Slow Burn

So I just came back from a run. It wasn't a big run, or a hard run. I just did a mile medium/hard and then a mile of fartleks. Not grueling but worthy of enough effort to justify spending my (currently tiny amount of) free time doing it.

So I walk into my house and my downstairs neighbor, who I will call "Hank," and I start chatting about various things (drilling, cell phones, moleskin notebooks, family) and he pauses to show me his new briefcase (re: Swiss Army messenger bag). As he was showcasing the versatile mesh pockets, I said "What's it mean if your hips hurt after you run?" He looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow and said, "it means you haven't run in awhile."

"It's only been two weeks!"
(with a little bit of judgment) "That's enough."

Hey now, "Hank!" We can't all be Eagle Scout marathoners with sick distance times even though we smoke like a chimney and eat nothing but red meat and potatoes with the occasional capellini aglio olio.


Or can we?

All Apologies (and some appetizers, if you will)

I lied. I totally lied. April 23rd I promised new posts soon. It's been more than a month! In my defense, work has been really crazy. Working extra hours - through lunch, staying late, extra days - the works. I'm not complaining though, I love my job.

Anyway, I took a vacation last week. I have a lot of stories. What comes to mind first is that we rescued a sweet-ass feral cat. We didn't keep her (everyone I know is allergic to cats, 2 dogs in my apartment, trying not to get evicted, etc.), but she got adopted into a cat colony (did you know such a thing existed?). We named her Miss Boots. Her nickname is Nancy Sinatra. She was all black but with white front paws and white "boots" (you guessed it) up to her haunches on her back legs (ala Nancy Sinatra). I'm not really a cat person, but if I could have found a way to adopt this cat I totally would have.

For now I'm happy with getting her a home, medicine, food, shelter, and making sure the fish hook she managed to get stuck in her mouth was (surgically) removed (many, many thanks to the vet, the vet techs, and everyone at Friends of Felines).

On another note, my dog actually flipped when she saw Miss Boots on the deck. Literally. I got her a travel crate (it's pop-up, like a tent) and she, while inside of the crate, flipped it end-over-end and rammed it into the sliding glass doors when she saw Miss Boots on the deck. I almost peed my pants and my dog actually peed her pants(?). I had to wash her blanket (bedding). Twice.

Also, I ate a cinnamon roll that was bigger than my face. Seriously, it was probably more than 12 inches long and 6 inches wide. And I ate it. Because I was on vacation.

In other news, congrats to my LA poet for having a master's degree, and for being almost 24!

Thanks

To the girl in the cute sundress and flip flops on East Carson:

Thanks for telling me that I looked very nice, I needed that.

soon

new post(s) soon.

Finally Fixed-ish.

They finally fixed the sinkhole in front of my house. After numerous comically erroneous decisions on the part of the city, and multiple grand street collapses, the street on which I live is now mostly level (except for, you know, the storm sewer that is caving in on the corner). Allow me to remind you that I first called about this sinkhole in July 2007. I'll be generous and say that it only took them 9 months to fix something that started out being relatively minor (I'll dig up pictures) and then turned into something that could swallow a few houses.
before:

"Isn't that just a pothole?" No, my friend, absolutely not. If you look at it in the right light you can see the hollowness that is occurring in its depths. Also, potholes, in my experience (and allow me to remind you that I live in Pittsburgh, the champion of potholes) are not 2 feet deep, with a 4 foot by 4 foot expanse of hollowness hiding beneath a roughly 1 inch layer of asphalt. This thing was no pothole. To further prove my point, I'll show you the "after" picture.
after:

Yes, that darker asphalt shows the extent of the repaired damage. Pretty impressive. The original picture of the small hole was taken about 2 feet behind the jeep's rear right tire. Obviously that little hand-sized guy was a harbinger of doom. Fantastic.

The day after the crews packed up and went home, I found an elderly man (who can be seen chatting with another elderly man every evening on our street corner around 6 or 7pm) shuffling around in the street, looking at the caliber of the work.

I was entering my house after walking my dog and stopped to talk to him. I said something like "Pretty impressive, huh?" He looked up at my slowly, assessed me, and then replied "I wouldn't say 'impressive' but it's something." He paused and then waved me over to him, all the while eyeing my puny dog suspiciously.

As he pointed out the errors the construction workers had made, I looked at his outfit. He wore khaki high-waisted (old man) pants, a short sleeve button down, worn tennis shoes, and a mesh-fronted baseball cap with a veteran's patch on the front (I couldn't see which branch he was in without being rude). As I inched closer to him, he showed me the tiny slits in the concrete they'd neglected to patch with tar, and then explained to me how the rain would collect in the slits before eventually eroding the pavement in the same place all over again. As I stood next to him, I caught wind of the scent of my grandpa. There's really no way to describe the scent but "clean" and to say that it's only something I've ever smelled on my grandpa. Maybe it's a vintage aftershave, or some really old bar soap. Or maybe after a certain amount of years, veteran's just have a common scent. I don't know, but it was the same. I practically stepped on this man's toes filling my nose greedily as memory after memory poured over me. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and say "I miss my grandaddy terribly and I don't get to hug him nearly enough, please ignore me while I hug you." But fortunately, I exercised some self-control.

I wasn't able to pay attention to everything he said to me, but I heard him say that they'd dug for a gas leak by his house and that, after they found and fixed the leak, they left the holes open and they collected with water and caused all sorts of trouble.

"That's so frustrating," I said to him.
"Frustrating? I think that's putting it pretty mildly."

I paused. "I was trying to be polite."
He stopped and thought to himself for a moment and then said "Oh, well, thank you," and then he smiled and nodded at me as if to say "you're not so bad."

The dog was getting antsy so I started toward the house and wished him a goodnight. He replied in kind and then he did something that took me by surprise--he thanked me for talking to him, and said that he had enjoyed talking to me. I told him likewise and I really wanted to explain to him about my grandpa and how I was so grateful to him, but I knew I couldn't do it without sounding crazy and getting emotional, so I waved and walked inside, choosing to keep the thoughts to myself.

Except that now I'm sharing them with you, whoever you are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make a phonecall to a sweet-smelling blue-eyed veteran with a voice like Southern butter.

Sweet Sunrise

I just looked at the weather forecast and saw that the sun is set to rise at 6:50 tomorrow morning. I am so excited not to the wait for the bus in the dark. I think this means my days of moon-lit commutes are coming to a close.

My boyfriend will be done with finals in less than a month. Sunny mornings and my favorite boy: two things I love coming back into my life at the same time.

I Get Satisfaction Everywhere I Go*

I bought my boyfriend Clutch tickets for his birthday. The last time they came around, the show sold out (as it did this time) and he was unable to go so I was pretty excited to remedy that with this gift.

Unfortunately for me (and he), Clutch (who put on a fantastic show) came to town on a Thursday (re: work night, with another work day to follow). We were so very tired by the time 7:00pm rolled around, but he got some dinner and I put on one of my favorite pairs of ripped (authentic, not Abercrombie) jeans and a camo t-shirt and attempted to transition from "office building" to "distorted-Southern-rock-lover" as quickly as possible. Luckily for me I own the aforementioned ripped jeans and a camo t-shirt, and the bags under my eyes made me look appropriately heroin-chic; needless to say, I was pretty pleased with my 5-minute transformation.

When we arrived, one of the openers was already on stage (bonus points to us for not having to listen to bands we don't care about), and there was no line outside. The notion that Clutch fans could potentially be a rowdy bunch was reinforced by the fact that the venue had beefed-up security - re: an extra man checking people who went in.

Over the years, I have become sort of a master of eluding security. I don't ever intend to do it, nor have I ever done any harm, rather I just forget to take stuff out of my bag that venues don't want inside (most often mace).

I was going to explain what I got past security and how, but I feel that could potentially allow people to abuse the system. And actually, let me set something straight, I didn't actively hide anything from security - I just didn't point out anything either. Anyway, I was pretty disappointed, because while it saved me the hassle of having to return to the car, I realized (as I have at every venue where this same thing has occurred) that if I could inadvertently get something past security, so could someone with bad intentions.

When we finally entered the building, the crowd was exactly what I imagined it would be, but more extreme. At least 50% of the concert-goers had Neil Fallon-esque beards (whether it was in tribute, I cannot say), and there were lots of flannel shirts, baseball caps (both forward and backward), mohawks, faux hawks, leather jackets, and an unbelievable amount of tobacco. Every guy there seemed to be smoking a cigarette and holding a beer, and every girl there appeared to be wearing black eyeliner and some sort of Fox Racing apparel.

Later, as we stood listening to Murder by Death (who put on an amazing performance as well), I looked mournfully up at the ceiling fans that the venue refuses -always- to turn on. The place was so smoky that the air seemed foggy.

A group of of guys stood in front of us shoving each other and generally have a good time goofing around. They were all probably in their late 20s and quite drunk and it was amusing except for that the fact that they kept bumping into me, and one began to gesture wildly forgetting that he had a lit cigarette in his hand and I had to dodge the cherry a few times.

I felt sentimental for the days when coming home from concerts with cigarette burns and bruises was like coming home from battle with scars. For years my friends and I remembered our great concerts by the tiny reminders on our bodies. Sometimes when I am at my parent's house I look through my ziploc baggy of concert ticket stubs and inevitably come to the small white piece of towel that belonged to Anthony Kiedis for a few minutes when he wiped off his concert sweat before throwing it into a chaotic crowd. It was at that Red Hot Chili Peppers concert that I crowd surfed for the first time. It's hilarious to me how brave I was when I was younger - I wouldn't think of doing that now. It seems so stupid and dangerous - almost everyone is dumped unceremoniously onto an unforgiving concrete or dirt floor after their short tenure on top of the world. I was lucky enough to make it up to the security barrier between the stage and the crowd where some really, really big security guard gently plucked me and set me down in no man's land before shooing me away.

As you can see, this show made me pretty nostalgic and thoughtful. I worried that I was aging too quickly. 23 seems awfully young to have hung up my crowd surfing shoes. I wondered why I felt so tired after a day of work when everyone else seemed so vibrant and eager to take on the night.

Just then, one of the goofs in front of us pushed someone who was trying to cross our paths. He didn't do it aggressively, he did it because he was looking on the floor. He frantically got out his lighter and started hopelessly pawing through the cigarette butts and broken glass. I saw him squeeze one of his fingers in a helpless gesture. I realized he'd lost a ring.

While most of the people around us were still trying to figure out what he was doing I crouched on the floor and calmly looked for the tell-tale reflection. I found his ring, touched his shoulder and pointed. He picked it up and screamed "thank you" several times although I only know this because of the shapes his lips made. It was too loud to hear him.

When the next song ended my boyfriend leaned over to me and said "God, wouldn't it be awful if that was his wedding ring." I laughed really hard.

After a few more songs, the guy (whose gestures had become significantly more subdued) turned to me and said "Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much trouble I would have been in." I laughed a little and then had to ask him the obvious question - "was that your wedding ring?" I shouted the question across the noise of the background music and indistinct chatter. His eyes widened and he nodded his head vigorously before slowly shaking his head in disbelief and saying something like "phew" before turning around to his friends again.

How hilarious is that?

"Honey, I'm sorry. I lost my wedding ring at a Clutch show while I was drunk."
"What?!"
"Well, technically it was Murder by Death, but you know I went to see Clutch."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No no, they weren't bad at all - they have sort of a horror-flick rockabilly sound. Quite good. They have this hot little cellist, but that's really neither here nor there."

I guess my concert-going days aren't really over, they, just like everything else, have changed. Instead of being the stupid blonde girl whose well-being is completely dependent on the good will of others, I am now more like the security guard who helps people when they get in over their heads. I'm still a part of the show, I'm just playing a new role.

I was at an outdoor concert once, in which I was in the full-sun 90 degree weather for 6 or 8 hours, and I became terribly dehydrated. I made my way up to the water buffalo (only by the grace of God, I imagine) but didn't have the where-with-all to get a drink of water. I sat down with my head between my knees and tried to go to sleep. Two strangers came along and got me water and forced me to drink it. Eventually my friends found me and sat with me and gave me water enough to rehydrate me. Thinking about that time is scary for me. I try never to be dependent on the goodwill of strangers. Oftentimes, strangers don't have much goodwill. I guess though, that for every person who gets in over his/her head, someone has to be there to help.

I find that at concerts, there are generally far too many of the former and far too few of the latter. As such, I guess I'm okay with being at a point in my life where going to a concert now means being the person who helps find the wedding ring, instead of being the one who loses it.

After Clutch came on, a very tiny girl teetered over near me and the boy, and began taking very sloppy swigs of a domestic pounder. She seemed to be getting drunker by the minute. I leaned over to my boyfriend and sarcastically told him that I just wasn't up for being vomitted on. He rolled his eyes at the girl and we started to venture away from her. For a minute I considered getting her a cup of water or asking if she was okay, but seeing her behavior and the behavior of the friends around her, I quickly filed her into the "not worth it" category. I wasn't in the mood to be vomitted on, or yelled at by, a girl who couldn't hold her booze.

When we reached our new spot, a big guy in front of us was dancing and shoving the crowd happily. Big guys seem to think that they can forget they're big at concerts. Hey big guys, you're still big. Big enough, it turns out, that your elbow, once thrown, will meet my eyesocket with remarkable accuracy. I cringed and told the boy I was fine. I rubbed my eye a few times throughout the night wondering if he'd left a mark.

When I got into the car after the concert I was surprised, not by the fact that I had a cherry red mark under my left eye, but by the fact that I was proud of it. I smiled at my boyfriend that night as I changed out of my smoke-saturated jeans and t shirt, and laid out my button down and pencil skirt for work the next morning.



*The title of this blog comes from the song "Electric Worry" by Clutch. You should also check out "Burning Beard" by Clutch and "Brother" by Murder by Death.

Flattered

by the fact that I reached the big 1k in hits. New post soon.

Alphabets

My body is trying to tell me that I need to write again.

A few nights ago, as I was going to sleep, but not quite ready for bed, I dozed off with my face in my pillow. For a few split seconds I saw a carousel. As it turned silently in my mind, I narrated the scene to myself in short lines of poetry. I awoke suddenly and said aloud, "I need to write again."

I was startled by the words. I don't know why I said it, but it left me unsettled.

I have a confession. I'm kind of mad at my poetry. Around my senior year of college we began to develop an adversarial relationship. I think this arose, at least in part, because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but I knew what I desperately wanted to do with my life, which was write poetry.

One day I decided that I wasn't going to dedicate the rest of my life to writing. I decided that I was going to do something else and that, to spite my writing, I'd be very happy with my decision and very good at my chosen career (luckily for me, the first part of this is true, and as for the second part, well, I guess my boss would be the judge of that).

I've tried to explain a poet's relationship with words, but I just can't. The only people I've met who sort of understand are musicians. Even people who prefer prose don't seem to feel the same way about writing as poets.

All of this confusion and emotion and anger and pain that comes from this mad passion can leave one feeling quite isolated. I grew tired of the isolation. The only thing that made it bearable for a few years was having a close friend, another poet, nearby to talk about these things that no one else understands. When she moved to California to go to graduate school, my entire poetic support network moved with her. I began to resent my writing.

When I angrily decided that I would not pursue writing as a career, I felt as if I had KO-ed my writing love. I was proud of myself. I felt strong. Poetry could not defeat me if I were simply to quit.

Still I find these moments of pain. I feel an emptiness. I hear phrases, names, fragments of conversation that I want to save and use in my poems. Indignantly, I refuse to claim them.

I feel as though I had a small lover's quarrel with my soul mate and, because we are both stubborn, we both refuse to come back to one another. Each is waiting for the other to yield.

It's a conundrum. Intangibles can't really yield. As a result, I'm always the one to come crawling back. I'm tired of crawling back. I'm ready for the writing to come to me.

But it won't.

A few months after I'd made this quiet decision, my LA poet started to catch on. She started to ask me about my writing. Ask me if I was writing and what I was writing. I kept telling her I didn't have the time. "Make the time," she said, "you need to write." I brushed her off. I grew annoyed with her for reminding me of something I was trying to forget.

She'd try to coax me and encourage me by telling me how I was better than almost everyone in her master's program. I told her she was exaggerating.

Then one day, for some reason or another, I sat down, and almost against my will, almost without my own consent, I wrote two or three poems. They were amazing. They were the flawless sort of works that are so perfect you feel they could almost fly off the page. The kind of poems that have no "process" and so can't be explained. The kind of poems that make poets crazy because they don't know how or why they write them, they just do (every poem I have written that has ever won an award has been this kind of poem).

I showed my LA poet. She said, "Oh my God, you need to write. There are so few good writers, I can't sit by and let one of them not write."

Here was my friend, trying to be the best friend and fellow writer she could be, encouraging me, giving me feedback, being supportive, not nagging - approaching the situation in the best way she could - and I wouldn't listen.

I was (and still am) really mad at my writing.

I'm still mad at my poetry.

I used to be in a place where reading a good poem brought me unbelievable joy, but now I'm in a place where it angers me. I've become something I loathe: a jealous writer.

Jealousy always seems a sign of mediocrity to me, especially among writers. Those who are great should not envy talent, they should admire it. Those who are great need not envy greatness, because they have it themselves. My jealousy showed me just how pitiful I'd become.

So I buried myself in outside things. I became so busy and so "otherwise occupied" that my once feigned excuse of busyness became a truth. There were a few months where I thought I might never write again. I even began reading some good fiction without having pangs of regret.

Then came that dream.

I have been uneasy since that dream, but I've left room for the uneasiness to persist.

Two nights ago I dreamed one of my dead friends was secretly still alive and disguised as another of my friends. The dream was long and involved. I was overjoyed. I felt the invisible scales of life's justice had finally tipped in his favor. I went along with the ruse. The dream ended with my friend fainting unexpectedly. Someone was coming, and I didn't know who. I sensed we were in danger. I picked up his motionless body and began to carry him. I carried him up flight after flights of stairs. I reached the top of the building with his body in my arms. There was no where else to go. I woke up.

I don't know what that dream means, but it is a clear message that I need to write again. There are too many things that, left unsorted, will explode out of my mind in confusing and painful ways, and rather than turning into something creative and beautiful, they will fester and hurt. I can't keeping pretending I don't need this. It's ridiculous.

A famous professor of mine once spoke of the magnitude of the poet's "fucking ego." "We all want to write all good things all the time," she said, "we all have this big fucking ego." She's right. This unspeakable trepidation I feel is fear that I will write something unsatisfying to me.

How shameful of me to have succumbed to my own pride in a way that ultimately ended up destroying the very pride I was trying to protect. What a stupid poetic thing to do. How deluded must I have been to believe that stopping the outlet I use to release all of my ideas and creations, good and bad, would stop the ideas and creations themselves?

Awakening with the feeling of the weight of my friend's body still lingering in my arms was a good reminder that, I guess to put it simply, I am who I am. Frustration, anger, indignation, pride - nothing will change that.


So LA poet, if you read this, "thank you" and I'll see you soon.

Happiness Is Not a Fish You Can Catch (?)

I read a couple of articles today that contradicted something I have preached for years. The article said that at least half of our happiness (if it can be measured in halves) is out of our control, and is linked to genetics. I say that we are in control of our happiness.

I say we are in control of our happiness because I've seen evidence of this in myself. When I make an effort to be happy, I am happier. I'm not saying I can control bad things that happen around me. I certainly can't control the sad things that happen around me. I'm not even even advocating that happiness is in the way we handle the bad things around us; I believe that we must strive for happiness at every opportunity, and welcome it from every possible source.

Simply stated, the little things add up.

I learned a few years ago that if you laugh at every opportunity - if you see the humor and absurdity in life - your days are immensely more pleasant. I laugh at myself when I trip over my dog. I laugh at myself when I forget that I didn't turn the nozzle to "hot" in the shower. I laugh when I tuck my skirt into my underwear. I laugh at the absurdity in life (I have a picture on my cell phone of a piece of paper I found sitting atop a stack of magazines in an apartment lobby that read "free/ $1" - and it's not even the inherent absurdity in the sign - it's the fact that (and I know I have stated this before) I thought that only happened in movies). I eagerly welcome happiness.

And I believe that everyone can do the same.

I can't control the things I see on the news. I can't control when loved ones die. I can't control when I, or someone I love, catch(es) a bad break.

But I can play with my dog. I can read Calvin & Hobbes. I can listen to funny stories anytime anyone offers to share them. I can look at myself in the bathroom mirror and laugh at the fact that I sometimes resemble a sad-looking Bridget Jones. I can laugh at the fact that my sister just discovered that my youngest niece really enjoys throwing things in the garbage can - so much so that my sister now has some mateless shoes. I can laugh at the fact that I once heard my mailman confiding to another mailman that "some days I just don't deliver the mail" (and come on, that's wayyyy annoying). I can laugh at the fact that some drunk stole a piece of my porch furniture, and a month later my neighbor saw it about a mile away while he was on a run, veered over, picked it up, and carried it over his head as he ran it back to me. I have to laugh about the fact that my boyfriend got two flat tires in two weeks (Pittsburgh roads SUCK!).

So I guess this study would argue that I am, genetically speaking, one of the lucky ones. That I have personality traits that allow me to find happiness where others can't. I am all of those things that they say most happy people are - social, compassionate, at least mildly extroverted - but I don't like the idea that unhappy people will dismiss the work I put into being happy, the choices I make, the deep breaths I take so as not to lose my cool over stupid things, the lessons I am constantly trying to learn - I can tell you right now, happiness didn't just happen to me.

I had a conversation with my parents a few months ago about the way they raised me and how appreciative I was of their parenting. I grew up believing I could do anything. Okay, now, I know that sounds like rhetoric cause every kid says that - every mildly successful person says that, and it annoys me. But for me, I really, really believed it. I still believe it. I fully believe that even though I am not working to be a published writer right now, that if I decided to I could absolutely be successful (with a ton of hard work). I even believe that even though the sciences are not my passion, I could, say, go to medical school if I wanted to. Maybe that's delusional, but no harm done because I don't want to go into medicine. Anyway, I explained to my parents that, because of them: "I don't believe that the world happens to me, I believe that I happen to the world."

And I apply that to a lot of situations where I see myself differing from other people. When I see things that don't work properly, I try to fix them, and most often do fix them. If something is making me unhappy, I try to get to the root of it and fix it. When I feel down for no reason, I make an effort to get more exercise (endorphins!) and get outside for longer periods of time (vitamin D, baby).

As such, I'm confident that, even when bad things come my way, I'm going to stay strong and find my happiness again.

This brings me to the second thing I read today - and I read so much today that I don't remember if it was in the same article as the previous one - that stated that if your happiness were to be plotted on a graph (with level of happiness on the x-axis and age on the y-axis), it would form a "U" shape. The study found that people's happiness declines until the age of roughly 44, wherein it bottoms out, and begins to ascend again.

How depressing is that?

While I could personally refute the first study (at least to my own satisfaction, I'm not actually dismissing it completely, I'm just saying it doesn't hold true for me and I don't think it's cut-and-dry sentence of unhappiness to those people for whom it might apply), I have no idea what it's like to be 44! Frankly, getting old scares me. Maybe this is what will eventually unravel my happiness. But I really hope not.

I hope that even if, when I'm 44, things are not at all what I foresee now (which is that I will be married, mothered, jobbed, and housed), I can find happiness in whatever life I'm leading.

Ultimately though, I think that the thing that will most ensure my future happiness is to not worry about stuff like this. This is the kind of thing that could be my undoing, so this is the kind of thing I should ignore. I can't change the fact that I will someday (most likely) be 44 years old. I can't change the fact that I am going to lose more people I cherish.

The only thing I can do is take each day as it comes, and suck as much happiness out of it as I possibly can - spend time with the people I love, try new things, fix problems, and live my life in such a way that, each time my alarm clock wakes me up, I look forward to the day ahead of me.

I choose happiness ( regardless of what my genes dictate, or the number of years I have lived), and I have to say, I am pretty happy with that choice.


Here is a link to at least one of the articles I read: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1721954,00.html