When my high school BFF and I fought over the same girl, it wasn’t out of jealousy of him, it was jealousy for him.  It wasn’t about the girl, it was about him wanting the girl and not me.  This is the same guy I boinked all summer.  Physical fighting scared me only to the extent of the damage I could do to someone.  When he hit me with a right hook to my left cheek, I hit him back and threw him into the lockers.  He picked himself up and looked at me and in that moment I knew he hated me.  The look hurt worse than hundreds of right hooks.  I never did figure out the wisdom in avoiding the straight guys.

My grandpa was a Mormon bigot that never accepted me and my adopted brother because we weren’t “true blood” (we pre-date Potter by decades).  Mother, the soft-spoken yet implacably obstinate and incredibly stubborn protector to us, taught me that elders are not always right, nor should they automatically be granted respect.  At a family picnic, Grandpa once hit me for something my cousins had done with his sanction.  I didn’t even think about it – I hit him back.  His face turned red and he raised his hand to strike me and he stopped and stared: my mom was standing behind me.  He pointed at me and bellowed that I was an evil child and how dare I hit him back and that he was going to punish me.  My mother calmly asked if he was also going to punish my cousins for doing the same thing?  His face went even more red and he stood there with fists clenched until he turned around and walked away.  She squeezed my shoulder and gathered my dad and brother and we left the party.  I learned that we can’t choose our family, but we can choose the people we care about.

Online experiences of the internets have changed the last few weeks.  A cousin went born-again apeshit on me on Facebook, taking various posts personally and saying I was “so negative” and why did I “have to be so prideful about being gay,” wherein I had to respond that my status updates, or Yahoo or Second Life profiles weren’t about her.  All my posts or profiles were meant to entertain, provoke, satirize, and stir things up, and failing that, they were simply mine to express or not – if she took things personally that was her business, not mine.  This evidently was not good enough and she sent a long email to me – she wanted the cousin she knew of her youth back – the young and adorkable and closeted best friend/cousin that wasn’t gay or certainly wasn’t out.  I learned that people will read what they want and make assumptions, no matter how clear or unclear one’s writing is.  I learned that “‘goodbyes” are a bluff I’m willing to call because I have no time to be someone she expects but doesn’t see.  I’ve also learned to use filters on Facebook.

I made a few friends at the Big Sur writing conference and I found out tonight that one of them got an agent with the Andrea Brown Literary team.  I’m so excited for her and her first young adult novel!  At the time of the conference I got to read the first five chapters and I was impressed with her writing.  She was one of several there who motivated me to do better with my own writing.  Keeping in touch via Facebook and email was a great way to check in with each other.

I know the path to publication is a long one, but it’s invaluable to see a writer at the start of their journey.  My own journey is still in the making, but it’s more like I’m at a rest stop than on the road.  I intentionally stayed away from the NaBloPoMo gig this year – I wasn’t going to commit to anything beyond work, Jennifer’s visit, and my masters program that starts on November 24th (delayed two weeks).  Creative writing isn’t a priority, but I still remember the blog and still get out a few times a week and post here, blathering or no – I do write daily, but not in any format or of any content that would be shared for the masses.

I’m glad for my writing friends who are writing, getting agents, and moving through publication.  I’m at the point of comfort and confidence with myself that I can appreciate their path without being jealous.  I could get used to this aging and maturity thing.  I could be mistaking it all for a sense of zen and the two glasses of wine, too.

Apologies are cyclical and transactional.  Action means reaction and a round of apologies.  Emotions get tossed like coins at a wishing well, wishing away the circumstances.  It’s when the coins are gone and the surface of the water quiets that the wronged is left with their time to heal and the apologist is left with promises to do better next time and those wishes have dried up and drifted away.

I had a boyfriend that swore to monogamy and ended up cheating three times because he wasn’t sure about us and had to ‘try out’ different guys.  At the time he was ‘the one’ for me, even though I knew, he knew, we all knew that we were not well matched, except in the bed department.  The bed department does not a relationship sustain, unfortunately, but that’s what we latched on to once, then twice, and three times a breakup.  Each time he screwed up (no pun intended), he’d confess his transgression and beg forgiveness and promise never to screw up again and then he’d have a big arrangement of flowers sent to me at work.  Stunning flowers.  Monstrously gorgeous flowers.  By the second set of tears and apologies, I hated the sight of them.  I was “done,” following the third episode, even though my co-workers loved the ambiance and observed that I ‘got more flowers than a dead person’s funeral.’  Each time felt like a funeral, and in a way that’s what each apology and new promise was – a little more of the relationship dying.  The mea cupla became the ritual acknowledgment of passing dreams.  I had said to him each time:  I was more sorry that I didn’t listen to myself better than him.

A decade later, now he’s still with the guy he cheated with the last time.  We talked about what worked and what didn’t work years ago and we both shared how wrong we were for each other (even though the bed department was so right – the bastard still knows exactly what turns me on).  Keeping in touch went from daily to weekly to eventually a few times a year.  When I look back at what he used to mean to me, I know I still see the man he could have been, which is the ruin of all relationships.  When we talk and he looks back, he sees the prior mea culpas I represented.

Our last conversation was a few weeks ago and saying goodbye was a pleasant sort of finality.  We’ve always gone through the ritual of goodbye but his other line rang for work and he had to go and with a soft click he was gone.  He texted me a few moments later and I read it and deleted and turned off my phone.  He was still sorry, and I was still glad I grew a pair and left him.  We were strangers trying to make sense of sorries from years ago, and I don’t want to pretend that we are any closer than we never were.

My grandma told the story to my father (he said), who told the story to me when I was growing up.  My grandparents had gone on vacation to Mexico and came home with souvenirs and knick-knacks of their trip, one of the items being a small mirror adorned with bells that was supposedly a charm against evil spirits.  The fact that my rigid, stoic, church-going grandparents had gone to Mexico was more shocking than their penchant for primitive magical beliefs, but my young-adult mind took the story in stride, listening to my dad’s voice and watching how his face changed as he enjoyed spinning the yarns he loved spinning.  I’d heard the story being told to my uncles and cousins at a family party, but I felt lucky that he was telling the story to just me this time.

They hung the charm on the inside door of their bedroom closet.  Over the years they forgot about it.  My dad watched my face as he explained that one hot summer night my grandparents had gone to bed when they heard the sounds of bells shaking softly against their closed closet door.  He must have been satisfied with my expression because he kept going with his tale, saying that my grandpa got out of bed.  The sound of bells stopped, but he opened the closet door and pulled the string to the light switch, but inside, nothing was amiss.  The charm hung calmly on a ribbon on a small nail, the bells silent.

Satisfied, my grandpa shut the door and went back to bed.  They awoke to the sounds of bells again, ringing louder and more vigorously than before.  Grandma got out of bed this time and the sounds stopped before she opened the door.  She pulled the string to the light switch and looked around, and like my grandpa had seen, nothing was amiss.  The charm hung silently against the door.  She shut the door and went back to bed and they both fell asleep.

They both shot out of bed when they heard the sounds of howls and hissing accompanying the sound of bells ringing violently.  My grandpa flipped the light switch and my grandma stood behind him when he threw open the closet door.  A black shape leaped up and over my grandpa’s shoulder, they both screamed, and the black shape of a cat jumped out their bedroom window.  There was a loud crack inside the closet and the sound of bells stopped.  Grandma looked at the charm and the mirror was marred by jagged cracks.  An evil spirit had come and gone.

I didn’t remember the story being told this way and I waited for him to finish.  He was silent for so long I grew impatient and said, “It was just their cat, locked in the closet.”

My dad took a sip of his beer and looked thoughtful.  “Son.  They never had a cat.”

The redbud tree in the front yard is dropping leaves.  The heart-shaped leaves crinkle and fold and fall to the ground and when the wind blows they scatter across the yard.  The oak tree across the street shares its harvest with every neighbor in the court.  When we walk Midas through the neighborhood, we’ve noticed a few trees that have bright and deep red leaves, but the ones that fall to the ground don’t have the same luster.

It’s a calm before the storm.  Even as the wind blowing through the bay area lowers the temperature to ‘jackets required’ kind of weather, and even as the days shorten so that I’m leaving in darkness and soon-to-be coming home in darkness, I feel calm (I don’t want to jinx anything with the “p” word here).  By the time I’ve driven home each day my mind has already put work inside a box with a lid and put it out of my mind for the night.  I keep in touch via telephone, and I am comforted and glad that my family and friends are healthy and well, that there are celebrations and triumphs (marriages, divorces, house buying, moving, reconnections, custody attainment) despite extreme hardships (suicide, health issues, marriages, divorces, moving, custody conflicts).  Lastly, I am more at peace with my own body since giving up soda, paying attention to what and when I eat, and by working out consistently.  My endurance is back up and I’m doing double sets again.  I’ve dropped 6 pounds, which is halfway to my goal.

I look at the world through the cycles of nature and Fall has usually been the most difficult season for me.  Part of me feels that I should be stressed out or manic because I’m about to start graduate classes again.  Part of me struggles with sitting down to write and share while other parts nod and smile and say, “Keep it up.”  Part of me expects a certain amount of sadness with the changing season, but I just don’t have it in me.  I’m enjoying the falling leaves that are instant reminders of life’s harvest before the bleak winter that doesn’t look so stark white.  Life is good and sweet, which make for rather mundane posts.  I think calm is good now and then.

I love this woman, and this is one of my all-time favorite songs.

(Fair warning:  this is incredibly fractured and I’m tired and irritable.)

My role in the space I’ve created here this past year has been more of an unraveller than a weaver.  Negligence is self-evident.  I spent a lot of time tonight looking back at prior posts and comments and I cringed because there’s so much I didn’t do, least of which was writing and sharing.  Those nice little strings here and fixing hems there haven’t been completed.  Tonight I read other blogs that I haven’t been to in ages and noticed a common theme of people examining the space they’ve created and the reasons for which have changed over time.  My space here and my intentions have changed too – and I don’t have the full answers yet because I’m in the middle of it.  Obviously, I don’t want to let this space go or I wouldn’t have bothered writing at all.  Somewhere in my heart is the need to afix more buttons to this work, to gather more threads where my life is woven with others and chronicle those moments and bindings.  It’s not to say that there won’t be times when I cut a thread or get cut myself – nothing nothing nothing in this universe stays the same.  Change happens, will happen, is happening.  The weave we think we’re working with will invariably be knotted differently than we expected.

When I read other blogs and their spaces spaces and looked back at my own I had to pause and take it in and appreciate the connections.  While blogging may be one of the most self-centered and narcissistic exercises this side of Facebook status updates, it is the act of reading and feeling others in their experiences of exhibitionism and self-less narcissism that make this weave of life so fascinating and worthwhile.  All these words on virtual pages that may or may not make an immediate difference to anyone or ourselves, but in time may show our textures and colors and changes because we’re able to see a pattern that moves beyond this space we can “see” only in now.

I have been holding the threads in my mind that mean both connection and specific people and I’ve been asking myself questions that won’t get answered, at least not here.  The answers will come later, after the part where I quietly attend to the loose stitches, the hems, and all the button holes.  I’ll know when I know when I’m not tired and manic and annoying myself because I do feel guilt and I really hate that.

***

I am sitting here listening to music.  I keep forwarding through songs when something bothersome comes on, such as Beck’s “Loser” or Nitzer Ebb’s “Murderous.”  I am thinking too much.  I have been writing this in between reading posts and email:  write, backspace, edit, repeat.   I’m absorbing the fact that as of today I’m back in grad school, that class starts on November 3rd, and that I’ll be finished next November.  I’m annoyed with my parents because they’re aging and they tell me stories instead of telling the truth about their health.  I’m happy I made dinner tonight for Scott (yes, it’s a rare thing).  I’ve lost five pounds of the ten I gained this past year.   I’m slightly concerned about my current contract and the financial challenges in California for higher education.  I’m blathering.

I’ve written a lot of nothing and I’m okay with that because it means I’ve sat my ass down and wrote.  Please note that if you consider all the words on this post, know that I’ve deleted more than what is posted.  At this point, you may also consider yourself blessed.  G’night.

I’m “stuck” in the Eighties in the sense that the music was so entwined with personal growth and self discovery.  I’m not apologizing for my musical tastes – I’m putting it on the table.  My friends have been the second biggest musical influence in my life, allowing me to break out of the sounds I find comfortable and comforting, and enjoy sounds and artists I wouldn’t normally care to discover:  Maroon 5, Kelly Clarkson, and Green Day, to name a few.  Since the days of the internets, it’s been easier and easier to share music via MP3’s and other file formats and I’d like to say that I jump on the email when I get an attachment in my inbox, but I will admit here that I sometimes sit and look at the file and don’t open it for days.

Days.

Sometimes more days.

Because I’m afraid that if I listen and like it that I will have a new purchase in my future, and I’m STILL organizing the hundreds of cds that line one wall in my office.  I’ve been known to get online and download albums with a few simple clicks and blow through a budget before I can blink, so I resist.  I resist.  In the end, if the music (and pardon the phrase) strikes the right chords with me – I’m sold.  I’m a goner.

But there’s been a semblance of a truce to my compulsive disorder.  Rhapsody (subscription based) and Pandora (say this in a high C:  FREE!).  The difference between the two is that through Rhapsody, you can listen to any song in their database service, add favorites, fast forward, repeat, and direct buy.

Pandora is a free service (that has recently introduced annoying 10-12 second sound byte (and visual) ads) where you can create your own “music stations” and even share those with friends.  You can play or pause, but you cannot rewind nor fast forward.  You can create “stations” of various likes, but you cannot dictate which song you hear.  Some of the magic of the sight is the random, and I’ve discovered some great artists simply by letting certain stations pick songs or artists for me based on little feedback from me.  Through Pandora, I “found”:  Toyah, The The, Beck, and Katy Perry.  I seriously would never have broken out of my own shell if I hadn’t been introduced to the sound of the aforementioned artists if I hadn’t streamed music randomly and been impressed enough to say “who was THAT I just heard?”

Care to share any of your musical discoveries or recommendations in the comments section?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRsb7rA2uUs

I loves this song, and the singer is over-the-top intriguing.

**update**  Direct embedding disabled for the song – sorry.  I tried to find an alternate.  Lo siento.