Showing posts with label son. Show all posts
Showing posts with label son. Show all posts

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thankxgiving

We're going to our friends' house which is right down the road.  I am pretty happy to be clear of in laws.  I ran into a casual friend the other night who lamented about the culture of Thanksgiving avec her MIL.  She went on and on.  I would not be able to deal with what she is dealing with.  I would say no, but I know now, from the tiny iota of maturity I've gleaned from my almost four decades on the earth that sometimes it is just better to deal with hit in order to keep the peace.  I am horrid at this.

I have the beginnings of a migraine, I think.  I am in a sort of denial about it, as I do not want to purchase my medication; it is so fucking expensive.

We lost power last night.  I was on my nightly walk the moment the power went out.  It was scary, but mostly so fucking gorgeous.  The trees heavy with too much snow.  The ground perfectly white.  And the air that reminded you of every sledding adventure you've ever had.  I was a bit onto the woods path that is lit up with street lamps and they went dark.  At first, I thought it was just the path and I just has bad luck with my timing, as this has happened on the path before.  It reminded me of being at a kiddie baseball game at night, when they shut the lights off, as it is finally time to go home, and you stumble with your kid(s) and your stuff, hoping you do not step on another person or yourself.

But then, I noticed it was not just the path, as there was a flicker, the lights going back on and then, reluctantly they went off for good.  I looked behind me, down into the street where the path spills.  And it was dark there, too. I scurried home, using my ipod to light the way. waving it over my head somewhat when cars drove past, worrying they'd not see me with my black hat and black jacket.   I looked like I was holding a lighter a t a cheesy, classic rock type concert.  Here is what I loved the most, well, there are two things really.  The way the star lit up the sky was intense in a way that is more organic than any recent experience I've had.  Everything seemed so real, so natural.  And then, as I approached our apt., I saw dim lights from the windows, people lighting up their rooms with tea candles and florescent flashlights.  And I heard them: Mr. Z and the old man shuffling down the epic stairway in the dark looking for the lone, lost momma in the dark.



I loved last night.  If I'd gone in the night, I think I wold have had a good last day.  We played charades in the dark and Mr. Z and I acted out scenes from The Office.  Life felt so sweet.  and I felt like I loved and was beloved.  I did miss my family though, mostly my dad.  I think I will always miss my dad.  It is something that will never go away; I do not want to let go of the hurt b/c it is all I have from him.  It is something.

Here is what I was reading last night and this morning: Confessions of a Memory Eater by Pagan Kennedy.  I'll maybe discuss it in depth later on, another day.  It is an extremely fast read and she has created a work filled with beautiful sentences, amazing imagery via analogies and metaphor.  I am impressed; however, there does seem to be something slightly amateurish about the overall work.  I cannot put my finger on what it is that makes me feel this way.  Again, I'll discuss the work in more detail later on.  I need to shower, get my migraine meds, make a salad, and get my family off to our friends' house.  The novel often refers to Thomas De Quincy's masterpiece, Confessions of an Opium Eater which I have never read, but, of course as a wannabe junky, want to.







Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Stories of our Lives


Here is what I wrote in response to a post by Gunther today over at: http://expaa.webs.com/

I really miss Gunther's videos.  Gunther, I know you prolly have your reasons for not having them up, but seriously, I would *purchase* a DVD of them.  I remember that month, your "Park your car in the Harvard yard," all of it.  It was the month I realized you guys were all *real*.  I do not mean to make you uncomfortable; I know you sometimes analyze your “Part” for being a leader of sorts on the anti AA movement.  My unsolicited advice for you on this is to enjoy it and embrace it. 




I am rewriting my story, too.  All of the time and every day.  It is not like I am tacking on a new chapter though; it is like I am editing.  And while I am doing so, I am figuring out what my story actually is about.  And my voice is becoming so much stronger, too.  Even now, during the editing, there are times when I ask for "God's" help.  And this is interestingly, as I am evolving into an unbeliever. Sometimes I think leaving AA has completely changed me, everything is now completely the opposite of what is was.  It is like bizarro Jerry on Seinfeld.  But then I wonder if the change is actually infinitesimal, that things would be pretty similar if I stayed in AA; maybe I’d be uncomfortable with all the powerless stuff, the rapes, the control games, but I would look at these like they were only a   peripheral issue, and my voice would lucidly help new women coming in. 

If it is a huge change or not though, I wonder about my waning belief in God, especially my idea of God that was created in the AA context.  Today, I think it is OK for me to ask God for help, if only out of habit.  Some of the smartest academic and intellectual thinkers in our history believed in God with a fervor that I never felt, even while in AA.  Wanting to believe (even in the lame AA God) is not a weakness; for me, it is a way to make sense of this insanely beautiful, but mostly terrifying situation we’re all in, junkies, alkies, regular mentally ill people, or “normies.”   And sometimes I wonder if I had not hit AA, maybe I would have come upon another way to believe in God; the belief itself would have been similar, but it would have been a different mode.  And this different mode may have been far graver than any sick AA situation: think poly-type Mormon compounds, or think born time infinity.  I might have been the baby mamma opposite a sick, Baptist never nude with an appetite for teen girls.  Instead I am counterpart to an aging deadhead who still has visible track marks, but who loves our son like the stars burn into the night sky and who gave our spare cash (when we had very little) to Howard Dean’s misguided, but hopeful campaign.



(Unrelated Note: I drove with this same father and our son this weekend past the Eric Carle Museum, and Carle's stars danced unhurried in my mind.  This father, though intensely flawed is the father who, without question, would get the moon right out of the sky if his son asked.  The Eric Carle Museum is across the street from Hampshire COllege, where I saw Mary Lou Lord when I was like 18 years old.)


Mary Lou Lord is so fucking parenthetical to this post, but I gotta let you hear her sing, man, it is like watching a teenage ballerina dance.  And one last thing about her, the beginning riff to this song sounds like Big Star's "Thirteen."


Mary Lou:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvnMjZH9Zgk&feature=related

I have a tendency to write into what I am thinking.  As I write, I am not only expressing my thinking to the reader, but to myself.  It is a long, clumsy digression almost every time… And here is what I am reaching now, as I type this to you guys:  I think the germ of my overall life story has actually changed by leaving AA: if only my perception of my story.  And it is like this: in AA I was bad and sick and now I am flawed, but good.  And I am working on having the most fluid perception as possible, as I do not want to be imprisoned by that easy, black and white AA thinking that plagued me for so long.  It is hard, but, as Rilke says, I am learning to live the questions.  And I feel like I am in brilliant company, esp. with all of you, even the ones I fight with and say mean shit to sometimes.  To end this digression, I’ll say this:  I am glad you are all part of my story. Without irony or embarrassment I can say that we are like Eric Carle's illustrated stars, imperfect and splendid, bumpy and smooth against the darkness that is our collective experience.  Thank you.  

New Idea:  Expressive, autobiographical criticism of illustrated children's fiction. 

Saturday, September 17, 2011

We watch so much gd TV, so much that we simply cannot write a sentence...


The Shows for fall of 2011, New and Continued from Last Year…

It is this bad.  This is how poorly my mind is able to even hold sentences together.  My son, Mr. Z and I are writing bad, half wittish television reviews.  It is true.

NEW SHOWS:

Up all Night: already on (stupid)… It amazes me how Will Arnette performs in supporting roles with such perfection, but when it comes time for him to shine, he is completely useless.  Yes, he is disappointing, but the show is beyond disappointing.  It is ridiculously painful.  The only people who might want to see this series are leftover Christina Applegate fans, boob men who were teens in the late eighties.

What we think as of 10/14: Mr. Z says this show suks.  I find it watchable.  It is not my favorite.  I like the friend, and I like watching Will Arnette just cuz he is adorable to me.  Mr. Z says that Mr. Arnette always plays the same character: "rich without deserving it."

New Girl: The Zooey show—not perfect, but definitely worth watching.  I was very relieved and almost proud that I had forced my fifty-two-year-old boyfriend to sit through an hour-and-a-half of Dirty Dancing earlier this summer.  It is for this reason that he cold have been able to happily sing along with the Zoey character during this series’ pilot production. Not that he did this.  At all.   It is my belief that you will, indeed, have the time of your life watching this new show. 

What we think as of now:   This show is on hiatus b/c of baseball. Mr Z says it is great.  I am not sure how great it is, but I do love Zooey Dashel. (sp.)

Revenge: 9/21—looking forward to it.  I have not seen this dark-haired beauty that is Madeline Stowe in much of anything for the past ten years.  The last time this actress struck me as perfectly talented was during her performance of 12 Monkeys, which I watched at least six times.  She was amazing in Short Cuts, too.

10/14: I completely fucking love this show.  

Pan Am: 9/25—Christina Ricci is the only part of this series that I am interested in, at all.  As it is a certain Mad Men copy, I do not hold onto much hope that it will deliver me from an iota of me real life anxiety, boredom.  What truly interests me here is scrutinizing how Christina Ricci has aged.  And I am wondering what her weight it right now.  As a former skinny turned pudgy, the opposite type girl fascinate me, a lot.

10/14: Fucking stoopid.  Cancelled already.  

Broke Girls: 9/21—This series looks funny to me, and it looks as though much of the setting will take place in a restaurant of a sort of low caliber, my most favorite type of place to eat.

10/14: Could hardly watch it, that bad.  

American Horror Story: 10/5—This series looks good, as the Friday Night Lights mom is in this.  It looks as though this mimics the early nineties, David Lynch directed, Twin Peaks.

10/14: Adore this.  

Enlightened: 10/10—This show features a fresh rehab graduate.  The star of the show is Laura Dern.  I am hoping that HBO “gets” that 12 step ideology is dbagcity, and my assumption is that they—in more ways than none—*do* understand this.  Laura Dern appears in trailers as a tra-la-la singer of all that is puppies and unicorns one moment, only to reappear as a borderline mascara-streamed faced lunatic the next.  I look forward to laughing my ass off.

10/14:  So fucking hard to watch, as Dern's character is so pathetic and clueless.  But the show is very true to the recovery personality type.  I think this show is a success thus far.  

Once Upon a Time: 10/23—This looks a bit stupid, but definitely looks watchable.  The young wife, Ginnifer Goodwin, from Big Love is on this.

10/14:  Still have not seen.  Premiers this Sunday, I think.  

Ringer: 9/13—This is the new “twin” show, think Buffy times 2.  I think I might actually pass on this.

10/14:  Have not seen it yet.  I might Amazon it when I get a chance.  

Suburgatory:  9/28—This show, featuring a teen girl with subversive, adorable qualities, looks freakin’ hilarious.  I am so looking forward to this.

10/14:  This is Mr. Z"s favorite thus far.  I think it is watchable.  LArry David's wife is freaking amazing.  But it is not my favorite.   

Hereafter: HBO –I am unsure about this new series, but something in the trailer has compelled me to try it …

10/14:  Not sure yet. 

Person of Interest: Show where Ben from Lost is the star.  Hmm? 9/22

10/14: I have watched this twice, maybe three times.  And all those times I was hardly paying attention, as I was this bored.  

Circle show: where the teens are witches--  And what a surprise, this show taking place in Washington, which is prolly filmed in Canada--Vancouver. I cannot help myself, I think I might have found a fave.  

10/14:  Utterly cheesy, but I really like it.  

OLD SHOWS:

Modern Family: 9/21—Funny, a lot of repeated jokes (example): the Dunphy family trying to fix their staircase.

The Office : 9/22 A great show, but they’ve lost star.                        

Parks and Rec: 9/22: We cannot wait.

Grey’ Anatomy: Do we really need to say a thing here, hm?

Parenthood: 9/13: Perfect—though decidedly trite—in almost every, possible way.             

Hung: 10/2—Cannot wait to see Miss Heche and her new antics, if any. 

Louie:  Louie Louie Louie Louie.  Need I say more? 

Blah...

My son is becoming too old; it is literally tearing my into pieces.

I feel claustrophobic right now living in this little, sports obsessed  town.  If had blond hair, big boobs, and a dumber mentality, I would be OK, but this is not the case.

I am obsessed with this blog, though the writer no longer writes it.  I have always wanted to be a carny.  According to the writer of this blog, and I believe him, I never woulda made it.  I am too much of a princess and I have a super hard time taking shit.  Anyway...here is the blog: http://diary-of-a-carny.blogspot.com/

Went to a corn maze today with my family.  I am having a hard time recognizing it is autumn.  I am sick on kettle corn.  The boy is playing his new football video game.  The old man just went in for a nap.  I need to get more serious about my writing.  But there is so much else to do, too.

Night Blogland.