And Now for Something Completely Different

In other news...

I have no other news.







Wait, I lied. I'm going to see Jackass 2 after work today, and I can't TELL you how excited I am about it.

Also, my crush on Syd has expanded by 300%. I did the math.



Okay, so I didn't really do that math, that's just a guesstimate. I don't think it can expand, actually.











There are cartoon pencils on my desktop here at work. Because someone submitted them for the monthly wallpaper contest. Which was instigated to conform all Imaging Department desktops in a spirit of Professionalism.



I am the only employee to be doubled over in pain at the irony of this.



People in groups are morons. All of them. Especially when it comes to voting for desktop wallpaper.



I hate you, coworkers. I. HATE. YOU.




It's still raining. I am in a good mood.













Fine, there was news after all. Don't ask me why I spaced this post like this. I think I did it to make it seem like there's more than there actually is, like when you eat a row and a half of oreos and then spread the remaining oreos out through the box in attempt to dupe your poor, overworked father when he gets home from his day job and wants to watch Everybody Loves Raymond reruns with some cookies.






Not that I've ever done that. Allegedly.













ChelsEdit: Tab THIS, you damn italics!! *face punch*

Nothing bloggy to post today, really...

In other news, I finally saw 40 Year-old Virgin for the first time yesterday. Holy crap, I have not laughed that hard since a conversation I had with my sister that went something like this:


QUOTE (My sister)
"I did not bake the chocolate!"

QUOTE (Me)
"I said take the chocolate, Laura. I swear, you have hearing problems."

QUOTE (My sister)
"I do not have urine problems!!"



Also, if you haven't started listening to Augie March yet, I hate you. You should. They are an awesome band. "Song in the Key of Chance" is on my list of Top Ten Favorite Songs That Aren't By Pink Floyd.



That's all. I'm off to finish my hunt for Deep Purple mp3s.

Avast!

And now, since I'm currently feeling lazy, and this bit of what I emailed to Syd made me laugh, I'm going to cop out and use it as my blog post. Until I get super-bored later and decide to add on to it here and there throughout the remainder of the day. Well, the workday anyway.

Good lord, I'm in a weird mood today. It's sad. In spite of it being International Talk Like A Pirate Day, which is my favorite holiday, I have hitherto spent the day in a rather foul mood due to a long bout of deck staining (nowhere NEAR as piratish as it sounds) which the Mum had me up and doing at 7 this morning. I mean, seriously, if I don't go to work till one o'clock, (13:00 for you people on...whatever that time measurement is called...it's not metric, is it? *Eddie Izzard doing his American impression* "Yah...get outta here with yer goddamn commie metric system!") why on earth would I need to get up at 7?

Besides, I was up until 2:30 this morning playing Mercenaries. I didn't intend to be up that early, but I lost all track of time hunting down renegade North Koreans. I think most of it was due to some subconscious fervor to find and kill the person who's to blame for Kim Jong Il's ridiculous haircut. And even though I know Mr. KJI 's not involved whatsoever in the plot of Mercenaries, I still just got some sort of personal satisfaction knowing I mowed down a lot of North Koreans and probably got his barber somewhere in the mix.

I confess, there's also another reason contributing to my lack-luster piratey mood. I didn't have time to fix my hair today. Because I decided to spend as long in the shower as possible so that I could de-stain myself. And then, I had to throw on the first thing I could find, which turned out to be jeans, my Teen Girl Squad (What's Her Face!) baseball tee, a black hoodie, my pair of ancient Vans, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beanie. Consequently, I am donning a sort of look I've named "Ubergeek the Gangsta" and that's about as unpiratey as you can get. If "unpiratey" were a word, that is.

And now, I'm here at work, and people keep eyeing my beanie with contempt and/or jealousy. It's not my fault they said it was a casual work environment and we have no dress code. (Well, except that you need to be dressed.) And there's not a lick of anything to do, so I decided to keelhaul you in the bilgewater of my ramblings.



It's the Cheeziest,

Chels

Dad says I need to stop being content with thinking that I'm stuck in neutral when, really, I'm just sliding backwards all the time.

I thought about this.


I though about Yankel in Everything Is Illuminated: falling in love with things he never had because he lied them into existence on some plane of his reality. Re-running thoughts in his head. I am not sad. I am not sad. I had to do this for myself.

I am not sad.


Somehow the sadness is bearable when the rest of the world doesn't know about it. Sometimes we realize that we love the idea of loving something, and we don't actually love the something.

What color is it? It tastes like red. It is red. But we cry, because it's not more red. It's not redder. The red we crave doesn't actually exist.



Volunteer, Dad says. What do you want? Don't say nothing. Everyone wants something.

I want to know what I want. I want to really want something so badly that it motivates me out of stagnation. It motivates me out of shuffling my circles at the beginnings of things.


Just finish something. Find something you can finish, that's not the top score of a game. That's not a book you've already read. That's not re-sorting your CD collection.

Finish something that you can put on a resume.

Finish something that will prove to the other people that you're worthwhile.

Dad said: If I don't come home from this trip, I don't want you to think that I thought you were a failure. I believe in your potential. I believe in your possibilities more than you believe in them.

I can't find love in this language. I'll learn another. I can find any more questions, I just have lapfuls of answers that I don't know where to put.



Get over your instant excuses. Lesser people that you have gotten over harder things than you to do things.

DO THINGS.

Do things you can finish.

Finish the thoughts that lead to motivation from knowing what you want.



Get out of your cave. What do you do in your room all day?

I read. I sleep. I draw. I write. I write. I write. I love things that I feel like I should love.

I love the idea of wanting something you love. I want the idea of something. I want the something of an ideal wanting.

I just want to find what I want. And I can't.

It's in the more red, and I haven't found it here.

And I'm tired of the filler. I'm tired of striving for some interesting melancholy instead of just plain melancholy.



You write because writing gives you second chances. Because writing, in itself, IS a second chance.

What do you mean, then, when you say you were born to be a writer?



Nobody will hire you, or pay you, for half-finished things.


I am only the beginnings. I am afraid of wanting things to the point of being compelled into completion.

What happens at the end? You can finish failure. I am crippled by the fear of completing my mistakes. You can't run away from something you've finished. Finished means a total commitment.


I don't want the things written in stones.


I am dry erase. I am fingerpaint on the tile floor.

See my chalk, my slate layers, peel off and crumble...
...so easily displaced.

Did You Hear the One About...

End of Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke

I have seen for some time
how everything is changing.
Something rises and acts
and kills and causes grief.

From one time to the next
all the gardens now are not the same;
from the yellowing to the
golden slow decay;
how long that path has been.

Now I stand amid emptiness
and gaze down all avenues.
Almost to the distant oceans
I can see the solemn ponderous
relentlessly denying sky.

I feel a kinship with the lemon peach tree in the backyard; its fruit harvested early, the leaves dirty gold and sloughing off too fast to catch and savour. Too soon for it to collect itself and don some other girding. This past week the wind changed direction and the tree and I have been rendered bare and reaching toward the sky. At our feet lay the million tiny reminders of what we were, and how things had been. Paralyzed in straining upward, someone else must rake up our pieces, or the ground collect and eat them - our past and little lives.

My roots plunge hungrily through the dark underneathing, a search for some meaning in the decay of former selves to feed and progress, to eat in the months of cold and hestitant sunlight. I shiver, exposed, at the touch of the breeze, and ask myself why I could not have kept my green and guarded growth. I ask myself what I could have done to stay whole. I ask the nothingness about change and why it has stripped me naked and set me before the elements. It was not me. Nothing I did has put me where I am now. Each leaf had let go, and the harsh wind swept me of what needed me no longer. Or rather, I am only rid of something I never actually had. The leaves exist in themselves, it seems. Still, I shiver. Still, I reach. Bitter, the growth of a new skin comes only after the long, cold thrash of darkness, of being numb. Soon, my sap will freeze in my veins; my brittle outward self suddenly second to what I am in the earth below that bears, supports, and warms me.

I don't know your face no more. Or feel the touch that I adored. I don't know your face no more. It's just the place I'm looking for. We might as well be strangers in another town, we might as well be living in another world. We might as well...We might as well...We might as well... I don't know your thoughts these days, we're strangers in an empty space. I don't understand your heart; it's easier to be apart. We might as well be strangers in another town. We might as well be living in another time. We might as well... we might as well... we might as well be strangers, for all I know of you now. For all I know.

It's so easy, you see, to imagine yourself sitting in the pieces of things and wondering what you could have done to keep it from breaking. The hard part is realizing that there was no thing to begin with. The breaking of something, I can take. It's when what you were holding so carefully in your hands is suddenly gone. When you look at the spaces it was and realize that it never was. You held it, you touched, smelt, and loved it, and then someone comes and tells you that it never existed. That you couldn't have held it and loved it, because it was never...there. Or anywhere. It's easier to have something broken. It's easier to have something lost. It's the empty that kills you. It's the empty that drains the blood from out the holes that you believed were full.

I used to think that truth was something stark, something stoic...steadfast, immovable. That truth was like a pillar, or a foundation. Then you hit it, and find that truth is more like a bullet train, or a mack truck. At least, that's what it feels like. But it is a pillar, it is a foundation. It is some vast, stark immovable thing. You realize it was there the whole time, and that it didn't hit you...you hit it. And not only do you hurt immensely, you feel a prize idiot for not seeing it there the whole time.

Well it's a lonely road that you have chosen; morning comes and you don't want to know me anymore. And it's a long time since your heart was frozen...morning comes and you don't want to know me anymore. For a moment your eyes open and you know all the things I ever wanted you to know. I don't know you, and I don't want to - till the moment your eyes open, and you know that it's a lonely place that you have run to. Morning comes, and you don't want to know me anymore. And it's a lonely end that you will come to...morning comes. And you don't want to know me anymore. For a moment, your eyes open, and you know all the things I ever wanted you to know. I don't know you, and I don't want to. Till the moment your eyes open, and you know.

The problem is, I was so damn close to hitting the nail...but I was still that crucial bit off, and when the hammer bounced, and pegged my thumb, I was completely surprized. And I cursed my thumb, I cursed the hammer. I didn't curse the fact that the nail was in the wrong place, the wrong wall, the wrong house... you set yourself up for these things, you know. When you're just so cocksure that you're right. That you've interpreted the wrench in your gut perfectly. I got the picture right. I was just looking from the wrong angle. It's never happened, before. Not like this...I mean, sure I've been cheated on. That is a grief that I know, and am acquainted with. That is a failure that I can accept. I expected the disappointment of a broken thing. I never could have guessed the agony of everything - everything - rendered non-existent, and myself rendered cheap and dirty.

It's one thing to be cheated on, it's another thing entirely to find that you have been the tool of his infidelities. It's just what you feel like, too. A tool. And then, oh agony, you blame your goddamn self for it. You cram the hurt into your mouth and suck on it hard, hoping it will stop...that you can erase the hurting too. I have been a lot of things...I've been a fabrication, a bitch, an invalid, a helpmeet, a better half, an evil half, a whole bunch of halves, a student, a drop-out, a lover, a hater, a rebel with and without a cause, a geek, a dork, an intellectual, a poet, a sister, a daughter, a friend, an enemy.

I'd never been an unwitting mistress. It's a new taste.

Do you know what it tastes like? It's foul. The putrid aftertaste of food-poisoning vomit when you've eaten at a second-rate Chinese hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and then - to go a step further - the only thing you have to clean that taste out of your mouth is feces. You feel like drinking bleach, or Pine-Sol™, or having someone scrub your soul out with Comet™ and a toothbrush. And you didn't even make the mess.

The worst of it comes when your empathy makes no exceptions for the situation. When he calls you crying, wanting pity and a warm embrace and every fiber of your heart is screaming to give it back, to stop his hurting. Because you yourself are so accustomed to hurting; you know it. And that it's no big deal if you hurt, you just don't want anyone else to. And then you ache not only for yourself, but for him. While you're force-fed shovelfuls of reality, empathy washes it down with pint after pint of a blind pity for the captor, the villain, the beast, the lie. And then you fight not only the pain, you have to fight yourself. You have to fight the nurturing aspect of yourself that only wants to fix and help and love. The parts of yourself that still love him, because they feel sorry for him, because they know him well enough to understand the why of things.

You realize that in the moment you feel the weakest, the worst, the most wretched, you have to be strong. You have to finally - finally - take a stand for yourself. And swear you won't let it hurt you more. That you won't cave. That you'll do something for yourself, because you respect yourself the way he didn't. That you honor yourself, the way he didn't. That you have faith in yourself...the way he didn't. That you love yourself. The way he didn't.

Then you are left alone, in quiet and aching, and your imagination wanders to what-ifs. And you fight it away from them for as long as possible, but they come in barrages, and your walls have already been broken. What if I had still been sick...still am sick? What if this had been the last year I had or have, and six months of it were stolen from me? What if I had known about it all along, and the truth wasn't a surprise...would I still have traded the fucking love of my life for the fucker of my life? I wondered about Dan. I wondered about what could have been, with the kinks ironed out, if I hadn't been so distracted by what seemed so genuine at the time. We talked this weekend, and cried a lot, he's having such a hard time now that Su's gone psychotic and hallucinatory on him again, and he talked about how he went for her because everything I'd done told him he'd never get me back. And I let myself be angry and sad - in the middle of the night, when I could be angry and sad no one would know....

So many what-ifs. So many hard, sticky places you can't let yourself sink into. You have to keep moving. You have to pick out the things that you learned and can be grateful for.

Do you know that line that Muzzy says to Millie, in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" starring Julie Andrews? It's a ridiculous movie, really, but over and over I've been thinking about the line...where she's talking about her deceased billionaire husband, and how she found out he was a billionaire. He'd given her this giant emerald brooch, but she'd thought it was green glass. And she loved it, because she loved him. One night she let her friend borrow it, and her friend happened to be dating a jeweller, who was aghast at the size of the emerald, and told her what it was. When Muzzy found out, she was heartsick. She didn't want her husband to go to jail, because she'd thought he'd stolen it. She took it to him and told him to take it back. That's when he told her he was a millionaire and not a thief. Then Muzzy says to Millie, "Now, Millie dear, I prefer emeralds, I really do...but we could have made it on green glass."

We could have made it on green glass...just don't tell me that it's an emerald, when it's not.


It was a lesson I needed, about honesty, about the crucial aspects of truth and integrity.


And in that moment I realized something... I need to apologize.

Andy, I'm sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for what I put you through, and I can only hope that you'll forgive me, and that we can be friends. Because I miss being friends, and I hate to think of what my anger and my misunderstanding has done to what was one of the best friendships of my life. I'm so sorry. For everything.


Experience is a bitch of a teacher, but it doesn't mean you won't learn things. It's a hell of a method...the test first, and then the lesson.

But it sticks, and you remember it.


God, do you remember it.