Category Archives: poems

I’ve been on stay­ca­tion this week– I have ridicu­lous amounts of vaca­tion that on my cruddy retail salary I can never use up and go some­place use­ful, and I’ve been feel­ing more than a lit­tle bit burnt, that whole recent wicked bad depres­sion thing to the side.

So– I stayed home, helped the elec­tri­cian find the wires in our old (1901) house’s walls, did stream­ing Net­flix (that Stan Lee, he may be on to some­thing with that Mar­vel dare I say fran­chise?) as I glut­ted myself on the BBC Sher­lock Series 1 and the pre–Avengers movies (super­heroes and shit blow­ing up YAY, although Iron Man 1 was by far my favorite), start/read/finished a whole bunch of books (George Mann’s The Affin­ity Bridge and The Osiris Rit­ual (steam­punk Vic­to­rian mys­tery series with a smat­ter­ing of romance), W.S. Merwin’s The Shadow of Sir­ius (poetry, oh, I love Mer­win so), Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Mis­rule (amaz­ing, a lit­tle hard to slog through until you get into it, but the voices and the world that she builds, it’s like McCarthy’s The Road in the chal­lenge it presents to the reader but it’s so very reward­ing), dipped some more into The Col­lected Sto­ries of Lydia Davis (the per­fect bed­side book, really, because it’s big and yet the sto­ries tend to be very short), and dis­cov­ered a poet called William Matthews via The Writer’s Almanac, whose Selected Poems I down­loaded onto my Nook (his poems are tak­ing my breath away, daily.)  Then, I totally wal­lowed in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series through #4, because you’ve got to have a lit­tle Napoleonic naval cap­tain and his sen­tient, lit­er­ate dragon fantasy-action-adventure to break up all that seri­ous reading.

I also saw The Artist.  If you don’t see any other Oscar-nominated movie, see this one.  There’s a dog, who does all the silent movie dog things to utter per­fec­tion.  And James Cromwell.  (Worth the price of admis­sion alone.)  And John Good­man.  (Also worth the price of the ticket.)  But oh.  Oh.  The main actors.  And the story.  The silent movie paean, while still being utterly mod­ern.  It’s just– every­thing that they say and more.

Yes­ter­day, I met up with Jen from Knit­ting Inter­rupted.  I’ve been mean­ing to meet up with Jen for, oh, I don’t know, I’d say … for­ever.  She lives about a three hour drive from my house and so it’s long enough to give seri­ous pause– and she’s got two boys, so her mak­ing the haul up to my place is even more of an issue.  But.  She’s mov­ing to Florida, so there, that was it.  The fire under my butt to drive the six hour round trip to see her.  Because the thing with this blog thing is– we’re all friends who just haven’t met yet, and I’ve known Jen prac­ti­cally since the start of my blog­ging, back when I used to do this more reg­u­larly and was fun­nier, cooked more, whined a lot less, and was bet­ter about mind­ing blog eti­quette, includ­ing vis­it­ing com­menters’ blogs, com­ment­ing back, respond­ing to com­ments– you know.  Blog 1.0 stuff, not to drive traf­fic, but just because it’s sim­ple good man­ners.  I need to do more of that.

It was an awe­some visit, not in the least because her pre­co­cious boys treated me like a vis­it­ing anthro­pol­o­gist and needed to show me Every­thing That They Do dur­ing their home­school­ing day, at least until her old­est got bored with me until he wasn’t.  : )  I’ve yet to meet some­one I’ve known through this blog (or, with a few I-knew-it-would-be-like-that-in-advance excep­tions in my online dorky fan­dom adven­tures) who hasn’t been some­one with whom I could just sit down and say– “Yeah.  This is cool.  You’re even more you than I already thought you would be.”

We talked of many things (though not ships, shoes, seal­ing wax, cab­bages or kings), includ­ing the ups and downs of blogs, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­tent deliv­ery means (FB, G+, Twit­ter, Tum­blr, blogs, Live­jour­nal) and how it can all just get over­whelm­ing in terms of what to keep up with and the deci­sion of how much infor­ma­tion about your­self to put out there.  We talked about self-editing when we post, the desire to be fair, and the fact that the Inter­net Con­tains All Use­ful Things, so the ped­a­gogy about mem­o­riza­tion and rote knowl­edge is some­thing that maybe edu­ca­tors should ques­tion– though I do love, love my books, not just my Nook (which is bright and shiny and awe­some and lets me carry more books than I can ever read in a week in my bag), and there’s a secret part of me that believes in belts and sus­penders and lives in fear of the Zom­bie apoc­a­lypse and eyes the Storey’s Coun­try Skills and other books of that ilk at work with book­lust bor­der­ing on weird­ness.  (What?  I don’t eye the back cor­ner of my Dad’s yard and think CHICKENS and then check the zon­ing laws.  I totally don’t.)  I men­tioned how I’ve been mulling over this inter­est­ing NYT arti­cle in terms of my own FB feed and try­ing to decide how to use my G+ feed, since I don’t, really, and I don’t Tweet or Tum­ble at all and have no desire to, and the “ham sand­wich” posts on FB?  IDK.  I need to con­dense stuff, fig­ure out what I really want to say, and not Use All The Plat­forms just because they’re there.  I need to fig­ure out who I want in my FB, whether to link my blog there, rethink my “anonymity” here, where I back­link this blog.  I need to pri­or­i­tize my con­tent.  God, that sounds fuck­ing pre­ten­tious.  But isn’t win­now­ing one’s online accounts an exten­sion of life, decid­ing what lev­els you want to engage your rela­tion­ships on?  And then doing it, because that’s the hard part…

We talked about our var­i­ous life changes, the uni­verse, every­thing.  It was great, and far too short a visit, con­sid­er­ing that I’d have to brave traf­fic on the way home– but also because I was start­ing to feel a lit­tle aaah these kids are really adorable but boy they want a lot of inter­ac­tion Jen is a HERO gee I really love Jen a lot this is a great con­ver­sa­tion I kind of really need to leave now and process all of this input before I explode.  I wish like hell I hadn’t put my visit off for so long.

On the ride home, in the rain, as I lis­tened to Flo­rence and the Machine’s Cer­e­mo­ni­als, Foo Fight­ers’ Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, then flipped radio chan­nels and waited to see what the radio gods sent me (I do love it when they send Diana Ross)– I mulled over the theme I’ve been think­ing about a lot recently– denial and self-denial, even when there’s no rea­son for it.  Those emotions/coping skills are sep­a­rate from fear/anxiety and atten­dant pro­cras­ti­na­tion, though I’ve also got those in spades.  But it brought up the ques­tion, one I wrote down on an index card and posted on a cork­board I have on my wall, along with other things I try to look at and inspire myself with (includ­ing a nifty, nifty Dalek wash­cloth Jen knit­ted for me). 

What are you wait­ing for?

I’ve been writ­ing here about how I’ve felt lonely– that’s no one’s fault but my own.  I have lovely friends– all of you, and in real life, and I do social­ize, do make appoint­ments so I get the hell out of the house and out of my head.  I need to make more friends, how­ever, sin­gle ones I don’t know from work or from my mar­riage, because in the end, I’ve got to re-learn how to put myself out there.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been on my own, with­out any buffer.  My edges are raw.  I have no pre­ten­sions that it won’t be any­thing but painful and awk­ward, and that some­times I’ll have to shoot some­one an email (or a blog post) after that says “It’s not you, it’s me.”  (Oh, HAI, Jen.)  I am some­one who takes a long time to open up for all that I blah blah blah here– but these posts, too, are care­fully crafted, and I do leave things unsaid.  (Yeah, hard to believe.)

I can be anx­ious and twitchy when meet­ing new peo­ple, even ones I’ve known online for years.  I get over­whelmed in large groups pretty eas­ily, and whether that’s a cog­ni­tive thing or a func­tion of shy­ness or my anx­i­ety, well, I don’t know.  I just know I need buffers, some­times.  When my brother-in-law used to hold his big Thanks­giv­ing turkey fry-up, I’d go hide in the kitchen and carve up the turkeys because that gave me some­thing on which I could focus– and I only then had to make small talk with the few peo­ple who could fit around the carv­ing board, so– whit­tling down my options to some­thing I could han­dle.  My hus­band is charm­ing and funny, able to make small talk with just about any­one, and able to draw me into the con­ver­sa­tion with what I always felt (and still feel) was overly effu­sive praise of my mer­its.  I’m not all that ster­ling, and his praise of me always made me feel squirmy because my self-esteem issues aside, I’m just not that awe­some.  Still, though.  Going to events with him was far eas­ier than going alone.

One of my favorite authors is Haven Kim­mel– and she wrote a book called The Solace of Leav­ing Early, in which the main char­ac­ter, who’s had a break­down, (crankily) falls in love with another mis­fit.  I don’t recall the exact pas­sage and whether she’s try­ing to explain it to some­one or just rec­ol­lect­ing some time– but there’s this pitch-perfect bit about leav­ing while the get­ting is good and she, the shy per­son, is still feel­ing engaged, even though the evening/event isn’t nearly over.

I’m going to find that pas­sage and write it on the Cork­board of Inspi­ra­tional Stuff, because next week I’m going to my first sup­port group meet­ing for divorced and sep­a­rated peo­ple and I am ter­ri­fied, even as I inwardly snark that it’s AA-Divorce.  I book­marked social groups for sin­gle women look­ing to make friends, sin­gle and divorced loser ladies, my self esteem says, but.  Baby steps.  I will even­tu­ally try them out.  I will.  Really.

If the meet­ing gets over­whelm­ing, I can leave early.  But at least I’ll have gone.  And who knows?  Maybe it won’t.  Either way, I can try.  I can leave early.  I can always go back.  But I won’t meet the friends that might be there if I don’t go.

What are you wait­ing for?

It’s time to find out.