Quote of the day :)

She did not believe that she could ever stop hating Nicky and Lee, until her pastor told her that when God was going to do something wonderful, it started with something hard, and when God was going to do something exquisite, He or She started with an impossibility.

Anne Lamott, Blue Shoe

The ideal is not real.

This morning, whilst en route to an estate sale a hundred miles north, I heard an interview with Nicole Atkins on NPR. She talked about Marcel Proust, and how he had influenced one of her songs with the idea of "the ideal is not real". She talked about how we, as humans, try to idealize our romantic partners, but in the end, it's all chemical and we have no control over who we end up with; that felt empty to me.

Couples were everywhere at the estate sale: sixty-year old antique dealers beside me in line, a man who told me he had to find something for his wife so she'd forgive him for all the junk he bought, wives asking their husbands to bring the trucks around to haul their finds, a hot bearded man with his wife and son that I couldn't take my eyes off of. I wished I'd brought a person with me to hold stuff, haul junk around. save my place in line. I couldn't stop thinking about it as I was alone in that line of fifty people, pushing my box with my feet because it was so heavy.

I ask strangers to hold my place, to watch my stuff. There are dogs and kids, and workers moving around constantly. I love people-watching, but in that moment, I wanted to be share my awesome thrifting life with somebody. But I guess I haven't found that special smelly somebody yet ;)

You don't understand.

Taylor & Ng has an entire collection of animal orgy mugs - classic

There is something that happens when a woman becomes the only single person she knows. And the secret is that she knows plenty of other single people - they just don't count. I have been through season after season of seeing all of my friends get married, and having to make new friends. Now it's been about a decade, and a new normal has set in, a realization that this is my life. There's a good reason that the men I date are still single in their thirties. There's a good reason I'm single, I suppose. Girl can't take a hint.

After a while, after a breakup, I make a decision to just stop already. It's the smart thing to do. But then I go and do it again: open myself up, let my heart stretch and hurt and soften in ways it never has, and then I get to today, the morning after, and remember why my life is the way it is, even if it hurts sometimes and is lonely in a way that other people cannot possibly understand.

I wonder why God chooses some people to have lives of stability and love and family. I wonder why God hasn't chosen me for those things, why I'm different. I'm pretty tired of fighting it. Fighting God is futile. And the hope of beauty is only crushed when reality steps in and shows its ugly face.

The Boys from Brazil

I realized this week that every movie that I watch that has violence, provides me with some sort of implicit social commentary on the nature of violence. If this were intentional, it seems like peace would be easier to achieve. If the Hunger Games trilogy is so popular, shouldn't we be seeing a peaceful revolution developing right in front of us? Some part of me thinks it is on the horizon, that somehow generations are being formed that will shift global consciousness towards peace and reconciliation. Or maybe I'm too hopeful for my own good.

Yesterday, I watched Red Dawn (1984), directed by John Milius, and starring a young Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and at the end of it felt like I'd watched a commentary on present-day Afghanistan. Young people are driven out into the wilderness during an attack on the US, and they become like cave-dwellers in the mountains, paranoid and hungry, willing to kill anyone who crosses them, even their closest friends. Isolation mixed with fear can produce some pretty nasty consequences.

Today I watched The Boys from Brazil (1978), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. World War II themes combined with 1970s era South America? It sounds like a recipe for my perfect movie. Also, Steve Gutenberg was pretty hot as a young twenty-something ;) It answers the strange and wonderful question, "Should you kill baby Hitler, if you knew he was Hitler?" Fascinating movie about social engineering and evil intent.

I guess the more violence I see, the more senseless it becomes. Perhaps that's just my special brain working. I don't know any better; it's the only one I've ever had :)

Faith is a fact.

I have a friend in another country who goes to church every day after work, sits in a silent old church in some old European country, and contemplates God or something especially cool. It seemed extreme to me when I first heard it, but I understand so much more now. We need ritual in our lives, sameness, things that do not change. This ritualizing of behaviors creates solidity in our souls, plants us into the ground, makes us feel safe in our own skin. Weird and definitely spiritual, but true. Take it or leave it.

In the wake of school shootings and marathon bombings, I hear stories of people reaching out in new and different ways. Today, while driving the freeway in between meetings across town from one another, I wondered if people are looking for God somehow in this reaching-out, and I thought about lighting a candle. I have another friend who lights candles regularly, also an awesome person. I so appreciate that she has created some kind of place for that. I don't think I have the room. Maybe I could put a shelf up or something.

Who knew I'd become more Catholic as I got older. It's strange and wonderful, and I'm glad my faith allows me to change over time, to go in and out of faith phases, just as I move in and out of food phases. I am still going to the panaderia every morning, and tonight I realized after my evening walk down the boulevard, that I could not go the rest of the day without eating ice cream.

So yeah, phases are good. Or okay, at least. Also ritual is good. I don't know if they are connected. Whatever. I won't figure everything out before I die, but I might figure out some things. Hopefully bread/ice cream phase won't put me in the grave sooner over later.

And I shall write.

Isn't this an amazing mug? I wish I could give it to everyone.

Esperanza means to wait -

Oh if I'd known this alternate definition,
I'd have suffered patiently,
to wait for healing, and precision

God exists within this pain -
she, triumphant in this waiting tumult,
years passing with each day

Inside my cold and wasting heart,
blossoms bud in silent reverence
for this Abba others cast away,
to ease their confusion, disbelief

I am quiet in my closet,
marking down with lines each day,
waiting for my esperanza - hoping God will find her way

I wrote this poem a few years ago, when life was bleak and I wanted something to hold on to. I was looking for God, or meaning. I was looking for a reason for pain. And I found that sometimes there are no reasons, that to truly accept the depth of evil, deep down in your soul, is suicide, and all we can do sometimes is love one another, and speak truth, and hold hands, and all that good mushy gushy hippie stuff.

Much love.

Piles and piles...

This coat just screams "Mountain Man", don' it?

Right now, I have a pile of clothing on my bed, already photographed, waiting to be listed. I had a momentary meltdown yesterday about money, so working today makes me feel calmer, like I have some power over my circumstances.

I spend like half my income on medical bills. So all this extra bullshit with my brain just makes me feel like I'm going to die in debt. I feel like I can't get out of it, so I'm working as much as I can to empower myself through December to pay my bills and buy groceries, simultaneously. A girl can hope.

My wish on the yoga studio's Christmas tree last night is to get out of debt someday. I just hope it will be someday soon.

I hate money.

Delusional hope.

I can't decide whether to give these to my shoe-loving friend for Christmas.

I think I've decided (for a brief moment of time) to be hopeful, for the future, because why not? Hope might be silly, and embarrassing sometimes, but it's tangible. There is no ephemeral hope. There is only hope for change, hope for better, hope for something different already, geez.

I often hope for a day without war, without violence in name and deed. I hope for this because I believe that we, the people, have the power to change the world for the better.

There's nothing better for fostering hope than staring through the window of a moving car (or train, if you're so lucky). That's how I get recentered, I guess, seeing the same scenery I've been seeing all my life, the same highway, the same crazy religious signs, the same oleander bushes. And I think to myself, "Well maybe I could change, maybe things could change a little, and everything would be okay".

I have hope that emptiness will be filled, that loss would be redeemed, and that someday, everything will make sense already, geez.

Peace out :)

I never want to let go.

The most difficult things I have had to do in my life have been to see people as they really are, not what I imagine them to be, but as they really are. And this process usually ends in tears, tears of regret and grief, and then the ultimate work of figuring how to move on.

A few years ago, I had to do this over and over again, and it almost killed me. And I never wanted to do it again. I never wanted to be disappointed again, I guess. But then, this year (oh God), I've had to do it again. I've had to see the people I love for who they really are, and figure out whether or not I'm going to accept them, or whether I'm going to move on (fuuuuuuuck).

The thing is (and this is the most difficult thing), I don't have a lot of relationships that I've had for over a decade. And that makes me want to cling to the ones I have left, to forgive and forget, to make it work when I'm pretty sure it won't. Because I don't want to go on in my life and leave everything behind. I don't want to leave my younger years behind me. I don't want that part of my life to disappear; I don't want that part of me to disappear. And I'm willing to compromise big-time to salvage parts of my life that have all but disappeared. I don't want to lose everyone, because it makes me feel like I'll lose myself in the process.

Sad day.

Forever with me.

Vintage Silhouette - Made in Austria

I've written a lot of poetry in my life, lots of terrible wonderful poems about love and loss and longing and anger with God. I'm sick today, and feeling lonely in my sickness, because being sick is always a lonely occupation, isn't it? And I'm trying to figure some stuff out, so I start looking through the last two years of poems to try to get some clarity on my feelings and how they've remained constant in some ways over the years, how my trajectory has, in spite of all obstacles, stayed straight and sure.

Vintage Liz Claiborne - Totally make me think of the early 1990s

I've figured out something really important. My love for other people, my deep unfailing commitment to what some would (and have) declared delusional, has carried me through my life like a bright shimmering string of hope, woven through the mess of my life, inextricably linked to who I was, who I am, and who I will become. These people did not earn that love, nor did they provide it to me. It was something inside of me that kept it going, kept that fire stoked through many stormy times.

Those people can never give me that love that I've created for myself with their names on it. They can never live up to the hype I've given them, because they're human, and I made that hope inside myself so I could keep living when I didn't want to. I deeply want to show these people what they have, with their mere existence, given to me, but it seems to be an impossible task. How do you really love another person? How do you give a person, in a few moments, a decade of hope that you have forever inside you because of them?

So I love them, not because of anything they did, but because at one time, they loved me. And it was everything to me.

Goodbye false hopes...

So yeah, I am back in the mire of my own brain waves, trying to figure out how to be 30, how to be me, and how to accept the life that I am currently living (without hesitation).

The wonder of it all is that my life is better at this moment than it has ever been. I am happier, more content, and I have more pure joy than I ever did before. But with all of this extra awesomeness comes this new unsettled feeling of, "Is this it? Is this the terribly romantic life I'd planned for myself, full of angst and resolution?"

Maybe those dreams, those hopes, were all just necessary along the way, keeping me alive long enough to get to a place where I didn't need false hope anymore. The idea that somehow, I have to cast aside (throw away!) false hopes that no longer serve me, significantly darkens my countenance.

Lisbeth would have none of these concerns. She'd just be a bad ass.

Perhaps all is not lost.

Vintage, handwoven, Scotland, mohair, hot pink!

...And one more thing: Don't think that the great love which was once granted to you, when you were a boy, has been lost; how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn't ripen in you at that time, and purposes by which you are still living today? I believe that that love remains so strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life...

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet - #7)

A little explanation

So the past two days, I've been talking about wanting and how I've decided to want things, like things beyond the usual things like eating dinner and watching the Olympics and not dying in 110 degree heat.

1. I've been living in a garage for the past year, and I'm ready for a house, with a kitchen that I can cook in as opposed to my cobbled together faux kitchen I've made work in my little place. While housesitting this month, I've realized that I'm done living with less.
2. I want to write memoirs about my awesome life, and all of the crazy stupid things that have happened and how in spite of all of it, I still get up every morning. Mostly I just want to write them for myself. Maybe other people will read them. I don't know.
3. I used to be a nanny for this family who had three boys, and they were just so boyish, and they were always running and climbing and we'd do fun things with bugs and it was wonderful. For whatever reason, I've only ever been a nanny for boys. I love my sister and all, but I have just always seen myself as a mother of sons. Perhaps my lover (as I will call him daily) and I will use the sex-choice method, or maybe we'll just be working with fast sperm. Again, I don't know.
4. I want to be bilingual. It will make my work infinitely easier.
5. One of my books will be about my family's story in Slovenia, and it will probably take me several decades before my heart will allow me to take such a huge risk, but it's on the list anyway.
6.
7. My uncle hiked part of the trail a few years ago, and I looked through all of his books while he was preparing. I don't know if I'd even be up for it, since it's so long and all, but my heart wants to do it, so there.
8. My hips don't like to open, and my head is really far from the ground, and my torso is shorter than my legs, so this may be a lifelong process, but I'm working on it. Let's all remember that a year ago, I couldn't do this, so anything is possible.
9. Something about the North Bay beckons me with its cool weather and Goodwill outlet :)
10. She said 'yes'. We are so going.
11. There are supposed to be thousands upon thousands of used books. Doesn't that sound like ecstasy?
12. I thought that as soon as I graduated, I'd suddenly have the funds necessary to travel. That isn't happening, but the plan is still there. There are people around the world who I love and miss dearly, especially that man on the river who thought I was flirting with him when I said 'oi' [wink].
13. The Creativity and Madness conference beckons me.
14. I went to a visual and performing arts school in Southern California (magnet school), and I was a member of the first class, so we created walls of ceramic tiles with our personal artwork on them. They're displayed on the wall of the cafeteria.

Peace out mofos. You're awesome.

Happy Saturday :)

This bird's nest fell out of a tree in my front yard :)

This has been a tough week, but the past several have been tough, so that really doesn't mean all that much. I hate the depression of summer, but it keeps me from going over the edge and collapsing the rest of the time, so it's worth the difficult days, usually. Mostly I just sit in my apartment with my mini fan pointed directly at me, doing eBay schtuff and listening to talk radio. Television makes me feel a lot more guilty, so I try to take it in small amounts (I don't know where I got the idea that summer television was shameful - probably my mother). Also, I drink a lot of smoothies, which makes me feel like a rock star. They're full of spinach and berries. I figure my iron and antioxidant load is now back where it should be.

Tonight, I am going out with friends to see Magic Mike (I later read this, and had some brain waves to the contrary). I am telling you so that you know that I have no shame (I think). Oh man, at the end of Dear John, when Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried's characters end up together after her sufficiently hot first husband dies tragically, gives me hope that love can truly conquer all. I'm not kidding.

I love Air Supply :)

Miniature oil painting - It reminds me of my home

Perhaps some of you wonderful readers remember last summer's heartaches and long posts about love, and longing, and loss, and "Oh! The meaning of it all", as I struggled through ex-boyfriends and trying to figure out how to be grown up.

I was watching Crazy, Stupid, Love for the second time yesterday, trying to turn my brain off in the midst of familial clatter. There was a lot of stuff in the movie about "soul-mates" and how when we find our soul-mate, we should never stop trying to be with them. I don't know how I feel about this. Just because we feel a certain way about another person, doesn't mean that that person feels anything similar to that for us. I don't believe in destiny or fate. I believe in human beings and the choices they make.

I'm a huge Air Supply fan (Making love out of nothing at all). I am a lover of cheesy '80s rock ballads. I'm ready for the time in my life when I can look backwards and think, "It was all worth it". I don't know if I've completely learned that lesson yet. I'm ready to be grown-up already. When does that happen?

Makin' things work

Vintage knit suit from Vivanti for Neiman Marcus

So after the car blow up yesterday morning, I went to town on listing my vintage clothing inventory. There really wasn't a ton of it, but it takes more time, blah, blah, blah...I complain about it too much. I am working diligently, listing everything I have. I reduced some big ticket items, hoping they'd sell faster, and now I'm just trying to be calm and not think about it too much.

I called my veggie oil friend, and he said he'd do some research, see if the car is sellable, and what I could do to make that happen. He said I might be able to get $2000 for it, and even though that's what I paid initially, it feels like such a small number now. I know that I don't have a lot, but what I do have is quite a lot of wonderful people in my life, and that's really all that matters to me.

Today I will be doing the same thing I did yesterday, taking a lot of photographs and listing a lot of my inventory. It will be a good day. I'm currently going through books, and enjoying the wonderful selection that I have. Perhaps I will share some with you tomorrow when I have some photos.

Is this the bottom?

I went to teppanyaki last night with coworkers for an end-of-the-year celebration. The place was packed, on a Tuesday, in an otherwise boring strip mall. It seemed odd to me. Good, even great (economy-wise), but odd nonetheless.

Last week, I went to my bank, and a young man was hiding outside, unseen from the security guards, selling M&Ms. He asked me if I wanted any (It was 102 degrees). I said "sorry". And it was in that moment that I thought, "this must be the bottom". People ask for money on cardboard signs on every corner, young people without shopping carts. Adults selling candy outside banks. Suddenly, I was transported to Peru, where children sell candy on the streets, and on the buses, where each car is accosted at every stop light, with people selling their wares, trying their best to survive.

But in happier news, my generic chocolate sandwich cookies have reappeared on their store's shelf, and I eagerly shared my joy with the first employee who seemed like she might care. And she did. It was a wonderful moment.

Survive the best you can.

Don't you just wanna feed it bugs?

Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo. What a day. It began with a night of terrible insomnia, followed by interactions with the police after I found my friend's home had been broken into overnight. What a day -- not one I'd like to repeat anytime soon. My friend's already antsy, loud, and annoying dog was on point today, yelping all over the house, letting me know that something was terribly, terribly wrong. And it was.

Why do people steal from their neighbors? Why do people steal at all? My experience last year with a home robbery was traumatic in a way, and I don't ever want to experience anything like it again. But seeing the drawers opened all over the house reminded me that bad things happen to good people, and there are no warnings to the crap that happens to us sometimes.

All I want to do is help people survive the crap they get dealt. But when I see the perpetrators damage in front of me, tangible evidence, I feel a little loss of hope. Then this afternoon, I came home in the middle of a gang territorial confrontation on the corner by my house. It feels like there is no hope, like this is life, and all we can do is survive the best we can.

Post flea market meltdown

I feel so bad right now. The flea market was so much work, and not worth the time and energy in the end, which makes me feel like I can't keep doing this reselling thing. I'm fooling myself to believe that I can continue to support myself this way. I couldn't pay my rent this month. I had to ask for help, and now I feel like this thing that I love so much has quickly become the thorn in my side.

I feel like my needs are exponentially greater than I can possibly meet. I need a job with health insurance, but I don't qualify for jobs that offer it. I'm stuck with a masters degree and now I'm almost thirty and my body is falling apart, and I need health care more than ever, and I'm less able to get it every day. I have less than three months to solve this problem, and now it feels like the sky is falling.

I need to eat, but my body doesn't want to eat because it's hot and I feel sick, but my mood is directly related to my food intake.

That's all for now.

Actual Postscript: Um, I just looked over my posts over the last week and it appears that I am having a total breakdown. I'm not. I'm functional, but graduation has taken the wind out of my sails. This too shall pass, I assume, as it always does.

omg — what have I done?

 

All of my insecurities are flying at my face right now, and I'm in pain. I don't know how it happened, and now I'm in this hole where I'm ugly and fat and I can't do anything right. Just typing that was difficult, and now I'm crying.

I was raised to be attuned to everyone's emotions but my own, everyone else's needs to the exclusion of my own. I was raised to believe that I had to be perfect or my parents would get rid of me. Oh my goodness. How horrible is that?

And now, in the midst of this silly business I try to pay the bills with, I keep getting hit with the reminder that no thing and no one is perfect. And to top it all off, I'm the one throwing the punches. I'm the one who loves thrift and recycling, the imperfect things of the world, the things that have been thrown away. I'm the one who decided that somehow this love would define me and my worldview. I'm the one who is somehow made whole through it.

And somehow, I'm the one I keep throwing away.