scattering leaves

you know when you feel like writing but you aren't sure what to say, and the post feels sort of masturbatory? occasionally, really great stuff comes out, but sometimes you just wank for a while.

still whipping together the last bits of end-of-time stuff. last day at work this week; appointments with banks to get off of signing authority for the non-profit i am quitting; trying to scramble together little stuff for the bus; having tea with all of the people i should see more often; trying to finish all the media i have signed out from the bookstore; it basically feels like i am trapped in an evil world of errands. although it's nice to see these people i have been visiting with.

last night i had tea with my cousin. yes, i have a cousin who lives in the city. actually i have two. and i never see them. yes, this is sad. honestly, it took my cousin and i two weeks to figure out when we each had free time that overlapped. it was ridiculous. we probably spent as much time planning as we did visiting. but anyway. she gave me a picture of my immediate nuclear family that i had never seen. taken in the early eighties, it has my mom with long straight hair, parted in the middle, wearing a classic hippie/artist black sweater. my dad, my cousin says, has a sam elliott look (i think it's the moustache and denim vest that sends her that way) and my sister and i are about 8-9 and 3-4 respectively. i have the stunned-kid look (this was my look for the first six years of my life) and my sis has a big missing-tooth grin. it's a great pic. i brought it home and showed the wife, who said "dude i've never seen a picture of your dad before." there aren't a lot. and i didn't have one of the four of us. it's lovely.

the queen is down at the farm, getting the bus ready and working with his brother. i know it's silly to miss him right before we got on a long road trip together, but i do. because i am silly.

obligatory pregnancy update:
the belly is growing. the baby kicks, softly for now. i have been able to eat more adventurous things, and go for longer periods without nausea. this is quite lovely. i have even successfully experienced some cravings for things like apple pie and deli meat. nutrition nazis: i am eating the vitamins and drinking the omegas. can someone please have a scotch-fueled night of brazen iniquity for me? thanks. i am developing a waddle. it's weird to walk with something hanging between your hips. you try it. i imagine it's also weird to rattle back and forth between someone's hips while they're walking somewhere. have you ever thought about how weird it is, this whole pregnancy thing? it's right up there in weirdness with eating eggs.

winter approaches, eh? moose are growing their extra coat of insulation, the snow dogs are in training, and i'm trying to find low-rise long johns. the wife hopefully reports a high of 24° this weekend (that's 75° to my 1.5 american readers), but the queen reports snow two hours south. he says the bus is cozy. through the greasy window of errands, i see the future and it is cozy.

twiddle twiddle

i think i need to sit and write, to clear some of the backlog on my mind.

i have neglected to check in with myself. just that inner touch-base that reassures me i am being present, i am taking care of myself and not getting swept up in the desires of others. because sometimes the desires or needs of others come through louder than my own. it can be easy to neglect myself with the knowledge that i will be here later, but this person in front of me may not (they'll go to that elusive 'somewhere else').

in actuality, the other person is no more likely to disappear than i am, if i take a big enough perspective (ie not just in my company, but somewhere in existence). moreover, i probably have more information regarding my own needs than i have for theirs. so jeez already, heal thyself.

but. i have this secret stupid ego thing i used to think of as compassion: that the other person won't listen to themselves and if i don't help them, they won't get help. never mind the countless examples of emotional vampirism, false martyrship and other nauseous hijacking of actual kindness. never mind the road that good intentions paves. never mind all that and let's just look at the hilarity of that thought. me in a cape, saving others from their own emotional inadequacies. awww. what a cartoon. gotta love finding those young-child beliefs we didn't know we've been harbouring all these years that let us make strange and often unhealthy decisions. awww.

then notice how i shortchange other people's abilities to take care of themselves. one wince allowed in general direction of childhood and then look around at smart people i know and sigh (slightly tremulously) in relief.

try and get past the italics, to the italics at the end

what is it about routine that immediately incenses me? i look at the laundry ready to put away, the in-box that's never been empty, the innocent plants that need watering, and i feel angry. angry at plants? they don't even complain.

it's the needing. in the last year, it's been a youth program that didn't have enough emotional support (guess who noticed?), organizing and curating a first-ever youth art show for a victim/crime awareness project, and helping a small business first moving into having employees and running their business according to government rules, which meant a lot of scary first steps and risks to take. eventually the scariness mellowed out, at which point i becamse bored and gave my notice. so there's something to be said about what i seek. let's come back to that.

i took this really easy job for the summer so that i could be responsibility-free (the board doesn't meet in the summer, which seemed promising as well), only to become a key-holder within three weeks. currently, my boss is on vacation and i'm 'running the place'. it's not a high-tech global centre of wealth or anything, but the pattern is uncanny. i attract positions of responsibility. and now and again (and again and again), they need things from me.

my spoils: coming back to my own attractions, i admit that i get off on feeling needed. it was the role i played in the family drama, after i outgrew the baby post. i problem-solve, collect emotional outpourings, smooth out ruffled feelings, head off imminent conflict and generally put people at ease (when i'm comfortable in my own zone, of course).

and when it's stimulating as opposed to grating, i find value in this. or do i?

maybe it's just feeling valued that i value (whew). well, it's helping me meet a need, seems harmless. unless i'm using others to build my self-esteem from the outside instead of from my own experiences. hmm. is there another way i'd like to meet that need (belonging/social security) that seems more centred in myself?

what else do i do that i think is needed by society as a whole?

...

also, and here's an interesting point. is it in my best interest and path to undertake every responsibility that i see or that is offered to me? i pretty rarely say no, although i do turn down projects. occasionally.

other than meeting a need for feeling valued by others, do i learn anything from playing this role?

maybe it isn't even a matter of changing how i meet the need. maybe it's a matter of letting myself realize how much i am already valued. i have such a fear of being left out - still. after all these years and all these social accomplishments. can i nourish the plant of self-confidence in my own garden, instead of buying it from the appreciation of others? can i barf after that terrible analogy? ewww. the power of one's own blog: ruthlessly publishing phrases better burned.

giving in to a sense of self-importance

i'm sure random prattling is the best thing ever about blogs, so here's some of mine.

noisiness
living two blocks off a major highway of iniquity, i am used to being entertained by incredible amounts of useless noise. nonetheless, the ridiculously close airplane (i think it almost hit a powerline) ten minutes ago had my heart pounding and the cat running in flat-out terror across the yard (away from the plane? not really, sweetie. nice try though). so i actually had a first, and called the city to register a noise complaint. i was told that they had a 'noise waiver' for whatever stupid commodity-laden festival currently going on across the river. awesome. a noise waiver. can i have one? we want to get really drunk tonight.

i wonder what one has to do in order to secure this get out of jail free card. justify your noise as fulfilling a deep need of city-dwellers? (we keep the riots at a minimum, your honour, through driving our bullshit, gas-eating, cool-looking bird-machines over your neighbourhoods.) maybe you get a noise waiver the old-fashioned way (tax-free donation to the rule-makers) or even as a throwback to tradition (this stupid gathering of noisiness has been occuring for sixty years! shit, maybe we should bring back beating our wives too, since we're so in love with tradition! mind you, we'd have to actually punish spousal abuse before we could let it become retro. otherwise, that's just tacky). anyway, i don't understand the concept of bylaws if you can get waivers for stupid reasons, even though i certainly justify regular jaywalking with the argument that crosswalks and traffic lights are for idiots and small children, not smart people like me.

ah, what a great self-masturbation session. i feel like i got rid of a bunch of otherwise useless spunk. excellent receptacle, the internet. no, i don't actually find my attitude comparable to sexism, why do you ask?

guilt
i'm whiling away the day dreaming of what i would do if i stopped whiling away the days dreaming of things to do. a book i finally finished reading told me to give myself an unquestionable pardon. for a brief moment, it was wonderful. like i'd been handed my own life at this point (here, she's thirty. see what you can do) and there were no expectations or holes to dig myself out of. now of course, the feeling has faded, and i've found some useless things to feel guilty about (not having sewn some summer pants even though it's almost august is a clear indication of how i will fail at everything for the rest of my life) instead of risking failure at things that matter more (such a sacrifice i make for my insecurities. hear that, insecurities? LOOK WHAT I GIVE YOU! ungrateful little mental offspring).

food
i am having fun feeding myself, and occasionally Special Friend (SF), with whom i had a fantastic, romantic time last night. i love how we own our time together, laughing occasionally about all the treacherous and dangerous paths of dishonesty laying around for less experienced lovers than we to trip upon, and agreeing that we are so much happier telling each other the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. of course, thus far, all the uncomfortable things have been relatively romantic. we aren't confessing that we fantasize about being blessedly alone for a day because we're still fantasizing about jetsetting with each other. won't it be fun to see how our honesty fares when the subjects become less shakespearean and more fawlty towers-esque. (secretly, i am actually looking forward to being boring with SF, since i think even this will be exciting. what's wrong with me?)

oh right, food. yeah, so i've been baking up apples with cheese and morning eggs, and dreaming up ways to fulfill my latest dietary/nutrition craze, which is to cut the processing steps in half. no more this-was-food-once-before-the-machines-got-to-it products. which means more chopping of vegetables. i think i'm up for it.

crazy labels
also, i am now officially a cat-lady. i dream of them, take care of them, and register noise complaints on their behalf. fortunately, SF sees some kind of nurturing side in this, and neither gets jealous nor makes fun of me. he even tries, albeit warily, to befriend my cat, who has of course recognized her nemesis (for attention) in him. she is willing to be bribed though, like most cats. somehow they don't let being bribed affect their sense of honour. must research.

uh oh, where'd my pretension go?

especially in the light of the square one post, i'm noticing the self-masturbatory aspect of blogging. i'm wondering how far i can take this story-telling and still avoid common pitfalls of wankery: My philosophy, The truth, Nobody understands me...

so much cyberspace, so little accountability. they aren't mutually exclusive, no. just rarely occurring together. why i love wikipedia. but that's another story. 

listening to coingutter (lovely, noise-y, like four tet but more raw) and occasionally glancing out to the clouds changing colour, feeling the pain in my lower back. this is today. the latent guilt trapped in the throat and unedited raw worry crammed into a tense jaw lying alongside a fierce desire for something different and the growing, joyous realisation that this is it and it's gorgeous.

these moments, when i notice them, they aren't frozen in time so much as brought to a halt and then revivified, and i feel it like a skipped heartbeat, like a hitch in my breath. i clear my throat, it's gone. 

'what was that? it felt weird.' sometimes i happily derail from the highway, but often, it seems like i actively ignore really interesting options. like i can't be bothered by the magic, i need to pay my bills right now. (uh, right, cuz they won't wait.) am i waiting for a moment where i feel like i've earned it, or am i scared to give up my drudgery? are the day-to-dayisms really drudgery, or have i just been led to believe that, in effort to make me more unhappy and insecure?

i keep trying to find the perfect temperature inside. covering and uncovering truths.