tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54339482334165411392024-03-13T07:55:27.379-07:00Devan BoyleDevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-75372627124996867612016-02-14T00:57:00.001-08:002016-02-14T00:59:18.201-08:00Three Valentine's Day Wishes<br />
1. The technology to deposit cash into my bank account remotely, preferably with handheld device<br />
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2. 24-hour clemency to write "GROW THE FUCK UP" beneath every romantic post on social media including engagement and wedding categories<br />
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3. True Detective the television show never existedDevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-27202706794517113552015-12-01T18:27:00.002-08:002015-12-01T19:00:59.849-08:00Shower Cold 4 ScienceThe benefits of taking cold showers were brought to my attention recently as much as twice, which is the exact number of times a "thing" needs to appear for me to become curious enough to try it for myself.<br />
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Call me crazy but I like my showers hot. Hotter than you. Call me soft but memories of getting a cold shower when expecting hot can still cause a ghost of misery and resentment within me to rise again. I don't approve of anything that is supposed to cure you of lust and I have to admit I am turned off whenever I am asked to drop a pleasure in the name of health. I had serious misgivings.</div>
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On the other hand, I like a physical challenge, I like shit that is free, and I like practices that I can incorporate into stuff I already have to do. I'm a risk-averse endorphin junkie so I like cheap, safe thrills. And I love anything that promises to make me feel or look better. </div>
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Now, I've embraced the cold shower before periodically as a wake-upper, hair-shiner, end-of-shower brace-for-the-worlder, but I have never made it a part of my routine and never for more than thirty seconds or so, sticking just my head under so as to avoid full contact. I read about it as a more-than-hair-deep self-help thing most recently on an astrology blog I follow, in which the author also mentioned a homemade coffee-ground and coconut oil scrub, and had seen it pop up on a few beauty sites as well.<a href="https://mysticmedusa.com/2015/11/saturns-bitch/" target="_blank"> But her writing especially convinced me.</a> </div>
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Being the good little Virgo I am I both embraced and enhanced the routine as well as doing some research on the medical, tactical, and mythological underpinnings of this practice. A quick google search reveals that it's popular with male bloggers writing about boosting testosterone and virility which I'm very much on board with co-opting for my own purposes. I'm fighting a bus cold, heartbreak, creative despair, and grieving at the moment so the additional claims of emotional fortitude, a natural high, and immunity-boosting panacea-copia of effects also seemed promising. </div>
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I added a clementine peel to the coco-oil coffee ground scrub from grounds left over from coffee made this morning and ate pieces of the fruit as I stirred it. I thought about my nephew while I peeled the clementine, how I'd arranged one in a star shape for him to distract from a hunger toddler meltdown attack mid-afternoon a few weeks ago. I thought about writing this post. I waited for water to boil for more coffee and while the milk steamed I laid down and did some stretching on the floor, on my back, legs over my head. I rubbed eucalyptus oil on my chest and breathed in deep. My sister was home working and I interrupted her to tell of my heroic mission to endure this so-old-it's-new asceticism and worked some tea tree oil into my scalp (I like to really go for it when I self-care). </div>
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{social media break}</div>
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I started the shower off hot because a few articles suggested this was still as beneficial (if vaguely wimpier) as taking a discrete cold shower. So I had time to wash my hair and use the scrub on comfortable, eucalyptus-y HOT open-pored skin and it smelled like fucking christmas and I thought of some good tweets. Exfoliating always feels great to me. Finally it was time. I reached out my hand and switched the knob to cold. </div>
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It was cold as fuck. I felt like a chump (a very cold chump) for the first ten seconds or so. But I had a plan, which I recommend to you now: If y'all try this at home distract yourself during the initial cold-as-fuck phase with some other shower activity ( I gave myself a vigorous massage with the grapeseed oil that my sister keeps in the shower) and it will help you adjust. Because soon, very soon, less than a minute in, just as the internet had predicted, I started to feel....pretty good. Strangely good. Really pretty awesome. </div>
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My heart was beating fast but it felt like the opposite of a panic attack. MORE LIKE A JOY ATTACK. The cold started to feel warm. My scalp was tingling, the skin was tightening all over my body, a rush of sheer excitement was building in my chest, I had to let out a few whoops, give a few weird hops. I held my face and head underneath the cold water and just held on for as long as I could. It felt like exercise without needing to exercise, sex without having to talk to someone. It felt like truth, justice, and the whatever way. </div>
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One immediate bonus was that getting out of the shower felt magically warm instead of horribly painfully cold as when you take a hot shower in the winter. I toweled myself off with manic glee, did ten push-ups just to up the Spartan, macho vibe, and re-applied the eucalyptus oil. I have to say I felt fantastic....all alive and shit. It did not cure my cold but I didn't even care about the sniffles anymore. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror (read: purposefully stood in front of mirror and watched myself caress my own chest and arms) and saw that my skin was both rosy pink and seemingly lit from within with glow. I would not fucking joke about glow. It was real. </div>
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I am going to do it every day and then go out into the world and use my powers and strength for good. And have incredibly shiny hair. </div>
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Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-69545264482126925692015-06-08T12:08:00.000-07:002015-06-08T12:08:03.005-07:00Introducing Avl GritLookee here: http://ashevillegrit.com/left-unsaid-avl-grit-anniversary-partyDevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-522427481813532652015-05-01T13:32:00.000-07:002015-05-01T13:34:30.111-07:00May Day Poem<br />
What year is it?<br />
What time of year is it?<br />
What a time we're having.<br />
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It's a beautiful night<br />
and you cut a beautiful figure.<br />
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Eat my life<br />
with the dainty spoon.<br />
Make it last and last.Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-44808120315620645512015-02-16T13:39:00.003-08:002015-02-16T13:48:07.595-08:00 Items Found In Bag Last Opened September 29, 2013<br />
1/3 roll of scotch tape<br />
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garnier fructis sky-hi volume mousse<br />
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depresser nozzle for garnier fructis sky-hi volume mousse<br />
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tea light candle, unlit<br />
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unused lavender soap in tissue paper wrapping<br />
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single imitation pearl earring, stud, backless<br />
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sinful colors professional nail polish in hot spot, dark blue shimmer<br />
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royal blue shimmer nail polish, origin unknown<br />
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empty visine bottle sans cap<br />
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organic peppermint essential oil<br />
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dale earnhardt jr racecar earrings purchased from Goodwill in Madison, CT, dangling<br />
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eyeliner pencil sharpener<br />
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covergirl natureluxe mousse mascara<br />
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rimmel glameyes day 2 night intense volume mascara<br />
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rimmel eyeliner pencil in pure white<br />
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jordana eyeliner pencil in espresso<br />
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jordana eyeliner pencil in dark brown<br />
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jordana eyeliner pencil in sapphire<br />
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burt's bees watermelon lip shimmer<br />
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burt's bees evening glow lip gloss<br />
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burt's bees super glossy nectar nude natural lip shine<br />
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lipliner pencil, soft pink, origin unknown<br />
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tiny green embroidered pouch to hold earrings, empty<br />
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first aid kit, tangle of earrings inside, single alcohol swab<br />
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retractable makeup brush stolen in college<br />
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six cvs brand 3 mg melatonin tablets in original bottle<br />
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single silver owl earring, dangling<br />
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blue four-inch plastic comb<br />
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bic ultra round stic grip ballpoint pen, black, capless<br />
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herbpharm kava liquid herbal extract in dropper bottle<br />
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rape whistle<br />
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skinny white hair elastic<br />
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the good witches' brew lavender spice bath salts<br />
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bach rescue remedy dropper bottle, empty<br />
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crest 3D white glamorous white travel toothpaste, empty<br />
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park ridge health 30 spf suncreen spray pen, procured at 5K<br />
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crest whitestrips, four, taken from parent's bathroom cabinet on trip home<br />
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peter thomas roth mega-rich body lotion and peter thomas roth mega-rich conditioner, two each, hotel-sized, gift from solo male traveler who visited the YMCA where I worked<br />
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single blue and silver dove earring, dangling<br />
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silver and pink lipstick case, sans lipstick<br />
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blue plastic foundation cap, sans foundation<br />
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round white thumbtack<br />
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orange clay buddha charm still in tiny ziplock bag, first gift from Roxy, came with card that said "sorry I walked in on you masturbating"<br />
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three quarters<br />
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one dime<br />
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single copper-colored hummingbird earring, stud<br />
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<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-20207847504351152722015-02-03T14:51:00.000-08:002015-02-03T14:51:09.584-08:00Missed Connections<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One ritual that I truly cherish is reading the Missed Connections section of the Asheville Craigslist. I sometimes forget about it for stretches of time, but other days I check it as often my email. Reading the missed connections for any city is like sinking into a warm bath of human neuroses and longings--an invitation to soak in need, want, fear, desire. I find the mere fact of their existence soothing--this quirky human instinct for connection and the pitfalls of its execution, a reliance still on the written word to communicate for the heart what the mouth cannot. And the typos! The typos are golden. Consider this recent gem of a post title: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 1.4em;">Beautiful girl riding her yellow bike threw the arts district. Pure poetry! </span></span><br />
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The posts range from puerile requests for head to heartfelt odes to platonic beauty to heartbroken screeds and bitter warnings about the perils of love. I love it all with abandon. I feel like an anthropologist of my own community, sometimes literally shaking my head at what I uncover, a map of these mountains coming into place in my head microcosmically, all urges, locations, sightings laid bare, artifice applied and artifice ignored. How could one not love the plaintive cry of "<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Bitstream Vera Serif', 'Times New Roman', serif;">I will not be doing any medium today work so please do not ask in your email?" So very Asheville, that exasperating and charming combination of Southern good manners and hippie idiocy and the entitlement of the chronically underemployed artistic type.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Bitstream Vera Serif, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">My foray into the world of online flirting-and-running-and-posting began when I moved here four years ago--nearly 24, heartbroken and with no idea how green I really was, plunged into small city life after ten months in a tiny rural winter town, two months before that spent completely alone on the road. I slept in a lofted bed in a house under construction where my twin's boyfriend was staying. The August days held a strange unsinkable heat. I sweated through my clothes every afternoon, lifting hair heavy with humidity off my neck, paying a series of men my last shekels to repair my truck, staring into the haze of blue mountains that framed each scene, licking sweat off my lips, wondering what on earth had brought me here, what magic the heat was working through me, that strangers said hello to me on the sidewalk, in the hardware store, everywhere and anywhere there was someone asking me how I was who seemed to really care.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Bitstream Vera Serif, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> I went for slow runs around the block where I was staying, memorizing street names, climbing over gravestones in the cemetery on the hill where I discovered O. Henry was buried (tale of the magi the ultimate missed connection, perhaps) and falling spectacularly on my face on one memorable occasion downtown, sidewalk grit ground into the heels of my hands and knees. Not even a day later I woke up next to my friend in that lofted bed--the night spent sitting on the kitchen floor, eating tortilla chips, swapping jokes about having ashtrays for hearts, drinking a brew of found alcohols combined with juice on sale at Whole Foods--and sat up directly in the path of the heavy wooden ceiling fan, was nearly knocked unconscious by the blow and began wailing in pain, warm blood gushing from my temple over my face and covering my tank top, my sister's boyfriend Kyle performing wilderness first aid on me in my underwear, blood-spattered and shaky in the bathroom. I wore a band-aid on my face and banged up knees and hands for my first two weeks in Asheville, meeting potential roommates and employers and new friends with what I hoped was a bashful and not battered air. </span></span><br />
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I moved into my own place, had my first series of jobs, fell for the Asheville classic (seduced and dumped by bartender of grandiose ambition with a pretty-young-thing fetish and limited emotional capacities) and back out of it (see: <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Bitstream Vera Serif', 'Times New Roman', serif;">"men who would not, could not, find the motivation to take action to heal their own wounds"),</span> dabbled in therapy that wasn't sticking yet. It was in this state that I experienced my first missed connection. I went out with my sister Laura, my friend Louisa, and their farm worker friend Alex to a trivia night at a bar in West Asheville, the neighborhood I had just moved into. I was wearing a shirt from GoodWill my parents had bought me during their September birthday visit, a soft navy blue polo with the words Yu Ken Cut It in white lettering where a breast pocket would go. The conversation ranged from rent to debt to trivia team names to handjobs, hilarity combining with the slight hysteria of the recently moved and currently broke. We walked down the warm, rainy street, saw not-yet-familiar faces. We ended the night at a place with ping-pong and foosball and such, buying the cheapest cans of beer they had and sitting on stools at the bar. I don't know whether it's a trick of my imagination or not--knowing as I do now what would come next--but I think I remember making eye contact with a dark-haired man on my way to the bathroom, crossing my legs and turning toward him again as I sat back down at the bar--a pleasant little frisson of nonverbal flirtation.<br />
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I woke up the next morning, by which of course I mean afternoon, and scrolled through the internet alone in my bed, summer light streaming in, shirtless with my skirt tugged down my hips in tangled sheets, a hungover reverie. I've tried to find the original text but it is gone to the ravages of time, another lost piece of craigslist ephemera, a fitting symbol of the fleeting temporality of missed connections in general. It said something about my glasses, my thigh-high black socks, my dark hair. I don't remember the exact words, and I eventually lost that shirt, but I remember that night.<br />
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That's what I love about missed connections: however much they misfire, misspell, mistake attention for attraction or friendship for love, they also record. A moment in time recalled in solitude (near enough to the essence of poetry, I've heard) followed by another moment, building on the first, of creation or discovery. In either role one's hands are hovering above a supposedly dehumanizing keyboard. But in each case there is a drawing out of yourself, either into your written expression or in the act of reading someone else's impression of you.<br />
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After that experience I started reading the section religiously. I looked for clues, talked and texted about it with friends, witnessed the sometimes beautiful, sometimes awful words of those unable to speak but full of feeling. Sagas unfolded, tales of betrayal, divorce, pregnancy, marriage--tremors of trouble and new love throughout--the trembling hope of a first meeting, the pangs of consummation, the isolating wrench of lost or broken relationships. I looked for myself in the listings, scanning for mention of any recent outings, place names, key descriptors. I looked for my friends, and exes, and coworkers, any identifying detail setting off a chain of conjecture. Sometimes there would be a lull, with only a few postings a day. Holidays were a sure sign that there would be a flurry of yearning, a rush of people trying to make something happen with someone, anyone, even a stranger in line at the family dollar, serving you food in a restaurant, making their way across a parking lot with child in tow. I would have a romantic or erotically charged encounter with a stranger and peruse the section for hours or days afterward, hoping to see a note. I would fantasize about writing my own posts, although I never have. To the owner of the perfect red Nissan pick-up outside the yoga studio with flowers on the dash--I'm still looking for you.<br />
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If nothing else reading missed connections has proven to me that there is truly someone out there for everyone--in the most basic sense, others are looking at you, seeing you, attempting to make themselves known. There's no way of knowing who you might attract. These listings are evidence of nothing less than the sheer potential available to us. Sometimes this is not a pleasant revelation--there is humor and light and poetry in these pleas and also cruelty, violence, pain. When I'm feeling the worst about the world and the worst about Asheville I see the story played out in this online arena as proof that many people are ignorant, sexist, trapped, greedy, hungry for power. At other times I see the sheer joy of the people living in these mountains, drinking their coffee, selling their art, trying to survive--and taking a moment to compliment someone's smile, to let it be known that someone else's beauty or warmth or charm changed their life for the better, however briefly, to offer condolences to those still seeking love or those recently burdened with loss, to ask to be seen.<br />
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To see and understand that duality exists, to see and understand that multiplicity exists--this is the true education of the missed connections enthusiast, and it's why I can't tear myself away from them. They represent the unavoidable realities of the human condition. And Kevin, whoever he is, has a lot to answer for.<br />
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Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-47137240698751864472015-01-21T10:26:00.000-08:002015-01-21T18:36:55.160-08:00Twenty Minutes: January 13th<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It takes twenty minutes to pick up the trash off your bedroom floor, start a load of laundry, make your bed, send an email to an ex-lover, put your shoes in the closet, screen a call asking you to donate blood, listen to Solomon Burke sing Cry to Me twice and Serena Ryder sing racing in the streets twice, put your books away, pick up all the half-empty coffee mugs and water glasses, turn some lights on and off, close the kitchen cabinets, hear the sound of your breath moist in your chest, take a gulp of coffee, look at pictures of your friends three thousand miles away, know what tv they’re watching and music they’re listening to and food they’re eating. Just twenty minutes after salad and bacon for breakfast and a book of essays and a cold sit on a misty front porch. Warm bruises from a lover underneath ripped jeans, eggs baking in an oven, dreams hovering around the edges of consciousness still, speaking of war, speaking of floods, dreams violent and strategic, warnings of incalculable loss. The fact of the holes in these socks, the cold floor on my feet. A problem worth fixing, in the mind of my lover, who gave me his cast-offs upon noticing the holes in these, who teased me about the manliness of their faded blackness, rough against smooth legs. Some fragility there and some shuddering of ego. What can be found in the fact of these socks, in my obstreperousness in not replacing them--some sense of poverty cheerfully accepted or duty abnegated? My casual shrug when he asks me why I’m wearing socks with holes in them--these are my socks, I said.
I crave his noticing and his delivery of it has this flip side, his attention, like the marks on my skin, can be measured less in good or bad than by a quality of wholeness. He asks me if I've washed my hands when I eat leftover chicken from the fridge with my fingers, and my body stiffens in offense. But he comes over, asks me what is wrong, makes amends for hurt feelings, for colliding world views. Sometimes he dreams about tidal waves and this morning I read about Mars moving into Pisces, rigid structures of force encountering primal flow. I don’t think about washing my hands in that way, don’t or won’t or can’t replace my broken things, don’t care if the period stains aren't totally washed out of my jeans, if my shoes are muddy. I prefer the total effect, lipstick smeared across my freckles into a blush, the wet corners of my mouth, the stretch of skin and bone and muscle between my shirt and my hips, the intent and the artifice of shaved legs, perfume, lingerie. “I like this, but I don’t get the point of it,” he comments on the sheer nude bra, a scrap of purposeless lace. “That is the point.” I say. </span></div>
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Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-77786035917787534662015-01-19T16:25:00.001-08:002015-01-19T16:25:12.355-08:00I Heart The NinetiesI woke on Thursday morning with a shiny orange cheetah-printed slap bracelet on my wrist, a Lisa Frank sticker of some puppies in a hot air balloon decorating my phone, and a mild case of craft beer flavored ennui. This state of affairs was courtesy of a conscription into attending one of a series of beer-and-food-tasting shows that are staged periodically at the brewery where I work. The theme was the 90's, my date was my twin sister, I had lots of eyeliner in my bag but no pen.<br />
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I had agreed to attend and write about the show in a paroxysm of holiday cheer back in December and then promptly forgotten all about it. When the arrangement finally resurfaced in my consciousness a few weeks later, it was attended by a host of prickly but-i-don't-wanna feelings: a fear of attention, a fear of work and social life colliding, urges to demur, urges to run. Organized fun is just not my jam--bowling, party games, icebreakers--all inspire the same middle-school type anxiety in me, a fundamental aversion to participation that I have learned to temper through avoidance, sarcasm, and looking better than I feel. But I love getting dressed up and Going To Things, and I love amateur theater, and I love beer and food, so I managed to keep a fairly positive spin on what parts of me feared was going to be an ordeal.<br />
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I spent the afternoon drinking tea and listening to music with my sister, half-heartedly folding laundry, trying to choose an outfit, and fielding a series of increasingly confusing text messages about if I would be needed to bus tables earlier in the evening. My twin and I both agreed that a philosophical approach was best. "It will be fine" and "whatever happens, happens" were our mantras as we bundled up, chose our lipstick colors, complimented each other's outfits, and drove through the darkening streets downtown.<br />
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As reliable as my particular brand of social anxiety is, so too is the truth that once I'm actually doing the feared activity, it's not so bad. Once I was inside, cheerfully greeted by my coworkers, eating deeply of the pull-and-peel twizzlers that decorated each table, I felt much better. The so-co and beer shooters upon our entrance didn't hurt, and being given a little gift from my lovely co-worker Rachel--a strawberry shaped hairpin--warmed my cynical heart. My sister and I were ushered to the "media table" that had been set up for us. As this blog is mostly about my obsession with myself, I was a little taken aback at being designated as press. I called upon the powers of imagination that have blessed me since childhood and pretended I was a fancy lady reporter covering a colorful local event, perhaps returning home to a well-appointed loft of some sort to work on my story. The vision gave me the courage to sit up straight, my sister provided a mini-notebook, a pen appeared courtesy of my coworker/comedienne/director of the show Kelli, and I was set.<br />
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The show was comprised of skits based on seven iconic nineties movies--the trailer for each projected on the screen in front of us, themed beer and food delivered as each movie was presented, and the lulls punctuated by a well-curated playlist of nineties hits. The actors mingled in between the tables as we readied ourselves for the first skit--Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I held my breath, waiting for second-hand embarrassment to spike. Mini-pizzas were delivered to the table and devoured and to my delight no mortification was forthcoming. The skits were funny and well-written, the actors enthusiastic and game, the pop cultural references on-point. A large part of the success was the trappings of perfect 90's nostalgia incorporated in the experience--from gak on the tables and those skate-inspired S doodles on the menus, to thumb wars and iconic lines--draw me like one of your french girls--woven into each sketch.<br />
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My sister and I played hangman with our star table companion of the night, a woman named Katie who was researching for her role as director of a similar (if less edgy) revue. We chatted about being kids of the eighties and nineties, compared notes on correct gak deployment, and sang along with Pink wanting real love. We agreed on the infuriating quality of the song that goes "This is the story of a girl/who cried a river that drowned the whole world/And while she looked so sad in photographs/I absolutely love her when she smiles." Clearly it should be "laughed."<br />
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During the Wayne's World sketch, one of the actors (Chase McNeill, incidentally an old coworker of mine at the Y and one of the most cheerful persons I have met to date) drawled to my sister, "We've got a bit of a babe on our hands here. A double babe! Baberasaurus! Babraham Lincoln! Babia Majora!" Another favorite was a line in the Forrest Gump sketch--a movie I have always secretly loathed for its sheer sentimental hubris-- in which Forrest is taken to task with the words "just because you're stupid doesn't mean you're forgiven." Amen.<br />
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I particularly appreciated the perfect marriage of topicality with nostalgia when Kelli sent up the movie Frozen by belting "The cold never bothered me anyway" during the sketch for Titanic. I drank from Katie and Laura's beers--allergies on one hand and designated driving on the other--and floated out the door in a haze of high-gravity hilarity with the words of the Dude echoing in my head: "That's just like, your opinion, man."<br />
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That's all we writer types ever really have to offer--our opinions--and the hope that others might feel the same way we do, whether about the ridiculousness of a fight club or the silly eroticism of that hand-print-leaving climax in Titanic. We no longer live in a time when Kate Winslet's bared breasts have the power to shock or Brad Pitt's brand of anti-consumerist masculinity feels refreshing. The glow of the iphones of the photographer and her beau seated next to us were a testament in themselves to the attention-span deficit of our current decade and the cynicism such constant access to entertainment inspires. It was nice, to be taken back in time for a night. To remember what it felt like to write a note and pass it, to record a song onto a cassette because that was the only way to hear it as many times as you wanted, to slap a bracelet on your wrist with a satisfying smack. We went out into the cold, pilfered twizzlers in our pockets, heading for home and the modern comforts of instantly streaming television. Friends, in case you were wondering. <br />
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Thank you to Kelli Cayman Cozlin for her tireless work on the Beer Dinner Series. More here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SecondaryCharacters">Sticky-Note Productions</a> and a shout-out to our actors: Chase McNeill, Allan Law, and Rigal Pawlak. Y'all rocked it out.<br />
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<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-77389943420933365752015-01-09T13:32:00.001-08:002015-01-10T20:05:36.984-08:00Ballad of the Hothouse Flower<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c353c; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Mrs. Witterly is of a very excitable nature, very delicate, very fragile, a hothouse plant." -<i>Nicholas Nickelby</i></span></span><br />
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Or, seasonal habits of the highly sensitive. I sometimes refer to myself as a hothouse flower. In unkinder terms: fussy, a whiner. There's a part of me that needs coddling, thrives under optimal conditions of heat and light, is sensitive in the extreme to its likes and dislikes, no matter how big or small. I need exact directions, a little handholding, an extra sweater, a handkerchief to sniffle into, the right kind of pants, information about the immediate future--when do we get to go home? will there be a place to seat? who is going to be there?<br />
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Having no other option in the interest of my sanity, I've come to think of these predilections toward comfort as essentially positive traits, with positive outcomes. I fancy that there is a grace to my delicacy, the noble sheen of a wish for a better, more pleasant life in my constant need to monitor. If I'm paying attention in the right ways, these tendencies create more ease and creativity in managing my day-to-day life. My attunement to sensory details and atmospheric data make me a valuable employee, a kickass hostess, and a pretty good friend.<br />
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And yet. A hothouse flower has connotations of weakness, a reliance on others to supply the caretaking, a fundamental inability to endure the endless barrages of unforgiving nature. And these hothouse parts of me, with their proclivity for sunlight, warmth, freedom of movement, absolute tenderness, endless encouragement, loathe and fear nothing quite so much as the coming of winter.<br />
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I have come to understand that I am a creature best suited to luxuriate in sunlight. Cold weather descends and I fold like a house of cards. Gone the long summer walks, gone the sundresses and shorts and breezy tees of spring, gone the crisp novelty of fall. Frost kills and I crumble, right around this time every year. My bravery is no longer aided by the magic of the holidays, the spiritual peaks and valleys of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the darkest nights of the year, the most poignant.<br />
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It's the second week of January and my predominant thought now is that winter sucks. I"m dehydrated, sore, tired, snotty. I don't know what to do with my hair. Getting dressed has become nothing short of a heartbreaking, tedious chore. Too many layers involved, too much scratchiness, stuffiness, not-quite-rightness. Static electricity lurks everywhere with its pointless, non-warming energy. I could write a separate essay on the torture device known as a winter coat. My resolutions are tried and tempted, it's cold as fuck but with no snow to speak of, everyone's relationship is falling apart under the sudden cease of holiday pressure and before the insidious crawl of February toward Valentines' day. My skin is somehow dry and breaking out at the same time, there's stubble poking through my tights, my sweatpants need to be washed every two days because I sweat through them in the middle of the sleepless night. Finding matching socks is a trek across the icy landscape of living room and kitchen. In short, everything feels like a trial. Everyone is pissing me off, including myself. The news is even more horrible than usual. I'm restless and closed in, craving space, but doing much of anything feels like too much.<br />
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I almost cried today because I couldn't make my braids look like they do on Game of Thrones. My health insurance bill was four times what it was in December and I don't know why and I need to call people and email things to fix it and I wailed for an hour and a half after realizing this. I'm an idiot child struggling through this life sometimes, doing way less than my best on most days and some days just surviving. And maybe doing that requires some strength that is integral to the hothouse flower. Some hardiness that is fueled, not thwarted, by this need for creature comforts. I take comfort in this sense of unconventional strength.<br />
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A hothouse flower of a different color mused to me last night, in light of Hebdo, in light of every dark and brutal and chaotic thing, in light of this narrowing of the year to a pinpoint--on the essential meaninglessness of life. I was only partly joking when I offered hedonism as a possible answer to this riddle, that our only purpose, really, and the only meaning, is to seek what brings us pleasure. There is a part of me that absolutely believes that this way lies salvation. Filling your life with what is most beautiful and stimulating to you is a crucial function of a healthier life more free of needless suffering. The animal warmth of my body, my socked feet lying on his moving chest, the hum of a house in winter, time softly ticking from eleven to midnight. And I'll take that over meaninglessness any day, but hedonism has its limits.<br />
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The challenge, for any hothouse flower, is to learn how to water and sun and feed yourself--for me that means finding ways to have lots of leafy greens, exercise, orgasms, dancing, and pleasure even in the dead of winter. It means striving for those things that give me the best chance, whatever they are, from vitamin d supplements to a space heater. I sat in the sauna at the Y today, finally experiencing the miracle of sweat, breathing in and out, drinking water out of jar I'd found half-frozen in my borrowed car. For just these things I felt deeply grateful, and of course once I started I thought of many more. My blessings are incalculable. In the locker room two women started talking about their hair together, swapping ways to wear it while undergoing cancer treatments and beyond them. It was a brief, warm interaction. One woman recounted her first shortest ever cut, visiting Germany in 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down, how she walked out in the street after her friend cut her hair, how she felt the air on her scalp, how she caught sight of herself in a store window and was transfixed, not recognizing herself.<br />
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Suddenly my braids seemed less important, this clutch that winter has on my hot little heart less strangling. It is ok not to know what to do with your hair, your room, your clothes, your life. It's ok not to know what to study or who to date or how to live. It's ok just to sit, and pay attention to what your stupid little magical body needs and just try to answer that need. Sometimes that's really the only thing you can do. Put on another goddamn coat already and get ready to grow.<br />
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<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-47189741661095747442015-01-05T11:26:00.002-08:002015-01-05T12:55:05.473-08:00Resolution Versus Reality<br />
I made a grandiose new year's resolution to write in this space every day for the month of January. When I set this intention it didn't feel out of the realm of possibility. Depending on the length and subject matter, these posts take only a couple hours of my time. There's few days that go by that I don't waste as least as much time as it takes to scribble down some thoughts and keep practicing my writing. I got home from working a ten hour shift at the restaurant on Saturday and stayed up late writing so I wouldn't miss a day. Yesterday, I wrote but didn't publish...I wasn't finished yet. Another part of my resolution was to not write about writing--consider that one scratched too.<br />
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It is far too easy for me to run out of time, to have a range of excuses not to write. These excuses are as frustratingly legitimate as they are not. I'm sleep deprived. The rib injury I wrote about a few weeks ago is back in force. I've been working non-stop for the holidays and my muscles are sore and my spirit is drained. My room is a mess. I have a date tonight I don't want to cancel, I have to babysit in an hour and I'm writing this in the lobby of the Y where I am trying to sneak in a quick sauna session so I can take a few deep breaths and have ten minutes to myself. In short, life pulls constantly. In short, I want a lot more than ten minutes to myself.<br />
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I tried to enter this resolution with a spirit of openness, to see it as an exercise, not a bound-in-iron mandate. But my psyche apparently loathes a half-measure and has a seriously wack perspective on what I am truly capable of and under which conditions. I should know after twenty-seven years that I have never been able to change or implement a habit by sheer force of will and there is almost no activity I can successfully replicate day after day after day. Science tells us that almost no one can, but this is not satisfying to the part of me that has this belief that if I just <i>fucking tried harder</i> I could force myself to write every day for the rest of my life, forget about the thirty days--that if I cared enough, focused enough, sacrificed enough I would be able to live up to some heretofore untapped work ethic and creative potential. I know in theory that entering into a project with such a spirit should preclude the harshness with which I've been re-reading my efforts so far (and frankly, cringing) but I don't know what else to do but keep trying.<br />
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And there is the voice in my head that says that none of this fucking matters--hissing sweetly about all the times in my life that I have set myself a goal and failed (please see: every last one) and all the ways in which ultimately, the only person who cares about this is me. When this voice acknowledges that other people exist at all, its to remind me that they probably are also thinking that I'm a scattered, lazy sack-of-shit who's never accomplished much of anything.<br />
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I know it's ridiculous to expect perfect, tidy prose to appear under these conditions. Of course I might need more than a few hours. Of course I might need to sacrifice some dates, breathe through the pain, sleep a little smarter, not put as much pressure on each post. And of course none of this is helped by lambasting myself, as I have been doing roundly all morning, for not just being a better person. But without this resolution, I won't write as much. I know that as surely as I know that without a job to go to most days of the week, I get depressed and slothful. But as so often happens when I put external controls on my behavior, another part of my spirit rebels. A healthy challenge quickly becomes an albatross. The call is coming from inside the house.Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-45870617476552463542015-01-04T00:45:00.001-08:002015-01-04T00:48:02.379-08:00The Tao of Barney Stinson's Chopsticks<br />
It may not surprise you at this point to learn that there is almost nothing--from mints to hairdryers--to which I will not apply intense analysis. This trait serves me well in some situations and less well in others. In school it was a boon, my ace in the hole. (When in doubt, perform close reading). In relationships, it means I can often have a seemingly uncanny grip on a particular dynamic. This analysis is in no way divorced from my intuition. They operate as a stream. My default state, perhaps because I am a twin--is deeply symbiotic, a fluid balance between focus and spirit.<br />
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The downside is an inability to separate myself from this function and partake in the less elegant world of reality. It took me until I was at least 24 years old to fully realize that not every person I encountered could read my mind, and vice versa. Further, there is an inability to stop the flow of analysis, no matter how ultimately trivial the object of attention. Symbiosis has its heartbreaking limits. There comes a time in every witch's life where she must learn to divine analysis from intuition and choose how to wield them together and alone for the best outcomes. This education comes slowly.<br />
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By way of example, there is my engagement with the television show How I Met Your Mother. At this point I've been watching for years. My interest has swung from casual to minor obsession to background noise to nostalgia and back again. It is with an appropriately ashamed pride that I admit I could probably fill a volume with essays about this show and my relationship with it. But to illustrate the psychological phenomenon I'm attempting to define, consider this one item: I have determined that a consistent detail through all nine seasons of this sitcom is that the actor Neal Patrick Harris, portraying Barney Stinson, is unable to properly deploy chopsticks in the never-ending parade of takeout meals featured in at least every other episode of this bougie-ass show. The one possible exception is in season seven, episode three, entitled Ducky Tie" in which in order to see his married female friend's breasts, Barney flawlessly practices Hibachi cooking which he has learmed in secret.<br />
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Low-brow plot points aside, I find this one detail deeply compelling. Partly, it is that I recognize myself in his humbling and endearing ineptitude. I too am familiar with the near-miss, the blind spot, the social grace just out of reach, the frustration of faking an unattainable skill. At times, when I've caught sight of a botched rise and fall of rice-to-mouth, I've felt sorry for Barney, going hungry through all those imaginary meals. Through multiple viewings, I've watched for instances of this quirk with patient, critical hope, pondering every emotional resonance and possible meaning of such a regular irregularity. I've considered whether the repetition was conscious on the part of the actor (and wouldn't <i>that</i> be satisfying) or merely circumstantial, perhaps even a fever dream of my own creation produced from too many nights falling asleep to urbane patter and a soothing laugh track. Maybe Neal was just on a diet all those years. I haven't gone so far as to scour any forums about it, but clearly it's only a matter of time.<br />
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And to what end, this conjecture, this culling of meaning, this arbitrary focus? I can't imagine a scenario more utterly pointless on nearly every level and yet I find myself fascinated by its existence--drawn in again and again every time the moment is captured, that small, winking flaw. To what end is my telling of this strange anecdote? Only that it moves me, only that it captures some essence of this piece of art I've spent so much wasteful and worthy time with, only that it expresses some microcosm of myself: the trying and failing, the noticing and not, the trivial and the true.<br />
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Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-48621858704011051572015-01-02T20:21:00.001-08:002015-01-02T20:21:16.312-08:00Mint Condition<br />
I've been mildly addicted to lifesaver mints, wintergreen flavor, for just over a decade. You know, the ones that populate candy dishes at reception desks. I hate how much I love these motherfucking cavity bombs. The mint flavor is concentrated and sugary--a delicious, spiky intensity. I crush them between my teeth, slide my tongue over and around them, let little shards break off and crunch them delicately, suck on them until there's nothing left. There is something deeply soothing about their solid round heft, the transition from whole, chunky perfection, the little ridges of those letters stamped into every fucking one hard against the roof of my mouth, my rough tongue smoothing the edges, into a dissolved mass of crumbly, electrically charged mint.<br />
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I'm not sure when my love affair began with these killers of oral hygenie, but by god has the obsession lasted longer than it should. I remember buying bags of these with my twin sister and mixing them in with the other candies we bought for long car trips, the whole bag getting infected with their minty intoxication. My mother used to find the wrappers all over the house, our slightly forbidden habit a source of housekeeping and parental consternation. We were indeed ruining our teeth with them. But to this day when I break down and buy a bag--usually when I'm feeling depleted, out-of-control, at loose ends--I feel a frisson of rebelliousness. Health be damned, these things are goddamn delicious. It makes me feel connected to my twin when we are far away, though she's far more successfully broken the habit---a little spark of nostalgia and love blooming with every insidious crunch.<br />
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I'll go days or weeks or months without giving in, then spend a weekend in an orgy of mint-crushing, a graveyard of rustling wrappers collecting in my jacket pockets and the corners of my room, soothing my oral fixations with a distressingly manic intensity. I've eaten them until the taste turns ashy and dead and then back again into savor.<br />
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Obviously there are some conflicting emotions at play here. How frustrating, that breaking oneself of bad habits is so piecemeal--I wish I could sever the neural pathways for all my vices at once, be done with the whole parcel of them, freed from conflicting desires. I wish there was labor involved, less sifting of which habit is of the highest priority to change, less need to understand the myriad impulses behind the push-pull I feel every time I catch a whiff of wintergreen and my mouth begins to water, each time I drift to the candy aisle seemingly unconsciously.<br />
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But my drive for self-improvement is packaged with my drive for self-destruction, and the space between is what I must inhabit to leave compulsive behaviors behind. I have a stubborn and sometimes perverse pride in allowing myself the indulgent purchase of these confections, despite the obvious detriments to my health, in the name of pleasure, in the name of the freedom of choice. Combined with the physical triggers I've developed, this is a feeling that is hard to replace with the less immediately satisfying thrill of restraint and discipline. My choice to persist arrives not only out of an instinct for hedonism, but is also tied to feelings of shame about still having such a childish vice. It is easier by far to spend two dollars and several hours happily, if guiltily, munching away, than to deal with this fragile sliver of ego so enmeshed in this cycle of self-determination and self-loathing.<br />
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There's a part of me that is loathe to give up such a quick fix, and part that is weary from a few years spent breaking myself of far nastier habits. For some of us, self-harm is a matter of degree. It's hard to admit that while chewing lustily on mints, as my teeth suffer the consequences, is just as much an action of self-loathing as cutting myself. The two behaviors vary in degree, but not content--I buy packs of mints under similar conditions to when I used to punish my body in more dramatic ways-- when forceful emotions gorge my throat, when I feel powerless to fix the larger problems in my life, when I'm fucking sad and lost and confused. And hit of sugar and mint, to be blunt, is far less satisfying than the opiate rush of cutting myself, less effective at deadening the immediate pain. Of course it's also less obviously destructive.<br />
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And so, here we are, in a new year. I know that I have to turn the same practices of gentleness and self-love that I used to break myself of the self-harm habit toward this lesser evil. There was no way I could bully myself out of that behavior, no amount of negative self-talk "This is weak, this is foolish, this is selfish" that could stay my hand, no amount of grief that I witnessed in the eyes of the friends, lovers, and family, who winced and wept and cajoled and freaked seeing my cuts, no power on earth that could stop me. There was only me, and at the time, I could not recognize myself as being enough, felt the isolation of this truth only rather than the purity of its power.<br />
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In the case of my self-harm, I had to learn the reasons behind what I was doing with a competent and professionally detached therapist. I had to learn the peaks and valleys of the brain chemicals involved in the addiction. I had to learn to notice the patterns of self-talk that led to a relapse, painstakingly accounting for each moment that occurred before ultimate action. Then, I had to learn to let the impulse come up and pass without taking action, and further, without judging its existence. I had to learn how to wait it out, how to sit with myself and let the feelings come without attacking or running, let the agonizing moments pass until finally, the next moment came, until normal time caught up with me again and I realized I had successfully done nothing. I had to deal with the sick, sad part of myself that took such inaction as evidence of further weakness, further shame. I had to embrace the part of myself that took immense comfort and even a sort of pleasure in the stinging, bleeding evidence that I was still alive despite my pain, that I had this strange power to mar and harm and continue on, to seize some control of chaos. I draw a connection between this darkness and the sheer animal pleasure I take in rolling that mouth-watering mint flavor between my teeth and crushing it to nothingness.<br />
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My brain is a much nicer place to live these days. The habits of attention I have cultivated come to my aid. When I feel the increasingly rare impulse to cut, I am able to notice it almost immediately, cut the urge off at its source with compassion. Those thoughts come up and I nod at them with a familiar, almost casual love. I do not hesitate to stop what i am doing and send kind energy to those parts that wish to wreak havoc. I recognize that these impulses come from a part of me that has done its poisonous best for years to help and protect a small, neglected, vulnerable part of me from feeling pain in the only way I allowed it to, not realizing the consequences, ignorant of the toll this takes on my other struggling parts. That protective part of me knows now that there are other, better ways to do its job.<br />
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And so here we are in the new year. The time is right for me to challenge myself to love the demonic child within who cannot get enough sugar, enough attention, enough love, enough raw sensual experience. I must turn the same patience and benevolent regard to mediating this lesser evil of a habit. I have to do better by not trying to be better. I have to accept the brightness of demanding more of myself, of letting the cream of my self-love rise until it's not as scary to take charge of my life, schedule the damn, expensive dental appointment, to have enough respect for myself to treat myself well from toenails to tooth enamel.<br />
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I have to meet myself where I am, one two-dollar bag at a time, one miserable. rainy, tired night at a time, one moment by one moment until the next moment finally arrives. And I will realize I have done nothing, and left a candy aisle empty-handed. Gratitude will be there, and simultaneously despair will rush in. I will want to go back inside, quell the inner storm with swift, chaotic action. I will notice this despair and love myself for it, and I will let out a shaky breath, or a soft laugh. I will pause and hold that darkness up to the light. I'll stand in the parking lot, and there I'll be, still myself, with more habits to begin and break, as many as there are parts of myself to love, running my tongue over the slickness of my perfect, damaged teeth, running my fingers over my perfect, faded scars.<br />
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<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-81085908693365251602015-01-01T14:53:00.004-08:002015-01-03T20:58:21.353-08:00Hair, Dry, Love<br />
I'm in a serious relationship with my hairdryer. I received it as a gift from my brother-in-law Curt when I was studying abroad in Ireland in 2008 and it's still chugging along. It's moved with me from dorm to dorm, house to house, across state lines and back.<br />
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It's a simple model, utilitarian, classic. Grey and black. The handle folds neatly into itself and the cord retracts. It fits my hand.<br />
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I had long, long hair then. I'd asked for it specifically as part of a secret santa type deal I had going with my siblings and their significant others that Christmas. The gift pegged Curt as the giver right away: it was exactly what I wanted and arrived within days of the request. He sent me a lot of sweet little presents that December: that poster of Obama changed to say STRONG EXAMS, Elvis's Blue Christmas sent directly to my inbox. But I loved the hairdryer most of all. The housing for international students was a converted seminary and it was cold. I had a sink in my room and a mirror, but the showers were down a long, drafty hall with a bone-chilling wood floor. The showers themselves were housed in a beautiful but unheated tiled room. The water never quite got hot and I would race back to my room sopping wet, towel off my hair, the strands already freezing together, and stand in front of my mirror, dryer in hand, until I was warm.<br />
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I didn't quite know how to wear my long hair yet. I didn't know how to handle any of it in fact, it being sudden sexual attention after two years at Bryn Mawr, sudden appraisals, flirtations, seductions, rituals I couldn't understand. I was negged constantly, probably because men could sense my discomfort, my willingness to be fixed. I was teased about my glasses, my vocabulary, my fashion choices--everything was fair game and I had no tools to deflect, absorbed every scrap greedily regardless, even when what I felt was more bewildered and hurt than adored and hungered for. I believed everything anyone said about me.<br />
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I got attention for my hair and I would puzzle over it, experimenting with different speeds and strengths of the dryer, different head movements and levels of toweling required. I had no idea what the fuck was happening. I would flip my hair back and forth, running my fingers through the strands, trying to make sense of the adult emerging in front of my eyes, this woman with long hair, with effect.<br />
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My new friends and I took advantage of our study abroad experience to drink as much as humanly possible, and definitely more than was probably good for my fragile 21 year-old brain. I threw up in bar bathrooms all over Dublin. I broke wine glasses, ran down city streets, woke up with strange bruises and generally made an ass out of myself in ways that only a recently de-virginized Catholic girl with a taste for freedom and an equally strong taste for love can. I danced all night and slept on floors and lost cellphones and followed strangers around. I ditched a taxi. I kissed anyone who'd ask and some who didn't. I held my friend's hair back for her and peed simultaneously while she puked eight euros of white wine into an alley behind a McDonald's, and then helped her befriend a stray cat stumbling back to my dorm. I fell in love with the best friend I made there and hid his lube and condoms from his visiting mother when he was in the hospital.<br />
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I slept with an unbelievably hot Swedish man and he got me good, made sex real to me in a way it hadn't been. He broke my glasses one drunken night and refused to give head and I confused watching Die Hard on his lap and then fucking for some kind of commitment. Once he and his friend intimated spanking me for breaking something in the kitchen late one night and it was so casual and erotic that I flushed more completely than I ever have since. I helped fruit vendors unpack at dawn in Berlin with my best friend from home and my twin sister. I went home with the tour guides from the Guinness factory after being called out on microphone for tripping spectacularly in the lobby. I stole their wooden parrot and received a text the next day that read "You probably shouldn't have given us the benefit of the doubt." I went to karaoke every Thursday night at the Wicked Wolf and drank cider through straws.<br />
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The depth of my innocence, my lack of preparedness, was completely unknown to me. I spent a lot of time in that cold little room, eating toast and delicious irish butter arduously prepared in a shared kitchen three flights of stairs down, streaming episode of episode after any cheesy American sit-com I could find until the room lightened, sleeping through my classes until the afternoon. I wept while gchatting and watched every Britney Spears video I could find. I stayed up all night writing papers I had done all the reading for within the first two weeks of the semester, fantasized endlessly and shamelessly about every male Irish professor I had.<br />
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So the perfect gift came at the perfect time. It was silly, I knew, but it touched me deeply when I opened it, and every time I thought of Curt selecting it on some website, entering in my address. Thinking of me, maybe, and this simple act of providing something for me I couldn't provide for myself. I'd sung Chapel of Love with him and my sister on the final drive to their wedding, Caitlin's dress filling the car with its whiteness, the green and gold of June in Connecticut flying past, saturating the blue sky glinting in the mirrors and windows, our mood nearly hysterical. We'd run a half-marathon together, drunk cocktails in their first apartment in South Boston. He'd covered for me when I'd gotten wasted at an early summer party my first year home from college, taking the blame for the noise my friends made dragging me up the stairs to my bedroom.<br />
<br />
Thinking of his love and friendship comforted me every time I dried my hair. There were a lot of hard times to come, and a lot of times Curt would give me more than an appliance to ease them. But the hairdryer says it all for me. Even now I can get a sparkle thinking about it as I warm up with a quick blow on greasy hair or take my time going full witch blown out--it being generosity, it being love, it being having someone on your side even when they are very far away.<br />
<br />
My hairdryer now is more about meditation and security than it is a tool of discovery. It's a great way to calm myself down before going somewhere, the whoosh of hot air around my head in counterpoint to some deep breaths, some forward folds and neck rolls to get the blood flowing. I look at myself in the mirror and luxuriate in the feeling of my hair falling over my shoulders, the smooth flow of it through my hands, my fingers on my scalp. The gradual change from damp to dry, the moments in between. I put it down for a minute and change the song, put on underwear, make my bed, then pick it up again, start fresh.<br />
<br />
I joke about it, but there's a part of me that truly believes I derive strength from my hair. When I have really good sex or a really good meal or a really good workout I picture it all going straight to my hair. Spiritual and practical: When I'm using my dryer, I assess the health of my hair and think about what I've been doing lately, how that might be transfiguring what's literally coming out of my head. Curt is a filmmaker, among much else, and in his first documentary there's a scene that's always stuck with me, a scientist testing Curt's hair to assess his intake of corn products. I still find it amazing how much he could deduct just from a strang of hair. My hair is a barometer of my overall status, my overall alignment with elementary principles of input and output.<br />
<br />
We're told that we mustn't become too attached to objects, but to me that carries the same flaw in logic as saying that money can't buy happiness. What I really needed, as that bitter December passed, was a way to dry my goddamn wet cold mass of hair, and I was too broke to buy a fucking 12 euro hairdryer. It was just exactly what I needed. And, as so often happens when we ask for what we really need, I got a hell of a lot more than that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-10526049629477018042014-12-31T12:56:00.000-08:002014-12-31T12:56:01.852-08:00The Right Way To Do It<br />
Ten tips for a good sex life that also apply to horrible, terrible, magic, stupid new year's eve.<br />
<br />
1. It's not just about kissing.<br />
<br />
2. Exfoliate.<br />
<br />
3. You won't get what you want unless you ask for it.<br />
<br />
4. Sometimes you won't get it.<br />
<br />
5. Lower your goddamn expectations.<br />
<br />
6. Breathe, bitch.<br />
<br />
7. It doesn't matter how anyone else likes to do it.<br />
<br />
8. It matters quite a bit how you like to do it.<br />
<br />
9. Remember any of us could die at any moment.<br />
<br />
10. Stay hydrated.<br />
<br />
Happy Fucking<br />
<br />
New YearDevanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-9591896882088525632014-11-25T16:49:00.001-08:002014-11-25T17:53:39.242-08:00On Mixed Blessings<br />
It's two days before Thanksgiving, and I'm putting cinnamon oil on my feet. I'm trying to drive down the sporadic fever this cold brought along. What a small miracle it is that I can do this, that I have a body that responds to this, that I have a body that can fight a cold. What a small miracle it is that I live in the kind of house where there's oils and someone who can tell you what to do with them.<br />
<br />
Earlier in the week I was cursing this cold with all my might. Everyone at work had it before me, the same cough, same weakness, same fever and chills. I cursed the crazed mindset of the American worker who cannot bear to miss a day of work even when contagious and the corrupt financial system that effectively prohibits one from doing so. I'm driving a rental car up the snow-threatened Northeast corridor tomorrow from North Carolina. Roommate and her dog in tow. I am desperately worried about money and worried about the jobs I'm not finding and the pieces I'm not writing because my body is sick. I spend so much of my time wrestling with how to spend it that when I have to face a physical reality, when I am forced to rest, there comes a twisted relief that I then feel guilty about feeling. Call it faking-a-sick-day syndrome.<br />
<br />
But here I am, rubbing cinnamon oil onto the soles of my feet, feeling it draw the heat down from my temples. I'm drinking the fanciest orange juice I could find at the discount grocery store and filling the tub, rubbing cedarwood and eucalyptus onto my chest, watching streaming Gilmore Girls on my parents' Netflix account. The dryer is churning in the back room. The dog pads in wearing her green sweater and gives me her soft, sweet, single-tongue-swipe kiss. I activate my credit card so I can rent this car and the sweetest woman named Beth wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving. I have friends coming over later to celebrate our departure, still others that have reached out to check on me while I've been sick.<br />
<br />
There are too many disgusting and horrible things happening in our country this week to handle. My head is awash in homeopathic cough medicine and hours of smart, snappy dialogue and endless images of cities torn apart, families suffering, so much hate and fear that I find myself astounded--wounded, even--to realize that there is no moral consensus when it comes to atrocity. How I hate knowing this, how dumbfounded and powerless I feel in its raw, basic truth.<br />
<br />
What relief I might feel if it were true that everyone reacted to murder in the same way, if everyone reacted to rape the same way. Just on a human level--some kind of a stable response to injustice, to trespass. But it's not that way. We all empathize to different extents, we all have blind spots, we all react out of fear in some circumstances and with love in others. And a lot of those characteristics come from our backgrounds, the experiences we have had or not had, the education we've been granted. I know this intellectually but in practice it is dark, it is enraging, it is threatening, and it is fucking sad. It's sad to me that I can look in the face of someone I know--even love--and see that we will not agree on Ferguson, will not agree about Bill Cosby, will be incapable of arriving at the same conclusions.<br />
<br />
I'm shaving my legs, visions of snow-proof outfits dancing in my head. I'm drinking tea with elderberry and hibiscus. I'm rubbing vegetable glycerin into my face, into my new tattoo to make it soft. The beauty of my rib cage with its new black words in the mirror takes my breath. And even so my own existence is making me angry. My own complicity in these disgusting and horrible things taking place, my own inability to do anything to assuage the grief my heritage has directly produced.<br />
<br />
A day or two ago I explained to the politically-minded man I'm sleeping with that just because my rapist will never be convicted of a crime doesn't mean a crime didn't occur. I found I have to ungrit my teeth to do it, I have to relax, I have to trust that I will be heard. Saying it out loud melts something in me, tempers somehow the unfathomably deep well of anger. But it still hurt. It still cost me something. But the melting happened and the gap that had been between us for a moment suddenly wasn't and I also have to take that as a small miracle.<br />
<br />
My body is racked with this cough. These sparse connections and disconnections are racking my mind. I want to take the whole world by the shoulders, shake it into waking up. The sheer frustration I feel is hot grit, a glaring, malignant error, a pebble in your shoe that is actually crippling you. My legs are smooth under the hot water. Luke is forgiving Lorelai for saving his dead father's boat. I received a book of poetry recently. On the last page it says "Explaining will get us nowhere." On the last page it says "We are all just trying to be holy."*<br />
<br />
*Richard Siken, <i>Crush</i><br />
<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-55241924103862817842014-11-20T21:11:00.001-08:002014-11-20T21:50:45.753-08:00Beauty Tips For The Mentally Deranged<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Read on if you are one of the following:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A bad bitch</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living in relative poverty</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lazy femme</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A witch</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Struggling under the nightmarish oppression of the capitalist patriarchy (hint: you are)</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not likely to be fazed by knowledge of my most intimate and outlandish beauty rituals.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I may have refused to wear a shirt until the age of 11 or 12, and thrown many a tantrum against the hegemony of scratchy tights and underwear, but I've also always been drawn to the girly side of life. Even as a small child, watching my mother get ready, selecting perfume, applying her makeup, brushing her hair, I recognized the power of female beauty rituals: the staking of a claim, the celebration of the mysterious, the cultivation of small, sensual pleasures, the attention to self. In becoming a woman, I felt I had found something worth belonging to and worth fighting for--I had a strong instinct that pursuing the feminine would not weaken me. I saw and still see these routines as one way to navigate a world that is brutally unkind to female bodies and female expression.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over years of experimentation, I learned how to make my appearance into one tool of many to wield; I learned how to incorporate my sexuality, my contradictions, my personality into a series of coherent looks that I could always rely upon to make me feel better no matter what was happening: the failing grade, a relationship ending, odious social events. During the inevitable dark times, I clung to this cultivation as a life-saving device that helped restore my equilibrium when I’d been knocked on my ass.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, I see my beauty routines as a core part of who I am, a core part of the way I choose to fight my way through life. My rituals are my refuge. The care I take with my appearance is how I access my creativity, my subversion, my power, my joy, my don't-give-a-fuck. It's part of how I practice self-care, how I draw boundaries for myself, how I prepare myself for life's challenges. It's how I experience freedom. Every lesson has been hard won. Here's a few of my best.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get weird with it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only real reason you need to do anything to your appearance is to make yourself happy. If, at the same time, you look hot as fuck constantly and scare the shit out of people (read: men) on a regular basis, all the better. Face glitter on a random Wednesday, mixed patterns, daring hair--there is really nothing too out there that you can’t try at least once. No one is watching you as much as you think. There’s nothing new under the sun--that can depress you or energize you. Make all the combinations, revisions, and decisions that please </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the most and you can’t go wrong. Fear nothing. Trial-and-error is everything. Experimentation is the reason that adorable sweater vests from Goodwill are now safe from me, and fake eyelashes will remain unattached to my body.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take your time</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I am rabid about my getting ready time, whether it’s a full hour in the afternoon or the ten minutes before my date gets to the bar or the five minutes in the bathroom before work. That is my time, and god help the person who impinges on it. Taking my time with my appearance is how I mentally prepare for whatever I’m about to do. Life is very short and goes by very fast. Outfits are how I mark occasions (even the Tuesday farmer's market) and how I celebrate myself. Also, getting ready is fucking fun. I put on music, arrange all my tools in front of me, sashay around the room gazing at myself in the mirror, noticing each tactile step: pulling on my tights, my fingers on my face, that split-second wetness of fresh mascara, the way my hair smells while I’m drying it. Claiming my time and my right to use it however I wish is powerful. No one else tells me when I’m ready but me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dirty as you wanna be</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Most of the time, my finished look is pretty damn girly, and if not exactly conservative, contains some element of class and restraint. But I only cultivate that by channeling my inner beast. You know, the one whose hair gets that sheen from the potato chip crumbs in her bed and crazy afternoon sex. The one with secretly ripped tights and menstrual blood underneath her fingernails. Being a little wild and frankly, gross with some of my beauty rituals frees my spirit. Digging the dirt means I have to be more inventive--the quickly unsmeared eyeliner from the night before, the half-damp paper towel used in the bathroom to bring a flush to my cheeks. The curiously effective exfoliation from the dirt trapped in the lipstick rolling around the bottom of my bag. Embracing filth keeps me from becoming a slave to my beauty standards--I know how to find a way to look as good as I want to even when I've spent the day tramping around the woods, driven a car through the night, been caught in a rain-storm, or just slept through my alarm. Beauty becomes a survival strategy for me in this way, makes me into less of a weird slob and more of a dirty-haired, no bra, dark-circles hungover witch who’s gonna ride her red-wine stained lips into history.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feel your way </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Looking good is feeling good, and vice versa. Sometimes I look my hottest when I'm actually feeling sad as shit, because I use my beauty arsenal to work out my feelings and adjust my look accordingly, and I use my feelings to adjust my beauty arsenal. Confrontations with roommates require muscle tees and braided hair. Drab afternoons when I've spent all day in bed require short, tight dresses and unruly waves. When I feel out-of-control I bring out the fancy underwear, collared shirts, and slightly binding mini-skirts. Feeling picked on and I go for baggy jeans, pale colors, and extra lipstick. Thick eyeliner and perfume when I'm meeting someone new. Anger is obviously a black dress. Feeling your way means wearing lacy tights because i like how they feel when I'm sliding myself into my lover's car, or asking myself what Buffy would wear to work if she also had to bus tables for a living. I have a coat I wear when I need to feel like a rich, impossible bitch and one I wear when I need to feel like a country fairy-tale princess. I've busted more than one bad mood just by putting my hair in a side ponytail.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Damn the man </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The man is out to get you to buy as much shit as possible, unrelentingly and without exception, from now until civilization collapses (so only a few weeks left to go). Don’t throw good money after bad and spend your hard-earned cash when you don’t need to. Shampoo is body wash. Conditioner is shaving cream, lipstick is blush, men’s razors are cheaper, fingers are just as good as most any makeup brush. I aspire to buy only all-organic fair-trade locally-sourced unicorn-tested products but until that happy day arrives most of my beauty shit comes from the dollar store or the grocery store. Baking soda, coconut oil, vaseline, sea salt, witch hazel, apple cider vinegar are some of my cheap go-tos. You can make a delightful scrub just using some sugar and the coffee grounds you were going to throw away (er, compost) anyway. Sticking to the drug-store, combining/re-purposing products, or making my own shit helps me stave off the class envy and depression I go through looking at the Sephora website and keeps me able to afford all the lavender oil my anxious little heart requires. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be a healthy-ass evolved bitch </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being hot is about a lot more than products. It’s not even really about technique. Being hot is a state of mind. When I do push-ups while I’m getting ready, or meditate to the sound of my blow-dryer, I’m getting myself into an optimal state of hotness. I take my vitamins while I get ready, create mantras, fantasize about my writing, drink huge jars of water, put garlic everywhere (yes, there) stretch and move, light incense and pray. When I eat a really good meal I feel it in my hair, no joke. So use your beauty routine to get right with yourself and become stronger. Masturbate before you get ready. Dance. Make your shower a crazy sacred temple where there’s always a candle ready to be lit and you’re allowed to think anything you want. I had a boyfriend who hated when I wore makeup, another one who nearly cried when I cut my hair, another who forbid me from wearing sheer tops. Every time I shake my ass in my mirror, put on red lipstick, take off a layer someone else might want me to leave on, every time I take a risk or a breath, I’m setting myself free.</span></div>
</div>
Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-82593827770856059442014-10-21T16:10:00.001-07:002014-10-21T16:15:29.933-07:00On Having A Day<br />
<br />
I had the chance to engage in some truly superlative activities today. A five-dollar yoga class, a drive by myself, coffee and water, sitting in the steam room, thrifting. A dream day off--floor swept, dishes done, time to myself, plenty of sleep, the prospect of a long afternoon spent luxuriating in preparing for a dinner date in the evening.<br />
<br />
And some truly superlative things happened.<br />
<br />
I wore my roommate's amazing yoga pants that are somehow deliciously comfortable and make me weep over my own ass. I had on my favorite hoodie that I rescued from a broken relationship, soft and grey with "KINK" instead of "PINK" written in white across the chest. A perfectly worn-in white bra under an orange tee that grazes my hips exactly. Beat up blue tennis shoes I bought in Las Vegas this summer.<br />
<br />
I managed to bring water, cash for the class, my debit card, an elastic for my hair, a banana, and still have time to stop and put ten dollars of gas in the car. Triumphs all for the attention-deficit.<br />
<br />
There was a choice parking spot in front of the yoga studio I pulled into with a minute to spare.<br />
<br />
Ten other women and I breathed and stretched and balanced and sweated and rested for an hour.<br />
<br />
I bought coffee and garlic and boric powder capsules and a spinach-ricotta croissant for myself.<br />
<br />
I went to the place I used to work and held my longest-ever headstand in a glowing patch of sunlight on a black yoga mat on a wooden floor.<br />
<br />
At Goodwill I found my dream red blouse, a slouchy-but-tailored grey sweater from J. Crew, a lacy black shirt I can wear to work in all weather, little grey stripy socks. Elton John was on the radio and I fingered all the baby Halloween costumes and admired myself even in the awful fluorescence of the dressing room--my strong freckled arms, the hair falling down my back, the shadow of a bruise on my inner thigh. No one talked to me or hit on me or gave me a hard time in any way.<br />
<br />
The ride home offered crisp breeze, falling golden light on mountains slowly becoming a riot of color.<br />
<br />
When I got home, there was a warm, tan egg left in the nook of our porch recliner on a blue blanket.<br />
<br />
And yet.<br />
<br />
I scuffled with my sister over coffee and putting gas in the car and slammed the door when I left the house. "Everyone here drives like a fucking idiot" was my audible soundtrack on the drive downtown. I bitched inwardly all through my opening meditation because the class I thought I would be attending is no longer offered. Every time a piece of clothing dropped off its hanger and onto the floor I let out a sigh the sheer force and desperation of which could move governments.<br />
<br />
I ran into my old boss and friend at the Y and followed the interaction down into all the ways I had failed in that job and all the ways I had failed in that friendship. I cursed the ache in my back as I bent to try on clothes, brought on by a long, hard weekend at the restaurant. The thought of my sixteen-dollar purchase against the enormity of my debt and my dreams worked me over, punishing in its narrowness. The tiny batman costume made my insides clench with sorrow.<br />
<br />
Sometimes truly perfect days offer themselves to us at a time when we are unprepared to accept them. Writing this down helps. Taking deep breaths helps, movement helps, and eating something good. Music can get me there, or cleaning up my bedroom. And sometimes even taking these small steps to feel better can be the hardest goddamnest son-of-a-bitch of a thing to ask of ourselves. We have to try, I think, to do them anyway, even when the benefit is not immediately forthcoming. We have to trust that it's on the way.<br />
<br />
In some ways I cherish these days even more than the easy ones. The days I feel like ungodly shit for no reason at all, the days where I am 112 pounds of sheer rage one moment and a puddle on the floor the next, restless, despairing, scared, at loose ends.<br />
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I remind myself I'll feel differently soon. I ask myself questions about what I am experiencing and why. I try to notice all the good things that are happening even while there's an anvil on my chest or a vise around my brain. I sit with my sadness and my stupid hurt feelings and my pain and I make allowances for them even when I feel to do so is a waste of precious time.<br />
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It's not. It's good work if you can get it.<br />
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<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-9860263009488843012014-10-11T22:24:00.003-07:002014-10-11T22:24:59.980-07:00A Note On Sleep<br />
A revelation I had this weekend that cannot wait for a full-length post to relay: Your day should prepare you for sleep, not the other way around.<br />
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Think about that, witches!Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-36058243268472250192014-10-11T22:23:00.002-07:002014-10-11T22:23:48.903-07:00Weekend Superlatives<br />
My facebook status upon returning home from my Saturday double at the restaurant reads as follows:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">to the man who tipped me a dollar for bringing him a to-go box and some mustard, you are a class act and you deserve a lifetime of unequivocal contentment and peace. to the man who asked me if i'd dropped my smile, you are no gentleman at all and you deserve a lifetime of increasingly disquieting impotence occuring at the worst possible moments.</span><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/weekendsuperlatives?source=feed_text&story_id=10203018323754101" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="_58cl" style="color: #6d84b4;">#</span><span class="_58cm">weekendsuperlatives</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"> </span><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/becarefulwhatyouwitchfor?source=feed_text&story_id=10203018323754101" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="_58cl" style="background-color: white; color: #6d84b4; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; text-decoration: none;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; text-decoration: none;">becarefulwhatyouwitchfor</span></a><br />
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You really are exposed to the best and the worst of people in my line of work. The table of thirty-somethings who complimented my guns from across the restaurant get an a plus. The bachelorette party rendered deaf by their own screaming, not so much.<br />
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I think customers and servers alike could benefit from trying to be the best part of someone's day rather than the worst.<br />
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And with that corny sentiment, this is one ketchup-dipped debutante who's putting herself to bed. Here's to the rest of the weekend.Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-76066542770364025342014-10-10T12:21:00.000-07:002014-10-10T12:21:53.695-07:00How To Not Lose Your Shit at Work<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a passage at my work that connects the kitchen to the bar. Actually, the passage is a brewery. I announced to one of the bartenders, on a recent afternoon, that I routinely find myself talking aloud when I'm walking through that space alone.<br />
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"What do you say?" she asked me.<br />
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"Oh, I just give myself little pep-talks!"<br />
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She laughed and gave me a look I've grown accustomed to receiving in reaction to my more cheerful moments. We chatted about the content of these private outbursts. Then, this slow, rainy, moon-y Thursday evening, she suggested that I write a post about those talks to myself in the brewery. I've elaborated on her idea with a few of my best tips for staying sane in the soul-sucking chaos of the modern workplace. While this refers specifically to restaurant work, I think these life-saving strategies will assuage the pains of a range of jobs, especially in the service industry.<br />
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1. <b>Preparation is everything.</b> My shifts go much more smoothly when I've prepared: sleeping as well as I can, eating a meal, having the tools that will get me through the day, from an emergency banana, to my watch, to a favorite essential oil. Provide for yourself and you'll be amazed how much lighter you feel before even setting foot in the building. Make sure you have any extras you need: a couple elastics, pain-killers, tissues, gum, a tampon for you and a friend, your phone charger, adjust freely. A server with a full and organized bag is a happy server.<br />
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2. <b>Flair is real.</b> It may have prompted the most righteous flicking off ever in <i>Office Space</i>, but expressing your personality with your style is one of the most honest-to-goodness ways I know to stay calm and happy in a work setting. Work drains me. Work can feel like a place where I'm erased. The right earrings, a scarf, my shirt tucked in just so--these little things help me hold onto my self. I need to wear all-black and no tank-tops, for god's sake! I cope with the dehumanization by wearing my hair in a signature style, dressing consciously, and performing some basic grooming rituals beforehand. This can be anything from a full-blown home-spa bath experience (try epsom salts!) to just splashing cold water on my face in the bathroom and tying a bandana on my dirty hair. (Speaking of which. Dry shampoo. It will change your life). Dressing the part distinguishes between who I am at work and who I am at home, and bringing some of myself into my work attire bridges that gap.<br />
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3. <b>Don't take it personally.</b> I try to approach each shift as a radical experiment in practicing detachment. Whether it's a glance, a sigh, a rant, remember: it's not about you. Not taking it personally means drawing a boundary around yourself. This border of protection means you need not concern yourself with what others are thinking or experiencing in a given moment: that is theirs to deal with. The most you have done is provided a stimulus that triggered someones shit--that doesn't make it yours. Take a deep breath, notice how you are feeling, and then let it go. Not taking it personally doesn't mean you can't own up for mistakes or notice the mistakes of others--it just means you needn't identify with them. <b>Bonus tip:</b> When I was first starting to realize that not everything another person did was a hidden slight against me (what a revelation!) I visualized this boundary with a simple image--a glow-y bubble, a circle of light, whatever your cynical little heart can stand.<br />
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4. <b>Don't shit-talk.</b> Don't shit-talk yourself, don't shit-talk your co-workers, don't shit-talk your customers, don't shit-talk your boss. Resisting being drawn into negativity is doubtless one of the trickiest endeavors we face, period. But practice this credo and experience true freedom. Don't be afraid to change the subject or walk away if you feel like you're being entangled in gossip or drama. You'll be the most popular person at work if you refuse to talk shit--people will wonder how you do that thing you do. The integrity you develop by not allowing yourself to spew with the vicious abandon your id would love pays spiritual and financial dividends.<br />
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5. <b>Take care of number one. </b> When you're thirsty, drink. Hungry? Eat something. Don't let the fact that you are at work and your time is being paid for make you neglect your own needs. Far better to take the thirty seconds to adjust your too-tight tights or stretch your arms over your head than remain distracted and tense. Whether it's drinking a glass of water every hour or taking a moment to apply some chap-stick, allow yourself the tiny gestures it takes to keep you feeling good. It's insane how many times a night I hear a fellow employee mention they've been so busy they haven't been able to pee. You're not that busy. Go pee for fuck's sake. <b>Bonus tip</b>: Be a little fancy. Go ahead, put a slice of lemon in your water. Straighten your tie, whistle a tune, put a little more cream in your coffee. You deserve it.<br />
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6. <b>Get it while you can.</b> When I run to the bathroom, I make sure to take deep breaths while I'm in there. If I'm cold, I'll pay extra attention to the warm water on my hands. If I'm hot, I'll rest a cold, wet hand on the back of my neck for a few seconds. Waiting for a drink at the bar? I stand up straight and adjust my posture with a few breaths. Being mindful when you have a minute for yourself conserves precious energy and emotional resources for when you inevitably get frazzled.<br />
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7. <b>Manage your time.</b> I have ADHD and staying focused for long periods of time (like 7 hour Saturday night shifts) can be difficult. I break my time into chunks (I'm going to wipe down table 20 and 23, go get more ice, then refill the linen) to get me through larger amounts of time without projecting too far into the future. I try to have a playful and elastic relationship with work time. It soothes me to have a mantra: "I can do anything for one hour," helps me a lot, so does "This is temporary." Make a (lame) game of it: I'll challenge myself not to look at the clock for as long as possible, or time myself sorting a tray of silverware.<br />
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8. <b>Practice positive self-talk.</b> To me, this means questioning and then filtering the content of my inner monologue. Do you put yourself down in your head or find certain phrases "This blows and I hate it and I suck," just for example, running on a loop when you're distracted or feeling poorly? Change the script. As corny as it sounds, telling yourself nice things really does help you feel nicer. I amplify this practice by talking to myself out loud if I've found that I can't censor the flow of negative judgement. I find an opportunity to say "You can do this," or even just "You're ok and nothing is wrong right now." This anchors me in the present and reaffirms my commitment to treating myself with respect and kindness. As always, a deep breath is your cheapest, most reliable, and most accessible source of instant self-care.<br />
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9. <b>Pay attention.</b> When I'm wiping down those tables or scooping ice into a bucket, I notice what I'm doing: how the cold metal handle feels in my hand, the sound the ice makes as I move it, the weight of the bucket. I match my breath to this work and it becomes a brief mediation, a way of staying grounded. If there's a breeze coming through the windows, a good song on the radio, rain just about to fall, a glorious sunset, I do myself the favor of noticing it. Paying attention to what is actually happening right here and now makes it easier to stay in the zone.<br />
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10. <b>But not too much</b>. The beauty of practicing mindfulness is that you get to choose what you pay attention to, and you get to choose what's happening inside your own head. I dream of sections of my novel at work, write impassioned emails, enumerate the components of a perfect Sunday afternoon. What's happening inside my head is mine alone, and it can co-exist with the task at hand. I can choose to pay attention to the drunken man leering at my body, or I can choose to pay attention to the mom telling her daughters, "Wow, look how strong she is," as I'm clearing the dishes from their table.<br />
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So there you have it. Fight the good fight.<br />
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<b>TL; DR</b>: Stay hot, don't talk shit and breathe, bitches.Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-21492539191086118852014-10-03T13:12:00.000-07:002014-10-03T13:12:01.889-07:00An Incomplete Rendering of Conversations in Utopia<br />
My mistake Ms. According to our database, you<i> are</i> premenstrual. Help yourself to anything in the store, with our compliments.<br />
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I'm sorry to bother you, but the city has decided to disable this streetlight that's right across from your bedroom window. It's not at all ridiculous that you haven't just put up a darker curtain.<br />
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The medical community would like to extend its deepest apologies for taking so long to come up with this one-dose cure for urinary tract infections. You never have to drink cranberry juice or get up to pee after sex right away ever again. We'd like to offer you a refund for the countless appointments where we suggested those strategies might actually do anything useful. We were totally bullshitting you.<br />
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Chewing ice is great for your teeth. Definitely do that as much as possible.<br />
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The rest of the Ministry and myself have decided you are eligible for a Time-Turner.<br />
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Girlfriend! Isn't it cool how now when you shave one leg, the other one is shaved automatically?<br />
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I've pushed my plate, covered with my napkin, to the side of the table. Also, my silverware is under the napkin. Also, I am planning on finishing all the water in this glass.<br />
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There's nothing you can't text me.<br />
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Me and the rest of the men on this bus would just like to let you know that we're going to ride the whole ten minutes downtown without interrupting you or interacting with you in any way whatsoever, starting now.<br />
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This <i>is</i> the funniest and deepest horror novel ever written. You'll have to come and visit me and Tabitha sometime.<br />
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I've communicated with all the other yoga teachers and we've agreed to never use the word 'yummy' ever again.<br />
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We've decided you can wear whatever you want to work.<br />
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Wake up honey! You were just having a nightmare about student loans. Those were universally forgiven years ago, remember? Shhhh, I'll hold you while your in-house sauna heats up.<br />
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I love how you called it "Slouching in Brooklyn." and it <i>does</i> brilliantly and heartbreakingly surpass my own writing about New York City while still honoring me as an influence.<br />
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Tell me more about your horoscope.<br />
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I've installed this camera in your mirror for when your hair looks really incredible right before bed.<br />
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You look so much prettier when you've spent exactly as much time as you need applying make-up and selecting your clothes in order to express outwardly the beauty and art of your continual and noble work on your innermost self.<br />
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In fact, just chew ice instead of flossing.<br />
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Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-7547768779973490342014-09-29T12:30:00.001-07:002014-09-29T12:34:12.656-07:00The Struggle Is Real<br />
I am drinking a tea that promises to cleanse my liver and kidneys. I can only wish it godspeed.<br />
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I took the dogs for a walk this morning (ok, this afternoon) and thought of a dozen beautiful, funny things I can write about better than anyone else can write about them. And yet all weekend I've been tongue-tied to myself, shuffling thoughts like the laziest tarot dealer, dreading the labor of transcription. Nothing I've written down in the last week seems to have any life.<br />
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I applied to a residency this week so I can write the horror novel that came to me fully-formed in a dream two years ago. When I submitted my 250 word essay I felt like a shoe-in. Today I feel like I have nothing to show for myself but the sheer force of my wishful thinking.<br />
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My imagination is my greatest tool and can be my greatest undoing: tasks shine before me in my mind's eye, completed down to the last exhale and tiniest detail, practically glowing with already being done. What hope do I have against these visions untainted by reality. The dishes unwashed, the unexpected visitor, the brutal and inescapable demands of distraction.<br />
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While I walked the dogs I tried to have a conversation with the part of me that is convinced I simply do not have what it takes. This part of me is so strong, so sure, so blindly attached to protecting me from the sting of failure and the chaos of effort that it prefers to shut me down completely. And many times, it is easier by far to let this part lead the way. How much easier it seems to sleep until noon, get lost on the internet, watch television for hours past the point of entertainment, to watch the sun rise through exhausted eyes. This part does not count the ways in which I do not fail. This part does not count practice, this part does not understand rough drafts, forgiveness, mistakes, compassion.<br />
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I tried speaking out loud, wrangling the dogs through my neighborhood. "Don't be such a stereotype," I told Kava, who wanted to pee on a fire hydrant. Rain was barely falling, hanging in the air like mist, glazing my hair. To this part of myself I said, "I know why you're scared. But I can't let you be in charge. I know how to help you, comfort you. Let me. You don't realize that you're strangling me. Please stop." I took a deep breath in and out. I felt the shift inside me, the quieting.<br />
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I am trying so hard to feel ready for this. I think I need to accept that it may not be in the cards for me to feel equal to the task before I begin. My practice lies in doing it anyway.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wild Geese</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You do not have to be good.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You do not have to walk on your knees</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You only have to let the soft animal of your body</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">love what it loves.</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile the world goes on.</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">are moving across the landscapes,</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">over the prairies and the deep trees,</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the mountains and the rivers.</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">are heading home again.</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the world offers itself to your imagination,</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">over and over announcing your place</span></div>
</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">in the family of things.</span></div>
</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">-Mary Oliver</span></span></div>
Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-65392322219330052272014-09-17T11:45:00.002-07:002014-09-17T11:48:49.357-07:00Bussing Tables<div>
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One of my hobbies is defending choices I've made that no one has bothered to actually criticize. </div>
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One of the choices I find myself feeling defensive about is what I do for work: I bus tables at a restaurant and brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. No one is trying to make me feel bad about it, but sometimes I do. Mostly it consists of trying and failing to avoid touching food that has been chewed on, and sometimes, mid-scraping mutilated nachos into the bin, I wonder just what the hell I'm doing with my very expensive education. It's not the kind of job I imagine my parents bragging about. It's not the stuff of which alumnae bulletin dreams are made. It's dirty and hard and underpaid almost all of the time.<br />
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But I love it. Even and especially when I end the night saturated in nacho cheese, my own sweat, and other people's beer. </div>
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I love rolling silverware, still warm from the dishwasher, the subtle flick of the wrist, the casual speed. I love seeing a dirty table and knowing that in less than a minute it will be clean and ready to use again. I love the challenge of carrying 17 (my pr) glasses in one arm and still being able to wipe with the other. I love the brute strength I use to carry buckets of ice, move tables, cart loads of dirty plates and bowls, haul sacks of used linen up the stairs. I love darting in between customers, weaving and dodging around pulled out chairs, free-range toddlers, drunk bros, and servers balancing dishes of food that I will soon scrape, half-eaten, into our compost bin.<br />
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This kind of work makes me feel strong and capable, dexterous and graceful in a way that I could not be accused of in other aspects of my life. </div>
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I love the spanish version of "My Heart Will Go On" my favorite dishwasher plays.<br />
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I love observing people who are out to eat, on first dates, bachelorette parties, family vacation, birthdays, retirements, anniversaries. I love listening to their conversations, witnessing their weird eating habits, counting how many napkins they let fall on the floor. I love making a table of patrons laugh when I'm wiping down their table or taking away their plates or bringing them an extra ketchup. I love explaining my tattoo to them. I love being part of the scene of their experience. Oh vanity: "Remember that lovely girl who bussed our table when we visited Asheville? She's so charming and smart and quick with a towel and she totally made me feel better about spilling beer all over the floor and myself".</div>
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My work suits my brain chemistry so well: exhausting physical activity and repetitive, short tasks that require brief spurts of intense focus and concentration is my mental health sweet spot. And bussing tables well requires the kind of mindfulness I'm trying to practice. A deep breath is your only true weapon in the battle against bros, and when your present moment includes balancing ten plates heaped with used chewing gum and collapsing sandwiches, it's pretty helpful to stay in it.<br />
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I love being paid mostly in cash. I love swapping dirty jokes with the kitchen, I love the access to unlimited amounts of ice to chew on, I love being surrounded by smart, hilarious female servers who won't take shit, I love that we all call each other "girl" without irony. I love witnessing the weather change out the big patio windows, twilight falling over my town in a different way with every season, the routine of it all and the novelties.<br />
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In my particular social milieu, it seems that it's only acceptable to work a service or blue-collar job if there are ambitious caveats attached. One must also be a writer, a scholar, an actress, what have you. And while I do a lot of work that has nothing to do with the remains of the burger of the day, I'm not interested in negating one kind of work in order to defend another, more palatable one. I want to stop saying, "I just bus tables."<br />
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I bus tables. It's challenging and rewarding and necessary work, and it's perfect for me right now. </div>
Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-48594539842775941642014-09-12T13:46:00.000-07:002014-09-12T13:46:35.715-07:00Let Freedom Ring<br />
I'm humbled (and astonished, frankly) by the responses I've received to my worst cover letter ever. Obviously, my frustrations with that particular albatross of modern life are not mine alone. Of course, summing oneself up is a necessary evil: on a date, on an interview, meeting potential roommates, social occasions small and large. People persist in asking where you went to college, what you do for money, where you grew up. If you're anything like me, these questions make you squirm, make you feel small, make you feel hopelessly inadequate to the task of telling it like it is with courage and detail and conviction. Because it's exhausting, difficult work. The teeth-grinding truth of it is that we'd all like to simply be seen. We'd all like to skip the small talk.<br />
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How many times I've stared at the hateful blank screen pulled up next to my resume and groaned at the burdensome, insanity-producing task of reducing my life and my experiences to sanitized, acceptable language. How often I've hated the final product of these attempts, no matter how polished and good-on-paper, and wished I could say "I'm writing this in two-day underwear and unwashed hair. I have 96 cents in my bank account and cavities I can't afford to fill. Please want me. Please pay me. Please see me. Please don't make me explain."<br />
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And yet. Here we are. We must do these things to survive.<br />
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But I'm never going to write another boring cover letter ever again. It's a waste of my time, my talent, my energy. I'm not going to do it anymore. If I must sell myself (and oh I must) I'm going to do it in a way that honors my style, my verve, my guts and blood and beating heart and dirty laundry, my unique way of seeing the world and my place in it. I don't want to be employed by anyone who would turn away from the sheer honesty I'll place before them.<br />
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So it is my hope that, in addition to being a place where I can write about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and yoga and the quest for the perfect eyeliner, this blog can be a place where I can help others take the leap that I took yesterday. I took that beautiful awful cover letter and I hacked and I reduced and I polished and I sent it off for better or for worse.<br />
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And my heart goes out to those like me, those who look at the lump sum of their experiences and their hard-fought, won-with-tears-and-sweat history and despair at the idea of expressing it all in 500 words to a faceless entity, those who get palpitations and clammy hands at the thought of reducing themselves to cliches in the name of making a buck, amongst a sea, a flood, a fucking tidal wave of other poor slobs all trying to do the same. My heart goes out to those reading those cover letters and those personal essays and those blurbs (and I have been one of those) whose eyes are blurred by the awful tedium of sentence after sentence of boilerplate, boring, hackneyed pap that's been wrung dry of anything resembling a coherent message. Fearful language, sloppy language, safe language.<br />
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Because those readers are longing for someone who can tell the truth about themselves with clarity, with spunk, with some spark of life, someone who sends a tingle down the spine, makes them sit up, punch the air, scream "Yes! Finally! Here she is!" Because those readers will fight for people like that. They'll open up that resume and they'll take on that history and they'll make damn sure it's seen.<br />
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So please, if you have a cover letter you hate for a job you'd love to have, send it my way. We'll get those imperfect, rambling, glittering, desperate drafts a place in the sun, a moment in time to just be.<br />
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Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of words yearning to breathe free. I'll see you. And then we'll go to work. And then together, we'll make our mealy-mouthed bullshit into something that shines like a goddamn crazy diamond.<br />
<br />Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433948233416541139.post-54301549128894466282014-09-11T07:16:00.002-07:002014-09-11T09:44:46.461-07:00The Worst Cover Letter EverMy name is Devan Boyle and I am delighted to express my interest in the position of Venue Manager for the [Redacted] Theatre. My personal experiences performing and participating in theatrical productions make the position interesting to me; it is my hope that my professional experiences in nonprofits, customer service, and the arts make me interesting to you.<br />
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At the risk of impudence, let me be frank: the concept of a traditional cover letter undoes me. By now you’ve probably read dozens written for this job, some professional, some appalling, most riddled with typos at the least and egregious grammar at the worst. I’m offering something a little different, and it’s no cover.<br />
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I believe I am the woman for this job, I’m excited as hell about it, and I’m going to tell you why.<br />
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I worked at the front desk of the downtown [Redacted] in Asheville for nearly three years. I learned how to defuse conflict gracefully, interact with people from all walks of life, and maintain a sunny, professional demeanor under the most unholy of customer service situations. I was called on to remember hundreds of details about pricing, membership options, programming, and events at the drop of a hat, keep our front desk attractive and clean, create a monthly work schedule for a dozen other front-desk staff, train new employees, and promote the mission of [Redacted] as a nonprofit, including fund-raising and soliciting community support.<br />
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And yes, I handed out a lot of basketballs along the way and folded more group exercise schedules than bear the telling of it. But I also knew the first and last names of hundreds of our members, and could spell those names to boot. I could look at a member’s face and anticipate both their problem and the solution for it almost before they could give it voice. I know this position at [Redacted] would give me a chance for similar satisfaction.<br />
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It’s that kind of attention-to-detail combined with big-picture vision that I believe would make me an asset in this position, and I welcome the challenge of a greater scope of responsibility in a field in which I still have much to learn.<br />
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In short, I know how to delegate tasks, communicate with efficiency, candor, and poise, and multitask like a crazy-in-a-good way 1950’s housewife. I have excellent taste, badass cleaning skills, and the way I handle a stapler strikes fear in the hearts of men. I can bend any copy machine in existence to my will, type with my eyes closed, and produce flawless paperwork. If necessary I can open a beer with a lighter, tie a cherry stem with my tongue, and get you back into the car you locked yourself out of. I have an instinctive and practiced ability to find the clearest path to smoothing a shitshow into a pile of silk purses. I’m fearless about asking for help when I need it, and resourceful enough to make that a rarity. I'm the secretary that would have saved Don Draper from himself.<br />
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I’ll whip your volunteers into warriors for your cause. I’ll brew coffee, take out the trash, file reports, wield a hammer, find the missing glue gun, soothe battered egos, and work tirelessly to make each production a success.<br />
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I would love to have the chance to work for you, and I can promise you’ll never regret it.Devanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14603886555126486553noreply@blogger.com43