I Can't Feel My Face!

I feel so body-tired right now. At work, exhausted, mindless. Useless! Shiftless! A bum!

It's a sick, dumb comfort, but it's all I know.

Hoping to death and beyond that anyone cares as much as I do about saying goodbye to the ocean. Wanting to be one of the the tiny sea waves in the harsh wind that is swept from the sand, into the oblivion of the Pacific.

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[AN ASIDE]

I look at your pictures, at your words, every day. I analyze them and search for effigies of myself, hoping still to find remorse in your voice, hoping to find the flint glint of me that I've convinced myself you stole from me. But in the space and time between then and now, some strange mellowing has happened; your words/writing have become familiar to be, non-dangerous, friendly even. I know the rythm of your prose, the patterns of your cover-ups, your trends towards indecipherable garble (in good times), and honest clarity (in bad times). I say this only to the sea foam ether, but I enjoy your work.

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It is a hard truth to admit that I am lonelier as I grow older. In spite of having a loving (if pessimistic) partner, in spite of a thriving life, I feel the beginning of that black-rock loneliness that we have all heard about; I wonder how much further it will go, and how much it will affect everything that I presently have in my life. I am thirty-one years old, and there is still so much craziness that lay ahead.

We watched 'Synechdoche, NY' the other day (when I was home sick for the afternoon), and it fucked me up. I didn't particularly like the movie, but it brought up all the terrifying realities of being a human being who just keeps on going. The things that end up being our constants are never the things we expect; the partner, the house, the school, the job, the parents... they are not, I think, what end up being the threads we produce our life from.

My threads are, so far, frayed phantom limbs, just beginning to unclench.

It's late Thursday night, the M and I are several hours returned from our day-long sojourn to the Oregon Coast. I had the notion that a run around the Three Capes scenic loop would knock me out of my stress-induced Life Stupor.

I am feeling Very Serious these days.

I'm off of Facebook. Going on one week now. If you know, you know. If you've never had a problem with the addictive nature of online social networking and you think I'm weak/weird, then fuck you and stop reading my blog.

It's hard... I see old pictures that I'm in, but now I'm not tagged, my comments are removed; a ghost. A ghost dyke as a central figure in a chaotic portrait of queer PDX life in 2010, and I'm Not Really There. So strange. So needing to get used to it.

What does it feel like to reclaim privacy? What do I give up/sacrifice in the process?

Will I know what to do with myself once I've grown accustomed to a world where I don't worry about what 500 people think of my thrice-hourly status updates? Will I remember how to function in one-on-one social interactions again? Already, everything seems more fascinating and overwhelming to me, just in one week of being 'off it'. Like I'm hearing people talking about how genuinely interesting they are for the first time, not just tuning in for whatever sound bites I can pilfer and post for later. Not storing up quips and social fodder for the sake of accomplishing vague witticisms online... but seeing the people I interact with. Being able to consider my reactions, interactions, and judgments for a moment longer, and in real time. Knowing that I have all the phone numbers and emails I'll ever need, and that I will be fine.

We went to a reading this evening of a book about the Riot Grrrl movement, written as a dissertation by a woman who, admittedly, did much of her interviewing & research through Facebook connections. She stood at the front of the room, her advance already cashed & spent, and told the audience that if people weren't on Facebook, they most likely were not in her book.

That got me excited. Excited to think that, yes, there are feminist hermits out there, people who this twee doctoral researcher was too lazy to get to, who are off the grid doing God-Knows-What and harvesting turnips. And I Love Them, they inspire me, and I quest for that place. Where we can claim our power to say NO. NO, I am not part of this mad world, I will not be caught up in the dissolution of my own creativity, I will go out and hunt for the authentic, the pure, the difficult.

So say I, writer of a blog read by no one!

To someone in particular, but no one special:

All this time, I gave you power.  Because I believed that you had stolen something from me, something deep and pure and true that I would never know again in my life.

As I pass through these veils of aging, I feel that loss like a wound on my internal organs, and I begin to understand that there was a failing dam long before you erupted into my life.  

I am crumpled and haggard and not who I used to be.

It's so simple to blame things on heartache and infidelity and homewreckers (like you).  It's so easy.

I have fought so hard against the idea that you are a permanent part of my life.  You've moved into my house, put your greasy fingers across the photos on my walls, gobbled my precious food with your mawing fat face.  But you are here, holding up my babies and claiming them as yours.

What's done is done.  You challenge me to meet your pig eyes on your level, but...

There is the sound of a clear ringing bell in the air; it is quiet and strange above the cacophony of this bullshit dream-- but it's ringing, telling me to wake up, telling me to grasp on to what is real and possible, and leave the murk behind.  

Crunch

I stubbed my toe hard on Saturday morning. Really put a dent in the day's plans; we were all set to take a beautiful hike up on Mt. Hood. Blast that god-damned chair. We went up anyway, and I did not make it very far into the woods with my pulsating broken foot (it felt broken, at least). It made me really crabby all weekend long and the lady & I got into all sorts of terrible fights.

Many tears. Some yelling. All stupid.

So it's Monday, I'm at work, I'm enormously cranky and unsettled.

I think I need to figure out how not to drink. It exacerbates my depression and makes everything seem so epically dense and tragic. It makes my highs higher, and my lows lower. I need a little seratonin stabilization or I am going to rip this world a new one.

100 deep breaths per day.

*

I really like watching M.M. set stuff up in the apartment.  I'm consistently charmed by how smart and capable she is.

Lesbian homemakers, reluctantly.

Facebook Abuse and Stale Donuts.

Thank God, it's Friday.

M.M. lives with me; we live together, and it's smooth so far.  We had a brief disagreement over the placement of a corner shelf, but after some alone time, we got over it.

Walked to the carts at Greeley and Killingsworth,  had fat korean noodles.  Ate chocolate croissants and said hello to a chub-tailed young black cat.  Bought $6.00 rainbow beer, walked across a freeway, felt sunset, felt Friday, felt change and the holy winds up inside of my heart like a sad weeping song.

I've decided to live with the easel in the living room, after all.  I was going to put it in storage; I haven't used it in months.  But I was having some sort of intense separation anxiety... I'm 30; putting something away now has the significance of "okay.  I'm out of time on that.  I will never do that again."  Really!  You think I jest?  I do not!  I know that I'm just a baby, but I am scared.  I have too much unfinished business on my plate and it feels like some stuff will inevitably have to fade away for me to find focus.  I do not want my painting to be one of things, after all.  

Teeny Tiny

Well, a development has occurred.

M.M. and I are going to move in together; or rather, she is going to move into my one-bedroom apartment in N. Portland.

I love the apartment's location so much, and I feel pretty strongly that I never again want to take on a new landlord. The idea is that my sweetie and I live in this tiny apartment together with three cats and two bikes and lots of art-making equipment until the time comes when I can buy a house. I can save up a little extra change this way.

BUT, it signifies a big shift in my life; a very close/intimate cohabitation with someone by choice instead of necessity. We could have moved somewhere larger and more expensive, easy. No problem. But I love where I live and I want to make this work.

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Also, met with Millynn last night. It was a little different than I expected-- she is very bright and knows a lot about houses and all that good stuff, but on a personal level she was a little scattered. She had poked a stick through her eyeball (accidentally) and a friend was just getting out of the psych ward and in the mid-80's a sociopathic girlfriend screwed her out of a real estate deal, etc. But she likes pygmy goats and houses built in the 1920's, and i like both those things too. We'll continue to feel it out.

There's a totally run-down house across the street from Interstate Lanes (the bowling alley kitty-corner from Fat Cobra adult video) that, of course, has captured my imagination and I want Millynn to check on it and tell me all of the things that are wrong with it. And then, if I remain undaunted, I will look at it on Sunday after I complete my Homebuying 101 course.

I need to buy some bookcases.

Biked to St. John's today and napped in the grass at Cathedral Park, under the bridge.  

Attended a totally awkward picnic where I had to make small talk with someone who, gotta tell you, I just totally detest.  Gross!  Ew!  But it was fine and M.M. and I biked away and all was well.

St. John's would be a fine place to buy a home, I suppose.  The commute is a little forever, but it's nice out there... a fine and cliff-dwelling place to set my sights.

Meh to feelings.  My cat watches birds.

Saturday coffee and sounds of lawnmowers.  Or is it a weedwhacker?  

I'm reading a book by the National Association of REALTORS (their capital letters) telling me that I should probably be making $17,000 more per year (gross) before I start looking for a shitty 1-bedroom hovel in Gresham.

But I persist.  Today's plan includes looking for bookshelves on Craigslist and giving space to M.M. so that she can decide if she wants to move herself and her two cats into my 1-bedroom apartment.  It would be tight, but I'd save a bunch of money.  Life is imperfect and I'm kind of tired of searching for places to live.  I'd rather get rid of a bunch of my stuff and make room for someone else.  I love this neighborhood, this proximity to everything.  I want to live it out as much as possible.  

I would not be able to afford an inhabitable house anywhere around here, I don't think.  Far N Portland, like West/North of St. John's, is probably the closest thing I could afford.  This process really is going to force me away from my tendency for jealousy, otherwise I'll be jealous of all 12,000 houses between my current apartment and where I'll eventually live.  Jealousies like "oh you motherfucker, you fucking bought a house with your parent's money that you don't deserve".  I need to shut up with that business, because it does not bring Positive Energy into my life.

Positive Energy.  Drink another cup of coffee.  Meeting M.M. at the Alberta Arts Hop at 2 p.m., near Vita Cafe.  

Maybe I will get a hanging indoor plant or plant the sunflower seeds today. Must borrow shovel.

I'M GOING TO BUY A HOUSE.

I've decided that I really am going to buy a house.

I allow myself the fullest range of waffling on this decision, but hear me, right here right now:  Today is the official day that I officially begin my search.  

I called Millynn James, a local lesbian realtor whose MSRP search engine I've been secretly using for the past two years.  She sounds kinda gruff on the phone, but she laughed at my neurotic jokes, so that's a good sign.  We're going to meet in person on Tuesday, like a blind date that ends with a giant mortgage payment instead of marriage.

So what I'm thinking here is that I'm going to start using/writing this blog again, knowing that most likely no one in the universe is reading it, so that I have a stable place to pour out my day-to-day tragedies of the extensive and harrowing first-time home-buying process.  It's a way to validate and reify the fact that I am, indeed, throwing my "oh I might suddenly move to Germany" despondency to the wind and hunkering down to the possibility of homeownership.

M.M. is, of course, roped into all this.  Her grad school debt is so fucking epic that she would never be able to actually help me buy the place, but she can move in with me and help me pay rent.  And, AND, it should be noted because I am notoriously selfish, I am looking for a place with a nice yard so M.M. can raise chickens.  

Enough room for chickens, and no fucking granite countertops, for under $180,000, within walking distance of non-Starbucks coffee, West of 42nd and North of Alberta.  as long as I buy within the next seven months, I don't think that's too much to ask.

Famous last words.  I'll keep you posted.