alienne

It's me again, another year older and maybe wiser. I'm back in Saint Louis, where there are theoretically people who love me. Lately i've been pretty down, and really exhausted; moving was awful, i've got household stress going on, and there's a stray boy living with us while he gets himself sorted out enough to look for a job. I do take in strays. (I'm not desperately in love with this one, at least. That does help.)

I don't really have much to say, this year; i've been feeling pretty wordless lately in general, at least about anything important. Mostly my heart just aches in a way i can't give voice to. But here's a song for you, as always:

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The Heart Remains a Child (Everything but the Girl)

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I still sleep with Fletcher almost every night; he still comforts me like nothing else can. Once in a long while, I look in his eyes and see you looking back.

Goodbye for another year, my dear one, my lost one. No matter how many years go by, I miss you, and I love you, and I never forget you. I wish i were the moonlight shining off your Camaro's hood -- still, and always. 

Dear Jonathan Livingston Severson,

It's been eleven years. And for the last few of those, there's been a scab over what used to be a gaping wound. It's not healed yet, may not completely heal ever, but it's healing, slowly. But i still set this day aside, to grieve your loss and remember you.

I just went back through, actually, and reread all the letters I've written you, over the years. A couple of the years, early on, I didn't write you anything; but it's been a pretty consistent ritual. In some sense i've come to think of you as my better self, my Holy Guardian Angel, the voice in my head that i cannot bear to disappoint. I sometimes wonder if you'd be disappointed that i still miss you so terribly, after all this time. I don't think you would, though — you understood loss, and ceremony.

And i suspect that at least once in awhile, when you feel cold and dark and alone, you miss me, too.

I had a marvelous vacation, the last few days. I had as a houseguest someone I hadn't talked to in fifteen years, and have been talking to every day since the middle of June. (You'd remember him; he went to Rhodes.) There was cuddling, and sex, and movies, and wine, and talking until the wee hours of the morning. It was wonderful, and I am overall the happiest i've been since significantly before i moved. It's clear that he loves me, and that i love him, despite an incredibly short re-acquaintance.

He left today, though, and i cried. A lot. I don't know when i'll see him again, and i don't know exactly where i stand with him, and even if neither of those things were true i am terrible at watching people go. It's never, ever a thing that gets easier; and especially on this day, of all days, all the missing-of-people that i've ever done in my life blends together into a gaping abyss that i cannot possibly see over.

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Tonight Will Be Fine (Leonard Cohen)

Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past.
We swore to each other that our love would last.
You kept right on loving, but I went on a fast;
now I am too thin and your love is too vast.
But I know from your eyes
and I know from your smile
that tonight will be fine,
will be fine, will be fine
for a while.

I choose the rooms that I live in with care,
the windows are small and the walls are bare.
There is only one bed and there's only one prayer;
I listen all night for your step on the stair.
But I know from your eyes
and I know from your smile
that tonight will be fine,
will be fine, will be fine
for a while.

Oh, sometimes I see her undressing for me,
she's the soft naked lady love meant her to be
and she's moving her body so brave and so free.
If I've got to remember, that's a fine memory.
And I know from her eyes
and I know from her smile
that tonight will be fine,
will be fine, will be fine
for a while.

---

Oh, my love, my dear one -- goodbye again, for another year. I will get through it; i have survived eleven previous years, and i will survive this one too. Not least because you live in my head as the voice of my best self; and not least because, through everything that's happened to me in those years, i have never stopped wishing i were the full moon shining off your Camaro's hood.

❧

Originally posted by kylecassidy at post

Dear Jonathan Livingston Severson,

So in the last couple months i've gotten a new job, moved 500 miles, started said new job, travelled to Long Island by way of Chicago, and just generally had A Lot Going On.

Even with that, though, some days it feels terrible, like nothing in my life ever changes. Doesn't help that i'm still being eaten alive by freelance work that i REALLY need to quit (but i kind of need the money); it also doesn't help that i'm still exhausted a stupid percentage of the time because of things entirely beyond my control (i really think it's a physical problem; they just can't FIND it.)

"No matter where you go, there you are." I was in a rut in StL; that's part of why i moved. But it feels like i'm still the same rut, sometimes, even though i relocated it. I think that's my challenge for the rest of the year: to figure out how to actually get a life i like, now that i've changed all the external details.

I found a photo of you looking all grown-up at your teaching gig, and it made me laugh and cry at the same time. I also found your profile on LinkedIn the other day, and tortured myself for a couple minutes with the fact that your electrons are close enough to reach with mine. But i have kept my promise all these years, and i keep it still.

I still miss you, you know. I'm less torn up, these days, but the loss never actually goes away. So i'm sending a song sent out into the ether for you, again. I always hope some tiny bit of you will hear it, and wonder...


mystery - Indigo Girls

each time you'd pull down the driveway
i wasn't sure when i would see you again;
yours was a twisted blind-sided highway
no matter which road you took then.
oh you set up your place in my thoughts,
moved in and made my thinking crowded;
now we're out in the back with the barking dogs
my heart the red sun,
your heart the moon clouded...

i could go crazy on a night like tonight,
when summer's beginning to give up her fight
and every thought's a possibility
and voices are heard but nothing is seen --
why do you spend this time with me?
may be an equal mystery

so what is love then?
is it dictated or chosen?
does it sing like the hymns of 1000 years,
or is it just pop emotion?
and if it ever was here and it left,
does it mean it was never true?
and to exist it must elude,
is that why i think these things of you?

but i could go crazy on a night like tonight,
when summer's beginning to give up her fight
and every thought's a possibility
and voices are heard but nothing is seen --
why do you spend this time with me?
may be an equal mystery

oh but you like the taste of danger,
it shines like sugar on your lips;
and you like to stand in the line of fire
just to show you can shoot straight from your hip.
there must be a thousand things you would die for --
i can hardly think of two.
but not everything is better spoken aloud,
not when i'm talking to you...

oh the pirate gets the ship and the girl tonight
breaks a bottle to christen her;
basking in the exploits of her thief,
she's a very good listener
and maybe that's all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility
standing at opposite poles, equal partners in a mystery

we're standing at opposite poles,
equal partners in a mystery.


Goodnight again, my seagull, my friend, my shining star, my love. And i tell you again as i tell you every year: i will always, always wish i were the full moon shining off your Camaro's hood.

Jake broke up with me on April 29, 2010. A year and a day is the length of traditional formal mourning.

The year that's passed hasn't done anything to soften all the ways in which i feel like i failed, or to quiet all the voices in my head that say i'm not good enough, i fucked up, it's all my fault. It hasn't made the wanting stop, or pieced back together all the badly broken bits of my psyche.

It hasn't made me able to touch, or to be touched, without flinching.

It has, at least, given me enough perspective to see all the ways in which the relationship wasn't perfect -- because of course no relationship is perfect. It's let me remember and see the ways he WASN'T good for me, in among all the ways he WAS. It's been long enough that i can remind myself that both of us were responsible for various of the things that weren't right, that went badly.

But that doesn't really help very much.

I miss him. I miss his son. I miss the life i thought i had, the life where i was wanted and loved and at least usually happy. I miss the people i can't bear to face, because i feel like i deceived them into thinking i was a worthwhile human being. I miss having someone care where i am, what i'm doing. I miss being worth worrying about. I miss feeling like i'm worth ANYTHING at all.

Even when i talk to him -- which i do, not infrequently -- i miss him. And i feel hollow, and i can't stop wondering (for all that i know better) if he ever loved me.

By my own rules, i have to be done with mourning. I've been going through the motions of a life for a year and a day. So starting tomorrow, i'll try to pick up what's left of my actual life; i'll start making more of an effort to go places, do things, act like things matter. I'll see if i can bear to face the people i've been avoiding. I will try harder to remind myself that there are people who love me, and things i'm good at, and that i'm not so worthless as i am prone to believing. I'll try not to run away from the people who care about me.

But if i'm done with mourning, it'll still be a long time yet before i'm done with grieving.

---

Watching all the insects march along
Seem to know just right where they belong
Smears of face reflecting in the chrome
Hiding in the crowd I'm all alone

No one's heard a single word I've said
They don't sound as good outside my head
It looks as though the past is here to stay
I've become a million miles a...

Why do you get all the love in the world?
Why do you get all the love in the world?

All the jagged edges disappear
Colors all look brighter when you're near
The stars are all afire in the sky
Sometimes I get so lonely I could...

Why do you get all the love in the world?
Why do you get all the love in the world?
Why do you get all the love?

—Nine Inch Nails, "All the Love in the World"






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A long December, and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
And the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven....I wish you would.

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that its all a lot of oysters, but no pearl
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California...I think you should.

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December, and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean..I guess I should.

("A Long December", by the Counting Crows)

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Thanks be to all the gods that the FUCKING year is over.

And here's to light, and life, and the hope of healing, in 2011.

Happy new year, all.

Me (to my friend Bryan): "I seem to be much better at being an ex-girlfriend than a girlfriend. I'm like the Jimmy Carter of girlfriends."

It is JUST NOT TRUE that "he" is a "gender-neutral" pronoun in English. It never has been true. English HAS no gender-neutral pronoun; it lost it centuries ago in the transition from being German.

It IS true that if you don't know the gender of the person you're talking about, you might say "he" -- but that's not because it's "gender-neutral". It's because the GENERIC human being is male, in people's heads. This happens at a very basic, unconscious level, and it's reflected in a lot of ways. This is one of them.

Let's give some example sentences to prove my point, and disprove this old canard. Note that the asterisk (*) is a convention in linguistics to mark an "ungrammatical" or "nonconforming" sentence -- that is, a sentence that will tend to make a native speaker of the language make this face upon reading or hearing it:

Each student should retrieve his books before leaving the classroom.

Okay, so far, so good, right? That looks a little archaic, but doesn't violate the idea that "he/him/his" COULD be gender-neutral, right? But try the next one:

*Every single one of them had a run in his pantyhose.

This is pretty odd, huh? Still, we could be talking about drag queens or some sort of mixed group of dancers. But the last one is really the kicker:

*I think everyone in this room is having his period right now.

If you said this, a native English speaker would look at you like you have two heads. It FEELS WRONG. (I mean, you could have an entire room full of trans men. But even then it would FEEL wrong to most native English speakers.) This cognitive weirdness, the "huh?" you get when reading or hearing it, is precisely because "he" is NOT a "gender-neutral" pronoun. It is used for a "generic" human being, but that "generic" human being is always -- on a very basic level -- ASSUMED TO BE MALE by the culture and by people in it.

I wanted to test a new beading technique, the easy spiral rope or “Internet rope” (so called because it was apparently a big fad on internet crafting sites for awhile, a couple of years back). And it turned out well!

Lessons learned:

• Use one length of wire, folded, for both the (much shorter) core strand and the spiral strand, rather than using separate lengths of wire. That way you can put the clasp on the fold before you do any beading, leaving you with one less thing to worry about!
• Do NOT put a final clasp on the other end of the core strand! Use a temporary crimp of some sort, tie a knot, or use a clamp — adding the final clasp now just means you have to find a way to add the spiral strand end in later.
• Make sure you have enough wire for the spiral strand — which is about four times what you think you’ll need!

Caret is really NOT working out in my household, at all. But he's a difficult kitty to place -- he's FIV-positive, so he needs a home with no other cats, or an owner willing to get their other cats vaccinated (which still isn't 100% guaranteed, but he's also not bitey with other cats). Frankly, i think he'd love having a dog to play with, he's rambunctious as hell.

Kukla was supposed to ask her brother about this, but that has apparently fallen through or something. I REALLY NEED a home for him, like, yesterday. So if anyone knows of a person who is either petless, or has a dog or two, and would like a kitty, please please PLEASE let me know.

He is a sweet cat, but he's a teenager and very rambunctious. He also likes to wrestle with people's hands and ankles, which behavior i haven't been able to train him out of (but i'm really not a good cat trainer, either, i'm afraid. :( ) He will also curl up next to people on the couch, and he purrs like a Harley. He's outgoing and really awesome.

Photos here: http://alienne.livejournal.com/104208.html#cutid1


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