New Year's Thoughts

Usually New Year’s Eve is not that important to me. In term of holiday importance (besides a day off work), in the past it has ranked about up there with Valentine’s Day. After all, it is sort of a superficial division. I mean, there is tomorrow and then tomorrow and then tomorrow. Sometimes it is a good excuse to party, but usually I just feel sort of bewildered.Why is everyone so excited?

But this year it feels important. It feels momentous. It’s the beginning of something, this New Year’s Eve. The beginning of an important year for me. As midnight approaches there is a solid tightness deep in me, between my breasts. What is this building feeling? When did I become conscious of it?

It feels important. It feels scary. And I feel ready. I think maybe it’s just plain old excitement. For a while I’ve been in a holding pattern, planning and waiting, and will be for a bit longer. But I can see what’s ahead, and I can’t wait. Just a little longer, and I’ll be in the thick of it. We’ve been in Minnesota for six years. In six months, we’ll be gone, but we don’t even know to where yet.

So I sit here with this ache in my throat. Today I wrote thank you letters. I must be feeling sentimental. I wrote one to my parents, thanking them for everything. It seems important to say it, right now. It is that sort of day. I’ve been doing, without the prompting of the holiday, all the things that one is supposed to do on New Year’s Eve. Look ahead, look back. Give thanks and plan for the future. Make resolutions, and praise myself for meeting personal goals.

I really started to like myself this year. Or rather, I think I’ve always liked myself, but I started to be proud of myself. To see who I am and what I do as worthy of pride. It’s like climbing out of a hole and looking at myself in the daylight and saying, hey, you’re not so bad. You clean up pretty good. I wish I could see like this all the time. I’m tired of being a bundle of insecurities. Can I shed it like an old skin? How does one go about systematically demolishing one’s insecurities?

It’s seven o’clock on New Year’s Eve. This coming year will be a lot of “lasts” as well as a lot of “firsts.” Something big will happen this year; however, it is very unlikely that anything will happen tonight. Despite this overwhelming feeling, I think this night will most likely pass as quietly as any average night on Big Toad Lake. Our last New Year’s here.

Anti-social? Me? Pish-Posh!

Ah, friday, the end of the week. Oh, wait, that's right, I didn't really have a week. I was home, skipping out on classes and other responsibilities with the flimsy excuse that my car has been in the shop since Tuesday. Okay, the excuse isn't that flimsy when you live 20 miles from any town. I'm as stranded as I would be on an island, except that instead of water surrounding me, it's a lethal combination of marshes, thick woods, and highways where people (who are asked, legally, to go 55) are actually going about 70, passing on the shoulder, and doing all sorts of crazy things. This means: no bike riding or, god forbid, walking, on the shoulders of the roads, even though they are broad and paved, with those scored rubbity-bumpity things along the edges. Still, to be on the roads here without the protection a car is to take your life in your hands. This means: yep, I'm still stranded.

It's been nice. The week has passed in a fog of writing, blogging, studying, walking (with pooch, down my nice long safe gravel road), and a lot of staring out the windows at the leaves changing and rattling down from the trees. I've never been one to mind solitude. In fact, it is a preference for me. I can go days without seeing a soul, without talking to anyone on the phone, and that is just fine.

My record for going without any companionship except that of my dog is 11 days, accomplished two summers ago with J was on a month-long backpacking trip in Montana. I did not go anywhere by car (which means I didn't go anywhere), I did not talk to anyone on the phone, I saw no neighbors, no one stopped by the house, I had no television, no internet. The only person I talked to was my pooch, Zoe, but after a while even that stopped. It was serene. That's the only way I can describe it. I went through the days without saying a word. It made me realize that speech is a sort of burden. Vows of silence must feel like a respite, to permanently relinquish the responsibility of speech.

Eleven days seemed like months. I read for hours, sitting on my back steps, walked down the road and back again, painted old furniture, watched movies, baked, rowed our little boat to the island to go swimming. It was like, for those eleven days, life was enchanted. I was under a spell, a bubble that protected me from the world and put me back to when I was eight and rowing my grandfather's boat into the channel to look at the flourescent molds and algaes, and catch turtles.

This week is a little different. I am still working (studying for GRE, etc.). But I find myself slipping into that bubble of timelessness. When I stand under a birch tree, the trunk glowing white against the crisp blue sky, round yellow leaves like chips of sunlight. The wind runs through them and they rattle like paper, like rustling windchimes. The rusty colors of reeds, lying over in tossed bundles, bumping and rolling across the marsh. Intermittent spikes of an unknown plant, dark red at the bottom, lightening towards the top into pink-orange-yellow, like thin columns of flame shooting up through the reeds, like otherworldly fires spurting up from below .

These are the thoughts that get lost in the everyday.

Being Wrong

An old boyfriend of mine used to quote the movie “Love Story” whenever he fucked up: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That infamous quote has surely plagued more relationships than it has helped (yeah, thanks a lot, Ali McGraw, for giving us women that character to live up to). I thought it was a load of tripe, and told him so, and then refused to say I’m sorry, on the grounds that, according to him, I shouldn’t have to. So there!

Yeah, okay, I’m childish, but at least I don’t go looking to movies for relationship advice. We had our problems. He was an unrealistic romantic, someone who thinks that love conquers all and all that crap. I was a pragmatist with a deep seated secret romantic side – I wanted to believe all the things he thought were true, but couldn’t quite make that leap, for the same reason that I can’t believe in God or the afterlife. It just doesn’t have the ring of truth about it for me.

Here’s my slight modification to the quote: “Love means being very good at saying you’re sorry.” Anyone who has been in a long-term relationship will understand that the ability to say I’m sorry when you fuck up is crucial to the success of said relationship. For a very, very long time (and still sometimes) I felt like saying 'I'm sorry' was the same as saying I was wrong, which is something almost impossible for me to do (say I'm wrong, not be wrong - that is all too possible, very often probable). I have this notion, planted deep within me during childhood, that to admit I was wrong is a weakness, a chink in my armor that will allow people to get to me. It gets easier, the older I get, the more I do it, but I still have that gut reaction when I realize, in an argument, or a discussion, that I am in fact, wrong. The instinct to hide that fact with some bravado and some accusations, turn the tables, change the subject, and if worse comes to worse, use my sarcasm to hurt, hurt, hurt. After all, if someone is hurting, they'll probably forget that I am wrong, and in fact, will probably be too hurt to hurt me.

Yikes. This is getting way too deep for Sunday morning. I'm still on my first cup of tea. Yeah, that's it, I'll blame my brooding state on a lack of caffeination. After all, I couldn't just be wrong.

Vinyl Nostalgia

Okay, I’m going to date myself with this post. Remember records? You know, those huge, heavy, fragile disks that popped and scratched and hissed through every song? Yeah, digitally remastered is pretty cool, but I’ve always been a fan of the record. At the ripe old age of 6, I was trained by my parents on our record player, and was set loose among their albums, stored in an old wooden orange crate under the stereo. I still have the crate, which has served me well over the years, and could be considered an heirloom, as it was my parent’s first piece of furniture after they got married. I’m quite fond of it. And it is currently filled with my albums, a great many of which I inherited from my parents.

But just as fun as listening to the albums was looking at the album covers. While the record was playing I would sit on the green carpet in our living room, and look at the album covers, trace the raised lettering. Of course, I had favorites, albums that mesmerized me as a child for one reason or another, albums that were usually my favorites in terms of music as well. Here are a few of my top choices, my favorite album covers from childhood:


Sly & The Family Stone could probably be considered the anthem of my youth. And I loved the people, the multiples of everyone in the band, their bright funky clothing, and especially the woman with the white afro. On the inside cover there is a huge picture of Sly that I also used to adore.


Big Brother & The Holding Company. Some of Janis Joplin’s finest stuff. The album was drawn by Robert Crumb, which I didn’t know at the time, but makes it even cooler now. It tickled me that each song had a cartoon, and I could follow along on the album with the drawings. Of course, I missed the nature of many of the drawings, and the subtle, and not so subtle drug references, but the cartoons were still just really cool.


The Band. I loved this picture, and although I couldn’t have defined it at the time, I found it so haunting. There is this gaunt quality to the men, hollow cheeks and eyes, and an indefinable sadness that I was so drawn to. Plus, it’s a seriously great album.


Led Zepplin, Physical Graffiti. The coolest thing about this album was that the outside cover was just the building, with cut-outs where all the windows are. The inside sleeve had pictures printed on it that, when inserted in the cover, lined up with the window cut-outs. I loved to “look in the windows,” and pretend that it was a real apartment building. In which case, it would have been a seriously weird one, seeing as there were cartoons, naked people, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, and some things that I probably just didn’t even understand yet.

There were more – a really cool Wes Montgomery Album, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Sgt. Pepper’s, but these were the ones that I pulled out time after time, the ones that got battered from use. Looking back, it was awfully cool of my parents to give a little kid free reign with their albums. I can’t say that I’d do the same, but it definitely set up my musical education at an early age. I still like spending a Saturday afternoon sitting on the floor, surrounded by albums, looking at the pictures while I listen to the hissing, skipping records. You just don’t get that from an Ipod.

Deep Breath Day

My mother-in-law left this morning. Did I mention she's my landlord as well? Luckily, she's cool. She left in her wake a washer, a new fridge, a door to our sunroom, and a new deck. She also worked us like slaves. For two weeks.

I don't mind hard work. Especially when it's all to my own benefit. Our old refrigerator was about forty years old, one of those rounded jobs with the pull lever handle and a freezer the size of a shoebox that we defrosted once a week. It looked cool, vintage, but really sucked the electricity. Plus, it didn't keep anything cold, and so I have lived for years without ice cream. Or ice. Now, I have a lovely little fridge that has two ice trays and a pint of Haagen-Daz Dulce de Leche ice cream (my fav). Heavenly.

But there's a trade off. I'm a solitary soul. I need frequent periods of aloneness to replenish my energy, my goodwill, my serenity. Entertaining for two weeks is definitely a drain. She left this morning and I spent the rest of the morning doing laundry with my new washer, reading and drinking coffee. Then, out of the blue, I got a whopper migraine. It caught me upside the head, I wasn't paying attention to the signs. It just came because it could, because I was alone and had no obligations. I'm also one of those people who usually only gets sick on vacation because I have the time. Yup. So, then, I spent the rest of my solitary day with the shades pulled on the couch with my microwaveable herb bag wrapped around my head. Finally, by using all my hard-learned Jedi tricks, I banished it before it could blossom into a multi-day affair. So here I am, up all night probably. I think I'll take my solitary time now and curl up with my book and some mac-n-cheese (my ultimate comfort food).

Okay, that's like three whiney posts in a row. I promise, I'm done being a big baby now. Thanks for putting up with me.

My Uncles Brian

I have two Uncles Brian, my dad’s brother and my mom’s sister’s husband (with me so far?). They are both dying. Not in the sense of “we’re all dying, day by day.” These guys are dying. They are both in stage four of cancer, the “we’ll just try to keep them comfortable” phase. One has malignant tumors on his spine, the other has them cropping up all over, but the ones that are going to do the deed are those that have sprouted in his lungs.

Whenever I talk to my parents, I get the updates on both of them (one lives in Wisconsin, the other in Florida). And I see it in my parents, their burgeoning realization that their friends, their peers, are dying. My dad, especially, is not dealing well. His brother Brian is his younger brother, and I think somewhere down deep he thinks he has failed to protect his younger brother. I just ache for him. He is not an emotive soul. He buries it down deep, and does his best to appear to be handling it.

As his child, and someone who uses the same techniques, I don't know whether to pierce the shell, or just let him try to find some peace behind it. I have a general rule: I don’t ask. If someone wants to talk, I will listen all night, but I don’t ask. I don’t like to dig into someone’s buried feelings without their permission. Even asking if someone is okay sometimes feels too intrusive. Although upfront and blunt about some things, I’m a pretty deeply private person and I try to respect that in other people. I want to be the one person that doesn’t ask what is wrong, the person who will simply recognize that all is not great, but allow you to exist for a moment in silence, or talk about something else.

But sometimes that feels like the wrong thing. Obviously, this is my dad, and I’m allowed to pry. I’m allowed to dig in there, to tell him up front that I know what is going on and I’m thinking of him. But it’s so counterintuitive for me. It feels awkward to me, and I'm sure to him, since we’re cut from the same cloth. Rusty lines of communication. For years, for most of our lives, my dad, my brother and I have existed with minimal communication, trusting completely in the love and loyalty of the others, so much so that we don’t affirm it very often. Maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. When I brought it up to my brother, he said, “we know how we feel, we don’t need to say it for it to be there.” Which is exactly how I feel. But I don’t know if it’s right. In fact, I know it’s not right here. But I’m rusty, and I’m sure my dad is too. How do we start to talk again, or for the first time, about death and love and siblings and mortality and health and afterlife and religion. How do you begin?

Glutton for Punishment

So I've taken another job that I don't know how to do. I didn't lie or anything, in order to get the job. It is stuff that I have some experience in (archive inventory - excitement!), so I have not misrepresented. But I do have this habit of picking up jobs that are right on the fringes of my experience and knowledge. Like, "well, I pretty much know how to do that... after all, I did this..."

The details are these: I got into inventorying the archives of the Tamarac Nat'l Wildlife Refuge, my favorite hiking spot near my house. They have documents and photos going back to 1937, when the land was originally being acquired. It's a difficult job to focus on when faced with sheets of photos from the thirties of people in snowshoes and plaid jackets with pheasant tied to their belts, people in canoes wild ricing, people maple sugaring. Cool. At least, cool to me. It reminds me that I actually did like some of my job when I worked at the Museum from Hell. It's only recently that I've recovered from running the Museum from Hell. I certainly haven't been in the frame of mind to consider the things that I liked about that job, at least not until recently. Any love I had for any of my activities at the museum got sucked out of me through frustration until everything I felt could be described by one word: apathy.

Anyway, this project has reminded me that, oddly enough, one of my great loves is to try to organize vast amounts of unorganized material. I've done it with artifacts, I've done it with photographs. I've never done it with archives, and I'm having to try out a whole new set of parameters for this project. Which leaves me blundering around most of the time, despite the fact that to most people, I appear to know what I'm doing.

Point is, I've realized something about myself: I love to bite off more than I can chew. In some way it is comforting to me to know that a project is so insurmountable that any success can be viewed as a big success. And on the flip side, with a project that is almost certainly doomed to a certain degree of failure, there is the comfort of knowing that you can't really fail.