Musings of a Winter Wren
I turn twenty seven today. This doesn't really mean much to me though, because I have been feeling about thirty five years old for the past twelve months. I'm exhausted and I really must take a day off of work, but I can't think of a good excuse. I already used food poisoning. Any ideas? How about knee surgery? How about alzheimers?
It's a weird thing when you move into a new place. You wake up in your own bed, but you are not quite sure where you are. You sit up and you think to yourself, this place does not feel like me, it does not look like me, it does not smell like me. Not yet anyway. All I want to do is nest and unpack and rub my body all over the doors and appliances like a cat marking territory. But no. Instead I must go to my old apartment and clean it out and say goodbye.
Today RS and I moved into a new place. We borrowed my friend's van because she's one of those real grown ups with children, a dog and a yard. I do a pretty convincing job of playing house, but I don't know if I'll ever be a true adult like her. At least not until I stop stealing toilet paper from work.
Each week I have my environmental science students come up with a question about the natural world. Then I give them time to conduct some research and answer their own question. I think this assignment gives them the freedom to engage themselves in the subject on a personal level. Every Friday they have the opportunity to present their results to the class in a very informal setting. During our session of show and tell last week, my student M blundered the following: “We should treat the earth more like a living orgasm rather than a huge rock that doesn’t seem to exist and doesn’t mean anything.”
Do you know what you get when you pay fifty cents for a cup of coffee? A cup of coffee that tastes like it costs fifty cents. klsjdflsdifosfosslsoib!! That's the sound of me scraping my tongue with a pencil.
I have a plant on my windowsill that is growing at an alarming rate. My windows face due south, so my apartment essentially gets light sun up to sun down. If I take the gangly limbs of this plant and stretched them out, it measures at least fifteen feet across. I'm thinking about enrolling it in a basketball league. Although, it looks like a space alien. Sometimes, by the light of the moon, I think it's reaching out to strangle me in my sleep.
Christ, who edits this thing? What's with all the confrontational, angsty shit? How about something light and lovely for a change. Like the note I found in the oatmeal jar at 5:40 a.m. this morning that RS, my big plate of nachoes, left for me. It reads "No matter where, no matter when, no matter how, no matter what, the only matter why...because I love you above all things and time and space." It has little hearts drawn all over it.
I wanted to respond to something you said yesterday on the phone. I have never said much to you about my relationships with men. You don't seem to ask about them or perhaps just I assume you're not interested. In any case, I remember you pointing out a perceived inconsistency in my wanting to be independent (independence being an issue leading to my divorce) on the one hand, and staying in this city with the Rock Skipper on the other.
I just want to make it clear that I did not leave my husband because he was hindering my independence. I left him because he could not, and would not, give me certain essential things I needed from a life long partner. Because he didn't fill these essential needs that I made clear to him, I fell out of love with him. And as hard as I tried to throw myself back in love with him to save us and everyone else around us from pain, it just didn't work.
My independence issues lay more with you and mom. Throughout my adult life, I have been overly conscious of your judgment and mom's judgment. Therefore, up until this point it has been hard for me to make decisions without my family's stamp of approval. Again, I would like to remind you that this is totally MY issue and NOT something I blame you two for. So now at 26.96 years of age, I'm starting to change my perspective. Although I will always welcome your input and value your opinions and wisdom, I have finally realized that the only stamp of approval I need is my own. And I trust my judgment. I'm not very good at deceiving myself anymore.
With all that said, I would like to state that I am very much in love with RS. He gives me things I did not even know existed. He supports me, but he also challenges me. I have never been happier in any other relationship as I am now. We hope to be together for a very long time and that is why I am staying in this city. And that is why he's going to move out west with me when he is done with school, so I can have my turn at it.
Wow, this is turning out to be a very long email! Even so, I have one more thing to share with you. As you know I started a nasty habit of puking about two years ago (January 31, 2003 to be exact). I'm proud to say that it has been exactly 24 days since I have given into that vice, which marks the longest period of time in two years. I know we all care deeply about each other as a family and the way we tend to show that is by taking interest in each other's lives, maybe expressing concern and giving advice. I hope that continues, but I also we hope we start to give more encouragement and words of support to one another. And I know I don't say it enough, but I love you very much.
Okay. That's it. I swear.
Winter Wren
I was at the YWCA yesterday afternoon. After completing a slow seven miles I went downstairs to stretch out. I found an empty aerobics room adjacent to the gym where some adolescent boys were playing basket ball. I could hear them clearly through the closed double doors and the things they were saying kinda rattled my cage. They were calling each other "nigger" and talking about girls with "big titties." I personally don't think these kids were trying to be obnoxious, offensive or disrespectful, but I did think they needed to be reminded that they were being totally obnoxious, offensive, and disrespectful. Especially since the mission statement of the YWCA is, empowering women and eliminating racism. With all that thought out, I informed the folks at the front desk and they went down and spoke with them.
I was with one of my favorite classes Friday afternoon. They are favored because they are generally respectful enough to listen as I lecture and yet they possess enough energy to make that whole instructor/student dynamic interesting. But hey, I won’t fuck around with you. They are also my last class of the day, and that helps too.
I was looking for something like advances in medical technology, improved nutrition and sanitation, lower infant mortality, higher life expectancy, industrial revolution, and/or agriculture. Any two of the above would have thrown me into a state of science teacher euphoria. Even one of the above would have been enough to send me spinning with joy and hope. Instead, one of my students wrote the following: Life, Death, and Time.
Lately, I feel like such a recluse. All I want to do is eat books and drink ginger tea alone in my room. Part of this has to do with the fact that I was sick for a week, but I also think my new roommate has something to do with it. He's there before I leave in the morning and he is usually there in the evenings. I’m starting to wonder if I unconsciously check off that box in my head marked “daily social interaction” because I feel like he gives me so many things I need. But there is really no such person in all the world and this situation is starting to make me feel a bit lonely.
For christmas I bought my dad and myself tickets to run the 2005 Chicago Marathon together. Since I am a silly romantic, I won't deny a vision I had of us running through the neighborhoods of his home town, laughing together, hurting together and encouraging each other. Plus think of all the delicious burritos and beer we could carbo load on. And you know I would be grubbing on sick amounts of Baskin Robbins chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Needless to say, I was disappointed when I presented this gift to him and he told me that it was impossible. Why? Because it would mean missing a day of work. My father ladies and gentleman.
I called in sick today. So as not to feel like a total lazy bum, I am doing two loads of laundary. As I put the light colored clothes into the dryer, I noticed a pentagram drawn on the metal coin slot in permanent marker. The star was decorated with sixes, three to be exact. So I guess this means the light colored clothes are going to be clean and dried...and damned.
Last night RS and I were standing on the raw edge of a clay colored cliff overlooking the ocean. It felt like we stood miles above water. White plastic boats clumped like grains of rice below. We darted about like lemmings seeking the perfect moment and when we finally found it, we sprung out hand in hand. I remember feeling weightless during our descent. I remember the water greeting our bodies as we pierced its smooth surface. I remember feeling satisfaction, and his hand in mine, as I came up for air.
Lately, I can't seem to stop thinking about the six months I spent overseas. I can't stop thinking about the people I met, the conversations we had and the connections we made. I can't stop thinking about the sensations experienced in China and Southeast Asia. All those mangoes, all those trains, all those sunsets, all those stares, all those cold winter mornings, all those bags of hot fresh soy milk, all those cheap cold bottles of beer, all those aimless hikes around the city, all those canned conversations with cabbies, all those dirty guest houses, all those terrible Chinese soap operas, all those flea markets, all of those things are hidden under a thin gauze of longing in my memory. I feel like I was untrue to them because every morning I'd get up and think to myself, WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE?
It has been fifteen days since I made myself throw up. That might not seem like a long time to you, but to an addict, it's a long time. The first time I ever did it, I yakked on brownies. It was January 31, 2003, my 25th birthday. I know, how fucking sad is that? Happy Birthday to me - Bblaaahh! I was under some serious pressures though. I was exhausted from work and about to get laid off. I was starting to notice fundamental flaws in my marriage. Finally, my grandfather had just passed away leaving my mother reeling and suicidal. I desperately needed comfort and the brownies were all, "Aw, come here baby, weeeee love you." I'm just wondering how different the past two years would be if someone had brought in a bottle of gin or a couple grams of heroin instead of brownies to work for my birthday.
First: What the fuck is up with the pokey seeds in this orange? They're like little daggers and all they do is germinate pain! Second: My student C came into class this morning raving about how he was stopped and hassled by the security guard for not wearing his id badge. He said grinning at his perceived cleverness, "I shoulda told him to go back to his own country and sleep on the dirt floor. Heh!" As soon as he said this I knew which guard he was talking about; the African National.
My students think I am lame. I know that because they tell me so. I had a student last quarter shake his head in pity and ask honestly, “Do ever you do anything fun?” I’m thinking, what do you mean? I’m young, I’m hip. Look at these Converse tenny shoes! Look at my crazy tattoo. Then I go back to my office, sit down at my desk and open the drawer to a bag of organic prunes starring back at me as if to say, “You fool nobody.”
There is an evil troll lurking in that little spot between my nose and mouth. He has a hook hand that keep scraping, scraping, scraping at the pink flesh of my sinuses. Last night I had to do this strange cyclic breathing thing where I inhaled through my mouth and exhaled through my nose, opening and closing the door of my soft palate because that was the only way I could keep my throat from hurting. I wanted to sleep with my head in the humidifier. This morning in class, I was all, “Bioaccumulation. DDT. Eggs. Any question? Okay then, buh-bye.”
There is a man in my office who looks and talks exactly like a character in a Dilbert cartoon strip.
The Rock Skipper smells like: Baisil, Hemp, Musk, Brie, Cedar, Tiger Blam and a touch of Play-doh.
They would be Margaret Atwood, Desmond Morris and Stephen Merritt.
The marriage of the parties is hereby dissolved by the Decree of Dissolution entered on Jan 03 2005.
"The African Stoneplant avoids predators by closely resembling nearby stones."
Last night I dreamt my (soon to be ex) husband called me a whore and told me I was sterile and that I would die young of STDs.
