I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor. ~Lord Byron
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Name: Sian
I paint, write, and dance. Also cook vegetarian food.
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Maybe the best part of moving is the fact that I'm now reading books on the sofa in the livingroom, instead of holed up in my bedroom. Roommate #3--I've decided to call her Alice, now that she's gone. It's not her real name... just a horribly dark inside joke--was a fundie. Of the "If you want my opinion, just ask Pastor" variety. Alice talked about the DaVinci code for-ever, but of course, she hadn't read it. I, being a true heretic, on the other hand, own or have read most of the Gnostic Gospels and a large percentage of the Pseudepigraphae, and I like them. That's not to say I believe them, but I like them. And then, one day, she opened her mouth one time too many, and I realized that she actually believed that the DaVinci Code was written by DaVinci. That's the point at which you just have to shut up and get out of the room before you laugh in someone's face. It's really not worth it. So I read my hell-bound books in privacy, and now, I'm reading them in the livingroom.
Life is good.
We're moving into the local historical revival district--into a beautiful apartment in a hundred-year old building. We have a gas stove and hardwood floors, and best of all, we can actually discuss books that we actually have read with other people who actually have read them, too. Yes, we finally managed to convince someone that we are responsible adults. So, I sent my new address to my mother, along with the website for the neighborhood (which shows pictures of the building from different time periods) and now, I'm going to start looking at all kinds of nifty furniture and cookware to go with it.
And Not a second too soon. Roommate #3--notice how easily #3 lifts out and disappears--was home with her "boy-friend" last evening. "Boy-friend" said some things... Dear lord, the man actually giggles.... and it just struck me. You actually are retarded, aren't you? Not just dull-normal, or slightly below average, but actually verifiably, quantifiably, certifiably retarded. And the girl doesn't even notice! She seems to be making a hobby of not noticing things, lately... Still hasn't noticed the fact that I have a new job.... Still hasn't noticed any of the posessive, obnoxious things that the man says to her. One of his favorites is some variation on the theme of "You aren't going there to meet men, so...(it's fine, if you look like shit.)" He likes to push her to dress in clothing which matches his own. Hmmm... Do you know how many men I've bought clothes to match? Not too darn many, and they were all members of my competitive dance team. But I do think he actually is retarded. How can you not notice if your boyfriend is that much dumber than you are? And let's face it... this guy doesn't have either the looks or the money to make up for it. I mean... if she were dating Joaquin Phoenix, I'd understand... If you get much uglier or poorer than that, you'd better be able to hold up your half of the conversation.
Add in his criminal record, (domestic violence, restraining order fun and excitement) and it's time for me to either sell tickets for the day she finally gets her head cracked open, or get out.
The guy I asked for advice on this told me to sell tickets at $5 a pop, and then have a cash bar to make up the difference, but I still went for "get out." I'm leaving. I'm just not going to keep watching "the cycle." You know the one. Wife Beater's Wife in search of Wife Beater. She finds a guy. Dates him for a while. When the signs become so obvious that even someone who's been dead for ten years can't miss them, she dumps him, swears off dating for a few months, and then moves on to the next one.
No... I'm not too tolerant of women who insist on seeking guys like this out.
They know what they're looking for. They try to find these guys. I mean come on! How else do you find every single one? That's like getting every single answer wrong on a true-false test.
It ain't chance.
If you're picking losers all the time, make no mistake: you are choosing losers.
It is a choice, and you are perfectly capable of making some other choice.
Don't expect sympathy from me, if you keep choosing the same kind of man over and over and over again.
There are easier ways to kill yourself.
I was up really late last night. Almost 2 o'clock in the morning, and then, it seemed like something happened to wake me up every two hours since then. It's not really 11 my time. It still feels like 4 in the morning, and yet, I am awake. Fully, painfully, awake... I finally gave up when my phone company IMed me to thank me for my payment. Yeah. Sure. No problem. I'm so tired, I can't even think, right now...
I'm also fairly sure that all I had to eat between nooon and now was a slice of pie with coffee, so I should probably start thinking about breakfast.
So tired that I can't make my mind follow what I'm reading... what I'm writing... I like to get up and read brain-candy in the morning, and even that, I can't really track.
The Catholic Church has told the Italian people not to vote, and as it turns out, most of them are, in fact, still obedient. They pretty much got up this morning and just ignored a national election. Life can't be put to a vote. Life? Well, they don't actually mean you or me. Or millions of Jews in the holocaust in which Holy mother Church was complicit. They mean a couple of cells in a petri dish. A couple of cells in a petri dish are sacred. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm a little pro-choice. Not enough to really care how a vote turns out in Italy.
But what the Church has done is to tell people to boycott Democracy.
Not to voice your opinion, not to vote your conscience, or even to vote the Pope's conscience. Boycott the process, entirely.
That, I care about.
There's something bigger, here, than whether a few women die in back alleys, or even whether a few embryos get washed down the laboratory sink.
Do you see it?
Right there.
That's how tenuous the world's hold on Democracy really is. Even in the developed world. Even among the educated, even among people who were raised believing that Democracy is the best system of government in the world, even in the birthplace of DaVinci and Galileo and Machiavelli, even in the very seat of the Renaissance, all it takes to make people betray Freedom and Democracy, is a whisper from a guru in a temple.
That's so little!
Someone should say something about it. Some wise old man should point, and say to his grandson, "See how easily it could all slip away!"
Today, the Italian people have made a political statement.
That statement is not that Life can't be put to a vote.
The statement is that Democracy doesn't matter.
Roommate #1 and I stayed up until 3 o'clock in the morning gossiping and making brownies--the kind where you squeeze caramel all over the tops before you bake them. Roommate #3, as usual, mostly just ignored it. I have noticed this: my friends and I have relatively few rituals, and the ones we have are very simple, but one should never doubt that they are mandatory. It doesn't really matter what they are--and they usually aren't much--but you have to be there. In spirit, at least. In the time since I've been in this house, there have been several of these things, and they always re-settle, each time a new roommate moves in. Originally, there were three of us, and the ritual--the big one--was movie night. We'd sit around and watch movies and eat popcorn. Then, one of us moved out, and the ritual was watching Fear Factor. Just one of those things. Then, when Roomie #1 moved in, it wound up being late-night brownies. No, not the coffee shop, although we do that on a fairly regular basis. It's the brownies. Except, of course that #3 never quite caught up with us on Brownies. So, by choosing not to be there, she has really chosen not to be a part of the group. It's really that simple. She doesn't have to be there, all the time, but she has to be there, some of the time. In the beginning, we would have arranged it so everyone could be there... but as the group was defined, it came to exclude #3.
There are others. My Greek class used to show up and study in the hall outside our classroom for about an hour before class started. Five days a week, with a rotating roster of players, but sure enough, the people who didn't were the people who quit or flunked out of the class. My cousins host each other's baby showers. Long distance, if necessary. I have a friend I used to eat Chinese food with--every Wednesday at 7:00. Horrible, greasy stuff.
I think all of western civilization is just a bunch of little teas between women. I mean, look at Rome. A bunch of chicks deciding over coffee that they don't want to leave their husbands.
My love life is definitely looking up.
Well... the odd little man I sometimes talk to at the library kissed me, yesterday.
I'm not entirely sure whether he's actually homeless, or just nuts. He always tells me about his kids, and whatever jobs he's applied for (he never actually gets jobs, just appplies for them.) It can be entertaining; he has his own homespun philosophy, and if you let him, he can go on for hours.
So, yesterday, he came over to say hello, and kissed me on the cheek.
He's about 65 years old, missing several of his front teeth, and not all that much taller than I am. He looks a like a scrawny little two-legged goat. Damn near the most harmless-looking thing I've ever seen. Always smells like cigarettes and Colt 45, but I've never seen him drunk.
You know the type.
Always seems like I have a few people like that around. People who interest me; people who are willing to sit under my microscope and be dissected.
You have to.
Today, I am toasting marshmallows over the kitchen range. There's no real reason for this decision, apart from the fact that I'm bored, and I happened to walk past a package of marshmallows in the store. Thank God I did, because I could be toasting mushrooms at this very moment. So, there you have it... the only element of camping that I ever liked brought into the air-conditioning.
I'm unspeakably accident prone. When I go camping, I'm mixing this with water and fire. You can imagine the results.
My mother called me to ask about computers, this morning. Somehow, I've become the family authority on these things. The question today--the one that was worth waking me up about--was whether or not she could go in a chat-room to talk about plants. Yes, mother. Fine. Yes. Fine. Just remember you don't really know these people. No. You don't. No. Not even if they have rhododendrons. No. (Not, of course, that I envision a bunch of plant people coming to get her, but I always push caution, because she's my mother.) No. Not all chatrooms. Some chat-rooms are about rhododendrons, and not about raping and murdering small children. Yes.. Uh huh. Just use your common sense.
And then I tried to explain the difference between a chat-room and a bulletin board for her.
And then, we started to do the crossword puzzle. (I have a great long-distance plan.)
The truth is, I probably talk to her more, now that I'm living five states away than I did when I was just down the street.
She's a product of that in-between-generation. They had computers, when she was in school... in fact her university had one. It was a great source of pride. At the senior center, she's the one all the other people ask, if they have questions about what they 're doing. If she doesn't know, she asks me.
She says there are two reasons for this. She feels bad asking (family computer geek's name here) because he does it for a living, and he won't take any money from her, and that's just not right. and I'm just so good at explaining these things.
There are two types of people in this world... people who misspell words they've never seen, and people who mispronounce words they've never heard. Mispronouncers are people who read. Alot. They have learned more vocabulary by reading than by talking. They may pronounce Pinot pie-knot, but at least they can use the word in a sentence. It's one of those moments of recognition, that yes, someone other than me has the same habit, the same shortcoming. Yes, here is someone else who has spent far too many hours in the library... here is someone else like me.
I found a tour company that specializes in tours for people within 4 million years of my age. I'm debating. And back and forth I go. On the one hand, it wouldn't exactly kill me to have some sort of enforced itinery. On the other hand... well, I have some very clear ideas of where I want to go on a trip to Italy. Absolutely must make a pilgrimage to the Cappucin monastery--the birthplace of Cappucino, and by extension, White Mochas and beatniks. Okay, so it probably isn't the place where I want to have honeymoon pictures taken, but I still want to go there. Is it on the list? Absolutely not. Some people just don't take their coffee seriously.
The phrase "we continue past Genoa and Milan " was found on this website. Past? Thank you very much, I would rather not "continue past" Genoa and Milan. Okay... so I look up the next place that is on the list. Which evidentally has an excellent soccer team and some charming 14th and 15th century buildings. Not open to the public. Which... well, given a choice between watching soccer, and plopping myself down and waiting for the caretaker to come and open said building to me... well, I wouldn't pick soccer. Then again, it is beautiful. Not beautiful enough to skip Milan, but beautiful enough to add to Milan. So, of course, I want to go there. This doesn't help the decision at all. Now, I want to do Genoa and Milan, and Como, so, here's where I start thinking about renting a motorcycle and planning my own damn vacation.
Can you get a Goldwing in Italy?
Okay... so there's no way that I'd get my roommate on a motorcycle. Sidecar, maybe?
I have issues all up and down with the way time is divided up on the tour. I think the general problem is that they want to tour Italy in 13 days, and I pretty much want to move in for good. They're trying to schedule something, and I'm trying to stay in these places until I'm good and ready to leave. Which pretty much means forever. I also notice a distinct lack of interest in any of my family history, which means that they are not willing to stop the tour bus and let me out at any of the places my grandfather used to talk about. They also show no interest in dropping off cookies at Marcella's which would really annoy my grandmother. So, maybe what I need is a tour, followed by my own personal, Vacation by Sian time.
I went to the local art museum yesterday. There was nothing there that I feel like I should skip down the halls rejoycing that I had seen, but it was a pleasant afternoon, anyway. They have a small collection of ancient art--a black figure vase, here, a cycladic figure there.... well, actually, crammed into one of the most claustrophobic galleries I've ever been in. Really, there were two other people there, and I felt like I should introduce myself. I like art galleries. They are, perhaps, the closest I'll ever get to a religious experience. Not that I'm an Atheist, but somehow, I've never connected through church--neither with the loud, braying fundamentalists, nor with the more traditional ritualists, nor even, perhaps, with the intellectualists. I feel that way, when I paint, too. Maybe it's just that it's the closest my skeptical little mind can come to believing that humanity, with all its petty, destructive flaws, truly was created in the image of a Creator God.
It's a big building, and most of the time, I was alone. There's another gold-star for art museums, and that's being left absolutely alone to enjoy the space and design of a major public building, while at the same time, being absolutely safe from any of the things that prowl around other empty buildings. I passed several students, who had their notebooks out, and who probably never noticed me, at all. So busy copying down the wall-plaques. There were a few security guards, who walked through. Like security guards at all museums, they had been carefully trained to make as much noise as possible. One of them--I kid you not-- was actually twirling his keys. There was a pair of pepper-pots (now, a multi-cultural descriptor, by the way) who seemed to have come mostly to talk to eachother, and for a while, it seemed as though I'd be listening to them echoing all day, but I lost them, somewhere between antiquities and eighteenth century France. Deliberately, actually. I passed them while they were in antiquities, and then back-tracked, after they were fininshed, and aside from just a hint of "well, I never..." as I passed them, I never heard from them, again.
The only person who actually seemed to "get it" was an elderly gentleman I passed in the Italian Baroque. I was going one way, and he, the other. We each took what time we wanted in our respective galleries, perfectly aware of eachother's existence. He waited for me to finish in my gallery (after all, it was the gallery which had lured me there, in the first place.) Then, we smiled, nodded, and silently exchanged galleries. That's my kind of person. I hope I see him, again, sometime.
TiVo makes obsessive compulsive behaviour so much easier. It really does. I would never have had the patience, or for that matter, the interest, to track any actor for long, if I had to do it the old fashioned way, by cross referencing TV guide with his filmography, and then watching the movies when they come on, and I certainly would never spend the kind of money that's involved in building up the all-Jean Marais video library. But, TiVo allows me to program a computer to obsess for me. I program the computer to look up said actor or actors. And they are almost all actors--only part of whom I love for their minds-and then it just records, and I can obsess at my leisure. The truth is that I pay absolutely no attention, as a general rule. Most of the people I've entered in the thing are people who pop into my head while I'm watching TV. As in "Oh, yeah... him. What else is he in?" And when I find out, I usually realize that I've been watching said person for most of my life. As in
Really? He was in that? Are you sure? So I watch whatever it is, and sure enough, there's such and so, up to his shoulder in a cow, pretending to be a veterinarian.
I have an academic's body. I don't mean that, in the sense of stick figure, TNT librarian, but in the one osteology lecture, too many sense. I looked in the mirror before my shower today, and realized that the angle of my shoulders marks me as exactly what I am. Not, mind you, a massive deformation, nothing that you notice, if you saw me walking down the street, but it's still definitely there. Shoulders shaped by the weight of too many books in my back pack. I don't really care. But I can see myself, a thousand years from now, stripped down--boiled down, however they do that, now--to my bare bones dangling in some Anth class while a professor (who looks, surprisingly, exactly like my old professor) lectures on how when you see this curvature, without any accompanying marks of strain on the radius or ulna... well, that means you have an academic.
Is it really wrong? Am I actually going to hell, or do you think I can get off with a little time in purgatory? Okay... I lied. This morning, I got up, and on my way to work, I stopped at a convenience store in the neighborhood to pick up my caffeine. I like caffeine. In any event, the clerk at the convenience store knew me from Evil Grocery Store, where I used to work, and asked if I was still working there. I said that I wasn't. When she asked why, I told her that they wouldn't let me have time off to go to school. So far, so good. So, her response was, good, if they won't work with you so you can go to school, screw them. This is a single mother, who's mostly working her ass off to make ends meet, and I know that every class she takes is a hardship for her. Here's where it gets sticky. She asked where I was going to school, paused for a second, and named the local community college. Was I going there? And I said yes. Damn it. The short lies are the easiest.
In any event, she told me that she was planning to go there, and I told her how much she would love it. (Not a lie.) Then, I took my drug of choice, and left.
It saved her embarassment, I know, but the reason I did it was because it saved me time and effort. This is a conversation I've had about a hundred million times, before, and it gets more and more annoying every time. I already have my bachelor's degree, and I'm working on getting into graduate school. That much would be fairly easy--and short-- to explain. When I do, though, the next question is what my major was. Okay. Fair enough. I name my major. It's in a field so obscure that I couldn't even find a class ring to commemorate the event. How's that? Next question--and it's always the same. Nobody's ever, ever willing to admit that they don't know and ask--is either "Oh, you mean, like Shakespeare?" or "What instrument do you play?" No, I don't mean like Shakespeare, and as we've already discussed, I play the CD player. Sometimes the radio.
So, if I'm still interested in being honest, and I feel I have time to explain it, we go into, "No, actually, it's sort of a cross between Literature and History and Anthropology with a healthy dose of linguistics, just for fun." This usually results in the person nodding, either knowingly, or pretending to know, handing me my bag of groceries, and wishing me a good day.
Why bother?
On the bright side, if I am going to hell, at least I can't think of an appropriate contrapasso for liars. I despise ironic punishments.
Roommate #1 is in Vegas. I heard from her, and she's having a great time. I just don't get it. Vegas is Vegas, for crying out loud. It's the biggest slum in the whole world. It's a place to pass through, not a place to stay. Pass through on the way to what, exactly, I'm not sure. I've been there. I was going somewhere. Don't really remember where. It's hot, it's dry; it's tacky. if a painting of Elvis on black velvet were a city, it would be Vegas.
I always seem to wind up hearing everyone's confessions, whether I want to, or not... whether I can help, or not... and since Roomie #1 is in Vegas, I seem to be catching up on Roomie #3's life and times. She has made no effort to be a part of the group, but #1 goes on vacation, and it's right back to the status quo ante. Except that it isn't, and she just doesn't seem to get that. She wants my advice on situations she has told me nothing about. She takes it for granted that my opinion will be just like hers. This would be the roommate I haven't had coffee with in about six months. The roommate who doesn't join us for brownie and bull sessions. The roommate who--and I'm timing her, here--hasn't quite gotten around to noticing my new job. How the hell can you be living with someone and be that out of touch? I know that I have more in common with my other roommate, but still... has #3 been living on the moon all this time? Hellooooooooooooo out there!! How diplomatic do I have to be?
It's definitely hard to find things to do with #3. She's a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-secular music listening to seven-syllable Christian. So, I suggested that we could go to see the Messiah--Handel's Messiah--that is. She said that she'd have to research it and decide if she agreed with it. We have a new theatre, here, and she's been saying how much she would really like to get all dressed up and see something there, and that's why I wound up looking at Handel in the first place. (Handel isn't one of my favorites, but he was about the only Christ-Centered performance that will be at the new theatre for about three years.) Well, Handel has come and gone, and still no word on if she agrees with him, or not.
Roommate #1 and I frequent a coffee house which #3 would not approve of. Up until #1 moved in, #3 and I went to a very white-bread local chain, which, admittedly, made some great blended drinks, but catered more to the 3 peice suit crowd than anything else. Generic roommate time to just talk about whatever before it builds up and smothers you. Very important. Very important. There's nothing really wrong with the new place, but it does have a more eclectic crowd. Okay. So I turned around, the other day, and found myself nose to chest with an E-normous drag queen. It really doesn't happen all that often. But the point is, the whole dynamic has shifted. You can't just make it shift back, in a day. #1 moved in, #3 got a new (semi-compulsive) boyfriend, and started spending all her time with him. Is it my fault that the new dynamic doesn't include her?
So, now that we're back to just the two, pre-boyfriend roommates, for a week or so, she's talking to me as if everything were just fine--as if she hadn't been ignoring both of us for the past few months. Oh, yes. And she wants someone to lean on. Boyfriend is in the middle of a family crisis, and she just can't do a thing for him. He doesn't want to talk, he just... Well, sounds like a nervous breakdown to me. Then again, that opinion is perfectly objective... after all, I barely know the guy.
If it's really love, nothing can stand in your way. You'll overcome all obstacles, and **sigh* achieve happiness with the object of your affection. You will be faithful and devoted and... Well, I'm how old, and the great love of my life has been the Spinakopita I used to get at a Greek family's restaurant down the street. This was love, pure and true, and I knew it from the very first moment. You have to imagine the pastry that God would have packed in little Jesus's lunchbox. Breathtakingly light and crispy, with perfect phyllo dough. Golden brown, and brushed in olive oil and garlic. Delicate, but not too delicate; it crumbles in your mouth, but doesn't completely disintegrate. Cradled inside, you find heart of feta cheese and spinach, with just a hint of garlic. Melty and gooey, but not stringy, and not oily. Just perfect filling. If I had lived there, forever, I would now be waddling down the street, fat and happy.
But I moved, and by the time I got back, my spinakopita was gone, and I didn't know where it was. Okay. So the restaurant closed, and it's owners went to Boca.
Oh, the years I've spent trying to recreate that feeling!
There was the debaccle with the croisant dough. There was the Spinach feta pie thing from the Buenos Aires cafe. Such infidelity! There were a few dozen recipes, which I tried, and which always disappointed. After all, trying to reproduce my Spinakopita from a recipe is like mimeographing the Mona Lisa. It's an art form, a masterpeice. It can't be done.
Oh, and there were obstacles. I've waded through an ocean of cheep Feta, and battled my way through roomates who treat a pastry brush like a barbecue brush, uphill... in the snow... both ways. There was even a time when I found my garlic press utterly submerged in dishwater for... well, it could have been hours! But I have triumphed.
I finally got it right. We have been reunited, and this time, I'll be faithful. Really, I will.
Randis on I'm really beginning...
alohalani on I'm really beginning...
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beauty parlors suck
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