the diabolical acts of melody

I was wandering in and out of a dream this morning, and I can't seem to remember where I put it... It occurs to me that minutia is filling my life. The details of some other person's life keep crowding in during my waking hours, and my most important dreams, goals, ambitions, those things that I have been convinced throughout my life that someday would be my life, keep slipping away out of the corners of my eyes. And I am pretty sure I am letting them. My current state of limbo is a different one than the dissertation limbo, which was closer to hell, of that I am sure, but I have definitely been here before. I am waiting for the next part of my life to begin instead of living the life I am in. I need to write and paint and build and stop planning. How do I do that? I cannot live with the same financial abandon as I did in my 20s, I am paying for that every day, but when I contemplate "fitting in" a day for writing or painting or building, a myriad of obstacles in the form of papers to grade, lessons to plan, bills to pay fill my vision and I exhaust myself with elaborate plans to attack the obstacles, and I forget the goals.

Well, and to be fair, I don't think the DVR helps...

I like being sick. Not really sick, lay-on-your- bed/floor/couch- and- feel(and smell)- like- death sick, just the kind where you get enough focus to do all the tedious things that seem like too much effort when you have energy. Those tedious things require that the world feel like a rainy day on a school bus or a walk through an aquarium. When you feel really good, then you lack focus. A perpetual cold may not lead to genius level ideas, but it helps with follow through. Maybe that is what a great work requires: spurts of kinetic energy and inspiration followed by weeks of fishbowl life.
Glug, glug...

My passport is getting moldy. I cannot seem to unpack the boxes in my house. I long for a fur cape and a Moscow winter. I long for a train through mountain passes. I wonder if I should join the merchant marine and see the world or if I am too weak. Weak in my mind? Weak in my spirit? Weak in my body? I think the spirit would fail me first. What is wrong that my spirit has become a scared little pink mouse, tethered to the boxes in my house? Maybe it was always weak, it is not like I ever did join the Peace Corps or backpack across America or live in New Delhi. I substituted others' stories for my dreams, and never made any of it real. When is life most real? Sitting in a train station in Wales, climbing a mountain in Asia, walking through an open air market in Sicily, smoking a cigarette on the waterways of El Tigre, feeling the spray of the water on the prow of a boat cutting across the bay in the Yucatan ... why do these things stand out and last week does not? I think it may have something to do with living in the moment instead of thinking about the next thing on the schedule. Thinking about what comes next. Fearing what comes next. The gut wrenching agony of trepidation. When did this first happen? Studying for the Bar? Is that when I began to think of life as something that was about to happen? Maybe. The Bar is over, my career in law is over, grad school is over, exams and dissertation are over. What comes next? When does life start? This is life, right?
This should be a technicolor moment.

Happy Independence Day! This year for Independence Day, my friend Casie and I, finding ourselves surprisingly in country, decided to do what all people do on Independence Day: find water and drink beer near it. In pursuit of this goal, we emptied the 6 bottles of beer I found in my refrigerator into a cooler, filled the cooler with ice, loaded the back of the car with camp chairs, towels, and various outdoor equipment and headed for the ocean. This is where the weekend started to go wrong.
For the purpose of background information, Casie and I are two single blonde women from Oklahoma who are both in temporary residence in the state of Texas. We are both over 21 (I admit, I am well over 21), have a few college degrees between us, have never been arrested, speak several languages, and have travelled and lived extensively throughout the world. Each of our cars have Oklahoma plates, and we both carry Oklahoma driver's licenses.
As we traveled down one of the state highways that enters Port Isabel (and finally, South Padre Island), we were pulled over. We had entered the outskirts of a town, I had not slowed down as quickly as the rest of the traffic, and the officer had recorded my speed as 45 in a 35. After protestations of innocence (I really did not see the speed limit signs, a semi had been blocking my view, but I had slowed down because I realized other traffic was slowing), and a long inquiry into the logic behind my Oklahoma plates and Oklahoma license, and another inquiry into our plans for the weekend, how long we had been in the area, how long we planned to stay, we were allowed to go free. He seemed very nice, really, and we were just glad he did not give us a ticket. This incident, however, was part of a larger pattern.
As we entered the national park to hit the beach, I commented to Casie, "you know, they may not allow glass bottles, look for signs." While we drove around we saw 3 anti-litter signs in Spanish and other assorted warnings, but nothing about glass. We parked the car, checked the signs on the steps down to the beach, and, assured there was no anti-glass policy, we established ourselves on the beach with our cooler between us. Between dips in the ocean, we each finished off one beer, put the bottles in the cooler, and began our seconds. Casie was overheated, and decided to jump in the ocean, so as I sat in the camp chair, drinking my beer, along tool two men in a golf cart, with "Code Enforcement" written on their vehicle. One steps out and comes over to talk to me, and I continue to drink my beer. He asks, "who is sitting here?" indicating Casie's chair. I say, "my friend, she is in the ocean," thinking he was going to ask for identification. Instead, he picks up her beer, gestures to mine, and says, "No glass bottles on the beach. How many do you have?" and opens the cooler. This deteriorates as Casie comes back and the supervisor gets out of the golf cart. After much threatening, "so who should I give the fine to? it is $250 a bottle" and cajoling "we looked for the sign." ("how could you miss the sign? there is a sign in english. there is a bottle with a line through it at the entrance, the universal symbol for no glass bottles.") "it is independence day." ("and we have to work.") we whipped out the flirting, "yes, but you got to talk to us." This argument apparently swayed them and after some investigation in how long we were staying, and where, they got into their cart and motored away. Casie and I were flabbergasted, but chose to make friends with a couple near us on the beach and went to buy more beer (in cans). The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful, we ate chips and canned dip, drank skinny coors lights, and watched fireworks, but the brushes with the law had left a taint on the day, and we were beginning to tire. Little did we know that the worst was yet to come.
The next day we decide to go to Mexico, buy some souveniers, and then Casie was to head back to Oklahoma, I was heading back a day later. Mexico was quite uneventful and we did buy souveniers and picked up some alcohol at the duty free shop. Unbeknownest to us, "duty free" is a lie. While there is no limit to the amount of things you buy in duty free shops in airports or airplanes, if you drive across the border (or walk) you are penalized (hmmmm, a tax on the poor from which the rich are exempt, shocking). You are taxed not only by the US government, but by the Texas government (even if you are not staying in Texas), and the Texas government will only take cash, so be prepared to pay a large fee at the ATM sitting next to the booth.
Thoroughly disgusted with the uneven application of the law, Casie heads north. She intends to stop at her apartment in Houston, and so takes the coastal route. 40 miles out of Houston she gets pulled over, for what she is unsure, but the police officer asks her where she has been, where she is going, and makes her show all the things she bought in Mexico, then, he follows her almost all the way to her home. The level of harassment in this land of the free is shocking. Maybe it is just Texas.

Man I hate Texas.

Why is refined white wheat flour so yummy? It is second cousin to the Devil after all. It is the reportedly the cause of obesity and diabetes and the dreaded "starch addiction," and yet, every time I try to make chocolate chip cookies using spelt or amaranth or rice or soy or oat or rye flour, it just tastes wrong. Like I almost know how to cook, but got the measurements a tad off. People smile around the crumbling, not quite rightly textured cookie, and say, hmmm, it can be healthy and yet tasty as well. It is frankly embarrassing. Additionally, the effect of pure grain flours on bread meant for grilled cheese are equally off-putting. I will gladly substitute a nice mozzarella (a cheese good for almost everyone) for the processed cheese slices that traditionally grace such fare, but the bread, the bread needs to be white bread or sour dough, and really, those are the only choices. We have a few technological advances here in the 21st Century, and yet, no one has figured out how to make refined white wheat flour good for you, even though they can stick in every possible vitamin. Tell me, why is that? What good is world domination if we can't pass along a healthy, yet perfectly yummy tasting chocolate chip cookie?


food for thought....

I hate suburbia. I hate people that love suburbia; I think it shows a lack of intelligence. I hate driving to get to the corner store. I hate that gas costs over $2.00 a gallon, and my car is a gas guzzler and I can't afford a hybrid. I HATE that GWB is claiming that the American people want a reformer in the U.N. and yet polls show that 70% of Americans think the U.N. is doing a good job. I hate that he misrepresents facts daily and there is no one in the press that will show the factual errors in every word that he says. I hate that Congress is going to cut funding to PBS and broadcast television, leaving us with only media whose sole purpose is to make a profit. I hate chain media and chain stores and chain malls. I hate that reality is distorted by the "news" and "reality" shows, so that no one is sure what reality is anymore. I hate hip-hop. I hate hip-hop because it is based on a musical form meant to rebel against the injustices of the inner city and now just sells gin, sex, and hamburgers. I hate people that love hip-hop, it is clear that these people lack some combination of intelligence, maturity and class. I hate.

GWB probably loves hip-hop.

Hypocrisy becomes me. I am not proud of this, but it seems that I find myself doing the very things I know are worst for me. I am a hypocrite in my own head. So I also get to self-loathe, which is not productive. Luckily, I hate other people more. It keeps me going. It motivates me to rise above my lazy mediocrity. I recently had a falling out with a person I considered a friend, albeit a friend with whom I had few things in common. One thing that came from this non-confrontational end to a relationship, other than the creation of a list of grievances should she ever have enough balls to apologize or, more likely, passive-aggressively ask me to explain what had happened, was that I realized how much emphasis I place on a person's ability to be courteous to strangers, to acquaintances, and to friends. I do not mean to intimate that courtesy is a substitute for honest discussion, but courtesy is more than a false veneer, it indicates that there is goodness and honesty below the surface as well. It should be noted that I believe that most problems can be resolved through frank discussion, and I would confront her with her affronts to my family and me, but I frankly believe her to be one of the worst people I have ever met and I have no desire to continue the friendship. In truth, I have had frank discussions with her regarding courtesy in the past. She is clearly not bright enough to catch on and I think she is so self-centered that she cannot see beyond her own tragedies and ambitions. The world is a beautiful place, and when people or things keep you from enjoying the world and creating more beauty in the world, then these things need to be excised. Write a poem, build a boat, and

rid yourself of the soul suckers.