Milan in a Nutshell

This is as much of Milan as I saw last week.  No, seriously.

My first European flight! (We ended up taking off at 8:30)

On the floor, JFK

Saying goodbye to my baby.

This was really my hotel room. It's a good thing I didn't really spend much time here, because I don't think I could get a good rest with a Nagel-esque Sophia Loren looming over my head.

Umm, this was 5:00 AM, not PM.  Tuesday into Wednesday morning. I had been on press from 11:00 Tuesday around the clock, and ended up finishing at about 6:00 PM Wednesday.

Third shift pressmen are third shift pressmen, no matter where you are in the world.

Nicolo and me, weary after a long night playing with color.  I am looking decidedly bedraggled.

What I do.

Vending machine in the plant, dispensing espressos, capuccinos, mochas, in the cutest little Dixie cups. These kept me going and I'm sure the multiple espressos didn't impair my judgment at all.

"No riding Razr scooters in the plant!"

You are required to wear gloves, shoes, an Anthony Hopkins mask, and Philip Johnson glasses.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Will This Year Ever End? -- Blabulous Blabbing

I promised myself (and thus you, my bloggy friends), that I would post more.

I've felt a little constrained lately.  To be perfectly frank, a better word may be choked, or suffocated, or throttled. Whatever the feeling, it's made me strangely leery of unloading here. Then I realized in the last few days, as I've done a little spiral slide down into what seems to be a bona fide mini-depression, or some kind of seasonally-affected thing -- whatever, it feels way beyond your usual holiday weltschmertz -- that I need to write here.

See, I realized I have replaced all the things I used to blab about here with lots of talking elsewhere, and now I'm starting to realize that one cannot replace the other. They need to exist in a kind of talk-write homeostasis, with some sort of surface tension keeping the thing quivering without overflowing.

Writing here = MUST DO.

I can't not write here. It's what I do. It's part of who I am. It's where I explore all the inny-outy places in my brain, the good stuff and the bad stuff, and hopefully make an occasional discovery about how I am at any given moment. It's a place where I can back up my truck (beep-beep-beep!), tilt the bed, and just dump out my garbage.  If anyone happens to be reading, well, that's great, but it's not really why I've written, or not written here.

And in not coming here and purging/cleansing/writing something/anything, I realize, I've become more and more rootless as time has passed. I've got to water the ground, or everything dries up and lately, I feel like I may blow away and disappear. Something that nourishes and nurtures me has gone fallow, and I've almost forgotten how to form a thought or how to express it.  I know my thinking/writing muscles are terribly out of shape. I think this is part of why I have been feeling depressed. Maybe it's not actually depression, but some sort of creative constipation.

It's not that I'm not on the bloggermajig every day, either -- I do read what all of my blog friends have to say in their own online spaces, and believe it or not, your observations on your own lives actually speak to me. I read the musings, the angst, the humor of my bloggy friends, and I always seem to find a place where I relate. (Even the fishing blog -- I don't know diddly about fishing, but I look at the pictures and feel a sweet sense of recognition in the Colorado landscapes that are so generously sprinkled there.)

Simply put:  Writing here is one of the ways I take care of me. A journalistic purgative. Ipecac for the writerly soul. And so, so imperative to my own self-care.

I'm still trying to find the balance between taking care of myself and nurturing a new relationship and remembering that oh, yes, there is another person involved in your life now, Aileen. (And is a relationship still considered "new" after five months, or are we just well into it? huh.)

I am finding this hard.  I've been alone for a long time, and I've liked it, and become used to just moving through my life like some implacable shark, doing what I want, when I want, and however I want, accountable to no one but me, myself, and Aileen. Since Dood is 1600 FMA (that's Fucking Miles Away, just so you know), I still have that perogative for the most part, but there are delicate areas of expectation and communication that have to be negotiated where I would have previously gone ahead and done what the hell I wanted, screw what anyone else thinks.

Stupid things like, say, disappearing into a bar with a friend for three hours after work with my phone buried in my handbag -- that's probably not polite, at least not without a call beforehand to say, "Honey, I'm going out for a drink with So-and-so, I'll talk to you later." Now, that courtesy call is, if not mandated, at least strongly encouraged, if only because I don't want someone to think my nude, dismembered body is lying in the Gowanus Canal.  And it's actually kind of nice, knowing there's someone out there who actually gives a shit where I might be at 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night.

We're also negotiating the "how much information about your past is too much information?" tightrope right now. He's of the "Ask All/Tell All No Matter What" school of thought, and I'm more of the "Ask Very Little/Tell What's Important and What Makes Sense From a Situational Standpoint" school. 

Apollonians versus Dionysians (interestingly, I tend to be the more "Apollonian" of us). Freudians versus Jungians. Jets versus Sharks. 

This has become another area of some quite lively discussion, and frankly I don't think we'll ever reach an accord on it.  We even got down to the specifics of what do you do with a text message from an ex? Well, it depends.  If it's pointless and means nothing to you, a random "Hi," showing up on your phone, what's wrong with seeing it, and deleting it without comment? I mean, it's not important, right? On the other hand, did I need to know his recent ex sent him one of those boohooey, "oh-poor-little-brokenhearted-me-I-am-reminded-of-you-every-time-I-go-to-the-7/11-to-refill-my-bottomless-Slurpee" texts on Thanksgiving morning? No, not really. It just irritated me and made me say, in a very mean voice, "Jesus Christ, won't the bitch just go away?"

For me, it's really situational. You pick your poison.  Do I need/want to know about the "Thinking of you," texts from his ex? No, not particularly. Would I need/want to know if he got a text from her saying, "Hey, I am going to be in Texas and I need a place to crash."? Damn straight. (And the correct answer to that, for the record, is "Here is a list of hotels," not, "You can crash on my couch.") Think of it as comparing a one-dollar bill with a Franklin hundred. They're both green pieces of paper with numbers on them, same size, shape and weight, but one has more value and can buy a whole lot more trouble. You can't go into Peter Luger and try to spend the dollar with the explanation that it's a green piece of paper with numbers on it, so it has the same intrinsic value as the hundred. You gotta decide if the situation is a dollar or a hundred, and prioritize appropriately.

But I digress. 

My sun sign is Libra: the scales. Most people assume that means I'm a balanced person, but what gets forgotten are the wild swings and tilts and UN-balanced moments that occur before the scales come to rest at that tenuous balance point. And that moment of balance can sometimes be upset by a mere feather landing on one side or another.

2010 has been a year of nothing but swings and tilts and having my legs kicked out from under me, it seems. Even adding good things to the scales, like a job promotion, or a brand-new, life-altering love, well, these are feathers on the scale, too. Stressors.  Good or bad, ugly or pretty, funny or grim, stress is stress. (For some reason this conjures memories of Mr. Knaupf in high school psychology class, and the terms "distress" and "eustress." Whether you attach a label "good" or "bad" to it, the physiological and sometimes psychological response to it is the same.)

Suddenly I have to think about my life, and the people in it, in a whole different way. I have to make room on the scales of my life for different things and try to make them balance. Put some on, take some off, move some around, hope things level out somewhere down the line.

I do have a tendency to go all or nothing sometimes -- and in this case, I went all.  I simply swept my arm across the table of my life, pushed every other thing off the edge, and said, sit here, this is all for you. I didn't even think to save a little piece for myself.  Now, this gets tricky, because once you've invited someone into your life and told them, you can have all of my time at any time, it gets a little sticky when you try to scoop some of that back onto your own plate. It takes some diplomacy (which I have to learn), and tact (which I have to learn), and grace (which I have to learn).
Being blurty AND quick-witted can be dangerous, because sometimes what comes out is mean as snakes.  Mean as snakes is not a good description for a girlfriend. "Ohhh, my girlfriend, she's mean as snakes. Funny as shit, but hoo-bob, don't cross her. She'll cut ya once and you'll bleed twice."  Attractive, no?

Anyway.

Those of us who write (for whatever reason, be it journals like this, or fiction, or history, or whatever), I think we have some cellular need to have a quiet place in our minds where we can go. We aren't doing one of the other arts where it's all about "Look at me! Look at what I'm doing!" We aren't singers or painters or dancers or actors, bleeding in public and making a lot of noise and then standing back and waiting for the applause to start. For some reason, we've chosen the most solitary, inward-looking art as our means of expression. We have something to say, and we are compelled to say it, even if it's just for ourselves. Maybe mostly for ourselves.

When I was a tiny little girl, my sister tells me, I used to walk up to her and hand her pieces of paper covered in the illegible scribbles of a 3-year-old.

"Look," I would say, "I wrote a story."

Even then, I was a child who needed to spend time in her head. Even as I was developing this personality, this loud and brash and silly and ridiculous "watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat," snark-laden personality, I must have had a need for some quiet place where my thoughts and ideas could ferment. Maybe it was just a natural reaction to living in a 3-bedroom house with six brothers and sisters, and it was my way of carving out that space for myself.

So my intention for 2011 is to re-apportion that time for myself.

To find those quiet corners, where I can sit alone and have my thinks, and write my thinks, and sometimes even publish my thinks right here in Blogworld.  To go for long walks on my own looking at things in my city, or to sit on the steps in Union Square and watch the people walk by, to go to a restaurant alone and eat a hamburger while reading a good book, or to just sit down in my own home, with no television, or music, or telephone, and cross my legs and exhale "ohmmmmmmm" into the universe.

In the meantime, I feel so much better right now, having written far too many words here, so thanks. Thanks for reading.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Oh, Oh Telephone Line, Give Me Some Time, I'm Living in Twilight

(This post started as a comment over at Gekko's place, then sort of grow'd like Topsy, so I decided it was a post unto itself.)

Since we only get to make the sex occasionally (due to the 1663.29 miles -- but who's counting? -- between us), Dood and I mostly do nothing BUT talk. And talk, and talk, and talk. And no, it's not all phone sex and dirty giggles late into the night -- there is that, but there have also been the quotidian moments of doing laundry, grocery shopping, taking a smoking break, and then some truly hard, painful, both-of-us-crying moments. There have also been the "I have to hang up the phone RIGHT NOW because if I stay on I will say something terrible that I don't mean and will regret later," moments.

See -- we made a commitment from the very beginning to total honesty.

First of all, we were just goofing around (what are the chances we'll actually really meet, I mean, you're in New Orleans and I'm in New York, right?) and felt we had absolutely nothing to lose by total nakedness, and then second, after the gooshy feelings started creeping in, we both recognized that the only way to sustain any kind of relationship is to be completely honest, even if it totally sucks at the moment.

Even if I'm afraid I'm revealing some aspect of my personality that will suddenly turn off the "love" switch*, it's out there for him to look at, and I'm mostly certain he's not looking at it and making a list of reasons to reject me, and same goes for me. (*part of me still thinks this can happen.)

I won't lie, this has been really hard. My inclination is to not talk about what I think, feel, and want. My inclination, sometimes, is still to shut down a la "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Because I am not verbally adept and I don't like confrontation (think "roll up in corner with arms over head"), I am TERRIBLE at arguing my positions. If I could rebut an argument by WRITING things down, I'd do it. If only it were so.

Every now and then, in the midst of a discussion, some double-edged Hattori Hanso words will come flying out of my mouth, drawing blood, surprising both of us.

"Your words cut me," he said, and the look in his eyes was:  First Tiny Heartbreak.  Which, for the record, made us even-steven that night.

And now there've been some changes to the Dood's life, which have curtailed our previous talk time. I am severely displeased by this -- no, actually, for a week or so, I acted like a junkie in withdrawal, but I reminded myself (thanks to zen for this) that I can accept it or not accept it, but it doesn't change the situation.  I still don't get any more talk time, so won't it be easier for me to just accept it and get on with things?

Acceptance is just easier.  And I do mean acceptance, not resignation.  As Cheri says, acceptance happens with your head up, resignation happens with your head down.  What this means is that I'm here, and he's there, and while he goes about his bidness, I just have to go about my bidness.  If he's in the middle of watching a movie that runs past the time I go to bed (I'm back to a somewhat normal bedtime again, those fabulous rangy calls that lasted 'til 3am had to stop sometime), then I just have to go about my going to bed, and we'll talk another time.

And so it goes...there is a longer-term goal in all of this, but since I've spent the last decade of my life training to not be "attached to outcomes," I also have to look ruthlessly at the possibility that it just might not happen. Life has a funny way of happening, throwing down obstacles that make you detour and end up somewhere else. Anything could happen, and might. I have to accept that possibility, as much as I really, reeeeeally, want that thing to happen.

Anyway, I only have to wait until my next birthday, and that's just 10 short months away, which means that it's less than a year away, and for some reason, that length of time seems completely manageable and suddenly I'm much more cheerful about it.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday (retroactive)

One Arm Out From Under the Porch, Waving a Tiny Piece of Paper With Some Words on It

Important enough for me to post and repost.

Cheri kicks my ass, if only I remember to go to her when I am feeling like crap.

Now, if only I could remember it:

Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but occasionally lovable.
Not special but....

But -- gawd-dayum I'm so pissed at myself because I haven't written anything worth a damn in a while.

Shit.

And FUCK ME, FUCK ME, FUCK ME, I wish I had written this:

Mr. Hayes probably got forty bucks for publishing this, but who the hell cares? It's freakin' beautiful ("I now know "bolt" is to lock and "bolt" is to run away.") and it's in The New Yorker.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

In other words, good ole Ozymandias was saying, you better read this, commit it to memory, before the copyright police come along and make me take it down.

Right now, I am jonesing for grace.

I'm Not Dead Yet

I haven't died or had anything really bad happen to me.

I just had had a tiny little piece of my heart carved out a few minutes ago after ten wonderful days of vacation and I will be back at work today.

Hopefully I'll be blogging full-speed-ahead again soon.

Right now, I need to pry the Mad Kitty from my lap, as she saw suitcases being packed this morning and went into full-on panicky clinging mode with all its attendant meowing and running from room to room and huge black accusatory eyes. She seems calmer now that she's realized it wasn't my luggage being packed, but she has planted herself on my lap as if she's about to sprout roots.

Right now, having watched my person get into a car that took him away from me to LaGuardia, where the good people at United Airlines will carry him even farther away, I'm too sad to cry.

I did my crying on and off yesterday as I watched our last hours trickle away, then felt the last precious ones were stolen from me, which made me jump up and down shouting, "Unfair! Unfair! Unfair!"

As the good Mr. Vonnegut said, so it goes.

More often than not, tears are futile and pointless anyway. And you can stand there jumping up and down all you want, and it doesn't make any difference in the end.

And sometimes you just have to realize that even though something is clearly huge and important to you at the moment, someone else will see something else as huger and more important in the same moment. And you just have to live with that. It's people, right? No one is going to see everything exactly as you do, and they are going to make the choices that seem right for them at the time. Agree to disagree.

I realize I'm sounding cryptic here, so I'm just gonna go hop in the shower where I can cry and pretend my tears are just more water from the tap.