The Weird Kid

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

It's Christmas Eve. I'm just so happy. I should write it to myself because it isn't going to be interesting or well written, it's just pouring out, but this is my writing medium now.

Everything has been right. My tree has decorations, and they're good, they're just right, I made them myself, all of them, from salt dough and Sculpy, I tied red and gold ribbon around the branches. Big fat lights, like they had when I was a kid. Sweet and good..the smell, the feel. I hauled the tree myself. Effort equals reward.

I made Smudge a bunny, knitted it from purple yarn. Sean says it looks like a rapist bunny, the kind of bunny that kills drifters. A little crazy eyed and Frankenstein stitched. I think it's so cool. She isn't interested in it now, but she'll take it to college with her when she leaves.

Tonight we furthered our tradition. So important to have solid, happy traditions, so we're making them. Such a luxury, to do the same safe warm thing every year. Handmade candycanes from the hippie store, coco, and Emmet Otter's JugBand Christmas. Smudge and I laid against Sean, against his broad chest and soft robe, Smudge swayed to the music and clapped after songs. She stood, and when Sean held out his hands for a hug, she grinned so wide and leapt onto his chest, into his arms, and he laughed and I started to tear up a little. This is so...happy.

I'll make turkey tomorrow for us, just us, and real potatoes. I'll watch more cozy winter Dr. Who and we'll all open presents that someone who loved us thought hard about us liking before buying.

I know this...I know how good this is. I know how special it is to have a good Christmas and not a survival Christmas. I've had so many years of those.

I'm so happy right now.

Well, the torrid toxic lust for which I burned for Myspace is flushing out of me.

It doesn't happen in nature, you know. Sudden interaction with all those souls you already buried. It also isn't natural that you should have all those different people, your boss, your best friend from second grade, and the person you have sex with, all of them receiving the same witty line from you, every day.

Except, to some of them it isn't witty, they don't get a reference to Star Wars, and so you are dumb. That exhausts me. I need to be able to tilt a little toward the personality of whoever I'm facing.

But, check this out. Got to thank the popular boy who was nice to me in 7th grade for being cool. Got to talk to the mother of a friend, a woman I always wanted to know with an adult mind. Saw pictures, saw jobs saw babies. Saw, oddly, that no one looked particularly happier than me.

Saw epilogues.

And most important, got to have one more tiny string hooked between my fingers and the fingers of far away people I love. So what if it is pretty much them saying, "Jeez it's cold today!!!"? I'm glad to know it, in their case.


But still, not my blog where no one can compare my words to my face or my history or my house.

So pure here. I missed you.

MySpace.

Avoided, so long...though...it was lame....now....can't stop. Last thing at night, first thing in morning...so lame...can't stop.

Be back when I grow up

My under-editor at the paper said, "Imez, deadlines are important."

Madame, I disagree with your opinion, but as a journalist I shall fight to the death to protect it.


I don't think I'm being punished. She's moved me away from doing the "Theatre Notes," citing my struggle to meet the deadlines.

Listen, Under-Editor. You take the notes on, fine. You're about to find out how easy it is to chase down stage actors and directors for interviews. They're all way to busy ironing their black leotards and being marvelous fops to talk to me.

I didn't turn in any notes this month, as I told you, because the guy you sent me after was too busy basking in the refracting glow of his semi-regular appearances on "The O.C.," to talk with me about the show he was directing.

So she moved me laterally, to the "Book Notes," to see if I wouldn't perform better. Now I guess I will work with authors and publishers. I say guess, because she didn't bother to tell me. Just said, "have them by the 18th."

Yet I know booky things are infintely more my skillbility. It will put me in constant contact with people living out my dreams. This contact will either drive me to a very good, or very dangerous place. Either way it is movement.

Plus I still get to be the one to review all the plays in the city, because my reviews, as she complimented? me, "are solid."

So, let's here it for shirking responsibilities in a consequence free environment.

Super!

What the old-man postal worker voice said to me over the phone.

"Ma'am, you're going to have to learn to take some responsibility for your errors."

What I said.

Nothing. And then, "Thank you for your time." Because you can't be rude to a person who is the link to your only option.

What I thought.

First of all, it was in no way my error. Sean put the wrong movie in the Netflix sleeve, not me. And the fact that it was the bootleg he'd just burned, proudly bearing the Sharpied title of the movie that was supposed to be in that sleeve, only makes this more urgent. I need those Netflix back or they might ban me when they see we're bootlegging them. I don't have television. All I have are those goddamn Netflix.

Second of all, I never asked to have my mailbox converted to that monstrous block uni-box with it's un-negotiable mail deposit slot that not even the bent coat hanger we tried to pry the movie out with can penetrate.

Third, of course I can't perfectly prove they are mine! My address was printed on the part of the envelope I ripped off to open it! Its very clever packaging and more efficient that way, dammit.

And lastly, that is a very rude, unnecessary way to answer the question, "What time does the postal carrier stop at my box?" And I only didn't tell you that (though, you horrid thing I have so many unvoiced screams seeking release), because you have something I desperately need, you nasty little blue minion.

I hope this ends well.

I have been cheerful on this blog for a really, really long time now.

This is the picture of it. Of me writing my blog now.

Head down alongside the keyboard, single finger morosely punching keys. "i....like....sushi...and...stuff."

Meanwhile emails to friends have become long and inflamed. Forty pages on Thanksgiving alone...with sentences like, "cats don't even EAT fucking OLIVES!!!" and "I didn't see that last pile of her filthy underwear until Smudge was already in it."

Therapist says, "You only accept your darkness. You need to let your light live!"

My light. My Light. MY LIGHT. Where is it?

Yes. Give my true lighted self the chance, and she shall pee rainbows.

Poop leprechauns.

Dammit.

How do you people DO THIS?

I will have completed my pledge to myself to be....cheerfuller... at the end of December. It is important to see it through.

So.

I wait.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of January.

Things I Ended Up Liking When I Gave Them A Chance

1. Christian Boarding School

2. "Dr. Who" & "30 Rock"

3. Libraries

4. A Couple of Other People

5. California Rolls


Things That Were Still No Good After Trying

1. Christian University

2. "Heroes" & "Reba"

3. Danielle Steele, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, at the library.

4. A Couple of Other People

5. Sushi

Reverend Lovejoy: "Get a divorce."
Marge Simpson: "But isn't that a sin?"
Reverend Lovejoy (holding a bible): "Marge, just about everything is a sin. Y'ever sat down and read this thing? Technically, we're not allowed to go to the bathroom."



Went to Kate's place and got to thinking. This video started me off.




Okay, seen it? Now read what I havc to say about it.


Now, I used to embrace the sweet slippery flesh of Christian logic, so I would like to warn you. The "pick and choose" aspect of Christianity put forth in the video? That argument about shellfish and stoning your wife, wouldn't hold up when arguing with a Christian. All those wild crazy-beautiful rules were put forth in the Old Testament. Most Christians believe (for some damn reason) that Jesus did away with those thousands of rules upon his death, when the curtain of the Most Holy of Holies in the Temple was rent in twain.

Oh yes it was. Rent.

In twain.

(Side note...guess which side of Jesus's death the Ten Commandments sits on? OLD Testament? Jesus' death did away with the Ten Commandments? So I can have sex with my neighbor's wife after killing him while worshipping a golden goat and swearing all on the Sabbath Day? What, no? The Commandments weren't done away with but...everything else...was...and...oh but God you are a tricky devil.

Now, to be sure, Faggy-acity was condemned in both Old and New Testaments.

So, here. Better tuck this in your belt if ever you find yourself red-faced and desperately trying to shriek logic into someone's theology. This is from the New Testament, the one that apparently still applies.

"As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." I Corinthians 14: 33-35

Shut-up bitch. Go fix me a Turkey Pot Pie.

Now, rather than admitting they or their good lady wife aren't allowed to speak in church, the Christian will then argue that the time the letter to the Corinthians was written must be considered, the context. Which will give you the lucky opportunity to say, because you, like me, are sharp and witty and oh so right, "I agree totally. I'm so happy homosexuality's time has come."

But you will not win the argument. Because facts, honestly, are hopeless in the face of faith.


Anyway this isn't about facts.

So, I'm not a meme sort of girl. I mean it's a total honor to be tagged, but then it gets complicated with link backs and maybe the meme is a not-too-thoughtful questionnaire that asks my favorite toothpaste....So in fairness I can't tag others, though I really want to today.

So...just answer my kick-ass questions here. Unless you wanna do it at your place.



1. Have you ever been hit in anger by someone who about your same size?

2. Worst Grade School Memory?

3. First celebrity crush? (see above for Imez's, age 7.)

4. Some not in your family (and who didn't do abuse-level damage), that you have still never forgiven?

5. Someone you never said thank you to?

The County Historical Museum is a very good one, and the volunteers who run it can't see all of it.

The crazy-quilt in the Oregon Trail section with "Mildred Lassiter 1901" embroidered sloppy on it has a laminated paper sign that says, "Don't Touch" and god help me, I know it really says, underneath, in special ink, "Everyone But Imez, Who is Very Careful."

How can I not TOUCH? The stitches, thousands, were pulled by a hand that never flushed a toilet. My hand is where her hand was. We've opened a hole in time together, with our hands. And that fabric. All that fabric. It came from wedding dresses and petticoats and wool farm pants and work shirts and Sunday dresses and the first bedspread in the trousseau. That fabric doesn't exist anymore, except in books and this quilt. If I don't touch it, if I don't smell it, it will crumble without me ever having it.

I touch everything. I wiggle the thin leather on the baby shoes and sit on the floor to lift up the Victorian travel dress and look under it. I sit at the school marm's desk and the chair creaks and I remember the average weight of an adult female in 1925 and I stand up quickly, but still flip the enormous pages in her grade-book and pinch a sheaf of wide lined children's penmanship paper. The phone operators console says don't touch and I connect a wire from Portland to some other hole. I can't creep inside the Model T because a volunteer sits in front of it, so I stick my head in smell the leather back, and then punch the tires on the side she can't see.

I am a terrible, selfish museum guest abusing the privilege rented with my $3. I can't think of an analogy to describe why I feel like this. All I can think of is how I was too tired to touch the medical equipment in the far corner or the old dolls in the toy room. I need to go back. It's like, I'm still hungry.