My own weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet

walking home from westlake center today, down fourth, in front of the family clinic, a deep-eyed man carrying a red bucket asked me where the exchange was.

i told him i didn’t know.
and wondered, achy-headed and world-tired, if i looked like i did.

hey, that’s no way to say goodbye

imma miss this radio studio a lot.

a whole lot.

<3 thanks, KUGS, for being the only place i ever felt at home on campus. even when i lived here.

and so I do what I do, and at least I exist

oh wait, though. really. let’s take a pause and again ask myself:

what actually would make me happy?

and don’t say family, because that’s a given.

and don’t say Indi, because that’s one, too.

Yes, we speak of things that matter, with words that must be said.

my life is mosty functional.

that is, i feel purely utilitarian. proletariat.

i find little bits of satisfaction in conversation, in sunlight, in passages of books that others have written that ring true.

but for the most part, i work. i make a little money. i spend a little money.

and i do radio. at which my mumbling and my stuttering render me mediocre. but it doesn’t matter because i can play music without speaking, and say a lot that way.

sitting on my porch (MY porch. my somewhat-very-own porch) tonight, i got an idea of what the next nine or ten months will be like.

new house, new street, new corner store (where i got recognized from work. that’s an entry for another day.) new bus route, new bike ride.

new heartache, new uselessness, new nights spent wandering in circles in my home with a bottle and a romanticized idea of what my life was supposed to be like.

perhaps i was wrong in condemning organized religion. i see the merit- it must be nice to feel like there’s a reason to your existence.

but ignorance gets corrected eventually, and it’s never easy to swallow.

i prefer to deal with what is in front of me, and not what is beyond the last heartbeat.

and, apparently, i will do this in the corniest way possible.

so, i will continue to live on my own first principle:

don’t fuck anyone over.

i am an island.

did you ever stop to think….

….that i nap all the time because the work i do is also physically exhausting?

….that the hours at which i do it are not easy, and they often mean less sleep?

….that because i deal with humans, and all of their little quirks, and all of their self-centeredness all day long, when i get home….i just want to be alone with my thoughts?

i can’t spend entire days (or nights) serving people, just to come home and continue to do it so that you feel important.

_____________________________________________________

everyone is the most important person in their life.

it’s true for you, and it’s true for me.

and it has recently come to my attention that it is actually impossible for me to make you important enough to be validated without entirely effacing myself and what i need.

yes. you do come second. you come second to me

but you come second, which is the first most important person after my own self. and that sounds selfish but FUCK- who else is there, all the time? just me.

why do i have to constantly have to go out of my way to make sure you feel important enough?

i’m already fucking tired.

i’m sorry you don’t feel important enough but the fact of the matter is i have to make money, i have to get sleep, i have to have time to just collect my thoughts. i love you, i love you, i love you, but i cannot spend my entire life assuring you of it. if you don’t already know that yes, i love you. and yes, you are always at the forefront of all of my thoughts and actions. and if you don’t know that, well….

it’s like the smartest man alive tells me:

tough shit.

to destroy is always the first step in any creation.

here are a few things are a funny, and a few that aren’t.

funny things:

1.) fine dining. here is a silly part of society.

the entire concept of the absolutely excessive treatment of food is kind of moronic. but i can value it as some people’s art form. however, the idea of going to an “upscale” establishment is a bit like going to church. you put on your sunday best to impress the other diners. but the difference is that in the restaurant world, the kids putting the stuff together are dirty-fingered ragamuffins like me, and non-english speaking twenty-year-olds named (really) Juan, Manuel, Wilmer and Raul. my stained apron, my use of the vernacular, and my ways of making things more efficient are only incorrect because they aren’t stylized in the way that some rumpled geriatrics think they should be. come on, old people. i’m paying for your social security, while you’re leaving me change and sticky butter-pat papers face-down on the table. besides, your time is up anyway.

why complicate everything with formalities that you, or someone like you, have constructed?

2.) My coworker’s attitudes towards me. everyone that i work with thinks i’m an absolutely ghettotrash idiot. and granted, i am not the most eloquent speaker. i stutter sometimes, i stammer frequently, and i invert words within a sentence like syntax is just a set of vague guidelines.

but in reality, i’m almost done with my college degree.
which none of them have.
and i never say things like “supposabley.”
and i don’t pluralize with an apostrophe. (“egg’s,” por exemplo)
and i can spell “apostrophe”
and i speak several languages.

and i’m literate.

sigh. maybe someday i’ll drop a knowledge bomb on them.
or continue to contain my laughter every time they end a sentence with “at.”
suckers.

now here are some not funny things:

a.) that thing that you think is funny and how it makes me feel. and how i never thought it was funny when you felt like this.

b.) the future in general. i feel really, really constricted by everything and terrified by how that makes the exact present seem less valuable. it’s like watching a storm coming, but knowing that even if you get into the cellar, you can’t be saved. so you just stand watching the twister coming, mouth ajar, marvelling at the force of it all.

which brings me to….

c.) mayanmar/burma and the cyclone/hurricane that hit them. and while tools in team-related t-shirts are tipping back coronas and taking tequilla shots with straw sombreros on, there are 10,000 fewer people in the world, which puts at least ten times that many people in absolutely soul crushing pain. and we could not care less until sheryl crow and oprah go over there to save the natives with coloring books and makeovers.

in conclusion-

i’m a little conflicted. because in some ways, yeah, i see the irony in everything. and i see when things don’t make sense in a silly kind of way.

the difference between comedy and tragedy is that in comedy, no one is taking themselves seriously- no one ever gets actually hurt or truthfully angry.

and some things are like that. jobs, busywork and kids in class who use the phrase “in so far as” literally every single class period for an entire quarter. has not missed a day yet.

and some people are in more pain than i could ever imagine right now. however, i do not think this makes my feelings any less valid.

i’m hurting. and just because it’s not as much as other people, or even as much as you think you’re hurting, does not make it incorrect. or able to be “gotten over.”

that’s part of that whole “mental disease” thing.
and that whole “being a human” thing.

xoxo me

unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

i’ve been meaning to say something, but meaning has been something i’ve been struggling with.

i’m unsure where it stems from, and i’m completely in the dark about where it goes from there.

and just when i think something means something, or doesn’t mean anything,

the light turns off and there i am, bumping into the nightstand trying to find it.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

here is something i’ve been thinking over for a while:

compliments on someone’s physical features.

maybe this has only recently come to mind because this has only recently happened in my life.

example:

“you have very pretty freckles” or….

“your eyes are very blue” or, stranger yet
“wow. you are very beautiful.”

here is what i find strange about these things:

it’s not like i did any of this myself. i didn’t make my eyes this color. these freckles have stayed in their respectful, rightful places since i’ve had skin that wasn’t brand-new. and beautiful? that’s just symetrical features, genetics and knowing what to do to make those things work together.

so. i think this whole concept of beauty if ridiculous. it’s really more like luck.

and not talent at all.

and it’s misleading.

example:

old man: “ma’am, i was very displeased with your service today.”

me: “um, sorry?”

old man: “blahblah geriatric type complaints about the good-old-days”

and then as i walk away, to his wife….

“That is the sort of girl who has gotten by her whole life with her looks. You can just tell.”

…no further questions, your honor.

i’ve come to wrap you up tight, ’til it’s time to break down.

from the pages of my paper journal

here is a list of things i don’t believe in:

binaries, the sole use of phonetics in teaching children, monotheism, monogamy, capitalism, the war on drugs, area 51, tax “relief”, alphabetical grades, busywork, bureacratics, war, the difficulty of citizenship exams, the concept of an “illegal” human being,  religion for the purposes of anything other than comfort, hell, heaven, the idea that “everyone has a purpose”, art within confines, lobbyists, middle-men in general, the punitive nature of the justice system and the resulting expectations of american citizens, pure communism, any kind of anarchy,  true selflessness, wastefulness, the criminalization of marijuana, the reduction of humans to dollar amounts, concrete thinking, true loves, best friends, great tragedies, prescriptive grammar, unlivable wages, doctors, western medicine in general, conservatism, the FCC, the DEA, the FDA, fur as fashion, the living conditions of livestock, a single truth, an honest retelling of a story, a non-biased history, the two-party system, the distribution of wealth, most mass-produced major label music, the unbearably unaffordable cost of higher education, required courses, the DCMA, the knowing production of unhealthy foods,  the nomenclature used to describe depression (mental disease) and mania (personality disorder),  the DSM,  privatized medicine,  “free trade” and the movement of espresso as an accessory and not an art form.

so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

in other news…

you want my hands, heart and crown?

well, i’m an irish girl, so you damned well better believe i’ll deliver.

and if it’s not enough,

then maybe i’m not the problem.

father up above, why all this hatred?

this is a holiday. a holy day. to celebrate an event that may or may have happened, but that many millions of people throughout history have staked their lives upon.

maybe it was a miracle, maybe it’s an old wives tale that somehow caught on.

and i may have only ever sat through one church service, but i know with every cell in my body that:

1.) God doesn’t see the connection between drinking before noon, eating chocolate bunnies and wearing $400 heels on a Sunday morning and his rise from the earth, either.

2.) Rabbits don’t lay eggs.

3.) “He Is Risen” is a poorly constructed sentence for all intents and purposes, save for the fact that because most English speakers would be ok with this clear mixing of tenses, linguists would have to accept it as a grammatical statement.

4.) God wants you to treat your waitress as if she really were a human. That’s kinda what he’s all about. That whole compassion, do-unto-others malarkey.

5.) God also wants you (if you’re going to celebrate his son’s return to the waking world) to stay home with your family on Easter, so that others can enjoy the same experience (see above, about the treat-thy-neighbor thing.) If no one got all spiffed up to go eat $20 eggs, then no one would have to spend the day serving on them, thus missing a gentle afternoon in reflection with their loved ones (surrogate parents included, beautiful warrens of my heart.) And parents would be forced to make conversation with their children, instead of chiding them for misbehaving in a restaurant.

So today we will drink this wine and muse about a pretty radical guy in the cradle of civilization.

And we will also think about our families, both the living and the dead,  because, regardless of who your savior is, family is it.

And try to ignore all of the things that people do in the name of salvation.
Hope everyone had someone to hug today.

xoxo me.

p.s. today one of the chefs at work was making small talk and he asked me why i was in bellingham (practically no one is actually local- the city is full of nomads) and if my family was up here, or “just me.” and i said “no, just me” and it sounded so lonely i almost cried.

p.s.s. while i was writing this, i remembered the time when i was 14 or so, on the night before Easter. and I asked her what we were doing the next day. And she responded that we were going to the grandparents and that “your aunt will probably be all dressed up, so let’s look like shit.”

that one did make me cry.