Ashbloemstraat

I'm so tired.

Chimney falls and lovers blaze
Thought that I was young
Now I've freezing hands and bloodless veins
As numb as I've become

I'm so tired
I wish I was the moon tonight

Last night I dreamt I had forgotten my name
'Cause I had sold my soul but awoke just the same
I'm so lonely
I wish I was the moon tonight

God blessed me, I'm a free man
With no place free to go
I'm paralyzed and collared-tight
No pills for what I fear

This is crazy
I wish I was the moon tonight

Chimney falls and lovers blaze
Thought that I was young
Now I've freezing hands & bloodless veins
As numb as I've become

I'm so tired,
I wish I was the moon tonight

How will you know if you found me at last
'Cause I'll be the one, be the one, be the one
With my heart in my lap
I'm so tired, I'm so tired
I wish I was the moon tonight

Coupling.

Have I mentioned this yet? Because it's only by reading every single entry today I kept myself regularly entertained while doing a sort of boring data audit project. I can say, with significant confidence, that I have not seen the entirety of ANY Lifetime movie. And now I never have to. Thanks, Rusty.

In other online listening news, this is an amazing show. I cannot recommend it as a soundtrack whilst doing a boring data audit, because it can lead to drifting off into a reverie. Not a sleepy one. But definitely a dreamy one.

In other general pondering news, you know what is really important? Having couple friends to hang out with as well as single friends. I never got that before, but I do now. It's just that you understand the dynamics of being in a couple, and have different expectations of what a reasonably negotiated evening is (of course, SOME of this is from being 34 and I just don't want to go clubbing on a thursday anymore). Let's put it this way - I have RARELY had to kick any couple-friends out of the apartment/house because they wore out their welcome. It's like... a different CLOCK.

Then again, I think it is just that people naturally fall into couple behavior, even when it is platonic. So if you are a couple and you have a single friend over, SOMEONE is going to be left out of the vibe. It may be one member of the couple, of course. But it's rarely an even field. And of course there are exceptions, but do you know what I mean? Chances are, if you are in a couple, you do.

I guess what I am saying is that Jennifer, Sean, Paula, and Jimmy & the two of us had a casual dinner last night and it was kind of nice to be able to talk about relationship dynamics in the context of reality instead of theory. I have a feeling I'm going to irritate some single friends with what I've said above, but I guess what i'm trying to communicate is that while I NEED - sometimes DESPERATELY MORE THAN BEFORE - my single friends, I can only now understand why so many of my coupled off friends would seek more couple friends instead of just hanging with little ol' me. There is an importance to it - maying having other friends who are married helps validate the difficult/wonderful/fucked up/beautiful/profound choice you made yourself? Mm?

I'm talking myself into the dumbest hole EVER.

Land of the free, home of the brave!

Originally David and I had talked about trying to start a family right around this time this year – after my birthday and in the lead-up to the wedding.  I've been taking my pre-natals like the good girl I'm supposed to be. Of course, we also thought we’d be insured by this point, so that’s the main reason we have NOT been trying (not that we haven’t been, you know, PRACTICING). Well, certainly ONE of the main, but not by far the only. There are the additional problems of having little savings, a somewhat irresponsible social life, and the million things we have on our plate already between finishing the house, buying a car, paying for a wedding, me wanting to buy a new computer, and let us not forget we would still really like to move out of Dallas in the next couple years. I can NOT really say that having a child fits into this equation very well in the short term. In short, I’m not really mindfully chomping at the bit for it at the moment, so keep that in mind as you are reading.

That said, there is definitely a lot going on in the subconscious that does suggest I’m ready. Hell, part of the conscious too.  It would seem it is time for me to have children if only to stop the harsh judgment I have been doling out recently (both internally and verbally, much to David’s surprise) upon other parents.

I just can’t help myself. I scrutinize every child I see in public – how they behave, what they are eating, what they are and are not allowed to do. I am every Dallas parent's harshest critic.

Hey Dallas – your kids are poorly fed and badly disciplined.

But who am I to judge? ME, who knows so so much about childcare, right? It’s been under 20 times I’ve babysat in my life. I have a younger sister, but we are close enough in age that I never really experienced her as a child when I wasn’t one too. I’ve only held a small handful of infants (ha ha - SMALL HANDFUL. They were too!). The one time I tried to give a bottle to one I ended up with more of the milk on me than in the kid's mouth.

It is funny, because I would say otherwise I am not such a judgmental person. True, I do believe my first impressions of people to be statistically more accurate than not, but those are generally an emotional impression (like they are strange or unhappy or crazy people), and I make a very conscious effort to make sure people have the opportunity to disprove my first instincts. But I don’t care what people do or say or how they wear their hair or clothes or if they have a million tattoos or green hair or whatever. I don’t judge people based on their personal choices. I try not to, anyway.

But I am judging parents’ choices terribly these days. It is wrong. I admit it. I get my knickers in a real twist and then later I feel bad about it, like they could see my face or sense my displeasure, and then maybe they feel all the worse for what they are doing in what is already a really hard job. And the cherry on top of all this is while I can recognize it is hard, I can bet it is about 100 times harder, so I should keep my judgments and facial expressions to myself. I'm sure karma is going to slap me with the worst kid EVER for all of this some day.

What I am more ashamed of is the almost outright indignation and… well, flat out anger I feel when I think of a couple people I know personally. Now,  before I start explaining myself further, I want to make it clear that I am not angry AT these people. They are friends of mine and I love them.

How to explain this without seeming like a real bitch. I have this one friend who rather rashly had unprotected sex with his girlfriend of, oh, 3 months or so. And now there is a baby; and a beautiful one at that. And another couple we know, who for the past year have done little in front of me than bicker and argue and fight – so much so that I had already written them off as over; I was just waiting to hear it made official. Instead what was made official was that they are having a baby.

I do not even know if they read this. If they do - and you know who you are, I am sure - please keep reading before you get angry with me or anything. Anyway, I have been struggling with this for a while now. I just get so upset about it. So I had to really sit myself down and have a talk with myself about it. What is bothering me SO MUCH? I'm not MAD at my friends for starting families. I'm happy for them. I want people to have love and happiness and all of that stuff.

What I have boiled it down to is this: they have innocently become the conduit through which every current frustration I have with our society is funneled.  It is exactly the same as with my job search - it is the feeling that I am trying to do everything the way I am supposed to - I got the degree; I have good job experience; I was careful about not getting pregnant before I was ready; I'm finally with my true life partner; I am waiting for the job to finally come around that will insure me - AND I AM GETTING ROYALLY SCREWED WHILE I JUST GET OLDER AND OLDER. And other people are all LA DEE DAH WE'RE GONNA MAKES A BABY LURLEEN! CLEAN OUT A DRAWER!

I am irritated that these friends just decided to get pregnant on apparent whimsy, because there is no damn logic to it. But I suppose the real irritation is with myself. I cannot operate that way.

Honestly, I am happy for my friends' riches, either in money or progeny. I just do not understand why I feel so left behind, so willing to follow the rules. If I was still in Europe, I do not think I'd be this angry. In fact, I'd probably have a child by now, because I would be able to afford one on my socialized health care. I would not really care if it was with someone I'd only been with for three months, or with someone I bickered with all the time, because I would know that society was always there to help me raise the best family I could, even if I had to do it alone.

So in the end, it's this whole system I am angry with when I get irritated over my friends' good fortunes. I hate America so much right now. Fuck you, USA. Fuck you and your stupid fucking capitalist "democracy" which totally screws the majority of the population while the rich just keep getting richer. Fuck you for spending $3 billion dollars a week in Iraq for a war we should have NEVER started while I look at babies on the street and wonder if it just is not in the cards for me because I can't get any reasonably priced health insurance. Fuck you, Stupid Americans, for going along with a war that was guaranteed to be a disaster from the get-go, that anyone with a brain suggested from the beginning, but thinking "SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE" is a dirty phrase. Fuck you. Fuck all of you.

Oh yeah, and I'm mad at Flickr too.

Postscript.

Right now I fade, I fade. I played journalist earlier because I needed to tell you how special the weekend was. But now I have had a couple glasses despite my vow that I would not take any. Not because I really wanted them, to tell you the truth, but because after the weekend I find myself back in the habit. However, a couple glasses on my own makes me moody and sleepy enough that it won't last; certainly not past tomorrow. The drama of lonely self-medication is no longer appealing. Thank goodness.

Tonight I finished re-reading The English Patient, as I have every couple of years for the past fifteen. Perhaps it is the exhaustion of pure emotion; the heartache of missing friends, as surely as if I would never see them again, but I wept off and on during this reading. Which I do sometimes upon my reading, like the first time I read it, but not always. A page turned and a tear fallen.

Maybe it is just the echo of a war that is frustratingly monstrous in its cruelty.

I am so tired sometimes. A weary traveller, with no chosen home. I, like Almásy, despising nations. While being in love grounds all, even in my most heartfelt happiness I fight the promise of constancy. Sometimes I want to lose myself in deserts. I want to take up arms against the simoom and chart my own cartography.

It is not that I desire another. On the contrary. My greatest temptation is solitude.

This is, all, of course, ridiculous. There is a different sort of war and there is nothing left to explore. We know the rock paintings of the Gilf Kebir. My days of solitude are almost over. Most often I consider this a blessing. Most often. But not always.

Another thought:

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.

I should clarify that despite the reference to the bridegroom, I speak of the bride. It is rarely David who is warlike. It is most often me.

Slow.

David had a little bit of a meltdown yesterday, and I realized we are really putting a lot of pressure on ourselves and that needs to stop forthwith. He is working non-stop, and therefore getting a.) little time to himself; b.) little time to have fun; and c.) little sleep. I am giving myself daily crap for not having a job yet (though thankfully I will get paid for the tour next week). Right now I am insisting that we calm the fuck down.

It feels like we have these looming costs, but really, we don't. The wedding is so reasonable at this stage, and while I am sure something will come up, I feel very good about our finances on this thus far. Our hopeful trip has been giving him some stress, but as I told him - hey, we've created a honeymoon registry, and if it doesn't look like it will cover everything we DREAM of doing, certainly it will cover part of it and that's just the part we will do! Right? Right.

I've created a first draft of my NEW RESUME. However, it's still mostly my old resume, cleaned up. I'm going to keep working on it, but at least I have one now that I feel a bit better about so if I happen to see a job I'm interested in right now I'll have that one to send off.

Wedding-wise, the honeymoon registry is done and we'll hopefully finish the Amazon one before we leave. We are having a hard time with that one because we don't need anything, really, but I don't want people buying us random crap at showers or whatever either. Tour-wise, I'm reading and studying, and really getting excited now. Also very excited because we'll spend the first few days in my old town of Luzern with my friend Sara who just had a little girl three days ago! That may be the littlest baby I have ever held, unless I hold a younger one before next week. Which is unlikely. I'm going to take David sledding on Mt. Pilatus. Hope we don't break any bones; that would be bad.

I am hoping this little bit of time away is going to help restore my creative impulses. I've been sort of trapped in the job-search/wedding-details hamster wheel recently. Being in new air and languages always perks me up. Maybe when I return this blog can get a little creative again, instead of just being a daily journal. BOOOOR-ing.

I've totally just bored the crap out of myself, but I'll post this anyway. Woo hoo!

Maybe I will never be all the things I want to be.

I took the picture above two years ago today, walking around my snowy South End neighborhood. David was en route to Boston, as I recall, and I sent him picture and text messages like this one every day he was on the road to keep his spirits up. But our spirits were up already, way up; my messages were extraneous, unnecessary for spirit-lifting. We'd met and fell in love a mere month before and could not imagine life apart and even today I said to him WE ARE SO LUCKY and he agreed.

But other than the happiness of having him sleeping in the next room from me, and this loving little kitten sitting in my lap, and the obvious fortunes of being healthy and not destitute and having a warm cozy home, I am coasting through some doldrums right now. This period of unemployment is forcing me to do some reflection about what I want my life to look like, and I have to tell you, I am drawing a huge blank here.

I have always considered myself a writer. But other than this blog, and some poetry, I guess I am not. I mean, I do not make a living at it. I have almost always had office jobs which, while I often found them interesting or even fun, never felt like my REAL work. Would I like to make a living writing? I have no idea where to start. And is that really what I want to do? Do I imagine that for myself?

I've been reading this blog off and on for a while called Electrolicious. I first found it after purchasing and loving Offbeat Bride; I just really liked the author and her style and I guess she reminded me of how fun the old rave days were and all that. And while I never doubted my non-traditional inclinations for our wedding, reading her book and the blog just became a really nice affirmation of all that. From there I started keeping up with her Flickr and dipping into the blog from time to time.

I bring this up because she and her husband seem to live a similar life to Davey and I - cute home, loving pet, open and affectionate, etc. - with the main difference that she is DOING WHAT SHE LOVES. And is making a living that way! I am just so intrigued, and fascinated, and - let's be honest now - envious.

For a long time I worked in the travel industry because I loved to travel. It might not have been the most sexy way to make it happen, but travel I did. It was my foremost passion for a long time, and I suppose that now I can say for eleven-odd years of my life I guess I did not so much do a job I loved but the BENEFITS of that job made me very happy indeed. I have been lots of places.

Now, everything feels different. Travel is still a passion, yes, but I am not sure a job wherein I travel all the time is what I want anymore. I want to be with David. I like our evenings in, cooking and reading. I want to sleep with my kitties every night. I suppose I am settling down a bit. But not, I think, in a bad way.

So I am reassessing my professional life. I need something new. I can just get a regular old HR job with a good paycheck and regular hours and spend my free time writing and crafting and doing what I really love to do. But wouldn't it be SO much better if I loved what I was doing professionally as well as personally?

I am at this crossroads, and I know now is the time to make the decision. While we are in Dallas, I have the luxury of minimal expenses and a supportive family and all that. If I am going to try something crazy or different, I should get on with it. We will be here a couple more years but not forever, certainly. I am lucky to have this window; to waste it would be tragically stupid.

Tomorrow I am going to Wellfleet to have some much needed Boston Friends Time. We are going to eat seafood and drink wine and I will probably ponder the nature of happiness in work and marriage and ask them lots of questions. We will listen to the sound of the wind on the beach and I will love it because there is something special about Cape Cod in the winter. I need to go pack. I will be back on Monday night, with photos and (hopefully) more insight.

Old and tired.

It has been a long time since I have dealt with any sort of direct bigotry or racism. Which is not to say that it does not surround me at any given time.

As a child I often sparred against my grandparents, who were racists of an old southern sort - they did not seem particularly bothered by individual black people, often having jolly conversations, but at home would make blanket statements about race and always, always referring to black people in racial slurs. I fought with my grandmother mightily about my two best friends in fourth through sixth grade being a black and a Mexican girl.

I do not think this made them bad people - obviously I love/d my grandparents very much - but they were from a different time, I suppose. And in some ways I suppose they were better than others. I never saw or knew of them being racist in person; I always saw them treat other people well no matter what color or nationality. Certainly closeted racism is no better (possibly worse) than bigotry outright, but they certainly impressed and taught me more with their behavior than their words.

Bigotry is an ever-present issue, but I feel I have grown up as blind to this as I possibly can, and believing that people should be treated differently based on color, gender, disability, nationality, et cetera is about as far away from my personal morals and beliefs as it can be. In high school I was the only white girl on an all black drill team. I never felt like I was treated different and I never felt I treated others different. This even though I was going to a majority white magnet school with special priviledges and certainly a better education, HOUSED INSIDE a majority black school smack dab in the middle of the west Dallas projects, and those girls probably had every right to be resentful. I've travelled trying to get to know what other nationalities are about. I took African-American studies in college. I try all the time to focus on the unifying qualities we all possess. We are so focused on individualism (which I am all for), but I believe people really lose sight of how we are all the same.

I'm not saying all of that to be like "oooo I'm so great", but just to describe myself. I think I'm pretty accepting, and non-judgemental, but I'm no love-fest hippy. I'm aware that differences exist. I just want to transcend them.

All this said, I've been irritated with people this week.

First: I interviewed a tranny for a position in the company, which freaked my colleagues out to no end. The person I was supposed to interview her with could not even come into the room. She tried to make sure the other colleague did not even SEE the candidate, because he would just lose it right there, she said.

Hey, ok, I understand that the transgender thing can be a hard thing to get one's head around. I'm pretty fucking liberal - hey, if people want to rollerblade in g-strings around Amsterdam, I'm all for it (there was a dude who did this, and we called him Assman); and if you want to be a man or a lady, I don't see anything wrong with that - but I can imagine that if you are not exposed to it, it can be hard to figure out just where to LOOK. But not wanting to see the candidate is discrimination, and my colleagues, who are black, should recognize that. I was a little irritated they did not see the parallels.

Second: I was on the train home last night, reading my paper. A kid plopped down in front of me and turned to me and we had the following conversation:

"Hey ma'm. Can I use your phone to holla at my boy?"

"No, sorry, I'm afraid not."

/irritated "I hope you never need my phone! I won't let you use it. I guess you don't let black people touch your phone."

"Hey. I don't care if you are green, I don't have a lot of minutes and I am not handing my phone to someone I don't know."

"Yeah, whatever."

This really fucking bothered me.

I hate these attitudes. I hate that we still have people hanging nooses to make some sort of statement, though they probably are too stupid to understand what exactly they themselves are trying to say. I hate that we have double-standards. I hate that I am implied a racist because I don't want to let some kid use my phone. I hate that because someone looks a certain way they are given shit at the airport. I hate that people talk about freedom of religion but oppose mosques being built. 

There is so much to like about people, but people won't allow me to do it! And I start getting cranky. Then I start to feel like I don't care about people anymore. And then I become part of the problem. I just do not ever want to be part of the problem.

How do you keep from being part of the problem, when everyone creates problems all the time? Shouldn't we all be worried about burning up from global warming?

Home is where I want to be but I guess I'm already there.

I had a bad day yesterday.

I don't know why. It was just one of those days when I felt like a failure; like I had wasted my life; that I am doomed for mediocrity and struggle for the rest of my days.

I sat at work and wondered why I made decisions that have me at the age of 33 with no career to speak of. Why my friends have made good decisions that have left them successful. My friends are amazing - doctors and lawyers and game designers and actors and writers and I, I am nothing. Talents and promise wasted away.

Looked at photos of Amsterdam and missed my friends and my life there, and cursed myself for making the decision to move to Switzerland with Mr. NC and leave the home I loved so much, and now the paths to get back there are difficult indeed. In fact, it feels impossible.

I left work and felt tired. Even as I knit on the train I wondered why I couldn't come up with a more creative project. I put it back in my bag, and chose to instead stare out the window, thinking about how David and I will never be able to afford the kind of trip we are dreaming about, and how we probably can't afford to have kids, and maybe I'm just the one who is too much of a fuck-up to have them anyway. If an application was required, I would surely be rejected.

I went to the gym and had a run and lifted some weights, thinking it would make me feel better. But instead it just brought everything I was feeling to a head, and I started crying almost as soon as I walked out the Y doors.

I went home and wept in the shower. I decided I hate my hair right now and it makes my face look fat and old.

Finally I stopped sobbing and I went over to my sister's for company. She was having a bad day too so we tried to make each other feel a little better over drinks, but we didn't try too hard, because it was not really going to help.

Later, I got drunk and passed out on the couch.

Today I feel mostly back to normal. I know I have a nice life - a really nice life - and my worst days are better than some people's best. I am healthy, my family is healthy, my friends are safe and loved. The decisions I have made have resulted in payoffs wonderful and myriad - the friends I have made, the places I have been, David, David, David. Days like yesterday are ridiculously self-indulgent and selfish and I really just do not feel that way most of the time. I am a happy and thankful person.

But they happen sometimes.

Restless.

I've spent more time than I should have today looking at pictures and videos of my friends in Amsterdam and elsewhere. Facebook is making it way to easy to miss people. The nice part though is I feel more connected to everyone there. It makes it way easier than trying to call with the time difference.

I'm jonesing for a new tattoo in a bad way.

Want to run run run. Like, another 5k. Right now. I've got some pent up energy to expend.

I love the beauty in the small things, but sometimes I want something BIG.

My words feel hollow, and shallow, and empty.

Disconnect pervades today. It is like I am everywhere and nowhere. I can't pin myself down.

Going into a weekend restless is a very bad idea indeed. No good can come of it. Either it will be bad for my body or bad for my wallet. Whichever it is, it will have me hurting come next week.

But even though I wish - WITH EVERYTHING I AM - that I was on a plane to Australia right now, I'm actually really happy.

I have no idea what I am getting at. Words do not exist for the state I am trying to explain.

Thought of all my great reasons for leaving; now I can't think of any

This morning I awoke and the light was very dim indeed, boding the arrival of autumn and winter. I was reminded, suddenly and without warning, of awakening to a dark Amsterdam morning and starting my bike ride to work as so, watching the sky grow lighter and lighter as I navigated the streets and bike traffic to work, my scarf flapping behind me. And then of Boston mornings moving into October, growing ever crisper and darker, leaves beginning to turn and fall. I wanted to start knitting something new in preparation for it. But of course I remembered that my autumn and winter are about to be very different.

It has been so long since I lived here I've forgotten what the fall and winter are like, and when I would visit at Christmas I would find them so wildly different year to year I was never certain if I would have the right clothes. There was one year when it was so warm I had to borrow cooler clothes from my mother; another when it was so cold I seemed the only person prepared for it, having just come from Switzerland.

One thing is for certain - it is still in the 90s here and for the next week at least it seems there will be no change. It's right now I am really starting to miss Boston, and Amsterdam, and even Luzern; all these places with seasons demarcated the way you always learned it in school, but growing up in Dallas never was. I have adjusted myself to these rhythms completely, having lived with them since the age of 18, that fall sixteen years ago when I relocated to Wellesley. And now I even start to miss Wellesley when I think of these seasons: the leaves jeweled across the lake in the fall; kicking through snow in my pajamas to get to class; the glorius breezy springs. It was idyllic in that way.

I try not to miss places too much, or at least not think about it. There are other adventures to be had, other people to meet, other cities to try. But something about knowing it is almost October, and I am missing the ONE constant thing I have had as an adult - seasons - makes me a little melacholy this morning. Something seems out of kilter. I want to sit in our living room and knit a useless hat; I want to cry a little bit. I miss Annie and Dabney and Terra and Seth and Carmen and Johan and Danielle and Tom and Anita and Sara and Pal, yes, even Pal, old Mr. NonCommittal.

Maybe I'm still just really really tired.