Celestial disappointments

Events in the sky had a way of eluding me for the longest time.

The first experience I can remember clearly was the approach of Haley’s Comet in 1986. I was terribly excited. I was 9 years old and relished thinking about what I’d be like in 76 more years. A grandma? Rich? Bones in a grave?

On the night it was supposed to be seen, my friends and I were outside waiting eagerly. It was incredibly cloudy, but this did little to diminish my optimism. This was a big deal. Something incredibly important was about to happen; my life was about to change.

We didn’t see a thing.

We were all disappointed, but I was the most upset. My friend Beau’s dad took pity on us and set off some Roman candles in the middle of the street as a consolation prize. This was only the first of many disappointments.

My grandpa bought me a telescope, and much to my embarrassment I could never see anything through it.

I wished earnestly on the first star I saw every night. I said the little chant and everything, “Star light, star bright…” Those stars never gave me anything.

Everyone I knew had seen shooting stars. While playing outside at night, friends would regularly say, “Oh, look! A shooting star! Oh, you missed it.” I would train my eyes on the sky for long stretches of time and never did I get to see a shooting star.

One night when I lived in Richmond, there was a meteor shower in the middle of the winter. It was supposed to be at its brightest around 4am when it was twenty degrees. I was eager to see the meteors, and dutifully bundled up and stood outside behind my apartment building watching the sky. After a half an hour of freezing and not seeing even a single meteor, I went back inside. This was pretty much my luck until I moved to San Francisco.

I moved in here in July 2005, and from a bench with a friend in Noe Valley one night in November, I about fell over when I saw a shooting star. I got so excited that he was a little alarmed, believing that my standards for entertainment were very, very low.

Since then I have seen hundreds of them. I catch them randomly all the time, and in October of 2007 I lay on a blanket in the backyard watching for shooting stars and contemplating constellations with someone I loved. One night last summer while on a midnight drive down Highway 1 with a friend, we saw a gargantuan flaming blue meteor, hurtling toward the ocean and we screamed with shock and delight.

Last night I lay in bed feeling desperately like I wanted to move away. I contemplated the things and the people and the memories I would have to leave behind, and I wondered if celestial events were included in those.

In my head I am so far away from here.

I want to spend the day on a blanket in the park. A bottle of wine would be nice here, but not necessary.

I want to see Tennessee Valley up in Mill Valley, CA.



I want to drive to Santa Cruz and spend the afternoon riding rides. And then I want to go to that little shop with all the lanterns.

I want to be most anywhere but here at my desk, feeling as though the world is passing me by as I send emails to participants in a research study.

Numero dos!

When it rains, it pours!

Today I got a rejection letter from The Sun magazine for "Hypervigilance." I am happier because this one's an actual letter instead of an email, although they didn't tell me they loved my essay.

Still waiting for: McSweeney's and This American Life. It's challenging to find places to send my work because not everyone wants memoir.

"Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey..."

As many of you know, my grandfather passed away on Feb. 7. There was an insurance policy divided three ways that my mother, uncle, and I are supposed to receive. I got the paperwork for it today, and I was woefully unprepared for the flood of emotion that would along with the copy of the death certificate that accompanied it.

Apparently there is another insurance policy that is in dispute between my mom, uncle, and step-grandmother. Lawyers are being consulted on both sides. My mom's trying to tell me not to talk to Wanda. I want no part of any of this. I don't know who's right and wrong, but it makes me sick that they've resorted to this.

We loved your essay...

Oh, you with the breathtaking eyes...

I got my first official rejection letter today from Brevity for "Narrate My Life."

What a day it's been!

"How do you detox off that?"

This little piece "Before" has been getting a surprising amount of attention. I got another response about it from a guy I went to high school with.

My God Amie. How do you you sum up life so perfectly? I related to this in so many ways. You have a gift of reaching out and defining things everyone experiences in life that would otherwise be intangible fellings to others. Thank you for this one. It helped put some of the stuff Im dealing with in life into a bit of perspective for me. Sorry about gushing. I had an emotional moment. Thanks for that.

I showed this to my roomie and he read it and said, "That is a total junkie statement." I questioned him about this. He responded....

"That is what goes through a junkie's mind before every hit they take off the pipe."
I was stunned.

He had hit something in me with that statement. My mind immediately began disassembling EVERYTHING. Every possible memory or feeling I had began to fly through my minds eye, scrutinized to see if I had felt that way in association to ANYTHING else I had ever experienced. In about the span of a half hour, perception had, once again, shifted. I am, in essence, a junkie. A drug whore of sorts. My drug has always been acceptance.

"How do you detox off that?" I ask myself.

"Do I really want to?"

After 34 years of life, I still question why I am the way I am every day. Every once in a while, I actually get an answer.

Thanks again.

How incredibly touching and flattering. How incredibly like myself.

Response

My friend Seth sent a response to the note I posted yesterday. The original post:

Before

I fidget: desperate to otherwise occupy my brain.
I wonder: what if...?
I hope: what if...?
I vow: the last time, the last time.
I worry: long to be more than I am just for a little while.


His response:

her fidgets and wonderment, her dreams and promises, and her worries........... all the tiny pieces of a puzzle. intricate and meaningful by themselves, come together to create a vision larger than any of the individual pieces could have inspired to her imagination. you are more than the parts that make you. :)

I love my friends.

Before

I fidget: desperate to otherwise occupy my brain.
I wonder: what if...?
I hope: what if...?
I vow: the last time, the last time.
I worry: long to be more than I am just for a little while.

Today, a poem.

I have posted this here before, but it seemed like a good idea to post it again today.

Her Lips are Copper Wire
by Jean Toomer

whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog

and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes

telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate

(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)

then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent

Can I...

work up the courage to try it one more time?

This is ridiculous.

I'm tired of scaring the hell out of myself by nodding off on I-280 before the sun comes up. I think I'm going to have to start traveling with a pillow and blanket in the car at all times.

In other news:

I'm positive my creativity has left. Gone. Shot. My boxes wait unfinished. My new greeting cards wait patiently for captions. Large portions of my bedroom walls remain bare. I have unwritten stories in me yet that haven't figured out how to come out. Even words I love hearing and reading are in short supply. The most interesting creative endeavors I have coming up are an origami paper unicorn centerpiece and a meat-shaped cake. Things have to get better.

I think it may be this whole full-time job nonsense. Note to self: Must put in more nights on the street corner so I can cut back on the 40 hour/week gig.

Haiku

On the way home tonight, I saw a hippie dude with a guitar in front of the DeLano's grocery store singing what he described as a haiku:

"Please don't murder me.
I hope you don't murder me.
Please don't murder me."

Choices

Yesterday I had the most hideous day at work.

It's not even worth going into, especially since this is a public blog and I need this job. But on the way home I was in tears and trying to think of what to do to help myself feel better. It was tempting to choose from any number of destructive things, but I'm trying hard NOT to do that.

So I went to Target.

And I bought some inexpensive but luxurious items: butter cream body cream, mascara, foot pumice, intensive hand cream, body wash. I felt better, I felt better about myself, and I smell fantastic.

Amazing powers of description

"Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to the other. She looked exquisitely calm, but impressively sad."

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

Janie had tried to show her shine.

"She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

On the meeting of Eddie and Ruth Ann

(They were my maternal grandparents.)

He was on a street corner waiting for a bus. She was helping to carry a mattress down the sidewalk. He watched her go by, staggering beneath the weight of the mattress. He thought she was beautiful and wanted to ask her out, but she looked rather busy at the time. Every time he went to that bus stop after that he looked for her; it put a little extra bounce in his step on the way to catch the bus. Finally one day she was there.

She stood primly off to the side in a long red coat, looking much more put together than the day she was carrying the mattress. He felt nervous, but the memory of the long wait to see her again spurned him to action. He quietly introduced himself and asked her for a date, and she accepted with a smile.

The rest is, well...

Bad joke

Yesterday while urgently searching for over-the-counter allergy medicine, I had to be reminded that they now keep it behind the pharmacy counter so the quantity you can buy can be controlled so as to reduce the chances you're converting the pseudoephedrine found in it to meth. I had to show I.D., sign a form, and turn around in a circle three times with my hand over my heart to promise I wasn't making meth with this allergy medicine. While signing my name, I asked the pharmacist, "This is all to keep me from producing meth, right?"

"Right," she answered.

"Well, fortunately my meth lab is already well-stocked," I replied.

She did not look amused. I might be on some kind of narcotics watch list or something now.

Text message conversation with S.

A: What what the name of that Bettie Serveert song?

S: Life is an Imbecile?

A: Haha! I thought it said "Life is an Amber Sail."

S: That's not even remotely close.

A: Duh. That's why it's funny. At least I didn't think they said 'cock' like normal.

S: What's funny is that you can replace "life" with "Amie."

A: Now you're just being a dickface.

S: Oh, that really cuts like a knife, Bitter Tits.

Conversation

[Standing outside a bar in Oakland talking with a friend of a friend, A.]

A: I'm more of a whiskey drinker.

Me: Not me. That's my sad bastard drink.

A: What do you mean? Really?

Me: I'm serious! I have a couple whiskeys and I'm curled in a fetal position on the floor and I'm all like, "My life is meaningless! There's no point to going on!"

A: (laughs) No way. I can't even imagine that.

Me: It's true! (goes on for effect) "We're all alone! There is no God!"

A: I don't think I believe you. I can't even imagine you being sad.

Me: (stops cold) What?

A: Yeah, I can't even picture you sad at all. Every time I look at you you're smiling.

"Even me."