain a club without talking about it. Not even an oblique reference? They must not have meant that literally.

Anyway, here's BOOK CLUB:

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/33309.Pulitzers_in_10_Pages_A_Day_Gilead

We're reading Gilead biyatches.

OK, but besides that and work emails and research and the aquaduct I'm having an internet-free summer.

Later!

I wonder sometimes why my shit is so not together.

This is looking like a poem because the crazy program is breaking my lines in bizarre ways.

Oh, fuck I find this annoying that I'm forced to write this post as if I'm ee cummings.

What next?

I wonder why we say 'get my shit together' but we never say 'my shit's so apart'?

My shit is apart. Very, very apart.

And it's bugging the shit out of me.

So I'm just writing this post because there are plums in the icebox...NO. SERIOUSLY THIS IS NOT A POEM.

I'm writing this post to tell you how pathetic my shit is right now. That my only pathetic resolution--and this is how tragically apart my shit is--is to (1) Go to bed by 11 p.m. every night (2) Not be late for anything for at least one week and (3) Get at least 2 hours of writing a day done. JUST TWO HOURS OF SOMETHING ON WRITING.

I fell off the rails somewhere. The only thing to do is get back on the rails. I used to look back but I can't remember that ever helped any.

Strange Tree Experience: Very Embarassing

This very weird thing happened to me at the park.

I was noticing this tree. Then I started to feel this 'energy' coming from the tree.

I started feeling like I was communing with the tree, like the tree was pulling me closer.

I can't describe what it was like--it was like I had suddenly become this person with much better observational powers and I really saw the tree. I wouldn't say I was one with the tree. But I could not take my eyes off the tree, I could see the tree in a vivid way I don't normally see things. I tend to be very oblivious to my surroundings. I could feel the tree's...treeness.

I don't know what kind of tree it was. I think someone said it was an elm. It was huge.

I also felt very good, peaceful--but tinged with sadness.

What was even weirder was I wasn't alone in some spiritual place. I was in a busy park surrounded by the usual loud people, broken glass, used ketchup packages, etc. My family was there. They were having conversations next to me. It wasn't peaceful or natural or beautiful.

Anyway, I felt like a real weirdo. Also, I was wondering if I have some kind of brain tumor.

I think this qualifies as a mystical experience. But what the fuck? Has this ever happened to anyone before?

I still feel like I really love that tree. I knew I was a weirdo but I'm rarely weird like this. This is not my usual brand of weirdness.

The Two Friend Problem

I'd contentedly had two and only two friends in my city. They were old friends. When I'd meet new people I liked, it tended to be in the context of parenthood. No real intimacy was created. They didn't know much of my history, I didn't know much of theirs. They weren't people I could turn to. They were nice and I could hang out with them.

But I had these old friends. (It is hard for me to even call the people we have dinner with once in a while or what-have-you friends. There isn't enough there. It's all day-to-day. There isn't a bond between us that I tend to think is characteristic of friendship.)

I have other old friends, in other places, people I talk to a few times a year or go travel to see here and there. They aren't people I call to chat with or people I can talk to when I've had a hard day. They are hilarious, wild, glamorous and from the past.

I'm not sure how my friendships became so insubstantial--why did I become so lazy about trying to create a real bond with other people. Business. Fears of being hurt by people. Past memories of painful friendships. An idea that I was too vulnerable for that at this point. I don't have time to nurture my connection with people. I don't have time alone, for one thing, to spend with people. I have to keep on an even keel. Safer to hide away in my little world.

In the meantime, with all the stress of work and letting myself go in various ways and my health going to hell, my reluctance to brush my hair regularly or what have you, I became a less charismatic person and less appealing to people. Fewer people were interested in becoming friends with me. I am not as appealing as I was when I'd made many friends and could take risks with people and let them get to know me.

After these nightmare years at my job I was wandering around in a kind of daze. My confidence was shot to pieces. I developed a permanent look of worry. My house is messier than is socially acceptable.

I stopped noticing people. I am living in my own head to a remarkable degree.

Occasionally, I would accidentally piss someone off and that was too disconcerting. I need all my emotional energy for my child and my job and my husband--I can't expend the energy being worried about how to repair relationships.

Much of this turning inward was a conservation of energy, a way of taking what little is left after everything else and saving it for the places where I am sure it will pay off. Taking risks with people seemed to be an unwise choice. Tenure chewed me up and spit me out and I had to get the spit off before my kid came home from school.

Perhaps as a way of compensating or perhaps from getting older I also became less interested in being socially acceptable. On the conservation-of-energy principle working on my appeal seems like a waste of time and money. I slowly created a uniform that consisted of one awesome pair of jeans, one extremely comfortable shirt of soft t-shirt material and a backup for both of these on laundry days.

My awesome jeans got stolen as did my #1 soft t-shirt. So I look even worse than I did, since I'm relying on some very dubious clothing at this point. They don't sell the awesome jeans on Amazon anymore.

I have my work clothes, naturally. I don't dress like that at work. But at the park with my kid, I have a sort of trailer dwelling-semi-homeless woman look, probably.

Sometimes my kid would make a friend and I'd make a love connection with the mom and then something would go wrong--the kids would have a falling out or something. We'd stop hanging out. They'd drift away.

I had my husband for everything, also. I wasn't driven by desperation to seek people out. I had someone to talk to, whenever I wanted. Someone who thinks I'm the bomb, almost all the time.

My two friends are highly unpredictable, prickly people. I don't know why these are the two people I maintained friendships with for 15 or so years when all the other, much more gentle, easygoing people drifted away. It was a product of similar professional trajectories, and locating in similar regions. There's also some chemistry there, some mysterious thing.

I was at that wonderful point where I know I loved these people but at the same time I never needed to think about that. Also, they could annoy me and I could still love them. That family point.

My husband and I broke up once before we got married after a long time of being together. And I remember one of the hardest things, when I would meet new people, was how shallow the connection seemed. Intellectually, I knew that what you are supposed to do is enjoy the new person and then let the years take their course until you have the depth of connection and history that you have in a long relationship. You go through all the misunderstandings and such and then the person and you gradually come to know one another and then you know whether you actually genuinely love them or just your image of them.

But that was hard for me. I guess I didn't have the patience. I already knew someone, very deeply. I already had a history with someone where I'd seen glimpses of their past, their childhood photos, knew where they came from, what they loved, where they'd been. I already loved this person. It was very hard for some new person to compete with the texture and complexity of what I'd had with the man who'd later become my husband.

Are friendships different now? We simply don't have time for people's complexity, for their eccentricities for their struggles. Not new people, anyway. So you hide your eccentricities, your struggles and most of your complexity. Or I do anyway. Then, when you do spend time with someone, much of the self is buried away and the connection you develop is necessarily superficial.

That's OK. I value those superficial friendships. And I know those people are complex people. We just don't get past a certain point. But I enjoy them and like them and admire them. I just never know if I'm going to see them again and I know I cannot ask them for anything much. Nor would they ask me.

To make a long story longer, I am having real problems with Friend #1. And I can't talk to Friend #2 because Friend #2 is also friends with Friend #1. I don't want to betray Friend #1 by going behind their back. I don't think Friend #2 will want to get involved. And I don't blame Friend #2 for that.

I am so unsure of what to do about Friend #1. Do I just give up? He is pushing me on something and now I don't know whether to push back. He is very angry. He is much more assertive than I am.

The problems with Friend #1 indirectly involve my husband. Something that, after years of a very harmonious marriage, created a surprising rift between us. I'm not sure I want to get into that rift. It's just starting to heal over. It's the most poisonous thing that's happened to us and the biggest threat to our mutual happiness since we reunited years ago. It was like a neutron bomb and things started to wither around it. (Financial, not sexual.) I'm not over it. And my reaction eventually had a very bad effect on my husband. We got into one of those scary cycles where you cannot communicate, where you erode trust.

Before this happened, I did not see how people who were very happy together like we were could end up divorced if one of them did not cheat. Couldn't you just fix everything with kisses? The answer is no, surprisingly. Certain mistakes between people that have nothing to do with sex can shatter things that are not so easy to repair. I think we will be together forever. But the spoiling of our happiness--that's not a small thing.

And we are all friends--husband, me, Friend #1, Friend #2.

Friend #1 is not being fair. But Friend #1 tends to be unfair at times. And the basis of my relationship with Friend #1 has always been to give in to Friend #1. (I'm a giver-inner.) But I can't give in on this point.

I'm very confused. I suppose this is some fateful thing, something to make me see that I need somehow to make other friends.

But I don't know how. I'm not sure I could make genuine friends at this point. I haven't done it for years. It's a bit like getting divorced and having to go out and date. If that happened, I'd never date again. I'm past the point in my life where I can let people in.

I'd probably try to put an internet ad out just so I could say I tried. But it would fail. I cannot imagine myself going out into the world and opening up to new people. I suppose it could happen. I don't even know how to do it.

How do you kids today make new friends and what are they like? I don't even know. I'm not sure I was every good at it--When young, I was cute and funny and people fell into my lap. But the skills have eroded past the point of no return and I'm now slovenly and melancholic.

And does anyone develop close friendships with people when they have kids and a demanding job these days? How do these things work?

I still don't know what to do about Friend #1. It hurts, and like a lot of things that hurt and scare me, I guess I will try and pretend it isn't happening until a few years go by and I regret that.

I Just Came On The Internet to Explain Why I Should Not Be On The Internet

So I am having the expected response to constant sunlight and I am all 'I CAN manage my life/my life may not be tragic like the lives of all my relatives/all shall be well'

Following this, it occurred to me:  'Maybe I should not descend into a slough of irritable misanthropy.'

But how to prevent?

So this is my project. I think it involves having more social contact with other humans who are not my family.  Friends? I think I need to be friendly and make friends with people.

The thing is, I do have friends from a previous period in my life where people liked me more. A period in my life when I had to do nothing and put in almost no effort and had friends anyway. In other words, youth.

I've got other ideas on how to dig out from the trough of habitual negativity. Perhaps I shall stop cursing. This is obviously--the de-curmudgeonizing strategy, I mean--a long term project.

There is the internet as some faux social activity. Yet, I think I miss things in real life because I'm on the internet.

I had a strange experience where sometimes 4,000 people were reading my blog once in a while. More on that later.

An audience just pulls me back in, somehow.

But these life things, unfortunately real and outside my full control in the manner of the internet, I believe may be preferable in some way I can't yet understand. I need to avoid the internet in order to find out if this is true and if so, why.

Also, I will avoid constant remind of our certain doom if I am less on the internet. I can't save the bees so maybe it is just better if I don't know that they are all dying and our crops will fail.

But I decided not to get ahead of myself in seeking full and regular contact with the physical world.

I've decided that my next step in my journey to something resembling good humor is to take those CD-Roms of the New Yorker and read every short story in the New Yorker starting from the beginning.

I'm shooting for two a day. When I say 'shooting for' I mean: I'm going to try not to read more than two a day. Because I have a major problem with short stories and go on benders sometimes.

In other words, I decided to go back to my old addiction of short stories. I think that addiction was better for me than the internet because I fret too much about the future

One problem is that I had a 'no internet' computer and that computer now links to the internet. I loaded the CD-Roms on there. So it is not a peaceful home for my short story reading.

I have other plans but typepad is slow and it is taking my forever to type this.

I had more to say but somehow this went all wrong. Enjoy this awe-inspiring Bollywood dance number in lieu of something exciting:

My One Thing of Mom Expertise: Books in Oral Form

So I was noticing that Maggie was @ing some people on Twitter. And I noticed some had 'mom' in their name. 

And I was thinking about how I don't identify myself as a mom. It seems weird to me that I am a mom. I've been a mom for awhile now and every once in a while I think "I am a Mom. Me? A mom?"

The funny thing is that I love kids. I am crazy about kids. I grew up taking care of lots of kids in my family and I adored them. I could juggle a passel of kids single-handedly, I was a very adept caretaker of children in my youth.

But this somehow did not translate into my being able to be a mom and own it.

I had PPD but that's just because I have such a problem with D. The kid itself was never an aspect in the PPD. 

I did struggle with whether to have a kid. I thought it would interfere with my novel-reading. And it did, big time. (I'm kidding here. There were many other things that gave me pause. It's just that I am this shallow.)

After I had a kid, I developed several seemingly contradictory views. One is that having kids is not the big hairy deal people make it out to be. You manage. I wish I'd known about the whole 'managing' thing earlier, I swear I would have gotten pregnant out of wedlock and had more. 

I could have brought more humans into the world and been a mediocre parent to more creatures! But it would have been fun for me. And for them--my kid has fun, most of the time. She's having fun now. That's all I can tell you. God knows how it will all turn out but her life is fun, most of the time. 

I wanted lots but I got secondary infertility and had miscarriages and such. 

At the same time, I always think of myself as a highly incompetent, unknowledgable mother. I always think the other mothers know what they are doing but I have no idea. So I think this is why I don't identify myself as a mom. Because it somehow feels like you have to earn that and somehow I feel like only partially a mom.

I think I tend to do this with everything, actually. I never think I'm competent at my job or good at the things I do. I imagine some paragon of whatever role I'm trying to fill. The paragon eyes my inept bumblings with disgust and annoyance. 

I even dreamed about the Paragon a few times. He wore a red cloak in one dream. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. (I thought this was simply a mark of his opposition to me.)

But then sometimes I think: Well, I do the mom thing OK. The real place I fall down is that I'm crazy. There isn't so much I can do about that. My kid knows it too. I was trying to give her some space to talk about it and just explaining that I freak out, it's kind of my way, it doesn't mean anything. Then I'm better. It has nothing to do with her. It's just how I've been, for as long as I can remember.

But of course, now she's all about how I freak out and likes to name this as one of my mom-deficiencies. 

For a while, she was annoyed that I didn't dress better, wear lipstick and high heeled shoes. I'm not sure where that came from. 

Sometimes I see her and realize I don't let her watch any TV on school days and I'm giving her organic strawberries for her after school snack and she's listening to a record of Peter and the Wolf and I think 'well, OK, isn't that how it's supposed to be? I'm doing the good mom thing!" But then I remember how there's dried rice on the rug that's been there for several weeks and about 20 other failings on my part. 

Anyway, the records are my one mom creative mom breakthrough. She's got to hear stories ALL THE TIME. But I run out of stories. I rack my brain. Every once in a while, I accidentally tell her about something completely inappropriate, like the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Because I'd just run out of stories. I've done every Greek myth, every Bible story, every movie, even episodes of Star Trek.  Talking about Montezuma and Cortez immediately prompted questions about what a conquest was and DID THEY KILL THE CHILDREN?

Oops. 

So I have one mom tip. I have no other mom tips. My kid's out of control, probably. I don't know. She isn't super child. She's not reading Beowulf in kindergarten. She doesn't have gigantic snarls in her hair anymore--but that's just because I cut off most of her hair. 

My one mom tip is:  http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/  for the car. Hours of child-tainment. 

And records. There are many kids' records floating around thrift stores. All the libraries in America got rid of their kids' records collection. SO DEPRESSING. But some of them are out there. I want to weep about the ones in landfills. No one copied them. No one made MP3s out of them. Hundreds of Caldecott winner books put into electronic form to entertain my child for at least the next 8 years.

In the Wall Street Journal there was a story about adult books that kids might like and now I'm combing the internet for these on tape. Here's the list:

--Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

--Kipling, Kim

--Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

--Yann Martel, Life of Pi

--Charles Portis, True Grit

--Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

--David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

--Tony Earley, Jim The Boy

--Rose Tremain, The Way I found Her

--Matthew Kneale, When We Were Romans

The author of the piece points out that one issue for writers, is that when a book features a young protagonist the book gets marked as youth fiction forever. This apparently happened to 'To Kill A Mockingbird.' 

But I can't imagine anything better than writing books for kids. Why would writing books for adults be a better thing? Who is a more appreciative audience? Whose life might be impacted to a great degree? 

Those books above are too old for her now, I think. I'm just thinking ahead to the pre-teen years and how to get out of storytelling in the car. One book she loved was Black Beauty. Except now she's going around speaking in a fake English accent like the narrator of Black Beauty. She's either going to become Meryl Streep or one of those weird people who quotes all the lines from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.'