spin

The more I enjoy what I write, the less people enjoy reading it. Or so I assume. I have been writing posts that don't make much sense, yes, but Jesus H. Buddha they are fun to write. The less sense I make, the better. Lucky for me! I haven't been making much sense since 1984!

Thoughts:

Kids really really super absolutely 100% need to be taught manners. Do yer job, you darn parents! It's great your child is involved in 475 extracurricular activities and knows how to catch pokemons, but could you take a sec to teach them how to not be deplorable creatures? AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, STAY OFF MY LAWN/TURN DOWN THAT DARN ROCK 'N ROLL/PULL UP YOUR PANTS!!!

I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going and it terrifies me.

Okay, I lied. I do know of one place where I'm going: Spinsterville. It's a town of spinsters, or rather a spinster. The population of Spinsterville is 1 and that 1 is yours truly.

I gotta worry less about online bullies and people I've never met disliking me for goofy reasons based off of fabricated tales. I shouldn't have to feel like I'm in high school at the age of 32. I should be way way waaay beyond that. I should be putting my child's macaroni art on the fridge while teaching them the importance of please and thank you and excuse me, can I have more porridge? If I was a mother, we'd eat a lot of porridge in my house and my angelic children would always politely ask for more more more -- not for themselves, but for the starving kids of the world. Bless my perfect children named Fallopian and Dog. (Fallopian and Dog are arguably wonderful names for humans to have. Have these names. Let's not argue about it. You'll thank me later, Fallopian.)

For the love of... It's only 2:45 in the afternoon? Why can't it be midnight? It feels like midnight, except it doesn't feel like midnight because at midnight I feel a lot more awake and happy and chill-as-fuuuuh. The mid-afternoon slump (right now) is rough. Everything feels like molasses. My mind, my words, my body, my thoughts. Slow slow slow. But high in iron! Here's your spoonful of blackstrap molasses, you pale, pale child. Drink up and feel your red blood cells multiply.

I got nothin'. Guess it's time to put on an eclectic coat and wacky hat and wander the streets of Spinsterville, stopping by the junkyard to find treasures. I can search for a purpose in life inside the tin cans someone forgot to recycle.

tune

Okay, let's try this again. I sat down two hours ago to write, but I don't think I actually wanted to write. I wanted to sit. So I sat, for approximately 18 seconds, and then I got back up, slapped on some red lipstick (slapped?), and took a walk in 102 degree weather. My skin began matching my Revlon Fire & Ice lips. I couldn't think clearly due to the heat and the zombies in the park, so I walked back home and put on sunglasses for aesthetic purposes and took a selfie and tweeted it with a clever caption and felt like I had accomplished something of worth and hey welcome to America today. Welcome to the dead end of my generation. Welcome to a land where lipsticks are given clever names and the nameless remain without adequate food and access to clean water. Welcome.

Oh yeah, so the zombies in the park. The zombies are the Pokemon Go players AND BEFORE I GET ANY HATEFUL COMMENTS THROWN MY WAY, let me explain. Actually, no. I don't care to explain because I don't care to take anymore time to discuss and/or complain about my distress over this app that is probably legit fun, but also a real headache for the curmudgeons like moi who want to wander around uninterrupted outside. I get that the zombies also want to wander around outside, but... but... but I was here first! And I'm enjoying the clouds and the birds and the trees and please please pleeeease stop asking me if I've caught this mon or that mon. I don't even know what a mon is, man. The only thing I've caught is a stronger desire to turn on tune in drop out, specifically somewhere in the woods with no wifi and plenty of real life pokemons (sometimes referred to as "woodland creatures").

Enough. Back to what I wasn't saying. What wasn't I saying? A lot. I have been typing a lot lately, but saying very little. This isn't necessarily a criticism, although I do have a talent for finding any and every way possible to criticize myself. My sweet self. My sweet self who tries so damn hard every single day but doesn't acknowledge it ever except for many sometimes in blog posts.

I do try hard. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. But do I succeed? That's where I fall silent.

So let's keep trying. We can wander around and catch whatever we choose to catch. Maybe we can occasionally catch ourselves before we fall silent? Catch ourselves a break? Break our losing streak of disregarding our wants and needs? Something needs to change and it's up to each of us to decide personally, privately what that thing is. I'm still looking for it, whatever it is. It is not to be found in an app on my phone. It is in plain sight out there, up there, in here. Let me access it. Let me pay attention.

meat

The beginnings and the endings are what I struggle with the most in writing. And in life? And in relationships. But the meat of the story/existence/love, I excel. (Would the middle be considered the meat? The middle is where you meet people and yourself and fate, but then again that meat and those meetings can happen at the beginning and hopefully at the end as well. So scratch that part about the meat of the story/existence/love and forgive me for not choosing more appropriate words and for littering the rest of this with unnecessary words and tiring parenthetical statements and questions.) Okay, back to whatever I was beginning to say about everything that comes after the beginning. The middle. I can handle the middle and I can run with it and enjoy the scenery, but when it's time to win (or at least finish) the race, I freeze up. My words grow cold despite the heat I can feel through the door. The trick is to open the door and let the warmth envelop the frozen, eventually leaving puddles of doubt to dry. So go open the damn door, Meg.

Okay, but here's the middle. I claimed mere minutes ago to be a near expert on the maybe-meat of the story, yet I'm stumped. I guess I have to be telling an actual story in order to continue, correct? All I am doing right now is slinging words on a screen and pretending to know what I'm doing. I am not sure I'm fooling anyone, but if I am -- thank you! Thank you for falling into my trap and boosting my ego a little teeny tiny bit.

Should I be writing stories? Isn't that a worthwhile thing to do with this vast landscape of time I have been gifted/cursed with? But I was never a fiction writer, at least not on the page. I was and continue to be a fiction writer of my day-to-day life, sure, but not one who comes up with plot and setting and characters and slaves away to magically bring them to life through the power of ink and sheets in my Moleskin. No. I was never a fiction writer. But a poet. A poet, perhaps. Perhaps a hesitant poet maybe probably kinda sorta. The unanswerable questions and all that's left out (in hopes that one fills it in with the senses) is what draws me to the poem. So if I cling on to the title of poet, it's best if I actually, you know, produce a verse or two every full moon at least.

At least. I have the sinking suspicion that I am doing the least these last few years. I have my moments where I am doing a little more than the least, but those moments are fleeting and unpredictable. I need assignments, I need directions, I need deadlines. I need a push a nudge a punch to the gut and the only way for me to get rid of the pain is to put it in poem form, formal or not. Just get it out. Get it out and get it together and get that door open and get outside where the fireball in the sky is fitfully waiting for something to ignite.

go

I wonder if constantly worrying about something is just my way of passing the time. Well if so, that's a pretty stupid way to pass the time. Pass time, kill time, buy time, waste time. Time out. Let's have a discussion right now about the now that is right now. There is no other now than the one that is right now. Now let's have a discussion about language and how we assign meaning to lines and shapes and call some of these lines and shapes naughty and other lines and shapes annoying, such as the lines and shapes that make up ointment and moist. It's the oi oi oi thing, huh? I don't find the oi obnoxious, but I do find Pokemon Go obnoxious for a few reasons I shall not discuss. Don't be pissed off at me for having negative feelings towards this particular app. Don't be pissed at me for using the word pissed -- do we have to discuss language again, hmmm?

What should I do this fall? (I sometimes hesitate calling it "fall" because I think I like the word "autumn" better, but then "autumn" can sound too formal and then I recall, once again, our language conversation we had in my mind about two minutes ago and then I no longer bother with preferences over lines and shapes.) Where should I place my physical body this autumn? I have a million ideas (well, three) and these ideas fill in the days and clutter up the nights and then before I know it months have passed and so has fall and now it's winter and I'm settled in for the long haul. Settled in to where I've always been. I forget that going places in my mind does not equal going places in the real world, this real world now populated with pokemons and shapes and lines and...

...and my three ideas are: Work at a Buddhist retreat in Northern California, work for a national park in a warm climate, and... Oh, I guess I only have two ideas. For now. I'll walk around the block in a minute and inevitably come up with five more ideas, some more fanciful than others, all forgotten the next day. Would I benefit from a self-help book on prioritizing and goal setting and goal achieving? You bet your beautiful ass I would. Will I read one? Sure, put it on my to do list, right under "write a poem about moist ointment." What rhymes with Preparation H? I will even accept a slant rhymes.

Now to take that walk. ("Where are you taking it? Bring it back when you're done!") Now to figure out my next step as I step around the grown men and women catching their pokemons in the park. They are not only catching creatures, they are effectively passing killing buying wasting time. Good for them. Good for me. Good for us, all of us, who have found successful ways to stave off the virus that is existence. Is it cold in here or is it just me? But out there -- out there we could die from the heat of the sun that gives us life.

toast

I am a foggy brained mess today. Is this what we call a Case of the Mondays? And can one suffer from such an affliction if they are unemployed? All days are Saturdays to The Girl Without a Job (me). Saturdays are my least favorite day. So I guess unemployment really isn't funemployment. I guess truth is stranger than fiction. I guess I'm getting a little sick of fiction. I take a break by reading supposedly true tales of loneliness. I find myself saying, "Yeah! Someone else understands loneliness! Maybe I'm not so alone in my loneliness!" And then I continue to read, exacerbating my loneliness. A curious creature I happen to be. Let it be. To be or not to be. Save the bees. They do far more for the world than just provide sweetness to our single slice of burnt morning toast. Let's offer a toast for the bees. Let's get down on our sore knees and praise what we don't quite yet understand. Let's then stand up and stand for something noble. But don't just stand there, walk somewhere. Maybe walk to the store and buy a toaster that doesn't turn bread black. Not that there's anything wrong with being black. Look, what I'm trying to say is that I don't see color. I joke. I see color everywhere, normally, but lately my eyes have been too focused on the page and haven't spent enough time wandering around, stretching their legs, taking in new sights. My eyesight is failing me because I fail to branch out and see the trees. The only tree I see is the corpse of one in my hands. My hands will never be free of the blood of a thousand and three trees, but my conscience is clean, as clean as the streets in the city in my head. It's all bright lights up there, folks. I may seem dull, but the city never sleeps.

reach

I hesitate starting my post with the word "I" because it just seems so self-centered. But isn't that what blogs are for? To satiate one's ego? And besides, who gives a rat's ass which word I use to begin a post or a tweet or a novel or a poem or a hahahaha, like I'll ever start a novel or a poem. Okay, I might start them, but that in no way guarantees that I will finish them. If there is one thing I can do (aside from toasting an English muffin perfectly), it is not finishing projects.

I (I! I! I!) should ease up on myself a little. I do finish projects -- it just depends on the project. I have to be almost obsessively in love with something in order to see it to fruition. And that kind of obsession tends to drive me bonkers (as obsessions naturally do), leaving me frazzled and anxious and euphoric and distraught and joyous and overwhelmed by the extreme ups and downs. Who wants to feel like this all of the time? I definitely don't, which might explain why I don't actively work on fulfilling long-term goals.

But that's crummy. Why assume my desires are not worth the struggle? The struggle is a large part of what makes the fulfillment of the goal so satisfying. Am I just becoming a motivational speaker now? Like, NO PAIN NO GAIN! LEAN IN! NO FEAR! Climb that mountain, reach that peak, brush your teeth, turn off the lights when you exit a room, mind your manners, respect other cultures, open doors for others, do not forget to floss. Not in that order, but also not not in that order. The order doesn't matter. What am I saying? I have gotten off course.

Maybe that's exactly what I need to do more often -- go of course. I stick to my protective, safe routines and schedules and habits and they do nothing but, well, just what I said: keep me safe. Safety is fine. In fact, nine times out of ten I would say err on the side of safety. But that one time I tell myself to take a risk, I want it to be for something I want. That something that may drive me mad along the way, possibly causing waves of nausea and a series of expletives at times, but man oh man is the view at the top worth it.

be

It is such a relief to sit down. I have recently said this, haven't I? Maybe I should get a clue and realize hey, you seem to like sitting down occasionally. So sit down occasionally. Because I don't. I don't even consider resting unless I have "earned" it. What I really need to realize first and foremost is that one should not feel like they have to earn basic human needs. I want food, water, rest, and genuine connection for all -- including myself.

I do not include myself in many things. I am, whether or not by choice, removed. Blame this on me being an observer, blame this on the trappings of social media, blame this on the weather (because I guess the weather is always to blame for all things). I believe, however, that my current hermit status has to do with me just figurin' life out, you know? Our lives are filled with different stages and phases and we're just going to make ourselves feel anxious and inferior if we fight against this natural flow of life.

So far this post has sounded like a diary entry of an 18-year-old college kid who has just stumbled upon a copy of The Tao Te Ching. I don't know if I am saying anything I haven't said 47,000 times before, but cut me some slack. How about I cut myself some slack? Okay okay, I will. I will cut myself some slack and then I will cut my hair into a conservative bob and shop for some slacks and put them on and put on a nonthreatening smile and step out into the world and step into my new life as a bank teller or gift shop owner.

Wouldn't it be a dream to be a gift shop owner? And by "gift shop owner" I mean Beyonce. It would be a dream to be Beyonce because she is a dream. Beyonce does not run a gift shop, though. She runs the world.

Speaking of the world, isn't the world a sincerely terrifying place? It is, and it's all thanks to humans. Sure, we've created astonishing things, but we've also created the atomic bomb. It's a bit of a blow to the ego to admit this, but I believe the earth would be a better place if all 7.4 billion of us were shipped off to Mars.

But we aren't going to Mars anytime soon. At least not all of us. So while we're still here, how about we try a little harder and try a little longer to make life easier and much, much safer for all sentient beings? I think that might be our one job. And no, that job isn't to be a bank teller or gift shop owner or Queen Bey. Our one important, critical job is to be as radically compassionate as possible. And it's possible. It always has been, it always will be.