Songs of love and loss. Songs of forgiveness.
I made a muxtape recently. It felt perfectly natural to make it, assembling meaningful songs, poignant songs, songs that make me lock up and feel something. But when I listened to it the next day I caught the narrative... It's chock-full of people I've loved, lost, unloved, hated, unhated, forgiven, missed, miss. It's really fucking sad, this collection of songs that somehow floated to the surface of my conscious subconscious.

And they're not all current tunes; some have been dancing in my head for years and years. A few are from college. One is in the mix explicitly to honor someone I knew from 16 to 23 (he killed himself at 25, my best friend and lover, so give me some slack on this one). Some of them are so so so so old that way... And each of them is an ode to someone I know or have known, all of them songs I might sing to myself in someone's honor. Sometimes they're sung wholly for myself, but just as often they're not. Just as often, they're a tribute to someone you might think I'd be better off forgetting.

So what keeps me gripped to this story of my life? What is it about this monologue that continues to fascinate me after all this time? Me, this "oh so independent woman"? I don't forget. I do keep singing these songs. I do remember.

A ex questioned me about this very thing: why do I keep the pictures around? Why do I keep reminders so close to the surface? Why do I TALK about the PAST so MUCH? Did time stop for me somewhere along the way? I guess his real question was: Have you lived so much already that there's nothing left for anyone else?

No. The answer is no. But sometimes I need to wallow in it.


P.S. I lied. Two songs are for you, Don, and they always will be. I miss you.

If laundry falls on an empty floor, does it really need washing?
Sometimes being single is about giving myself permission NOT to do things. I DON'T need to get up for brunch. I DON'T need to put on make-up on Saturday. I can do the dishes TOMORROW instead of today. It's self-indulgent, yes, but it's also freeing. Relaxed. Left to its own devices, life paints an honest picture. Unimpeded by another's causes & effects, my life fulfills its own. I haven't washed my hair in two days because I've got nobody to impress but myself, and my self is pretty comfortable with oily sideburns on Sundays.

This gives way, of course, to the next logical question: "Am I myself when I'm in a relationship?" And the answer, of course, is "Yes. I'm my Relationship Self." And this self is not the same as my Single Self. And I can't possibly put them on a scale of 'better to worse' or 'sane to insane' or any other judgmental continuum that might veer me towards a relationship-for-its-own-sake or the opposite. That would be false, fake, pointless, gutless. I refuse to judge myself on the basis of my "relationship status".

But we all have scales on which we weigh ourselves. Artistic/creative expression is a big one for me, and if you put a gun to my head right now, on that merit alone I'd choose "Single" without hesitation. Go ahead, read back through this blog and correlate my written expression to my relationship status:

Dec 2002-Sept 2003: Single
Sept 2003-Jan 2008: In relationships
Jan 2008-Today: Single

Stick it all in an Excel sheet and graph it. I am far more prolific, post for post and word for word, when I'm single. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!? It's vexing, truthfully, and it's painful to admit. And that's just my writing. If I gave you stats on my costume design, music, knitting, weaving... if creative output is something you value in a partner, you'd write me off your dating dance card forever.

At the end of the day, though, it's my problem and not yours. If I'm to form appropriately territorial relationships with my muses, it's for me to manage and ultimately to judge. If you've read this far, I appreciate your interest but I don't (and can't) rely on it to keep me going. I write, both publicly and privately, to keep myself sane. As odd as it may read on a public (though unpublicized) blog, I write for me.

Thanks, though.

"So, what, he gets a medal for correctly identifying a feeling?"
What's an apology worth? When does "I'm sorry, and I learned something" give way to "I know better but I fucked things up anyway"? It depends on the recipient's particular flavor of co-dependency, their propensity to think, "This will be the last time; it will all change with me." Sometimes it's about a person's sense of self-worth: "I deserve [this or that type of treatment] because I'm [damaged in this or that way]." For me, often, it's about balance: "Everything has been good for awhile. I'm strong. I can handle this right now."

Mostly, though, I think it's about my propensity to behave the same way. To sympathize. To relate. I do, on some level, forgive behavior that I can see myself repeating in a reasonably short timeline (or have already manifested not long ago). And I can't be dishonest about who I am. Well, maybe I can to you, but not to myself. Not any more than I can wear a navy-blue suit and feel at home. But that doesn't mean I don't still behave in ways that I know are beyond me, beneath me. Ways that I know, at "my age," are bad/wrong/inappropriate/immature/whatever.

So, as messed up as it is, aren't I forgiving you in order to forgive myself? Isn't it all just a ruse to excuse myself for behavior that the better part of me can't abide? And what does that say about me, that I let both of us treat me this way?

Build it.
"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's."
-William Blake

"...escape well-established patterns of behavior, especially the ones that are no damn good for you."
-Rob Breszny

"Always accept yourself the way you are."
-Fortune in a cookie from S. Dynasty, New York City, NY

"May you lead an interesting life."
-Chinese curse

What dreams may come (redux)
I don't know what we fought about that day or if we were always just fighting. I don't know why I left him alone in my house but I did, returning shortly after to find him at the end of a rampage that had gouged and bloodied walls in almost every room. Hammers, pipes and bats had left welts and holes and cracks. Columns and rows of wounds were eerily aligned. Windows were alternately spiderwebbed and shattered. Oddly, though, rooms that already bore gaping wounds by my own lazily ambitious hand were left untouched. Perhaps only those that I had naively considered "done" were deemed fit for destruction.

I screeched at full-volume, following him as he fled through the back door. Suddenly fearing for my safety, I doubled back, ran out the front door and banged the door of the neighbor's house. A man answered, and I introduced myself as someone who'd lived next door for my entire life, realizing as I glanced around that I was in the cul-de-sac where I grew up, next door to the house I'd inhabited with my family until I was 15. And though I feared he'd never recognize me, feared my ignorance of these people who were obviously keenly aware of me had made me equally invisible in their eyes, this man knew me. This man from my past was kind. He offered to help, to shield. He knew restitution was in order (or at least relief) even though he didn't have a specific plan to pursue.

I found him again later, the destroyer, and confronted him: "You owe me $100,000 to fix all of this damage! You've ruined my house! You're responsible for this!" I knew he was capable of helping if he chose to. I cried. He was cold.

And I looked around me, at the holes in my walls and the shards of my windows, and thought that it didn't seem so bad after all. An opportunity, perhaps, for a new way of decorating. In truth there was no way to go back anyway, no way to replicate things to be exactly as they'd been before.

And I thought, "Well, I guess it's up to me."

On staying in the game

"One of the most important of the rules that make improv possible...is the idea of agreement, the notion that a very simple way to create a story--or humor--is to have characters accept everything that happens to them."
-Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink"

Well, goddamn if I haven't been mulling over this very concept for the past three years, and some improv team (parsed by Gladwell) finally put it into words I failed to find. And it all started with text messages.

I have this friend. And this friend said to me, "You and [ex-boyfriend] have this really cool banter, always joking with each other. How come I can't do that with [boyfriend]?" She flipped open her cellphone to show me the latest text he'd sent: a silly come-on, something about her tits. And I said to my friend, "You've just gotta learn how to stay in the game. If he says something weird, respond with something weirder. If he's got a goofy idea, don't shrug it off... suggest the first step towards making it happen." I quickly narrated two or three potential responses; she thumbed her favorite into the phone and hit "Send". He replied in kind and they were off to the races.

What I was trying to communicate was the notion that you have to make the crazy shit real, if only for a few moments. So what stops us? What makes us giggle and wave our hand in a "Oh, you're just silly!" gesture? Why do we laugh and decide that that's it, that's the end of the story? Is it a self-confidence thing? Do we think that other people have already cornered the market on funny-smarts and there's just not enough left to go around? The funniest person you know wouldn't be funny if she didn't know how to play along. Or she'd be a modern-day Henny Youngman. The merit of either predicament is up for debate.

And sometimes that crazy shit morphs into something real: a piece of art, a trip around the world, a new way of looking at things. Sometimes, god bless it, it changes your life. At the very least it can make you belly-laugh, and that's good enough for me much of the time. Two of my greatest joys in life are laughing, and hearing someone else laugh at me.

It doesn't have to get any more complicated than that.