Saturday, January 27, 2007

the bottomless pit

it's almost february; outside, it's chilled and pale, sky milky with scattered clouds. my inner writer has been nagging me for weeks now: "sit down, you fool, and type!" but i'm on a reading kick, and apparently my inner reader needs to be fed.

i don't know how i would describe these rushes of feeling--cravings, perhaps? the ravenous urge for prose, tripping along the page. i sneak up on it like a predator, i hang round its known watering holes--the library, half-price books, barnes and noble. and then, when i'm not sure i can take the suspense any longer, i pounce.

last night we watched "muppets take manhattan." i hadn't seen it in years; it brought me back to my young days of pink and yellow footed pajamas, with the slippery white padding on the soles of the feet. my mom always cut those off--the feet, i mean--and i don't know why. perhaps she knew that her offspring would have a propensity for wearing nothing on their feet that might constrict their toes. who knows.

anyway, it solidified something in my mind that's been rattling around for the better part of a week: i'm hungry for youth.

not in the perverted sense, mind you. just hungry for that endless, bottomless curiosity, and the energy to satisfy it at any given moment. as i get older, i find that apathy sets in--i'm still curious, but i don't seek it out like i once did.

perhaps it is knowledge that propels? when i was young i read books the same way i do now: i eat them, tear out their innards and savor. i think i read them for a different reason, though. when i was a kid i read to broaden my base of knowledge--what is it like to fall in love? what is it like to have leprosy? what is it like to...be an adult.

now i am an adult. i still fall back into my own personal classics--the 101 dalmations, by dodie smith. charlie and the chocolate factory, by roald dahl. go dog go, by pd eastman.

my childhood friend, rachel, and i used to read large books, just to say that we had read them. we'd closet ourselves in our separate homes for a competitive reading weekend. (i know, how nerdy were we?) this was in sixth grade, i think, when we were about 12 or 13 or whatever age you are at that time. her favorite book was "gone with the wind." i read it just because it was a big book. we came in on monday and i remember she had read the book like 11 times or something. it's a big book; i look at it now and find it daunting. but we were so enamored of that open door--what is beyond this little realm of classrooms, barbie dolls, and the embarrassed pre-puberty showers after gym class?

before that, i'd read michener--chesapeake, alaska, and the omni-present hawaii. that last i found in the basement, along the wall with the few books my parents owned. i read it obsessively; it was a buffet of nouns and verbs, actions and romance, violence, history. i can't say that it set the tune for the rest of my reading diet, but it certainly set the tone for the next few years, during which most of my contemporaries were reading "sweet valley high" and such.

boooooooor-ing. who cares which cheerleader the quarterback dates? puh-lease. not my style.

when i was in 8th grade, i had a crush on one of the kids in my math class: sam. *insert dreamy sigh here* sam'd read during class, while the math teacher droned on about, horror of horrors, fractions. he was reading piers anthony, "a spell for chameleon."

of course i just had to go out and find it. that summer i remember taking the bus downtown to the library, alone, and finding a whole new section: fantasy and sci-fi.

the library was a dream, and being set free in it, with no time limits and a library card, was nirvana.

i think of stopping in the grocery store on the weekend, when they're handing out samples, and that is what i associate with the library: many different options, and you can choose to taste what you like. a smorgasboard of delights.

***

my mom would make new foods for us, when we were young, and my father would intone, above our heads at the dinner table: "try it; you'll like it."

for the most part i try, very hard, to be open to what is being tossed my way. yeah, i'm not perfect--i'm well aware of that. reading is a safe hobby; it's traveling across stormy oceans while sipping cocoa, exploring greenland from the security of my sofa and blankets, soaring through the cosmos and touching stars while my cats are curled at my feet.

i might not be the most adventuresome woman alive, but i certainly hope that my appetite for writing--both reading and creating--is never satiated.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

got the time

this time of year is always busy for me, what with work and all. i took on an additional responsibility at work, helping plan the year end party (which we have at the end of january, since that's when the busiest time of the year is over, when you work with taxes and W2s, at least.)

anyway, after i typed my last post i got in the car and drove to wal-mart. en route, i called dan to let him know i'd be late. while on the phone, i got to witness a three-car accident. no one was hurt (except for a goose-egg on the offending driver, and a 10-year-old scared witless), although the cars involved were no doubt totaled.

the whole moment was so surreal--i can remember the first thought i had, after one car mangled another: "i've never seen an airbag go off before." metal crumpled like paper; cars swerved and brakes squealed. i stopped and gave my phone number to police, in case they would need a witness, and then went to wal-mart, and then went home.

it's odd when you see how fortunate you truly are. usually at intersections, when i need to make a left turn, i pull out far enough so that if the light turns red, i can still squeak through. the only reason that my car was not the folded bits of steel that the others were is because i was slow to react, and chatting with dan. a few more feet forward and it would have been my car, my body.

there have been many times in my life where i wanted to end it--it being my life--myself. by whatever means came to mind--i find i cannot type it here. there have been times that i have been so sick that i thought, "perhaps i am dying, right now." and i know that each step i take is another towards the inevitable, that i have only a certain amount of time allotted to this conglomeration of cells i call "me."

perhaps that accident was a reminder, in a strange way. a reminder that it is not entirely up to me--it is in the hands of the fates, of chance, of serendipity.

***

yesterday i had lunch with my sister; then we shopped and had dinner at her house, prepared by her husband. this morning i remember the topic of conversation, the one that shook me the most, at least, was my dad.

when i was a kid my dad had stock phrases that he kept in the wings. things like: "stop crying, or i'll give you something to cry about." or "if you had a brain cell, you'd be dangerous." for many years he's been much better--he doesn't stress out about everything, and he's much more open with his feelings.

lately, though, since he's been retired, he's been leaning back to being a powder keg again.

when my sister was talking about his behavior during their last visit, i realized that i was clamming up, inside. we talked a bit about how dad's attitude affected us when we were young, and about how we wished that he would see a therapist now. there's a lot on his mind; i know, because i think like my dad. he's probably worried about retirement, finances and his uncle paul, who just had a stroke; paul's the last of his generation, on my dad's side. dad's concerned with his brother, jed, who's in a care facility in palm springs, ca, after his own massive series of strokes. there's the entire country of vietnam, with all its memories, sitting in his head too. dad gets consumed by worry.

i've had a hard time coming to terms with the fear that i felt, when i was a kid. it was not the imminent threat of physical harm. it was the feeling of uncertainty around my father. i love my dad dearly, and he's a very, very good man. but his temper has always been shaky. i think of zeus, tossing lightning bolts around heaven, and i think of my father.

***

it has snowed, since my last post. and it's snowing this morning too, myriad white flakes drifting down.

i think of metal wrinkled like bedsheets. i think of that stab of fear i had, sitting in my sister's basement, hearing about my father's temper. i think about how they say you marry your father, or mother, whatever. i know that for many years our relationship, dan's and mine, was that same type--mental and emotional mines, planted below the surface, just waiting to be touched. lots of them were not even planted by us; they were planted by our parents, unknowingly.

i think about how much change has gone on, in the last few years: difficult, more difficult, most difficult. i think of the father and son, standing next to their rumpled cars; the son has pulled on a gray sweatshirt, stained with dark spots of cola. i hear the father say, we are safe.

i dislike comparing life to that car wreck, but in truth, it often seems that way. you survive the car wreck, or whatever disaster is on the menu, and then you take that moment and you file it away and you move forward. that father and son took something different away from that accident than i did, sitting in the periphery.

can i honestly say i am glad to have seen it? nope. can i say that i'm glad that my dad's got a bad temper? not really. can i say that i am happy about the way the last few years tossed me around, a fish between sharks? not especially.

can i say that i am glad to be here? today, yes. today i know dan will wake up and we will smile together, and he won't be afraid to share his emotions, doled out like small precious bits of treasure. or perhaps that is how i feel--that i can share my self with him again, and in that sharing, there is a strength that would not be here, had i not experienced what i have.

i haven't got all the time in the world; and yet i do.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

741 post merdian

it's now 741 on my monitor screen. i just logged out of my system and am going to be heading home. after, of course, a stop at wal-mart.

why, i am asking myself, do i need to stop there, when i have this nagging head-ache that i think is brought on due to the overhead lights and eye strain with the computer?

because, i'll answer...i'm out of underwear.

year end at work is always sucky. no matter how you slice it. some days are short because you're caught up and can sneak out the door on time. other days sneak up and beat you over the head. if you've never been assaulted by your job, just imagine a few reams of paper hanging over your head and then dropping suddenly. it's kind of like the coyote-roadrunner fights, with the coyote mashed under the anvil.

at any rate, i have this nagging headache. i'm going to start calling it my 741 headache because it is at this point in the day where i wave the white flag and do one of the following:

1. crawl into bed
2. slither into the shower
3. start doing head rolls that would make ichabod crane shiver

and it's that time, today. and i'm still at work. and if i don't stop at wal-mart, tomorrow i will be going commando. and that, my friends, is just all wrong. (;

Saturday, January 06, 2007

let me count the ways

i've never been a math-alete. i can scrape by in percentages, but don't ask about fractions or ratios or *shudder* geometry. word problems were continually the bane of my existence, during school. for as many years as i've been employed, however, i've been put in situations where i am forced to do math, mainly bookkeeping, or in the case of my present job, figuring out where numbers come from or where they went.

in some ways i look at this as a mystery, waiting to be solved, and that makes it easier to swallow. however i'm still jaded about word problems. for instance:

question: A pool is filling with water at the rate of 1/2 gallon per minute. It is emptying at one gallon an hour. How long until the pool is filled?

answer: PLUG THE FRICKING LEAK.

i get disgruntled, quickly.

this week has been a reminder of how far i have come, mathematically speaking. in my new position i just do a lot of checking off of lists, etc, versus my old position, where i assisted clients with their taxes and deductions and why something was not figuring correctly. at any rate, people still come to me for help with figuring out things that they cannot figure themselves. and not to toot my own horn, but usually i can solve them.

in fact, at one point, someone actually said that i was LOGICAL.

huh? me, logical? not usually! then again, perhaps i am more logical than i think, but less so than say, spock.

i think the problem i usually have with math is that i hare off on a different topic before i can complete the current function. therefore when i come back to it, i don't know what i just did, and voila! i'm lost.

i don't know what the difference is at work, where suddenly i become the Inspector Poirot of Numerical Crap.

it does give me pause.

why? because there are many, many things that i never thought i could do, but i have done. i remember when i was first learning to drive, and i had a moment of hesitation about stepping on the gas pedal. in fact i was such a cautious driver that i did not think i would ever drive in a big city.

scoot fifteen years down the line, and i love driving in the cities. driving itself is second nature.

and the same thing is true when i consider math.

i don't think that i will ever overcome my fear of math, my loathing for imaginary numbers. (if they are imaginary, does that mean that i can imagine that they're simply gone? hm?) i think that, like many other things, i have become accustomed to dealing with it.

i cannot count the number of things that i have encountered with fear, and now live with on a daily basis. but if i think of those things, even just a few, it makes me feel strong enough to handle the next one, or just continue to live with the fears i do have.

my fear of math, in the scheme of things, is small. i have much greater fears--losing loved ones, for example--but i have lost loved ones, and i know that life goes on, whether i will it or no.

when i was a young child and my parents yelled at me, i would do one of two things: hide in the back corner of my closet, or any dark small space, or go outside and run over to the park, and pretend that i was elsewhere on the planet.

when i was in my teens, my dad used to get frustrated with my math skills, or lack thereof. he would rail and shout at me, until he gave up and walked away. my reaction was generally to sit and try not to cry, because then i'd hear that wonderful phrase: "stop crying or i'll give you something to cry about." when he finally would storm off, i would give in and sniffle through the math problems myself, and then content myself with walking into the woods behind our house, alone, and trying to make the feelings go away.

it's something i carried, along with all those basic habits you pick up as a kid. when something happens that makes me want to cry, my first instinct is to run off somewhere and curl up, that if i make myself a small enough target, i will be forgotten and will forget.

it's something that i have to face, every day. my mother always said you have to pick your battles. i understand now that it's not only the battles you have with other people; more important are the battles we wage against our selves.

the truth of the matter is understanding that there really is no battle, just a simple question to be asked of your self. the question varies, as will your answer. it is the pause that is important, the pause where you question your behavior or action or thought, and hold it up and consider it, no matter how briefly. my therapist calls this "coginitive therapy."

whatever you call it, it does slow down the world a little. the questions i pose to myself are my own inner negotiator, feeling out reactions.

i cannot count the number of times that i have filed my nails; nor can i count the number of fears that i have come to live with, the number of times i have fought to a truce with my own thought process.

but if i think about it in the smallest of ways--my hidden math abilities, say--then it becomes more realistic, for everything else i face.