Surge

I'm broke. My quasi-regular job has just assigned me the equivalent of those impossible tasks you read about in fairy tales - collect the feathers of a thousand birds, or find the one silver straw among millions of, well, straw-coloured ones. I need to make friends with mice, or rabbits, or some other helpful work source. Although with this task, I need mice and rabbits that READ.
I am tempted to up and quit today. I am suspicious that this task has been created to make me do that. But, see above, I'm broke. So, I must begin the task. Maybe after lunch.

I am less broke than this morning, however, in that I now have money to pay my rent and other bills that are coming due right now. This morning, I had $58. Total.

Part of the broke-ness is waiting for money that has not yet arrived. Part is a committment I made to put money in responsible places for a while (like, say, an IRA, or towards a debt I have).

I do feel fairly sunny and positive, however, and I think that's because being broke is not the drain being in debt is. Being broke is a bummer. It keeps you from doing things. You cook your own meals from things you have had frozen for months. But being in debt can make you lose sleep, or your hair (which, frankly, you can't afford, I've seen your pillow of a morning), or your ability to think about anything other than the debt.

So, I'm happily broke. It could be worse.

Ten Women. Two Days. Toffee.

I managed to have an adventure a few weeks ago. I did a two day industrial shoot for a product that shall remain nameless. The shoot was set up in a single family home - the family was away in Africa on vacation, we were told, and although they left behind the furniture and most of the furnishings, there was very little clutter, which made it seem like a model home and which led me to suspect some of their personal belongings had been moved off site while a film crew invaded their home. The shoot was set up like a gathering at someone's home, with a total of ten women involved.

Now, I could detail the shoot, and how much waiting around there was, and how the catered lunches were wonderful and how it was a really fun experience to be paid for being an actor, put up in a hotel room and given per diem and things like that. I could talk about that, but what was really fascinating was the people! However, I may have crippled my ability to do so, because the first day involved a massive, massive error on my part:

Ten women are wandering through the upstairs, lounging on the beds, examining the furniture, and generally making small talk to move the day along. (This could be the beginning of a fabulous murder mystery.) One of these women has her laptop out, which leads to a desultory discussion of blogs and websites (we range from "I update my blog everyday" to "I never could see the point of having an email address until very recently....computers are greek to me"), and I say, "I have a blog, but it's not a big deal. I think maybe three people read it."

"What's the address?" she asks, perky and interested.

And I told her. As well as a couple of other people who were in the room and who asked later.

Now, that's not a huge problem. But for the most part, I have been content with my small virtual space where I could say what I wanted and no one would be looking. I'm not so obnoxious as to imagine any of those women are checking this page regularly, but the very idea that they COULD, that they might stumble back upon it, leads me to an unhappy conclusion.

I can't write down exactly what I thought about it all. Because it's work, and I could run into these people again, and it's unwise to bite the hand that feeds. Not that I have much to say in the negative column, but I can't even make fun of them! It would be rude!

So I've been stymied as to how to talk about my adventure, because I have to come up with a edited way of approaching it.

I'm beginning to see why so many people turn to fiction.

Maybe it was good I wasn't there

My Love Biscuit was away for a wedding this past weekend, which time away I enjoyed, though I wish I could have been at this wedding, as it sounds amazing. (Crepe station at the reception, anyone?)

His friend who got married was the last of his high school friends to marry, and at they are all in their late 30's now, he got a lot of prodding about when HIS wedding would be. He's the only single one left, you see.

Now, to be fair, he is hepped up on the idea of marriage. I am the one standing in the way. My friend Michael suggested I have a t-shirt made that would say "I'm the Problem" to wear to events like this. True, true.

Anyway, I have been completely ruined by a photo taken of us at another wedding this summer. One look at the photo (above) and the whole group of his friends nodded their heads, as if one person, and said, oh, yeah, let us know when your wedding is.

Damn photo. If we didn't look so bleedin' happy....

Forward but not upward

I have a headache. Because I've been eating tons of chocolate. Otherwise...
Overall, I'm grumpy. I would like to be working as an actor, or if not, something to do with acting. I am still working, currently 4 days a week, in an office. I am working a lot in an attempt to hack away at a long outstanding debt and to throw money into an IRA, but there is nothing challenging to do here. Yet I can't leave, because who else would let me write my own schedule?

Part II: This week, being here pays off, because I booked my first ever industrial two day shoot and I was able to say, hey, I'm not coming in for 2 days next week. I won't make a ton of money, but it should be worth doing, and it will be a New Experience. I need one desperately.

I guess progress is being made, but it feels sooooo sloooooow. I don't need "drama" in the classic sense, but I do need challenge, and that has been in precious short supply. Watching "Joe versus the Volcano" the other night, I noticed that line about how most of the people in the world are asleep. I've been feeling like that. I mean, this has been my workplace for THREE YEARS. But again, it allows me the money and freedom to GO on auditions and yet still get paid. Right now I have the freedom to work 4 days a week because I have a show on Friday. It's incredibly flexible, and I won't get that anywhere else.

Except for the fact that I dislike it intensely, it's a great job.

Romantically, everything is healthy and happy and fine. My (what do I call him? Sweetheart? Love? Smootchie face?) paramour and I talk about getting married and I just don't know. He's super fun to date, he'd be a great person to go through life with, but I can't see into the future. How long will my life be like this? Will it change into something more artistic? We're both poor - how could we ever have children? Heck - we're both poor, how could we ever have INSURANCE?

The more I analyze the kinds of worries and problems I'm having (and it's me, so clearly I do this often), the more I notice a pattern - the "rest of life" looms, and I don't feel equipped to move into it. I haven't made money, I haven't established myself in my chosen profession, I haven't married into a place in life. How do I get older without achieving anything visible? Or rather, how can I be content to age without seeming to move forward?

Outside of it all

On the train, after a stressful situation was competently handled, I relax reading Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries. It's lovely - irascible and unapologetic, Gray simply writes down whatever he needs to. He has turned 64 and seen his friend Ian Hamilton die. Within the first twenty pages, Gray has dinner with Harold Pinter and his wife Antonia (Fraser, the writer and biographer), and Pinter announces he has cancer.

I don't adore Gray's plays - I saw the critically trounced Cell Mates in London on its debut, Valentine's Day, 1995 (or 94?), and remember being seriously underwhelmed, even before the reviews did their dirty work. But this book, in which he putters along, speaking of his famous writer friends and looking kindly but honestly back at his youth and wishing he'd studied Anglo-Saxon more thoroughly so he'd know more about the origin of the word shiffen, this book soothes me. I think it eases some fret in me that he is an intellectual and feels no need to apologize for that. That he can argue about Auden not being a good poet without anyone taking him to task for his elitism. It is a world I miss, and yearn for, and, truth be told, am not really smart enough to belong in. I like Auden, and know barely any Latin, much less Anglo-Saxon.

The book eases my malaise so much that when a man sits next to me in the train, I have enough room in my brain to notice the wonderful smell of his coffee - clearly a flavoured roast, hazelnut, perhaps, or almond. He's studying a book about foundations, the page neatly blocked in diagrams.

The otherness of a life spent studying foundations further soothes me, like a french window into a new idea sliding open to allow a breeze.

I wish I could go to college again. Now I'm ravenous for knowledge, now I care less for the grades and more for the sheer knowing grace of grappling with the new idea. I'm still more at home arguing plays and poetry than philosophy, but I'm like to branch out into anthropology, biology again, maybe buckle down at a language. Who am I kidding? Languages are my stumbling block, and ever will be. C'est la vie. I'll bet - I'll hope I'm spelling that wrong and proving my point.

I love reading. I feel very sorry for people who don't or can't read, because I feel I have entry into whole worlds they deny themselves or are denied. I'm extroverted in company when the occasion allows, but some child in me longs always for a quiet space and a book to ride into the wind. When I read I become engrossed, so that conversation directed at me has to penetrate a thick haze ("I'm sorry, what?"), and any interruption aggravates, even sleep. Last night I made up my mind, after losing yet another whole night's sleep to a book, that if I ever have children, I will enforce lights out with an iron hand - all flashlights will be confiscated! As a child I found any loophole I could to keep reading whatever was at hand, thus beginning a habit that keeps me sleepy by day. Like all parents trying to root out the parts of themselves they dislike, my plan is doomed to failure, I should think.

In closing, I have the impulse to apologize for the last-post-but-one. I catalog the impulse, but I do not apologize. In the calm of another day, my rightness (or wrongness) is not as important as my shock that so few people even try to get things right - not intrinsically right, per se, but at least as right as they can. I deplore the thought that a person's objection to my personality could obscure the possibilities of my ideas (i.e., your smartness threatens me, therefore I will dismiss you as being too intellectual), but my own tantrum at not being respected reflects the same kind of thinking. I must decide I have something I want to say and say it, then whether or not people listen is external, and secondary.

And I still think I'm right

I'm frustrated. A friend of mine wrote a play, and I'm involved in a reading of about ten pages, and last night we had a rehearsal. I have very strong views about this play, though I have a sneaking feeling I have no objectivity left in this friendship, and thus my views are suspect.

I've read most of my friend's plays, and I think he's a good writer, but I've known him about five years now, and I have formed ideas about what he's trying to say, as many of his plays have similar themes and characters. (That's not a criticism - so does Chekhov, so does Tennessee Williams, so do many great writers.) I admit to feeling a little on the inside of his work, as if I know more about it than an outsider. This, I have realized, may or may not be true.

I went to the rehearsal with very clear comments and criticisms, and first, found there was no forum to air these, as my role had gone from "well-informed friend" to "reader of scene controlled by director", and second, found that the problems I had with the play were not universal, as several other actors disagreed with my views.

I'm shocked that not everyone shares my aesthetic for clarity. And I'm shocked that because I want clarity, there's an inference that I think I'm smarter than the rest of the group. This infuriates me, because I then waste time trying to play low status to make my point in a non-threatening manner, a ploy that probably doesn't work. I am thrown back to a college professor who graded a play journal of mine and wrote the comment: "It makes me sad to see someone so young have such strong opinions."

This comment and others like it have shut me up and haunted me for years. I have been told over and over again than no one wants to hear what I think, and certainly no one wants me to talk about myself. And I have accepted this as true, because it is. Even this blog is an effort, because I can't imagine what I might have to say that someone would find enlightening.

I am angry. Enough. When do I get the right to speak? When am I old enough to have opinions? Is there a day when I get to stop apologizing for having some thing to say and people will just listen to me say it?

Yes, maybe it's me. Maybe if I could train my ear not to be upset by this kind of comment, perhaps I would command the kind of respect I'm looking for. But the lesson has been hammered in for too long by too many to just shrug off.

The title of this post does not refer to the fact that I think my comments are unarguable, inherent. But if I say, this is unclear, I didn't know what this meant, don't fob me off with, well, people speak unclearly. Of course they do. But if you're trying to tell a story in a scant two hours, you need to chose every piece of information that goes into that story. If you PLAN to confuse, fine, that's a choice, but don't pretend your laziness makes you more authentic.

Someday, I will bear down on some script like an angel of the apocalypse and there will be no mercy. Of course, in a just world, that script would be mine, but as we've established, no one is interested in what I have to say.

An adventure

I'd like one, please. An adventure. 'Sfunny, I spend about eight hours every weekend playing out someone else's adventure, and yet I'm surprised as how much I want my own. I've always threaded the line between the responsible and the devil-may-care, but I've been trying to feed more money, time and energy into responsibility lately. I'm sure it's very grown up and forward thinking, but I'm feeling very trapped. Ugh. I feel an escape coming on.

To be fair, I don't want to escape acting. I like acting. I like the commercial auditions and gigs as much as the high-toned theatre acting. It is an adventure, and it changes all the time. It's just that currently, I spend a lot of time in the office to give me the opportunity to eat as well as audition. And I'd like to escape the office. It seems ironic that so many "creative" people have to pay for the chance to be creative with truly mind-numbing days. I suppose there's a nobility to earning your right to success, but I feel like I've been slogging away for four years - I'd like some success now, if you don't mind. Sadly, my life has never been run on my time line.

So in the meantime, I'm secretly planning an adventure. Hmmm.....it should involve derring-do and disguises. Also the judicious use of code words, and probably some interpretive dance. I'll report back with the mission is completed.

Insaniquarium

So I've been playing this game online called Insaniquarium, a complete waste of time when I should be putting mailings together to casting directors enjoining them to come see my show. Oh, the reviews, the ones I was worried about - the Tribune put it in the paper Monday, the Sun-Times on Tuesday, and the newest Time Out Chicago brought out an issue on Wednesday with a blurb. All were positive, all enjoyed the show, all feel the show is a massive fun romp with no substance. (Well, it is.) All three reviewers compare me to Emma Thompson.

This is flattering, certainly, if somewhat unnerving. Do these reviewers hang out in the reviewer bar afterwards? Do they phone each other before they publish? Did one of them watch the show while the other two slept, and so were forced to copy each other's notes?

The only problem with being compared to Emma Thompson is the shocking number of people who have no idea who she is. I'm sure that an overwhelming majority don't know who Edith Evans was, or Ralph Richardson or Gielgud, but Emma Thompson? I mean, even if you didn't see it, surely you'd be aware of Sense and Sensibility from 1997? Or have seen the Harry Potter movies, at least, that's just last year. It's not like she's an obscure British stage actress, like Victoria Hamilton or Joanna Riding (I can't stand the former, and adore the latter).

There is just one more problem. My character is described as insouciant, and I do know what it means, but apparently no one else does. So they all make little "insouciant" jokes throughout the day. YAAWWNNN.

So I should be putting mini press packets together and mailing them to Important People to tell them to come see the show. But instead I'm mildly obsessed with this odd game. You have to feed the fish regularly or they turn yellow, and eventually die. Sometimes the tank is teeming with fish, turning odd colours and requiring you feed them immediately.

Last night there was some bad news - a stroke in the family, not my family, but my sweetheart's. And I feel powerless, and guilty to be doing so well, and I have nothing to say but "I love you," over and over again, and that doesn't seem like enough right now. And I held this person and tried to sleep, and in the back of my head behind my closed eyes, animated fish swam. They rose in my dream state, turning green and yellow and orange again, shifting colours incessantly, wave upon wave of fish rolling around my mind.

I guess I'm lucky I haven't been playing Grand Theft Auto.

Pop Music

The air has that leaves-brittle-and-bright-as-confetti feel, and I want to go driving with pop music playing and the windows down. "I'm not strong, and you'll find out, how the girls love rock and roll..." I wanna warble. I want to be on the way to a high school football game, and be sitting on the winning side. I'd like to wear a scarf but no coat, and corduroy trousers. I'd probably look a little like a Sears ad.

What is it about pop music? Well-crafted pop music is like a tapeworm: it sneaks into your brain and devours you. You can't help being manipulated by it, and you like it, although you feel guilty. Once it takes over a moment, it's like a watermark, you can't hear the song without triggering the memory, and you never have the memory without thinking of the song.

Some pop songs end up being tenaciously enduring, but you can't predict that beforehand. Some are amazing songs but become dated, while others have some timeless groove, so the song sounds as if it were just released. Personally, I think one of the most perfect pop songs of all time is "You Can't Always Get What You Want." I think that's a hard song to hear without wanting to do a huge head-bopping dance that will encompass bystanders and perhaps even nearby dogs before you're done. It is hard to be completely unhappy after hearing that song.

Anyone else? Got a timeless wonder? Whotcha fancy?

Autumn

The weather is perfect. I love being able to put a jacket on, and extra covers on my bed. For some reason, autumn always seems so cozy. It would be nice to jettison my wretched day job and begin a round-the-world journey (funded, of course, by a grant that would allow me to live without worrying about money), but even without such a plan, autumn holds that kind of adventure and promise.

Who knows, maybe it will come to that. I'm opening a show on Friday, and for once, I'm actually in it enough that my performance will be reviewed with the show. There's no squeaking by without a mention now, no peripheral character. I'm glad, of course, but it's overwhelming. I'm not used to getting what I want. I love this play. I love being in it, I love the people, I enjoy spinning out the scenes and building up the story bit by bit. I adore getting a laugh, I do internal dances of joy when we get to the happy ending (complete with a big romantic kiss - yay!), I even relish the bits where I get beaten up. I also love fainting and being carried up the stairs. The show is a great big swashbuckling romp of a delight, and no matter what the reviews say, I will enjoy it.

But I feel exposed. As a perfectionist, I don't like criticism, as I will obsess and worry about all the things I got "wrong". The possibility exists that the reviewers might not enjoy it, and no matter how grown up and mature I am about that, I will be disappointed. I want to spend my life working as an actress - it's a nightmare to think reviewers will tell me I should scurry back to my day job.

Logically, the reviews won't matter. I love the show - I'll still love the show, no matter what gets said. And I doubt I can stop acting for long, no matter how discouraging a review may or may not be.

But isn't it about time I'm forced to accustom myself to getting what I want?

A True Story

My grandmother and I are negotiating the kitchen of her snug farmhouse in the middle of South Carolina peach farming country. She is nearly ninety, her white hair set off with a bright blue outfit, and she is very pleased with herself, because despite the fact that she recently had a hip replaced and should not be doing any more than absolutely necessary, despite the fact that I made it absolutely clear that I wanted to take her out to lunch, she has foiled this plan by having lunch already prepared. It's the South - you haven't visited unless you've been fed. In addition, she is meeting my boyfriend, and because we live in Chicago, she is determined to give him a "real taste of the South". Of course, he grew up for the most part in Pensacola, Florida, so he's tasted the South before. (When she discovers the Florida connection, she exclaims, with a big smile and note of relief, "Why, you're not a Yankee at all!!" Sigh.)

Grandma hobbles and I bustle. She has at least cheated the meal by buying most of it at a barbecue place, but she has made two gleaming, golden pecan pies with her own hands. We are in the midst of reheating barbecue and slicing tomatoes when there is a knock at the door.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. Maurice said I should come by about noon, twelve thirty for my gun." The older gentleman wears a hunting cap and a shirt with a nametag, "ROY". My uncle Maurice repairs and makes guns, and Roy has had some emergency work done on his gun so that he can go dove hunting this afternoon. The season starts today. I don't know what Roy does with his days, but his skin is reddish from being outside often. His deference to my grandmother seems genuine. Does it stem from shyness or respect? No matter which, it pleases her.

"He's not back yet, but he told me you'd be by, he should be here shortly. Roy, son, would you like a slice of pecan pie?"

"Oh, no, ma'am, I don't have no bottom teeth." He smiles just widely enough as if to be showing his gummy lack of tooth, but you can't see much. "I'll just go out and pick you folks some peaches."

In about fifteen minutes, he is back with two enormous shopping bags of peaches - the bags are full, and the peaches themselves are massive. By the time he returns, Maurice has brought Roy's gun home and everyone wanders off happy. My mother and I are sent home with one of the two bags of peaches to divide between us.

We haul softball-sized peaches on and off of planes and buses and finally into my apartment. All this hauling seems like trouble until the gluttony of peaches begins. Every time I eat one, I think of Roy, and how proud and ashamed and glad I am to be from the South.

And for the record, the pecan pie was amazing.

And I am

listening to Kanye West, and feeling hip and urban. (I am, actually, very hip, and urban.)

It leaves me fretful, though. I dislike such a liberal use of the n-word, but issues of race are touchy. I do (illogically) feel some burden of guilt for the evil of slavery, as a Southerner. If the inequality the system of slavery introduced into the New World had been eradicated, maybe I could separate myself entirely from what is in the past. It isn't.

And I find myself really intrigued by African-American culture, and yet I think to participate in the culture would make me the target for scorn, suspicion, and hosility. I don't think I'm allowed to have opinions about that culture. I grant you, my exposure is on the sidelines - I'm addicted to watching "Girlfriends", I'm listening to Kanye West, I think Taye Diggs is hot. (Well, he is.)

I guess really every individual is different, and the truth is I'd like to know a few who are very different from me. But human nature being what it is, befriending the different remains a threat for both sides.

Peace out, brutha.

City Girl

I went to get my hair cut yesterday for free at a shi-shi salon. Exposed brick, funky decor, and a gaggle of stylists wearing flip flops and sunglasses and anything that would generally make them look as if they had walked out of a fashion magazine. And of course, every one of them had feisty, layered, stylin' hair. The girl cutting my hair was a petite, dark-haired beauty sporting incredibly shiny lip gloss and slightly preoccupied by her upcoming move to Lincoln Park - she's moving in with a friend she grew up with in the suburbs.

I grant you, having your hair wet down and plastered to your head while someone cuts it is rarely a good look for anyone, but I started to feel a little insecure, surrounded by these uber fashionable girls wearing the latest tube tops and gossiping about movie stars and Eva Longoria. I hate wearing flip flops. I've got too much chest to keep a tube top in place. Lip gloss is wasted on me as it inevitably ends up all over everything but my lips (my hair, my fingernails, papers I handle...). I have, in barber's chairs, a large neck. It distracts me. Also, a wide face. Somehow, outside of the salon, things blend and never bother me, but when I'm having my hair cut I worry about my tremendously wide neck and face. Bye, bye, Hollywood, you wouldn't be able to use this sagging flesh. I have lines on my forehead nowadays, too, which I suppose is normal for someone who is 31, but those lines are still a shock, every time I see them.

The two stylists I can see very clearly in the mirror behind me (who have been gossiping about their drunken night on the town) have clearly come in early so that one can dye the other's hair. The application of the dye looks truly complicated, all these small sections wrapped intricately in tin foil, and then more dye applied to the straggling hair that escaped the sectioning. And wait - I suddenly notice that the woman whose hair is plastered against her head with dye looks dreadful - that indeed, she appears to have a very large neck.

It occurs to me that I am in Chicago. Probably most of these women are from the suburbs, and have moved into the city in a desperate attempt to wash that Middle America right out of their hair. I'm making a big generalization, but I'm guessing not all of them went to college, that they've never lived anywhere except Aurora before moving to Wrigleyville. They HAVE to dress like this, and have their hair cut wildly and use lots of styling products, they have to use glamour to remove themselves from the average, colourless existence they left behind.

I'm originally a small town girl myself, I admit it, but I've lived in a series of difference places of varying size, and Chicago isn't the largest. I am, at this point, a City Girl. No matter what I wear. Or how my hair is styled. I don't have to work at it.

Although, with a little product and a blow dryer, I have to tell you, it looks FABULOUS. I might start wearing eyeshadow. If the next issue of Cosmopolitan tells me it's still cool.

Don't skip TIWRBD

I almost hate to write something more current than Things I Would Rather Be Doing, as I don't think I get a lot of traffic here and what there is tends to read to the top, but it struck me that one of my least favorite things is to be frantically busy, and then get morose emails from people saying:

"It seems like we never see each other anymore."

Things I would rather be doing

It's true, when I work in an office I am making money, and that money allows me to do things. Barring that benefit, it seems like a spectacular waste of time. And mostly, it's because I have created an environment where I don't have to work that hard, even though I'm a person who thrives on challenge. However, I don't want to waste my energy being challenged to make copies or some such nonsense. Hmmmm. A quandry and no mistake.

One of my co-workers has been with this office for thirty-one years. Maybe it's thirty-two. This boggles my mind. Oh, yes, I know everyone is made differently and just because I hate it doesn't mean it isn't ideal for someone else. But this person doesn't seem in any way happy to be here. How can you stay somewhere for 32 years without planning an escape??

Me, I'd rather be:

Sailing down the Ganges.
Hiking in the Andes.
Riding a camel in the Sahara.
Scouring the whaling museum in Nantucket.

I'd rather be on a train taking me to a place I've never been before.
I'd rather be talking to someone who is an expert in some particularly fascinating field: psychology, foreign relations.
I'd rather be watching Open University, or Call My Bluff.
I'd rather be trekking across open fields armed with a very good map, a bottle of water, a sandwich and perhaps some gingerbread.
I'd rather be creating some kind of whimsical and bizarre plan with Tee, something involving disguises and word play and giggling.
I'd rather be cooking something, maybe fresh fish with white wine and lemon, or a pasta salad with herbs I cut out of the front garden.
I'd rather be talking to Anna and Maeve.
I'd rather be cleaning my apartment, a really deep-down clean that smells citrus-y and makes me feel I can control at least the dirt.

And with that, I have given myself a reasonable goal. I have the day off Friday, I shall try to clean. With loud music playing. Singing at the top of my lungs. And mayhap I will make pasta salad for lunch.

That's better.

A Mystery

Why is it that my family can painstaking slather sunscreen on ourselves and yet inexplicably end up with subburn patches? Stray sections of skin that escape the sunblock and get beaten by the sun instead. After a week of lying on a beach every day, I ended up with strange red markings on my knees, a small patch of red near the elbow on my right arm, and a few stray wisps of burn where suit meets skin.

Once, my brother couldn't find anyone to put sunscreen on his back, and just slapped his own hand across it, only to find the next day that his back was entirely red, save for one white handprint.

I never notice such extra tan sections on other people. Maybe it is genetic.

Interruptions

Don't tell anyone I work for, but I'm dreadful at multi-tasking. One-track mind, that's me. Can I accomplish many things at once? Yes. But not if you keep (that was one right there, someone had a question) interrupting me.

I really hate being interrupted. Watch, it will happen again before I even finish typing this sentence. . . ok, that time I got away without one, but (oh, there we go - had to send someone a fax) it won't last (and, as you note, didn't).

On the up side, today a school kid who came to see my children's show liked the show and gave me a purple rubber bracelet that says "Heluhelu" on it. What does that mean, I asked this very sweet girl. "I dunno," she said, with the classic kid I'm-not-supposed-to-know shrug, and then her friend flashed a sneaky little smile and said, "But it means you need to read eight books over the summer." Done. I was tricked into it but I'll make that commitment. I wonder if I can manage it without trying or whether it will take a little effort.

Bring it On

Ok, people, I'm ready. I can handle it. I will even welcome it. Go ahead and . . . post a comment. When I started this shindig, I was doing it much like a bad yet enthusiastic dancer risks a few tentative shimmies in a dark corner of a crowded floor. I thought, I'll write myself a few snippets and hope no one ever goes looking for them.

But I find I like the comments. (Thanks to the two of you - I know who you are.) So, if you are one of the handful of people who ever take a look at this page, I invite you to join the fun. I will even challenge you to a) come up with your own Missed Connections ad, b) Offer your own personal rant subject, or c) write a haiku praising your favorite food. I had a co-worker who had a sideline in Spam haiku, see if you can top that.

Try it, people! Hey, I could ask you for money, but I just want your thoughts. So much cheaper.

(Also, it's very uncool, but I still love Oasis. I can't help it. I try to stop but the backbeat gets me. Please don't tell anyone. Well, anyone else.)

I'm not addicted, I'm not

So I'm reading craigslist again...but this time I Know When To Stop! It's almost immediately, before the poor grammar or misanthropy get to me. I thought I would love the missed connections section, as that's a favorite of mine in the Reader, but no, somehow today it doesn't strike me.

I love Missed Connections. There's something so desperate, yet so hopeful, about it. I doubt anyone finds the person they are looking for, partly because I suspect most missed connections are completely forgotten by one of the parties said to be connecting. If you're as hot as the ad claims, are you combing ads to see if someone noticed you? Do you remember the geeky guy/girl that tried to catch your eye but was TOO CHICKEN to say anything?

But if you come across the Missed Connections section, there's a part of you that can't help looking for yourself, to see if you made an impression on someone.

I used to laugh at the ads that gave very little information, as if the connectee were fortune telling, keeping the edges vague to ensure the info could be interpreted multiple directions. "We were on the El, I wore a black jacket, you had on a hat. Call me." ?? But it occurred to me that many people don't even mind if they find THE person (there might not be a person), they're just looking for people, casting their fishing line out upon the waters, and missed connections is their excuse.

The most memorable one I've yet read was a study in transparent pretense. "I missed your ad a few weeks ago. You said you look like Juliet Binoche but what really interested me was that your favorite movie was North by Northwest." Riiiiiiigggghhhttt. So if she'd said she looked like Ann Widdicombe* or Janet Reno but still liked NbNW, you'd still be trying to find her?

The ones I love the best are so specific that either the writer really did see someone or they're working really hard and constructing their perfect person, either of which I can appreciate.
"We met at a party - you were wearing a purple ribbon on your belt loop, I asked you what prize you had won. I wore glasses and a shirt that said "What Would Jesus Do for a Klondike Bar?". You told me your favorite flower was daffodils; I grabbed some out of the neighbor's yard for you. We talked about Jack Russell terriers and Jane Russell, but I was distracted by the shine of your green eyes. You rushed off at midnight but lost one of your sandals. I have it. Wanta talk some more?"

You can believe in an ad like that, that indeed, a connection was made, and that maybe both people wanted more and didn't get it, and perhaps this ad will be the way that they find each other and regret will shift to elation.


* As I researched Ann Widdicombe to make sure I had spelled her name right, I see her image has improved vastly. So this seems a touch unfair. Apologies to you Widdicombe fans. The blonde hair is quite attractive.

Eventually it palls

So I made a mistake. I can admit it. I started reading Craig's List "Best of". Yes, it's fairly amusing, and yes, I'm certain reading it as opposed to reading a whole category of posts weeds out a lot of crazy rantings and poor grammar. But eventually, I came up against people who, while I support their right to be as different from myself as possible, I just wouldn't want to spend any time with.

Particularly troubling to me this afternoon are the incredibly mysogynistic men. Really, for them, women aren't individuals at all, merely variations on a stereotype that has been cobbled together from all the women who wouldn't have sex with them at the exact time and position they desired.

Now, I'm trying to be fair here. (Why bother? you ask. Because I don't want to become the thing I hate.)

I know, I should have a sense of humor about it. But I always think the gender war is largely constructed. No, I don't want to argue that men and women are exactly the same. But isn't it a huge disservice to all to assume men merely want to hit things and have sex every moment (hit things and "hit" things, I suppose) while women just want to cuddle and put on lipstick? Couldn't we all take a moment to remember that individuals exist? After all, who in their right mind actually wants a picket fence? And yet that's the symbol of the stereotypical American dream. But hardly anyone has them! (They're a bitch to paint and it's easy for kids to steal the pickets, so your fence is like a smile missing teeth.)

There are a lot of people out there who don't fit your idea of who they are, and thank goodness. How boring would it be if everyone did? So, thank you, mysogynistic man, for showing me that people can be mean, petty, lacking in self-awareness and devoid of empathy for anyone else. Because the moment I realized that, I was grateful for the kind, sexy, caring men I have encountered, one of whom I currently date, and who allows me to be whatever I wish, whether it fits into his stereotype or not.