My heavy bangs, which have in certain circles been predicted to be quite fashionable in the coming year, have been blown dry and straight, while the rest of my hair is sitting damp and limp on my back and shoulders, in the midst of a half ass attempt at being curly. I am eating stolen biscotti with my tea. How many can allege to have eaten stolen biscotti? Not many. I am now a part of an elite community whose sole claim is to have eaten a pilfered petrified pastry. I know what you’re thinking, but lets face it, life isn’t fair. I have spent more time writing today than I have in the past month or more combined. I wanted to say “writing rubbish” but I made split-second pact with myself to never call anything I write rubbish, as it would only make me think negatively on the little writing that I do these days. My canine encumbrance (notice that I’ve changed the commonly used ‘companion’ to something slightly more, um, accurate; this is no mistake) has been somewhere in the vicinity of my feet for hours. She is dreaming her doggy dreams, doggedly chasing something worthwhile (her tail) no doubt, with one eye open, lest a real threat (her tail) that needs her attention present itself.
I was listening to Tchaikovsky a few minutes ago because I needed something wordless and non-depressing (see previous Boards of Canada entry) to listen to. Yeah….no. That lasted for a couple of nocturnes, when I felt the little burrito of my soul unfold and begin to wither. I knew then that it was time for a change of pace. I selected track one of Best of Flamenco, which is, obviously, the best of flamenco, and pushed play. Now, not only is my burrito revamped and refolded, I’d venture to call it a burrito supreme.
Saturday, December 15
Transient Woman
I am in my car; I am the driver, pulled up to and stopped at a light. I am waiting to turn left. There is a transient woman on the corner, looking directly into my face. Directly, or so I imagine, just as every other driver must imagine, while we fidget with our phones or change the radio station. Any distraction, any device to give an air of busyness, of lost in thought-ness, of I-didn’t-give-you-money-because-I-didn’t-even-know-you-were-there-ness. The woman on the corner holds a sign that simply says “IN NEED.” Nothing more. No sob stories or case histories, no ploys, nothing to make you chuckle and subsequently donate for the amusement. The words on the sign were even spelled correctly, and each letter faced the appropriate direction. A simple statement, so fine in effectiveness, so effective in its simplicity, it shoots through every logical thought, every judgment, every grammatical criticism, straight to our wells, whatever the size, of humanity and compassion. Or so it should. But there’s no accounting for doubts, suspected deceptions, and the fear of being victimized by a scam. With these tools, anything can be justified.
These thoughts, in a situation of the seconds it takes to look down at the never sizeable and steadily dwindling stack of ones in my purse.
I have no job. In fact, I am on my way to an interview as we speak. I have less than fifty dollars to my name (including the changed change in the water jug, less the 8.9% fee (greedy bastards!)), and well over a thousand owed to a mess of places. Self inflicted responsibilities, drowning in them, everything a compounded result of a decision I’ve made. I look back at this woman, in her out dated and ratty jeans, her ill kempt teeth, sneakers dirtied by smog and street corner smut. She stands in the cold, moistened by a persistent drizzle. She has laid down her pride and she begs. I don’t know her reasons. I don’t know what decisions she’s made or have been made for her that have brought her to this specific junction in space and time. Despite her exposure to the elements, her lack of things, her necessary humility, I envy her. For her freedom. And despite my worries and pressures, despite my stress and obligations, maybe she envies me. For my…well, maybe not. Maybe for the respect I can have from others for being “respectable,” for doing what I’m supposed to do. Maybe she doesn’t need that. Maybe she craves it. I wonder, is the scorn of your species a reasonable price to pay for your freedom, for living the way you want to live, or the way you have to live? And what about the price I pay? Is the forsaking of your freedom a reasonable price to pay for the approval of your neighbor, for a completely insecure sense of security?
Theses thoughts, in the mere moment it takes for me to pull my eyes from my purse, and decide to keep my dollar for myself.
These thoughts, in a situation of the seconds it takes to look down at the never sizeable and steadily dwindling stack of ones in my purse.
I have no job. In fact, I am on my way to an interview as we speak. I have less than fifty dollars to my name (including the changed change in the water jug, less the 8.9% fee (greedy bastards!)), and well over a thousand owed to a mess of places. Self inflicted responsibilities, drowning in them, everything a compounded result of a decision I’ve made. I look back at this woman, in her out dated and ratty jeans, her ill kempt teeth, sneakers dirtied by smog and street corner smut. She stands in the cold, moistened by a persistent drizzle. She has laid down her pride and she begs. I don’t know her reasons. I don’t know what decisions she’s made or have been made for her that have brought her to this specific junction in space and time. Despite her exposure to the elements, her lack of things, her necessary humility, I envy her. For her freedom. And despite my worries and pressures, despite my stress and obligations, maybe she envies me. For my…well, maybe not. Maybe for the respect I can have from others for being “respectable,” for doing what I’m supposed to do. Maybe she doesn’t need that. Maybe she craves it. I wonder, is the scorn of your species a reasonable price to pay for your freedom, for living the way you want to live, or the way you have to live? And what about the price I pay? Is the forsaking of your freedom a reasonable price to pay for the approval of your neighbor, for a completely insecure sense of security?
Theses thoughts, in the mere moment it takes for me to pull my eyes from my purse, and decide to keep my dollar for myself.
Here is where I am. My legs are crossed into a Native American pattern, and just one of my dried and crusty feet sits in my lap, like some deformed, yet pleasantly quiet baby, wearing a golden ring on its bulbous, what would it be, arm? My lap, and similarly the remainder of my lower half, is covered in inadvertently stolen, sparkling cherry screaming pajama pants. They are very thin, very comfortable, and despite these things, not mine. I meant to return them before Lindsay left, but I didn’t, so I must accept this flamboyant night wear as my charge. I am drowning in responsibility.
I walked outside and downstairs today, only to allow my phone charger eating, constipated, asshole of a dog to urinate and defecate. She did not defecate. Shocking.
I am still blinking boogers from my eyes as I’m typing this, and although you don’t know this, I am making beau coups of typos and stealthily rectifying them before they can be observed. That’s just the kind of person I am.
Ambulatory appendage update! I have stretched out my legs to rest on the chairs in front of me, and right foot (the baby) is tingling with awakening. Such miserable shit. Fortunately no one is around to poke or prod my yawning limb at a time like this. I’m channeling memories of Melody and my days of prolific toilet top reading. But that’s another story for anther time.
Actually, to be honest, the story has been 90% written; maybe 85% if you consider that it hasn’t been edited. Maybe I’ll work on that later, so I have something cohesive on my sister’s various adolescent torture tactics to present to the world. Yes, I will write it! I will write it and inspire siblings across the land!
Last night I thought of a funny way of describing myself which is “poop poured into a human mold (Candice, 2007).” This isn’t always necessarily accurate thought. Sometimes I’ll make an effort, style my hair, slap on some make up, don a tutu, and then I may be more accurately described as poop poured into a human mold then adorned with a ribbon; a pink and red ribbon, a sparkling cherry screaming ribbon.
I walked outside and downstairs today, only to allow my phone charger eating, constipated, asshole of a dog to urinate and defecate. She did not defecate. Shocking.
I am still blinking boogers from my eyes as I’m typing this, and although you don’t know this, I am making beau coups of typos and stealthily rectifying them before they can be observed. That’s just the kind of person I am.
Ambulatory appendage update! I have stretched out my legs to rest on the chairs in front of me, and right foot (the baby) is tingling with awakening. Such miserable shit. Fortunately no one is around to poke or prod my yawning limb at a time like this. I’m channeling memories of Melody and my days of prolific toilet top reading. But that’s another story for anther time.
Actually, to be honest, the story has been 90% written; maybe 85% if you consider that it hasn’t been edited. Maybe I’ll work on that later, so I have something cohesive on my sister’s various adolescent torture tactics to present to the world. Yes, I will write it! I will write it and inspire siblings across the land!
Last night I thought of a funny way of describing myself which is “poop poured into a human mold (Candice, 2007).” This isn’t always necessarily accurate thought. Sometimes I’ll make an effort, style my hair, slap on some make up, don a tutu, and then I may be more accurately described as poop poured into a human mold then adorned with a ribbon; a pink and red ribbon, a sparkling cherry screaming ribbon.
Bubble Bath
Once again I find myself confronted with an opening line dealing my listening to Boards of Canada, and the very weird place it puts me. So I won’t elaborate much. But for a quick Dayvan Cowboy update, I have just finished listening to it for the first time in months literally, and I was in the ocean, and the waves were tumbling my mind, and while I’m not in an existential crisis yet, I am a bit dazed. The weather is grey and I am far from the sea in a place I have been, and been, and been, with vibrant memories flashing and swirling in my mind of distant places, distant people. I am looking out this window, again again again, at this tree I have seen so many times it is now a part of my mind, and the weather isn’t grey, it’s the sky, so oppressive it’s found its way inside.
That’s the basic gist of it anyway.
There are many fruitful and productive things I could be engaging myself in. I could be exercising at this luxurious apartment complex’s 24 hour gym. I could be bathing myself in the Dove soap shaped bathtub, the kind that, when you see one somewhere you either think to yourself or say aloud, “I’d love to take a bubble bath in that!” But that sad truth is, if you had that bath tub, you would rarely, if ever, take a bubble bath in it. You wouldn’t treat yourself to some lemonade or some hot tea, and sit in the tiny, tickling bubbles for an hour, some candles lit, reading a book, closing your eyes and listening to some tunes. If you even made it as far as the bubbles, you’d, in all likeliness, sit in the underappreciated warmth of the water, and think about all the other things you should be doing that are productive and non-frivolous for about ten minutes before deciding to get out and become a person you can respect and your mother can be proud of. After deciding this you will drain the bath, wasting fifty gallons of water, killing several fish and completely obliterating one species of algae, all for naught, since you didn’t even enjoy yourself. And worst part of it all is that, en route to accomplishing the first item on your list of ‘should’ activities, you will turn on the tv, sit your dimpled ass on the sofa, and not move for the next several hours except to stuff your jiggling face with potato chips or to relieve your self of your bodies fetid waste.
It’s grim, I know, but it’s reality.
Can’t we just accept our congenital selfishness sometimes? And by “we”, I mean “I”. Can’t we just do what we need to do sometimes instead of what we should do? I can only stand in appalled amazement when mentally observing the vast library of tomes left unwritten by me in lieu of tidying or dish washing or worst of all, television. Disgusting. All that genius wasted on an hour of mindless entertainment, a clean kitchen which will only once again become dirty after dinner.
About a year ago now, I was in the apogee of a fantastic phase for me. It was an era during which I commented at the very least twenty times daily on my awesomeness. Instead of hearing a constant inner monologue of self-doubt, self-loathing, fear, insecurity, I was verbally reiterating the nature of my awesome. A very simple and very effective affirmation. You don’t need to write one hundred sentences a day on the things you want or don’t want in your life. This is a catchall. When you are awesome, everything else falls into place. The only possible negative side effect, if it could even be viewed as negative, is excessive self-confidence, which, to some nay-sayers, could translate as a superior complex. Not so. I always encouraged my friends to celebrate their awesome vocally, and they did. And you know what? It helped them too.
Here’s the sad thing. These days, when, in some sort retrogressive tribute I say “I’m awesome” it sounds weak and pathetic. It sounds like a lie. Maybe it’s the lack of coke, maybe it’s the fact that I’m not on an awesome solo voyage. I don’t know the answers to these speculations. But I do know that at some point I stopped saying it, and as a consequence, I stopped believing it.
So, do I believe in my awesome no matter what, or do I make myself something I can’t help but to believe in the awesomeness of? Maybe some where in between.
That’s the basic gist of it anyway.
There are many fruitful and productive things I could be engaging myself in. I could be exercising at this luxurious apartment complex’s 24 hour gym. I could be bathing myself in the Dove soap shaped bathtub, the kind that, when you see one somewhere you either think to yourself or say aloud, “I’d love to take a bubble bath in that!” But that sad truth is, if you had that bath tub, you would rarely, if ever, take a bubble bath in it. You wouldn’t treat yourself to some lemonade or some hot tea, and sit in the tiny, tickling bubbles for an hour, some candles lit, reading a book, closing your eyes and listening to some tunes. If you even made it as far as the bubbles, you’d, in all likeliness, sit in the underappreciated warmth of the water, and think about all the other things you should be doing that are productive and non-frivolous for about ten minutes before deciding to get out and become a person you can respect and your mother can be proud of. After deciding this you will drain the bath, wasting fifty gallons of water, killing several fish and completely obliterating one species of algae, all for naught, since you didn’t even enjoy yourself. And worst part of it all is that, en route to accomplishing the first item on your list of ‘should’ activities, you will turn on the tv, sit your dimpled ass on the sofa, and not move for the next several hours except to stuff your jiggling face with potato chips or to relieve your self of your bodies fetid waste.
It’s grim, I know, but it’s reality.
Can’t we just accept our congenital selfishness sometimes? And by “we”, I mean “I”. Can’t we just do what we need to do sometimes instead of what we should do? I can only stand in appalled amazement when mentally observing the vast library of tomes left unwritten by me in lieu of tidying or dish washing or worst of all, television. Disgusting. All that genius wasted on an hour of mindless entertainment, a clean kitchen which will only once again become dirty after dinner.
About a year ago now, I was in the apogee of a fantastic phase for me. It was an era during which I commented at the very least twenty times daily on my awesomeness. Instead of hearing a constant inner monologue of self-doubt, self-loathing, fear, insecurity, I was verbally reiterating the nature of my awesome. A very simple and very effective affirmation. You don’t need to write one hundred sentences a day on the things you want or don’t want in your life. This is a catchall. When you are awesome, everything else falls into place. The only possible negative side effect, if it could even be viewed as negative, is excessive self-confidence, which, to some nay-sayers, could translate as a superior complex. Not so. I always encouraged my friends to celebrate their awesome vocally, and they did. And you know what? It helped them too.
Here’s the sad thing. These days, when, in some sort retrogressive tribute I say “I’m awesome” it sounds weak and pathetic. It sounds like a lie. Maybe it’s the lack of coke, maybe it’s the fact that I’m not on an awesome solo voyage. I don’t know the answers to these speculations. But I do know that at some point I stopped saying it, and as a consequence, I stopped believing it.
So, do I believe in my awesome no matter what, or do I make myself something I can’t help but to believe in the awesomeness of? Maybe some where in between.
Tuesday, December 11
Okay kids, now it’s time for “Candice tries to explain life with a random adage she made up.” Yay!
Life is, in its most duo chromatic sense, like theatre. There are tragedies, and there are comedies. We are often quite quick to cry at the tragedies, slow to laugh at the comedies, and almost always fail to see that there’s no distinct line between the two. In essence, in the great cosmic play, we are all the comic relief.
I just added that last sentence at the end. Kind of brings the whole theatre of life theme full circle. I feel as though this minute morsel of magnificent will lose some of its scintillating effect by any effort to clarify on my part, but since I can be wordy, and I also do so happen to love the sound of my own hands typing, I can’t resist. One indisputable example of the bleeding and blending of comedy and tragedy, the “opposites” attraction in to copulation and ergo, the creation of a progeny, is the show “ America's Funniest Home Videos.” For those who aren’t familiar with the show (where have you been existing for the previous fifteen years, dwelling beneath an igneous boulder?) (I’m a douche) I’ll sum it up quickly: people or animals or babies (because they aren’t people?) do funny things, almost always involving someone getting hurt, videotape it, send it in to win a prize, and the viewers, whether in the audience or at home, laugh. Now that I’ve explained the program, I think it would be redundant to expound further on my point. People get hurt, we laugh, and thus the line is blurred.
As a speedy aside, I learned something quite interesting as I googled comedy and tragedy to find appropriate links. What I found was 5,760,000 entries for tragedy, while comedy came in with a whopping 34,900,000. Kudos to humanity. We're trying to look on the bright side.
I am capable of annoying even myself. Not that it’s hard.
Life is, in its most duo chromatic sense, like theatre. There are tragedies, and there are comedies. We are often quite quick to cry at the tragedies, slow to laugh at the comedies, and almost always fail to see that there’s no distinct line between the two. In essence, in the great cosmic play, we are all the comic relief.
I just added that last sentence at the end. Kind of brings the whole theatre of life theme full circle. I feel as though this minute morsel of magnificent will lose some of its scintillating effect by any effort to clarify on my part, but since I can be wordy, and I also do so happen to love the sound of my own hands typing, I can’t resist. One indisputable example of the bleeding and blending of comedy and tragedy, the “opposites” attraction in to copulation and ergo, the creation of a progeny, is the show “ America's Funniest Home Videos.” For those who aren’t familiar with the show (where have you been existing for the previous fifteen years, dwelling beneath an igneous boulder?) (I’m a douche) I’ll sum it up quickly: people or animals or babies (because they aren’t people?) do funny things, almost always involving someone getting hurt, videotape it, send it in to win a prize, and the viewers, whether in the audience or at home, laugh. Now that I’ve explained the program, I think it would be redundant to expound further on my point. People get hurt, we laugh, and thus the line is blurred.
As a speedy aside, I learned something quite interesting as I googled comedy and tragedy to find appropriate links. What I found was 5,760,000 entries for tragedy, while comedy came in with a whopping 34,900,000. Kudos to humanity. We're trying to look on the bright side.
I am capable of annoying even myself. Not that it’s hard.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
