kiki

Sometimes. I feel like Kiki. Stuck between belonging. Not fit for my life now. Grown out of my life then. In the middle of being. Something.

Evangelicals call it an unequal yoke. Being not-alike because not-alikes don’t work the balancing act so well. They’re all about religion and race and the Tower of Babel but they never say anything about social strata or marquee or what happens when a girl from the mountains, who use to carry water to bathe in, meets up with an artistic Englishman who doesn’t blink twice at spending $700 a night just so he can have a plasma screen.

My then-life is a movie set to him. The small and the coal. The dirt and the poor. “Who can’t find two hundred dollars?” A friend was having trouble with the rent. One hundred and seventy dollars short. “How can anyone struggle to come up with that kind of money?”

He calls them the uninspired. “You’ve heard of the American dream,” he says. “People just don’t want it enough.”

He’ll never be those kind of people. He’ll never ‘not want it enough’. And he’ll never understand the ones who do.

another west virginia girl

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck

david fonseca : superstars

I really cant say enough about the super talented and oh-so easy on the eyes David Fonseca. I’ve listened to Superstars 1200 times this month. That’s an actual number folks.

A certain fellow I know keeps threatening to do me bodily harm if I play it again. But I think I called his bluff this evening when I walked in on him doing The Breakfast Club Dance to the very same tune – in his boxers.

Children of the 80s: Unite. Guaranteed to make you do a Molly Ringwald all over your living room. Superstars. By David Fonseca.

fruits and vegetables and nuts

I run into them a lot. On the bus. By the library. In the pub. You know the type. People with no internal dialogue. The ones full of a primal urge to be overheard – because why else would they be so bleedin loud.

Yesterday it was a rather round brunette. She said she wanted gastric bypass surgery. “Just a band.” A friend asked why she didn’t use her treadmill instead. “Because. I need something that works.”

I wanted to smack her. Or smack myself. Like in those V8 commercials – “I should have had a V8.” Smack! – But I didn’t.

I just stared.

under pressure

I play theme songs when I work. Not on my iPod or anything like that. In my head. Like Ally McBeal and the dancing baby, I drift off into an alternate universe where Eye of the Tiger and Freddie Mercury sit on repeat. Under Pressure – the song you always think is Ice Ice Baby, because you grew up when it was- it’s my mantra. Only I never get anything done when I’m listening to it because I get all day dreamy and stuff. (I once walked in front of a double decker bus in the middle of the Bowie remix.) When the piano kicks in, it’s my time to boogie. To dance on the inside – because I’ve never done the other kind before – because the other kind, the real kind, is far too much expression for me.

I’m emotionally stunted. Like a man. And I don’t mean that in a bad way so you guys can just calm down. What I mean is, well, you know how some women get all teary eyed over things like sappy story lines or grandiose romantic gestures … roses and bended knees? Well I’m not that way. I laugh when someone cries during a film and the knee thing…the knee thing just makes me want to roll my eyes and help the poor sod up. I keep thinking one of these days I’ll get better. Work up a good hard cuddle or the perfect warm wish for a birthday card. One of these days hasn’t come yet.

Maybe that’s what’s doing me in. What’s wearing me out before I should be worn out. Like the not-old man who spent all his life never crying because he was too strong and tears were for women – he died of a heart attack. The big one. He was 54.

Maybe that’s what done him in. All those tears he never let out. Maybe they have to get out. Somehow. And if we don’t let ‘em out ourselves they’ll burst right out on their own. Like they did with the not-old man.

Paulie says it’ll happen to me. Paulie’s this wrinkled Italian I know. He said that if I don’t find some way of letting go of the gut rot and awfulness that I’m hanging on to, it’ll explode on me. All that pressure building up inside. I’ll be singing Freddie Mercury one day and … BAM! He reckons I should take up lascivious living for a year. Says that’ll flush it out.

I said “I’ll emote some other way thanks”, and he agreed to let me. Not that he’d have any choice in the matter. I mean, he’s Paulie, and I listen when he talks because he’s been kicked around pretty hard and looks like he knows alot. But other than that he’s just some wrinkled old Italian I met in the coffee shop one day. That I still meet, every day, for a morning cuppa.

Max, who isn’t anybody important, just some guy from the office who saw me with Paulie one morning, said “That Paulie’s a homeless bum”.

He may be. I’ve never asked. Partly because it’s not something you ask a man: “Are you a bum”. But mostly because he always smells good and is fat. In my experience bums are skinny. And smell bad. Paulie is neither. Even still, if he were, I wouldn’t care. I like him. And I’m taking his advice. Not the lascivious part. The other part. The get it all out you part.

Cue ‘Under Pressure’. I’m about to explode.

wayfarin stranger

I grew up in a family full of wayfarin strangers. Gnarled old men who I didn’t know but should have – because Pa said they were kin – sang the words with such strength of conviction that I always saw the story as their own.

A cousin even adopted it as his anthem when we were seven. When I questioned any right he had to claim the lyrics, he set me straight. “I’m an old soul,” he said. “Destined to walk this world alone.”

So far…he isn’t wrong.

Steve and I were talking about it a few weeks back. The song. Not the cousin. And I’ve been waiting to post it ever since. Now seems just as good a time as any. Have a read. Then hunt down Jack White’s rendition…and have a listen.

I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling thru this world of woe
Yet there’s no sickness, toil, or danger
In that bright world to which I go

I’m going there to see my brothers;
they said they’d meet me when I come.
I’m only goin’ over Jordan.
I’m only goin’ over home.

my sister is jack handey

On Romance:

My instant messenger just popped up with a note that says ‘Add Me’. I don’t know what it means. But it sounds dirty.

So he says “But you’ve (bungee) jumped with me before” and I say “Yeah, but I’m married to you now. I don’t have to do stupid things to impress you anymore.”

I use to have one of Jon Bon Jovi’s videos Tivoed. Watched it every morning. Then the husband got ticked off and said I was just using it to get in the mood – so I had to delete it.

On Pregnancy:

I know you’re dreading the whole birthing-process. Labor and all that. But don’t . Honestly. By the time you carry a baby for nine months, you’ll be begging them to take it out.

Pregnancy’s a funny thing. With your first everything is so new and exciting. The anticipation of what ‘might be’ is just…incredible. With the second, you already know. So it’s all ‘I’ve created a life. I’m a creator’. By the third one you’re just like…I get it already! Can we please have the baby now.

On Family:

Our brother use to read romance novels. That’s a rumor I’m thinking about starting.

She was convinced he’d never leave her. Seriously. Why else would she introduce him to the family.

On Intellect:

Eating fish and reading big-worded books should help. That and Zoloft.

I’m not saying he’s stupid. But he looks like he might be.

On Fitness:

Yeah. Whatever. I can’t run. I’ve had three kids. My bladder will fall out.

So some people think I’m fit because I wear a size 2. What some people don’t know…is that I’m a midget!

On Me:

She has this uncanny ability to brainwash her little sister. Honestly. She’s just like you.

Sometimes I listen to the voice mails you leave – and they’re so long – I start to answer you back.

questionnaire de proust

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
The loss of loved ones.
Where would you like to live?
Everywhere. At least once.
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
To be whole.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Idleness.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Sydney Carton. David Dunn.
Who are your favorite characters in history?
Simon-bar-Jonah. Elizabeth I of England.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Susan B. Anthony. Harriet Tubman. Mother Teresa.
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
The Slayer. Of course.
Your favorite painter?
Albrecht Dürer. Lucien Freud post-1960.
Your favorite musician?
Depends on my mood. At the moment, David Fonseca.
The quality you most admire in a man?
To quote Proust himself: Intelligence and moral sense.
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Wit.
Your favorite virtue?
Wisdom.
Your favorite occupation?
Authoress.
Who would you have liked to be?
I’ve never wanted to be anyone else. Not really.