a little bit about a lot of me
I live in France.
I don't use capital letters when I write emails.
I do use capital letters in my blogs.
I turned 33 in October 2002.
I believe in God.
I am my own worst critic.
I have 11 piercings and 5 tattoos.
Sometimes I am very clever. Sometimes I am very stupid. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
I love my friends and make sure they know it.
My pirate name is Captain Mary Vane.
I read music before words.
I conduct a polyphonic choir.
I am the grammar police.
I can turn catty when I don't get my way.
Spiders are my greatest fear. Worse than dying at the hands of terrorists. Worse than being guillotined or thrown into a vat of boiling oil or forced to watch Manos, the Hands of Fate six hundred times in a row with my eyes taped open.
I too often forget to pardon those who trespass against me.
I am lazy. And I love pasta. You do the math.
I have never ever ever been blonde. Orange, once. Serious chemical error.
I wear my scars proudly sometimes, but usually I hide them in my sleeves.
I love getting email.
Saturday, December 14, 2002 The Number One Drawback to Being Alone in France on a Saturday Night During the Pre-Christmas Season:
There is no Taco Bell anywhere within probably 5000 miles to satisfy a 1-a.m. cheap-burrito craving.
I'll think of nine more drawbacks, I'm sure. But for now this one is truly preoccupying me. Ingredients I have in the house include healthy red rice, chick peas, and Brie. I guess I could make a burrito out of that, but quite honestly the idea alone is enough to frighten me.
15:56
Friday, December 13, 2002 Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag
I’m pretty lucky, on the whole. Ok, sometimes things suck, but I have an apartment. I eat most days. I have all my limbs, even if some of them are a bit the worse for wear. I exercise various talents and occasionally receive praise and appreciation for them. Sometimes random guys phone me (mostly collection agents wanting beaucoup euros for my hospital stays) and we end up chatting about my accent, and they marvel that I’m American and not, say, German, or Scottish. We hang up all friendly-like, the random guy with vague promises and me with a little warm spot inside, a kind of “wow, I owe a buttload of money, but that guy sure was nice!” feeling. Rare enough to feel special each time.
And every now and then something throws me for a loop.
1992: I realized that staying in graduate school in Boston, instead of moving back to California, meant surviving a second New England winter with papers to write and Latin to decipher and only a few photogenic life-moments involving red-cheeked children, snow-flecked ivy on brick edifices, or redemption through Christmas lights. I like those moments, a whole hell of a lot better than Latin third-declension nouns. That threw me for a loop.
1998: I phoned my parents’ house and understood from their tones of voice that it was Really Not A Good Time To Call, I mean, like, A Really Bad Time To Call, possibly even The Really Bad Time To Call. Then I heard a couple days later that my mom had moved out. Thirty-one years, three kids, and a couple hundred photo albums after her marriage began, she had finally had enough. Do I want my parents to be happy? Absolutely. Am I proud of my mother for recognizing her need for independence and striking out on her own, and proud of my father for surviving a shock that must have felt like a bomb going off and starting his life over again? Again, absolutely. Do I wish my parents were still together? Yes I absolutely do. That threw me for a loop.
2001: My husband told me he would rather have a Ph.D. and a career in the sciences than a wife and family. Am I bitter about this? Of course I am. Big-time loop.
But last week, during my brother’s visit, I rode the Montezuma’s Revenge of loop-throwing life realizations. I learned things that only exist in absurd sitcoms with totally improbable plotlines or those awful Bildungsromanish 1980s movies that involve some spotty teenager getting humiliated and coming of age in the hard way. You know, the kind of realization that goes “you’re a grown-up, right? Well, here! Here’s some fucking Reality! Now let’s see how grown up you are!”
I thought, after my parents’ separation, when my dad talked for a while about sending away to Thailand for a child bride so he could start his life over, or when my mom phoned me, drunk, after the first time the family got together for dinner and she went home alone at the end of the night, that I was a fairly stable family member in whom the others could confide. Even when the confidences involved potentially under-age sex servants from Bangkok or my mother plastered on snow-cone-sweet pink wine. Even when they passed out of that weird range and into the one where both parents, undivorced, began dating other people (and, I have to admit, probably sleeping with them too). Even after the visit home when, on a quest for socks in my mom’s sock-drawer (she said I could borrow some), I found a ping-pong paddle and a book about spanking fetishes.
Loopity-loop-loop-loop.
Last week my brother, who had just arrived from Amsterdam, talked to me about pot. He told me he prefers it even to red wine. My baby brother.
The best red wine.
Ok, I asked for it. No, literally. I asked him if he’d smoked in Amsterdam, but even while pronouncing the question I expected to hear a negative answer. Like, “What, are you nuts? Me, do drugs?” Or “No way, I remember the Nancy-Reagan years too well for that.” I boggled.
So I’m boggling, and as if to reassure me, my brother goes, “You know, Dad’s a pothead too.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a prude, but I like to think I’m a fairly cool one. I’m no blushing Daisy Miller swept up wide-eyed in a Europe full of debauchery. I sometimes crank up the bass on my music until “melody” is just a pretty girl’s name from the 1970s. I kind of dig sexual fetishes, as long as they don’t involve my parents. I know five grammatically correct uses for the word “fuck.” I can hold my liquor. I’m a Bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother, I’m a sinner, I’m a saint. I write run-on sentences on purpose. I am, in short, down with my bad self.
And people have told me some weird-ass things in my life. Though I guess even the definition of “weird-ass” is relative, when you get right down to it. I know people who go by four different names, not because they have nicknames and professional names or divorced names or whatever, but because they have multiple personalities. I have a friend who used to hit herself with hairbrushes. I knew a guy in college who chose to ignore both his Korean name and his English name and go by “Barney” instead. While walking through Vieux Lyon a couple years ago, I watched as my colleague stopped and bent down to dip his finger into a, well, a heap of dog poo. He tasted it. Actually put the finger in his mouth. And tasted it. The dog poo. Because, he said, it was such an enticing color. Red clay. (I’m still not entirely over that one yet.)
But everyone has a limit.
This is where I stood up in the E-ticket ride and said, hey, hey, hey. Everybody just hang on one fucking minute. Upside-down and inside-out and held in place by nothing but spandex and gravity, I said, pull this heap over, we gotta straighten some things out here.
You know, I even put my hands and arms outside the car.
My father smokes pot. Hashish, marijuana, weed. My brother found his stash. My brother knows vocabulary words I wouldn’t recognize on the streets – like “generation bag.” Now, see, to me that holds no meaning whatsoever. I’d probably hear it as something derogatory about an older woman. Anyway, my father, my dad, my daddy, the measure of my artistic and spiritual life since I was, like, zero years old, has one. A generation bag.
I don’t think I’m upset about this. I just can’t get my mind around it. My father smokes pot? Excuse me, in case I didn’t inflect that question right, my father? The one who was once so offended by my friend Kim's lack of manners that he asked if she was born in a barn? The one who for the first nine years of my life insisted that we listen to Mozart and nothing else – I mean, nothing – and that popular music on the radio was literally diabolical? Diabolical, as in from the devil. My father, the atheist, managed to convince me that The Cars and Queen and basically anything else heard on AM 690 (The Mighty Six-Ninety, Tijuana, Mexico) was just plain evil. My father, who once came downstairs and caught me watching porn on Channel Z? (I think it’s only because it embarrassed him that I heard the end of that one.) He’s always called himself a Libertarian but acted so conservatively that it’s hard to know where to find middle ground.
My father, really, throws me for a loop.
If I’m upset it’s probably because for all these years I’ve been editing myself, holding things back, repressing instincts and hiding my desires, my dreams, pieces of myself. Not daring to try things like, say, pot because of what it would mean I’d have to lie about later. Got that? Yeah, I know that’s not fair, but we’re talking about parents here, not about fairness. I also know my reaction here is more about me than about him, and if he’s been a source of self-editing it’s also a sign that there are things in me I knew I wasn’t ok with. And that’s the Big Moral Lesson du jour.
I don’t begrudge my dad a hit from time to time. Hell, he’s a jazz musician. And he’s my dad. When it comes right down to it, I guess, I don’t care how much pot he does. I hope it makes him feel good. I hope he’s safe with it. I hope it gives him twenty minutes of happiness. And I hope it isn’t the reason he always calls me by my sister’s name when we happen to be in the same house.
And damn it, I’m going to go rent some porn.
And there’s gonna be no spanking in it, like, anywhere.
"Do not say that Christian art is impossible. Say rather that it is difficult, doubly difficult, difficulty squared, because it is difficult to be an artist and difficult to be a Christian, and because the whole difficulty is not merely the sum but the product of these two difficulties multiplied by one another, for it is a question of reconciling two absolutes."
Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism
I've never seen art and faith as impossible, I have to say. (Well, I don't have to say, nobody's holding a gun to my head, etc. You understand.) For me they are forces that must go together, forces as naturally complementary as wind and water, equally contradictory yet interdefinable and just as strongly at battle against each other, with every now and then moments of reconciliation. And those moments are what we - artists, faithful, musicians, poor of spirit, flawed in countless ways, hoping to witness just a little beauty during our stay here - live for, they are what make all the rest of it worth living through.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002 About the worst CD selection ever
has just appeared on my browser's start-up page. Some highlights: Kenny G, Barry Manilow, Whitney Houston, Alanis Morissette and The Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Right up there with John Denver and the Muppets (which I liked) and that Tenor with the Spice Girls who performed some mass hit a couple years ago.
I never had a Jewish grandmother who expressed herself best in Yiddish, but if I had, she'd be rolling over in her consecrated grave groaning "Oy vey, it's all geschmokel in my genecktegesoik."
12:21
Actual quotes from the convivial getting-tipsy-together evening my brother, my friend Fabrice, and I had after Sunday evening's solemn Mass.
"Did you notice that Father P was a bit ... smelly tonight?"
"I didn't actually get close enough to smell him, so no."
"I mean, I believe in mortification of the flesh and all, but this was really ..."
"One word: soap."
*****
"What do you think of the English?"
"What English?"
"You know, the."
"Oh. I don't think of them, usually."
"Yes, you're quite right."
*****
"Ok, I have a question. Two of the Gospels end with Jesus's specific last words. One other one ends with different, but equally last, words. Which is correct?"
"That's very ... specific, as questions go."
"And?"
"Is there any more Bordeaux?"
*****
"Everyone I know is gay or a priest."
"Why don't you go for Edgar? He has very sensual lips."
"Fabrice, he's a boy scout."
"And then?"
"So ... he's probably three short steps from being a priest himself."
"This is dirty, but he'd be a great shag."
"The way you say it, that probably means he's gay."
"Actually, it probably does."
"Is there any more Bordeaux?"
Europe. France. Lyon. Wednesday. My head. So, this is how the morning goes. I get up knowing I have a therapy appointment at 11h15. I drink a lot of coffee while stressing about the appointment, because every week I think, this isn’t doing me any good and it’s expensive and my insurance (though all-encompassing, God bless socialist medicine) doesn’t cover all of it and I plan my I’m-quitting-therapy speech, which goes something like this:
Me: Well, Docteur, I’ve appreciated our time together but have come to realize that this format isn’t what I need. You see, thinking out loud for 30 minutes (28-½ really, because we have to stop a bit before the time limit so I can pay you and stuff) while you nod and make understanding “Oui … oui …” noises isn’t exactly the kind of interactive therapy I had in mind when, you know, they released me from the hospital on the condition that I see you within the week. So merci très fucking beaucoup for the two months of dispassionate agreement in French and all, but I think I’m going to reconsider my options.
At which point Monsieur le Docteur raises his eyebrows, murmurs “Oui, oui,” shakes my hand and tells me how much I owe, and I’m outta there.
Yeah, right, in my dreams. Here’s how it really goes down.
I walk in, sit down, say I’m not doing so great today, still rehearsing the speech (well, minus the word “fuck,” I can’t say that in front of a therapist, it’s the whole teacher’s kid thing I think), working up to it as I talk about how since I saw him last my brother went back to California and I’ve realized I will probably never have children and I feel most of the time like my life is one huge waste with a Ph.D. nameplate tacked onto the door. And Monsieur le Docteur makes a bunch of eyebrow motions and understanding murmurs. Twenty-five minutes go by as I work up my courage. Then the thing happens. This is the thing.
[Long Pause.]
Docteur: You miss your brother, don’t you?
Me: (inarticulate sobbing) Ye-e-e-e-ess ...
[Short Pause.]
Docteur: Our time today is up.
Damn it, every week he sneaks in at the last minute and pulls some sucker punch and I end up in the brown leather armchair that is too big for me so I have to either sit way forward in it with my elbows propped up on my knees or way back in it so my feet don’t touch the floor, crying or close to it. And the whole breaking-up-with-my-therapist speech evaporates – or rather gets sucked away, like a drunkard’s vomit in the morning on a French street when the kelly-green-clad sanitation people go by on their color-coordinated vacuum-hose motorcycles.
So I have another appointment next Wednesday. The whole situation reminds me of the Friends episode where Chandler tries to quit his gym. My therapist doesn’t wear spandex as a weapon (not in sessions anyway) but I think I may have to take a Friend with me to make sure I go through with it. But I don’t think I’ll take Ross.
romy is going to see a dermatologist at tufts on saturday
romy is jessica morgue's ex
romy is humiliated in front of the "a group
romy is exhibiting 14 acrylics at l'opera
romy is the nice lady who handles the customer service for rega
romy is half langharige zwart
romy is a sofa which combines the best of convenience with comfort
romy is the criss
romy is downright likable in a sad sort of way?she is diligently optimistic despite her lack of any kind of talent
romy is nervous when all the women at the party are all over jb
romy is taking her hair out of rollers when someone knocks at the door
romy is now played by romeo
romy is the leader of the two
romy is een fantastische zangeres met een modern allround repertoire
romy is currently showing her six
romy is radiantly beautiful
romy is a member of the socweb ring
romy is working at her job
romy is now an ex girlfriend
romy is fluent in french
romy is pretty sick
romy is a composer
romy is the boy with the glasses
romy is drachtig / pregnant
romy is attracted to the easygoing lifestyle of the underworld and is gradually drawn into kooka singh's gang
romy is also a local author whose books include "the stonehenge story"
romy is driven insane by an accident and gives up on her education
romy is incredible
romy is trained in classical singing
romy is busy with requests for signings and talks
romy is on her deathbed as an old woman and they have the same argument
romy is gedekt / mated
romy is aleader in the diagnosis and treatment of spinal disc conditionsand chronic pain
romy is the female mudwrestler who wreaks havoc on whomever enters her mud pit
romy is a swiss artist born in 1951 in alexandria
romy is already gone
romy is also the biggest reason for our lawn not to be in such a good shape
Hey, I'm likeable in a sad sort of way despite my lack of any talent. That's just depressing. Oh well, at least I'm still standing at the door.
00:49
Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes ...
Passing time on the internet waiting for "Jenny from the Block" to download (you know, so I can make fun of her rocks with all yall Americans not living in self-imposed exile) ... and I came across some Googlisms that make me feel good about bein' me:
rosemary is the featured spice of the month from oldetimecooking
rosemary is harder to come by and is usually alone
rosemary is celebrated and laid to rest a well
rosemary is simply the best
rosemary is almost back to super best
rosemary is magnificent with a long history
rosemary is a stimulant and assists mental clarity
rosemary is for remembrance october 23
rosemary is known to anyone who has eaten gourmet lamb dishes
rosemary is the solution
rosemary is baptised
rosemary is a wonderfully versatile herb
rosemary is said to be a mental and physical stimulant
rosemary is the hard
rosemary is a native to the mediterranean
rosemary is a spicy
rosemary is burned it is said to rid space of negativity because of its cleansing vibrations
rosemary is an ancient plant native to the sea cliffs of the mediterranean
rosemary is an herb in the mint family
rosemary is a stimulant of the circulatory system
rosemary is an effective remedy for digestive upsets and flatulence when taken with food
rosemary is a shrub like herb growing to 90cm high
rosemary is burned
rosemary is a popular and attractive herb
rosemary is known to have been used for magic
rosemary is growing well in the home garden
rosemary is also supposed to strengthen the memory
rosemary is useful with the following
rosemary is a native of the countries surrounding the mediterranean sea
rosemary is closely associated with the christmas season
rosemary is a medium
rosemary is native to the mediterranean
rosemary is for remembrance
rosemary is generally thought of as inexpensive and plentiful
rosemary is cultivated worldwide
rosemary is young and totally in love
rosemary is known as a potent tonic
rosemary is not an ordinary herb
rosemary is a quaint housewife
rosemary is pregnant
rosemary is justly famous
rosemary is a native of new orleans
rosemary is now grown in several parts of the world
rosemary is antibacterial and antifungal
rosemary is consumed with so much paralyzing self
rosemary is this month's topic because it remains hardy in the garden all winter in virginia
rosemary is so much better fresh because it dries into tough little sticks that stick in your teeth or ruin the consistency of culinary dishes
rosemary is fascinating
rosemary is indeed versatile
rosemary is said to thrive in households where "the mistress
rosemary is a free spirit and usually resents being molded so closely
rosemary is a perennial that grows up to 4 foot tall
rosemary is standing at the front door
rosemary is used to waken sleeping beauty
rosemary is optically dextro
rosemary is ambivalent; she hates her husband and hates losing him to the younger woman
rosemary is without a doubt my favorite
I like the thought of being cultivated worldwide. Thanks, Googlism.
00:43
Tuesday, December 10, 2002 Songs that make me glad I'm not in a slitting-my-wrists mood:
Sondheim - "Not a Day Goes By" (performed by Bernadette Peters. Or Lonestar. Go for the original cast soundtrack, not the country remake, even though that one's pretty too.)
I need some help interpreting this one ... last night I dreamed my best friend and I were going through some boxes of CDs and tapes and first-aid supplies left behind at an old Pasadena church office, because she (my friend) had managed to buy the grounds and was going to turn them into a shelter-slash-gym. We found CDs of Maria Callas, Maire Brennan, and a bunch of Cure lookalike goth bands with scary fluorescent covers. We also found a whole stash of razor blades and bandages in perfect travel-size plastic boxes (yes, my little heart went pitter-pat). And at one moment, while we were boxing things up in order to transfer them to a different regional church office, this man walked into the room. We was wearing a cassock and had a very distinguished face, and I knew he was God. He asked where we were moving the things and I said "to St. Helena's By the Sea" and he nodded sagely (God should always nod sagely). Then He turned to me and said, and I knew Julia couldn't hear him, "And this choir rehearsal tonight. Where will it be?" I kind of stuttered, because the question seemed so banal but I knew it was Really, Really Important, and finally I was like, "Um, it's at Your house."
I woke up this morning and heard a woman from choir leaving a message on my answering machine, asking where the rehearsal was. Now my subconscious is in overdrive and I'm sure I need more coffee and my mind is kind of just going, à la Keanu Reeves when he was a good actor, "Whoa. Whoa."
It’s a little early, but I’ve started thinking about that time-honored tradition of making new year’s resolutions. Despite my annually proven conviction that this exercise is just another way of experiencing futility, I feel compelled to comply with whatever instinct it is that says, "Go ahead, make a list. You'll feel better for it afterward." Or maybe it's not an instinct. Maybe it's a bone. And who am I to argue with bones? Anyway, I guess I’m in a whole ongoing Bridget Jones self-makeover phase or something, and well, a good hopeful list is always in season. So here’s some ideas.
1. I will work out at least three times a week.
2. I will not procrastinate all three work-outs and spend 5 hours sweating and cursing on Sunday afternoon.
3. I will eat more vegetables.
4. They will not be pre-cut, frozen, deep-fried sticks of anything and also will not be covered in melted cheese.
5. I will change out of my pyjamas and into street-acceptable clothing every single day.
6. Before noon.
7. Sweatshirts and warmup pants, no matter how few times I have slept in them, do not count as acceptable street clothing.
8. I will go on dates.
9. I will not start matching my name with the man’s name one half-hour into the date, no matter how cute he is or how well the syllables could potentially mix (Mrs. Me Depardieu, par exemple).
10. I will not evaluate a man’s potential mate-dom based on how well “Mrs. Me Machintruc” sounds.
11. I will not drink alone in my flat.
12. I will not do the following things while drunk alone in my flat:
a. Dye my hair.
b. Paint my bathroom walls. Any color. But especially green.
c. Remember how long it’s been since I talked to my father.
d. Suddenly develop the artistic inspiration to develop photos in my green bathroom.
e. Go for a walk along the quais of the nearest river.
f. Phone friends I haven’t talked to within at least the last 6 years.
g. Decide life is too short and you can’t take it with you and therefore I should fly to Ténérife before any more time goes by.
h. Buy airline tickets online.
13. I will replace all my ten-year-old black tights with holes around every toe with new black tights with no holes around any toes at all. If they have holes I will take them back or throw them away.
14. I will get over my repulsion for red meat, miniskirts, loud teenage boys in the métro, and dog shit in the streets. (Hang on, I am still in France after all ...)
15. I will finish reading Moby Dick so I can move on to other 600-page masterworks of world literature that actually hold my interest beyond Page 4.
16. I will celebrate life in all its richness and diversity, cultivate kindness and generosity, and find equilibrium between faith and feminism, between Chaste Devotion to the Promises of Eternal Life and rampant horniness.
17. Afterwards, I will go to confession.
18. I will try new things.
19. Not bordeaux-colored fake-vinyl knee-high boots. Not even fur-lined. Nor mixtures of gin with various popular American soft drinks available on the black market in France.
20. I will not smoke.
21. Cigarettes.
22. When drunk.
23. After having painted the bathroom walls green or near the photo-developing chemicals.
24. I will play my violin at least often enough to say, with a casual toss of the hair, “oh yeah, I still play.”
25. I will not buy any more “Adorable Eight-Year-Olds Play The World's Violin Masterpieces At 40 Times Their Normal Speed” CDs until I can play “O Tannenbaum” without fearing repercussions from my downstairs neighbors.
14:27
How do you get two sopranos to sing in unison?
The answer, in the 1992-music-camp joke version of this question, was "Shoot one of them." I conduct sopranos and boy, is it tempting sometimes to translate this fab idea out of the theoretical domain. But last Thursday, while rehearsing the "Cantique de Jean Racine" (ok, I might just have it on the brain), I actually got them to sing a full major sixth (instead of an augmented fifth, which should by all logical musical standards be harder to get people to sing). I even got the altos to sing their weird chromatic progression (many sharps and flats in unexpected combinations) in tune and for the most part accurately. Then the men made their grand entrance ("dissipe le sommeil" ...) and sounded like a herd of bloodhounds trying to drag a long rectangle of wet carpeting through a cat door.
Maybe I should have told them all to try singing in unison. Lock and load ...
10:18
Being right about things:
It's Monday night. My brother left today, and I spent the entire afternoon under a down comforter napping and reading a Terry Pratchett novel with my cat alternately sleeping on my chest and trying to get me to give her a milk treat. I woke up about once an hour and traced the progress of the sun through its "wow it's daylight" to "definitely not daylight anymore" stages. I'm currently listening to the Aqua CD I couldn't resist 2 years ago when it was sitting all lonely and sad in a French thrift store and cost a grand total of 24 francs, and even though a kind of dorky-Netherlands-dance-group version of Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine" (a beautiful four-part-harmony sacred choral work from the late nineteenth century) would be an interesting, possibly even fun, musical experiment, I am confirmed in my belief that said interpretation is best left imagined, and maybe even then is a really, really Bad Idea.
10:08
Top ten songs that should never happen.
10. Mariah Carey, The Indigo Girls and Céline Dion : “Lady Marmalade.”
9. Hole : “Ne Me Quitte Pas.”
8. Frank Sinatra : “Like a Prayer.”
7. Aqua with Michael Nyman on piano : “Le Cantique de Jean Racine.”
6. Alanis Morissette : “Stayin’ Alive.”
5. Pavarotti : “Loser.”
4. Jewel : “Nessun Dorma.”
3. Jimmy Durante and Macy Gray : “Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partirò).”
2. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir : “Losing My Religion” – in four-part harmony.
And the Number One song that should never happen is … (drum roll) …
I want to put on dark matte lipstick and platform heels and go sit in the mysterious corner of a smoky bar, leaving vermilion lip-shapes on a tumbler of single-malt scotch.
I turn the music up loud enough to piss off my punk neighbors downstairs.
It gets so lonely I have to pull on a heavy grey coat and go walking by the river thinking dark thoughts about all the chances I’ve lost through stubbornness or stupidity or heartbreak.
I just have to get the hell out of this city.
The thermostat doesn’t move from 4° all day long.
Bitter cold feels like a metaphor.
I dream in Latin.
Nothing moves fast enough or glitters hard enough or matters more than the little red metal sting from tearing a fingernail at the quick.
I doubt everything my faith tells me and everything I’ve learned.
I believe so passionately I can actually see Jesus resting a hand on Mary Magdalena’s head as she weeps over his feet.
I want to sell or throw out everything I own and disappear, start over in Tunisia or the Île de la Réunion with a new bank account and forget everything, all the way down to the syllables of my name.
I want to speed south along the Pacific Coast Highway and let the wind and sea-spray whip the breath from my lungs as I sing and the land turns to desert and reverts to rock.
I’m a hermit dedicating my life to prayer.
I’m a rock star sparkling.
I’m a loving maternal figure who welcomes everyone and bakes her own bread.
I don’t know who I am.
Everything is touched with beauty.
Everything sucks and hurts, and people are dirty belligerent idiots who don’t know how to walk in a crowd.
I want to dance until I’m dizzy.
The winter sun blinks so white off the sidewalks it hurts the eyes.
Even the most natural things seem like miracles, and nature doesn’t make sense unless it’s miraculous.
Words mean nothing more than mirrors and speaking has no point.
I want to write something better than lists.
I’m –almost– convinced I’ll wake up to a pale-blue house with a two-car garage and a Ken-doll husband who works in a law firm and my steady job as a stenographer or pediatric nurse and when I come home in the evening our freckled children will help make dinner and we will say grace and sit down as a family and talk about how we spent our day. On Sundays we go to Mass together and attend church picnics and contribute to bake sales and take two weeks every summer for a family vacation. We speak perfect French and English. We sing rounds in the car. I don’t have prescription anti-depressants or wake up at 3 a.m. with my heart pounding from inexplicable arachnid nightmares. Nobody says my French is great for an American or they hardly hear my accent. I don’t start reading books I won’t be able to finish. It snows at Christmas. I don’t have to prop up the dining table with thinly concealed wads of duct tape, and the television stand doesn’t consist of a wooden board balanced on piles of discarded books. I know what I think about even the trickiest issues and people listen to me when I explain myself. I don’t worry I will grow old alone or never hold someone’s hand again or waste time and energy on theoretical drawbacks or never truly know what God wants me to do with my life.
I don’t care about appearances and am happy just living this day as well, as thoroughly, as truly as I can.
I give thanks for the various difficulties.
I would gladly trade my life for something less complex and more cohesive.
