“My love of [you] is in me, moving in my heart, changing chambers, like something poured from hand to hand, to be weighed and then reweighed.” –Sharon Olds, “High School Senior”
I build the version of you that I love inside of me, even though you’re right in front of me. I think everyone does, often without knowing it, and they get upset when that inner version disagrees with the truer, fleshier version, which has the advantage of being incarnate but is, quite frankly, unknowable, unstable, and unpredictable. I get upset, too, like anyone, when I am stung by disappointment or surprised by some mismatch between the working model of you that I carry within me and who you are being, to me, right now.
(Continued)
1. Do you like animals?
a) Like animals? I LOVE animals!
b) I’m an asshole.
(Continued)
Jeff and I are in Madrid. Yes, my ex-husband and I went to Madrid together. Many potentially fascinating theories could explain this odd development, but here, let me save you the trouble: we are in Spain together simply because we both wanted to go to Spain.
(Continued)
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
PRETENDING TO BE TOO COOL FOR PERSONAL ADS BUT PROBABLY JUST LAZY
I am too amazing and complex to be summed up in paragraphs so I won’t even try. You should similarly recognize the futility of this exercise and just message me, hopefully with considerably more effort than I just exerted.
ALMOST COMICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING ALIVE
I like fun. I enjoy going out, staying in, and eating food that tastes good. I also enjoy snuggling and laughing. Sometimes I watch movies. I live in a house and have a job. The first thing people usually notice about me would have to be my smile, my eyes, or my unique inability to pick myself out of a lineup. (My friends could, though, and they claim I am attractive, with a great sense of humor.)
(Continued)
I keep thinking of this elephant I met, once.
(Continued)
The collection below essentially amounts to what happens when an agnostic attempts to articulate her own personal prayer beads into words. I stop, I kneel, I clutch them, and I let them slip through my fingers, one by one, all while muttering these sorts of things at myself.
And then I go out into the world and fuck it all up again, and how.
I write them out because it helps me, because it makes them more solid and strings them all together. I write them out because I am moving to a new place that offers a new chance to lean on them a little harder, to have a little more faith.
It’s not technically spiritual, I guess, but it’s the best I can do. I invite you to take what helps you and leave the rest.
(Continued)
Monday, November 16, 2009
When I was a teenager, we used to play the Blanket Game at parties. It goes like this:
1. Throw a blanket over someone.
2. Tell them to take off something they don’t need and hand it over to you.
3. Keep accepting socks, watches, hats, and clothing from them until they take off the predetermined correct item.
Guess what the predetermined item always was. If you aren’t sure, here’s a little hint:
(Continued)
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
THE DENIAL STAGE
When my ex-husband, Jeff, and I moved to St. Louis, he knew I was unhappy with the decor of our house, but money, of course, did not grow on trees. Except that year, it did, because he cashed in some investments and spent hours twist-tying money to a festive little potted tree. Then he gave it to me for Christmas and told me to make the house we lived in ours. He wanted me to have everything; it was almost an obsession. There wasn’t one minute of the years and years we spent together that he wasn’t striving to put the world on a string and loop it around my little finger. I learned to avoid wishing aloud, lest the poor man collapse in exhaustion from his determination to fulfill whatever request I had just absentmindedly uttered.
(Continued)
Thursday, October 29, 2009
1. She’s flat-out terrified.
2. She has no game whatsoever. This girl not only fails to remember to wear hot underwear, but she will also strike up a conversation while perched on your toilet (just to PEE, of course—she’s still a lady). She may also discuss her cycles with you, regardless of whether you happen to be trying to eat lunch at the time. Come to think of it, this girl is not really for the faint of heart.
(Continued)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
So, like literally six days after my life fell apart, I decided to get a cat.
I think you will agree that there is never a better time to make such a decision than when you are romantically heartbroken, with an utterly uncertain future and nowhere to live. This is truly the ideal time for a visit the Humane Society; it says so right in their pamphlet. When Jeff and I were negotiating everything, I actually ASKED, as in, on my LIST OF DEMANDS, if I could get a cat, because having a cat to snuggle with would make me “feel better about this whole divorce thing,” especially since I was leaving the bunnies behind for the foreseeable future. No red flags there! Carry on!
(Continued)
