another rip-off from sara

this post is stolen directly from sara's blog, but only because it is the kind of post that just begs to be in conversation with other blogs.

what were you doing ten years ago?

drinking gin and juice.


what were you doing one year ago?

nesting in my new apartment and gaining weight



five snacks you enjoy:

genisoy

heart to heart kashi

veggie crisps and hummus

fruit leather

cheese and crackers



five songs you know all the lyrics to:

Gold Digger

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Manic Monday

Me and Bobby McGee

Man in the Mirror



things you would do if you were a millionaire:

start a writers colony

pay my parents back

buy a harley

travel



five bad habits:

smoking

procrastination

...i'll finish this later, i have to go have a cigarette



five things you like to do:

read

write

blog

lift weights

drink vodka



things you'll never wear again:


control top panty hose



five favorite toys:

hehehehehehe...

laptop

ipod

talking globe

my dog

volleyball

where will you be in ten years?

at my writers colony

1408

yesterday two of my friends convinced me that at some point i had agreed to go to the movie 1408 with them. i am not sure under what conditions i had agreed to this, but i believed them because i am an idiot and a masochist.



i liked the movie. it is a good movie. once it's over. while it's still running, it is just psychological torment. i suffered through it the same way i watched creepshow when i was 10, the exorcist at age 14, and the shining at age 23. with a shield propped and held continually in front of my face. i have always been one of those people, and don't act like i am the only one, folks, i know there are a lot of us, for whom simply closing the eyes during the scary parts just isn't enough. i need a barrier. without the conveniences of home i.e. pillows, blankets, couch cushions, i had to settle for a stack of about 12 napkins which i had absent-mindedly pulled from the dispenser while i was nervously thinking about whether or not i really wanted to enter this theater. 12 napkins can't protect you from much, but it certainly is a lot better than the zero protection factor of simply turning your head to the side.



i wasn't quite as frightened as i thought i would be by the movie, overall. although there were comments like "okay, i am ready to check out of the hotel now." and "no no no, i don't want him to stick his head out the window." these uttered in a voice that might have made a nearby movie-goer wonder why someone has brought their 5 year old to the scary movie. but as we left i didn't have a lot of anxiety about going home alone. we all did, however, suffer the difficult-to-describe suspension of reality sensation that follows a viewing of a a film in the paranormal or supernnatural genre-- mind-fuck movies. you know, that sense that when you get outside, everything is just a little bit off. your senses are heightened, your perceptions are keen to abnormalities and everyone might possibly be a ghost or apparition. so when we left the movie and were driving on a fairly busy street, the woman who was standing on the sidewalk (not even at an intersection, just in the middle of a sidewalk) with a baby in a carseat sitting on the ground next to her, seemed especially peculiar. i am not sure if it is because such a vulnerable-looking situation demands to be interpreted as a set up for disaster in a horror film or if it really was just that weird. but it didn't help that just as i noticed the woman with the baby, obnoxiously loud ambulance sirens began to blare, nearly startling me into that kind of driver's panic that far too many people suffer--the kind where the sound of an emergency suddenly renders drivers of all other vehicles temporarily moronic so they look around desperately wondering what to do and actually do everything except the very simple basic rule: get out of the way and stay still. i totally almost became one of those drivers because the sound of the siren bouncing off of the walls of the large concrete buildings around me combined with my altered sense of reality made the sound attack my senses from all directions until i couldn't figure out how many sirens there were, where they were coming from or what the fuck i was supposed to do. and my brain was in movie plot mode, so the siren felt like foreshadowing for whatever terrible thing was about to happen to the baby sitting so innocently and perilously close to the 50mph traffic of the busy street. and why is that woman there with that baby?

because humans are creatures of indescribable foolishness, my two friends and i concluded that we should stay with the theme of the evening and continue subjecting ourselves to terror and anxiety. in a moment of intellectual weakness, i think it may even have been me who said, "let's go ghost-hunting." to be clear, i don't even believe in ghosts, but i am afraid of them. and, as i mentioned to my friend karol, if you see any ghosts don't tell them i said that, it seems like the kind of thing that would piss them off. anyway, we went online and did a quick search for a handy list of all of the allegedly haunted places in our state. then we took a little cruise around town to see a few of these places. not to see ghosts. because there aren't any ghosts. but to see the places where people say there are ghosts.

i saw a ghost three times in a building in which i worked for a few years. i don't think ghosts exist or if they do i don't think we can see them. i reconcile this in a way similar to my continued atheistic-christianity. really, when it comes down to it, it's all kind of one big mind-fuck, isn't it?

like a flamingo

my computer has a terminal illness. a deadly bug, it seems. it has been threatening suicide now for about 4 days, but miraculously she is holding on for the time being. as a result of her repeated lapses into computer-coma, i have been transferring files like a mad woman because i am one of those not-so-brilliant people who has no back-up copies of anything. now i have some very cute little memorex keychains that also happen to hold the very hope for my future inside them.

i am not sure what kind of illness my computer has aqcuired. i tried to run a virus scan, but the poor darling can't stay on long enough for the scan to be completed. just when i think i might get an answer, once again i get the blue screen of death: preparing to dump physical memory. i don't even know what that means or if it is anywhere near as bad as it sounds, but since it takes approximately 5-8 tries to get the little bugger to turn on again after that screen appears, i think it is not such a good thing.

yesterday i ordered a new computer. a dell inspiron notebook. maybe it will inspire me. i think it will be a nice addition to the family, but i have to be sure the the latitude is not kicked out completely until she decides she is ready to go. she's been a trooper for the past year of travel and extensive daily word-processing. the new computer will be shiny and pretty and hopefully it's keyboard is very resilient... see earlier post on temper tantrums and irritability. she also has a built in webcam. this seems unecessary, but i went for it because it seemed like the kind of thing i might one day wish i had... i just hope i fully understand how to turn the damn thing off. that could really suck. she also, of course, will come with windows vista which is sure to cause a great deal of overstimulation for me and maybe a minor seizure.

and my new dell inspiron notebook is pink. bright pink even. like a flamingo. i am sure to become a better writer now.

off and writing

because i have been blessed with a brilliant writer for a new best friend and because i have been overcome by a sudden burst of energy and renewed passion for the craft, i am off and running with a piece that might one day become the memoir that inspires my parents to finally disown me. but karol has convinced me, rightly, to worry about that detail when it's time. hopefully this ambition will last longer than my current pack of cigarettes. there are stories to be told and i want to tell them, damn it. granted, i am only 1541 words in, but the important part is that i want to keep going. so much to say....

blog blog blog blah blah blah

i learned today that, as a group, we who blog pointlessly about ourselves are a dull lot. i have always known that when i accidentally divulge to someone new that i "blog", i am sending a bit of a misleading message. i do blog. this is true. but i am not a "blogger" like those often referenced on, say, NPR. bloggers write daily about things that matter to people with intent and political poignancy. i like to tell people how i feel about karen carpenter. i know there is a difference, but today i got a strong dose of that difference. i started following some links from blog to blog and i was soon reading about family projects and vacations-- families i don't know. and based on the way these folks are representing their lives in the blogosphere, i am content to not know them. it's boring. i am boring. i have long maintained that i do this exclusively for myself and for the two people who routinely harrass me if i stop. beyond the three of us, this little corner of the internet ought not to be visited. and to be perfectly honest, in my assessment, most of those other little corners of the internet ought not to be visited by anyone. i have to do this because my internal word generator is set to hyperactive mode and if i don't have a place to let the overflow land, well, i might just die. and even if i have a boring blog like everyone else, i would like to think that you accidental tourists out there don't actually want me to die. right?

a quirk

ok, i am just going to put it out there. you can choose to maintain or cease any formal relationship we have had thus far, it is your right. but i have to tell you: i love the carpenters. i love them so much. karen carpenter's voice is so perfect and powerful it makes me cry a little. not always, but it has happened. i love them and i have loved them for years. at one time i had everything they had ever recorded on either cd, LP, or cassette tape. i listened faithfully. i still kind of do. i am not ashamed that i know all the lyrics to "rainy days and mondays" or "this masquerade". i am a dash humiliated by the fact that i can sing along to "calling occupants of inter-planetary craft" without missing a beat or a note. i love it when the really quiet lady who sits in the bar and drinks diet coke alone steps up to the mic at karaoke to sing "close to you" or "hurting each other". i sing along as i walk through the bar looking for empty glasses that might want to be replaced with full glasses. i can tell that my singing along only serves to increase the curiosity about exactly what the fuck i am all about. but i might secretly love that too. i heart richard and karen carpenter. so there. but i am still cool.

disturbo

KIDS
Requiem for a Dream
Bully
A Clockwork Orange
Happiness
Boys Don't Cry
Beloved
Bastard out of Carolina
Saw
American History X
Dogville
Storytelling
Leaving Las Vegas
GirlsTown

all of these, excellent films. some better than others, some perhaps a few degrees shy of excellent, but quality for sure. all members of an elite club known as "Glad I Saw It, Will Never Watch It Again". i don't do well with the level of inhumanity so brutally represented in these films. i know that no one should do exactly "well" with this, but i have a profound lack of ability to bounce back from a viewing of something like KIDS, for example. i am disturbed to my core and i go through a period during which i find it difficult to get along in a world where these kinds of things happen. i try my hardest to avoid this degree of grotesqueness. unfortunately, as i have noted, they are often very good films.

to be perfectly honest, there are a couple on this abridged list and on the longer list in my head that i didn't actually watch all the way through. for others i can only wish i'd had that kind of wisdom. for example, someone talked me in to watching Leaving Las Vegas. before i was too far into it, i learned how it ended. i didn't think it necessary in my life to view a scene like that, so i proactively turned it off. i experienced much of "Requiem..." with my eyes closed. this was also the case with Saw and American History X. self-preservation. and for the record, before anyone goes making suggestions, yes, i have heard about hostel. i won't even touch the dvd case it comes in.

i am not meant to carry these images in my head. things are troubling enough in there already.

movin' on up

life is good and it's only getting better. i try not to be one of those people who assumes that something awful lies eerily around the corner, but i am starting to worry a little. i get to finally finish my master's degree, the possibility of writing for publication is being strongly encouraged all around me, including by people who definitely know what they are talking about. now i may have a real life big girl job just thrust at me for free, alleviating the need to ever again repeat the word "budbudlightbudselectcoordslightmillerlitegoldenlighthoneywiessbluemoon-amberbockandsummit". although, as many of my friends know, i will likely always have a job that demands something similar. a tavern wench i am and a tavern wench i shall always be.

anyway, as i said, i am trying to avoid the thought-plague that something terrible is pending. but i couldn't help but mention to karol yesterday that i am a little concerned i might be hit by a bus or something equally comedically tragic. karol said, "what color is the bus?" a real softy, ms. griffin.

yogurt

ok people...

there is a mini poll conveniently located in the sidebar of this blog. now only one of you has bothered to help me out with my curiosity and i must say i am a little disappointed. it may seem trite and inconsequential to you, but what if the yogurt question is crucial to me? what if my heart longs for resolution to the matter of yogurt: good or bad? it is possible i have a substantial wager riding on this issue. perhaps i have offered to sacrifice my eternal soul should i find myself on the wrong side of the yogurt debate. it is also possible that i just like it when people play my little games. humor me, huh? three seconds of your life. answer the fucking question.

frontier

when i was very young and just learning about my state-- learning that as one moved west through the dakotas the romatic notion of the frontier, the wild west, the old west began to reveal itself. as i often did as a young child, i glorified this idea in my mind and i seized every opportunity to contact the past. the olden days. i loved the museum in my home town because it reminded me of little house on the prairie. i felt connected to the harshness and the openness of the prairie and i loved the images of the west, which was right next door as far as i could tell. i loved to touch things that were old and imagine the lives of the people who touched them before they were old. i loved to dream about dusty dirt roads and horse-driven buggies and ink wells. i bought the nostalgic product that steam thrashing days and jubilee days in tiny north dakota towns were selling. i was emotionally connected to the rugged wild west and i was a descendent of it.

then i got a little older and i forgot about it and i fell in love with other things and i lost interest. western cinema loaded with gun-toting machismo outlaws and slutty bar whores forever dressed in lingerie replaced my vision of tough, driven prairie families who trust and love and care for their neighbors. i was less interested in connecting my self-understanding with deadwood, more interested in the tremendous tenacity of the residents of walnut grove. i eventually stopped thinking about regional history at all and found the energy and power of the city much more interesting.

i didn't give any thought to the frontier for a very long time. then i read karol's book and it was engaging and illuminating and showed me the (real) west in ways i had never understood it before. it was so compelling i began to feel the stinging loss of something i had never even known. i wanted to touch it in the same way that i had to touch the reading glasses and the school desks at the museum when i was 7. but that's the thing about the frontier, isn't it? you can't touch it. by it's very nature and definition it disappears before you can reach it and just when you think you have found it, it no longer is what it was. the whole concept feels more like a scenic overlook than a tangible, breathable space. or the whole thing is a matter of perspective.

there is a fantastic conversation in karol's book about the frontier which culminates with a profound observation made by a character who is known as Travis. "the only frontier anyone's got anymore is that split second when all of your options are still open." this line stopped me for a good while. i had to listen to that and ponder the possibility that it should mean something to me at this very moment in my life. it rang of such familiarity immediately. as a general rule, i am too jaded for lines like this. too jaded for the belief that anything is supposed to mean anything in the cosmic order of things. and as another general rule, i agree with the horrible mr. Udall in the 1997 film "as good as it gets", that "people who speak in metaphors ought to shampoo my crotch." but i am willing to soften for a moment and let this be the poignant moment that it clearly wanted to be for me. i was reading this book just days after i learned that my option for completing the master's degree i had given up on was now back on the table. i was on my way to a writers conference where i would learn whether or not writing is something for which i have any talent. i was about to meet the author of this fantastic memoir and i could not ignore the fact that i may very well be in that moment when all of my options are open. if this moment has ever occurred before for me, i was too drunk or too depressed or too angry to notice. i am willing, just this one time, to concede that this line spoke to me regardless of my refusal to be spoken to by the universe. my subsequent contact and developing friendship with karol and all the support and encouragement i am getting from her does indeed fling wide open the metaphorical door to options i didn't think i would ever have. and speaking of metaphors again, i can totally forgive "travis" for this metaphor-ish statement because he clearly didn't mean to do it. the very next thing he says is, "want some mashed potatoes?" and this totally makes me want to meet travis.

going home

i think i have decided to move back to my home town. to say this inspires a plethora of responses from friends and acquaintances, and the response tends to tell me a lot about the person who offers it. it's interesting the way people think about their home towns. some people immediately interpret this as a bad thing, the kind of thing one would only do in order to care for a dying parent or kick a nasty crack habit. some people clearly wouldn't even do it for either of those reasons. when i told karol of my plan, she noted that she would put her cigarette out in her eye before she would move back to laramie. i think at one time i told sara that i would rather stab myself in the face than move back to grand forks. the new truth is that it really makes a lot of sense for me to move back. it's where the love is. it's where i feel connected. it's where the people who will kick my ass to move on with my life will have the greatest access to me and my ass. it's home. what can i say?

i am trying to look at the whole situation not as a return in shame and failure kind of deal, although if my compassionate reader wants to view it this way, i won't deny that it is a legitimate interpretation. i prefer to see it as a logical place to make a repeat attempt at launching into something a little more hopeful, a little more intentional. i will have the space and the support and the resources to finally complete my graduate degree and participate in the graduation ceremony that i should have walked through five years ago. i will be able, better and more obviously anyway, to take my life off of "hold" and do the things that have been tucked away under fear and avoidance for so long.

this is a good thing. unless one compares it to a move to, say, NYC or san diego. then it's not such a good thing. so let's not do that.

Karol Griffin

contrary to everything that one might expect from me, i did attend and participate in the jackson hole writers conference. as a spy, mostly, of course. just standing quietly on the sidelines watching and listening. my standard MO when i am new to something and don't want to make too much of an ass of myself. it was a fantastic experience as i knew it would be. and yes, i know that i have to toss out some propers to sara and kim and phil and kathy and judy for making me go.

i went to jackson hole with anxiety and embarrassment and no idea how i was going to handle any of the critiques or conversations with other writers... i left jackson hole with a great deal more excitement and confidence and a lot of information and, most importantly, a new best friend. Karol Griffin is one of my favorite people i have ever met. we got along famously from the first moments of conversation and she seems to be under the misguided impression that there is something about me that is interesting. i am choosing not to correct that perception-- i want her to keep talking to me. little ol' me. Karol wrote a beautiful and witty memoir called Skin Deep which every person who reads this must go out and buy. i say this in part because i think every person in general should read it, and in part because i know all three people who read this blog, and all of you would love this book. so read it.

it is difficult to adjust to being back in my weird life of coffee and beer and the occasional opportunity to jot down a thought or two. but it is good to return to my life with some new energy and hope for a more directed future. i have plans now. plans. how weird is that? i have never lived by things like budgets and plans, but as we have seen, this is not a very effective way of ordering one's life, so i think i'll try it the grown up way. i think i'm ready.