Greek Tragedyhi

at least I'm sleeping

I've never seen your mother, but I imagined her in a dream to be nothing like the woman I imagine she is when I'm awake.  In my dream she's young and artistic, long hair that falls in wisps and commas.  In reality, I think of her as frail, translucent hands like the skin of onions, age spots.  Ready, not to snap, but for bits of her bones to splinter off.  In my dream, because I loved you, I preserved her for you.  She was young and naked; she looked about 40.  She was dead.  I laid her in a claw-foot tub and submerged her in water.  I worried she'd float up.  Once the water covered her completely, I took thick waffle weave blankets, everything white and clean, and enshrined her.  You could no longer see the tub at all, not even the feet of it.  I was proud of my work when I saw you, so proud I almost forgot to offer my condolences.  I figured it went without saying, as so much does between us. 

Then you were going back to boarding school.  They gave you a car called "a pool," and you asked, "so why did you get a town car, and I get a pool?" And I wondered, who'd want to drive, not be driven in, but actually drive a town car?  That's like getting a Bentley and not having a driver.  What's the point?  Maybe I need more sleep.

playing it cool

I just had a camp dream with non-camp people.  My boyfriends from home had names like Eric, Brian, and Joe.  They’d write me letters saying they loved and missed me.  Could I call them?  When would I be back?  I don’t think I’ve ever dated a Brian.

Phil was my camp boyfriend.  In my dream, his sister was named Wendy, and she had blond hair and wore orange tennis shorts.  Philip and I had some kind of fight.  It’s unclear about what exactly, but then his sister began to physically attack me, while he watched.  He just left the room and let her hit me.  In real life Phil always defends me.  This would never happen. 

Time goes by.  Days I think.  And he hasn’t reached out to fix things.  I know he’s in the wrong, but I miss him and want everything to go back to the way it had been, with him loving me again.  Holding hands.  Laughing.  Kissing, his nervous hands around my waist.  But how can I be the one to apologize?  I’ve done nothing wrong.  So I have to pretend that I’m happy and fine now, act like I don’t care.  Because if I show him I’m hurt and ache for him, he’ll want me less.  That’s what we’re told, and somewhere inside we know it’s right, but it still feels wrong.  I emerge from my cabin, determined to find him, but to act as if I don’t see him.  I just need him to see that I’m happy and fine without him.  I need to act.  This is what I hated most about dating: forcing myself to act exactly counter to how I really felt.  Play it cool.  I’m horrible at playing it cool.  When Phil does it, he’s not playing.  He has a valve and can turn his feelings off.  In real life, even, his sister has said it to me.  She fears that one day, he’ll just cut her out of his life if she does the wrong thing.  He’s capable of it.  This is what I dreamt.

There was a camp-wide apache relay going on.  Since I was a senior counselor, I was able to move throughout campus without a designated post.  I remember clapping for Ruthie as she spun with her head on the handle of a bat.  “Dizzy Lizzy.”  Then she had to run and pass the baton.  I never found Phil, but I knew he didn’t want to see me.  I hadn’t done anything wrong, certainly nothing to warrant his cutting me off completely. 

Next thing I know, we’re no longer at camp.  I’m in Phil’s sister’s apartment, his real sister, not the blond in tennis shorts.  She acts, at first, as if she doesn’t know we’ve split apart.  She’s warm to me, and I know she’ll always be warm to me, no matter what happens.  We talk about her daughter and her health, and then she says she knows.  I want to make her call him, convince him he’s making a mistake.  And in real life I know this feeling.  You’ve broken up, but you’re sure a phone call from your friend, or father, or one of their friends, or their mother, will convince them they’re making a mistake.  You’re sure someone else can talk them into you.  I feel desperate for him, and I hate who I’ve become: this crazed frantic woman who thinks she’ll stop living without him.  But it’s who I am, and even in my head, I know it’s all wrong, but I can’t act my way into believing something else.  They tell you “believing follows behavior.”  It’s why when you force yourself to smile, you’ll eventually feel better.  Your brain will say, “hey I’m smiling (behavior), so I must be happy (belief).”  If I force myself through the motions, I will feel better, in time.  And it all just sucks. 

I tell her he’s cut me off, and she tells me she has warned me he can be like this.  I think of grabbing her cell phone and calling him.  He’d pick up if he saw it was her, especially now that he’s no longer swept up in a relationship.  But it would be me.  What would I say?  “We have twins on the way.  Don’t you love me anymore?”  But in my dream, I realize he’ll still be their father.  He knows this.  He just doesn’t love me anymore, and it’s too late.  He’s turned a switch and won’t go back to loving me. 

I then wake up crying.  Phil comes into the room, after I summon him there, and I ask him for a hug.  “I’ve never seen anyone cry after a dream,” he said.  And I sob, crying into him.  I would hate to ever lose him.

reversal of fortune

I love when it's cold in the morning.  I fell asleep last night with nothing but a sheet and the whirl of the overhead fan.  I awoke beneath a hill of comforter, squares of down by my face.  I had such a realistic dream about my ex-mother-in-law.  It felt like two dreams strung together, as if I'd stirred a bit between them.  First I'd found a ticket in my ex-husband's desk drawer to a basketball sporting event.  Somehow in the dream it was left for me.  I showed up at the game, court-side seats.  I was wearing a baseball hat, with my ponytail of hair pulled through the hat loop in back.  In reality, I never wear baseball caps, just tennis visors, mostly because I have too much hair.  But in the dream, I was wearing a hat, and as I stood to rearrange it, my ex called my name from a few seats behind me.  It's always bothersome to dream about people with whom you no longer speak--people who are still alive, you've heard.  He wanted to switch seats with me.  Of course he did.  He wanted the better seats.  So I agreed.  He and his friend navigated past me, and as I looked up toward where I would be sitting, I realized Rome was there.  "You're going to have to make this right," I mumbled to my ex as he walked past me.  But he did nothing.  This is when I must have stirred in my sleep because in the next scene, I was in her kitchen, the two of us alone.  My ex was out playing golf.  She began to blink, a nervous tick of hers.  Then she got angry.  I thought it was about the book, or that I called her a crotch-rot.  She was angry, still, that I married her son, and even more that she'd had gifts made for me, with my name, that she could no longer use.  Beautiful handmade furniture, with drawers and crystal pulls.  She and I had the same taste.  "No one would appreciate this like you," she said.  And I shook my head in agreement, regretting, in just that moment, that I'd ever divorced her.  I envied her things and taste, and now that I'm decorating my own house, I cannot help but wonder what she'd have picked or suggested for our living room.  I like a lived in formal, but with kids on the way, prudent decisions should be made. 

In reality, I know there were no hopes or special gifts tucked away for me.  She was relieved when I left their lives.  And I hear now that she paints me as a whore to her country club friends.  That's all I've ever heard.  It was a difficult life I lived with that family, so it's all the more disturbing when I dream of it somehow being right.  Though at the end of the dream, my ex reappeared, and I was startled by his face.  It reminded me of just who he was, and definitely wasn't.

patience

Last night, I went through a guided visualization exercise.  I had to picture in my mind a safe place.  I imagined the family room den from the house in which I was raised.  I was relaxing on the green sofa, looking out the sunny windows at a small tree I used to like to watch in the wind.  Okay, now you should see a figure.  Invite that figure in.  Focus on the figure.  Mine was a tanned bald man who might have also had long hair.  Very business in the front, party in the back.  How can my guide have a mullet?!  No!  This is all wrong.  Wait, now I see it, he's bald.  It's been decided.  He wore a brown leather belt saying, "Jesus Loves You."  He was very tall with wise warm eyes and a soothing voice.  He reminded me of my eighth grade global studies teacher, Mr. Bob Brandt.  I asked him to sit with me on the sofa.  "Please tell me what you've come here to say," I asked him.  Then I listened.  He looked me in the eye, taking both my hands.  His were warm, brown, and square, covering mine.  "Be patient," he said after some thought.  "Love yourself.  Be kind to yourself, and just be patient.  You have everything you want.  Stop being so hard.  Just be patient and forgiving of yourself."  I opened my eyes and said it aloud, "Be patient."  I have to let go and trust everything will be okay. I'm so in love and so lucky to have someone on my side, even when it seems we're looking at it from different angles. 

I closed my eyes again and asked my bald guru, "Well what should I do?" 
He closed his eyes for a while, then opened them with a response.  "You should start drawing again.  And take yourself on more of your artists dates, the ones where you went somewhere new by yourself, with your notebook, exploring."  My God, he was right.  I've stopped doing that, stopped going out on my own, without my friends.  I need more of that in my life.  I'm signing up for a drawing class at the 92nd Street Y while I'm at it.  Tonight, I'm heading out alone, too.  Then I'll meet my friends for drinks afterward.

I love this idea, that I can seek advice from myself through visualization.  Not so crazy about his fashion sense, but what the hell?  God bless us everyone, even those who dream about men with "Jesus Loves You" belts.

dreams to forget

I awoke this morning on the right side of the bed feeling wrong.  In my dream, you made plans with your friends to go to Pink Elephant, even though you knew I’d spent the day collecting your favorite ingredients.  I’d be cooking dinner.  When I confronted you, you told me to deal and not be as selfish.  You twisted things and left me wondering if I’d done something wrong.  You were ordering life for one instead of two, without apology. 

When I awoke, I wanted to punish you.  “But it’s only a dream; I didn’t do anything.”  I knew it wasn’t just a dream.  Something in our life is bothering me and working its way out in my sleep.  It happens when I drink, too.  The irrational bubbles to the surface when my good sense numbs out.  I forget how you sacrifice and spend your time thinking of how you can improve my life.  I remember when you take time for yourself; I cling to the negative space between us, and somehow believe that’s what I should be looking at.  Not the sculpture and shape of us, but what’s missing, what you’re not doing enough of.  I will then ignore you, deleting your numbers from my phone, because when we’re missing, people look for us.  It’s my way of manipulating affection, drawing it out of you, instead of being kind and understanding and having faith that it will come again, without my having to do anything. 

“But it was just a dream sweetheart; I’d never do that.”
“Yeah, but I dreamt it for a reason.  I must suspect or worry that you will behave that way, and my worrying about that is the problem here.”  When I said, “here,” I should have meant, “with me.”  I am tired of twisting things and leaving you to wonder if you’ve done something wrong.

chew the fat

I feel like I shouldn't be writing about this because it means I'm admitting something.  No one wants to read about how it feels do they?  I mean, people like reading what they can relate to, so my writing about being recognized, loved more, plagued with more anonymous inconsideration... well, frankly, who cares?  But then, this isn't about you, so fcuk it.

When people ask me how my life has changed, I just shrug.  It hasn't really.  I mean, I'm still coming home to Linus every night.  Yes, sometimes I get the "Are you Stephanie Klein?" thing.  But overall, it's still me in here, ya know.  Yeah, these events, articles, deals, whatever, they're all happening around me, but really I feel like an observer to it all, as well.

Great example: right now.  It's 6:49am on Saturday.  I still haven't slept, reading emails, catching up on my blog reading, and boom.  I hit a blog entry on my friend Derek's site about me.  I hit this place where I'm "Stephanie Klein" this object that stands for something, being written about in windows.  That is how my life has changed.

When I lost a lot of weight, it took a long time for my brain to catch up to my body.  My shape fit into smaller sizes.  My head was still a fatty, and to this day, if I overhear someone make a fat remark on the street, I assume it's directed toward me.  Thin didn't really cozy up to me.  "Oh, my God, I can't believe you were ever fat.  You look like you've been thin your whole life."  I hear the words come out of his mouth, but inside, I'm thinking, "Yeah, right.  Okay.  Whatever."  Because it's still ME in here, looking out.  It’s me in here, the girl who hates to shower because it means having to dry all this hair, the girl who looked out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night, looked up, and wished to be “happy, healthy, and thin” at 11:11 since I was eleven.  It’s me in here.  You don’t all of a sudden change just because people begin to notice you. 

Men noticed me when I was thinner.  I felt the difference sometimes, giddy with an offer to dinner with a cute boy, but deep down inside, I was Moose, and that hurt.  Like, fetal position hurt.  It was an ache so deep that it hits me still, even as I write it.  I think it makes me feel more human.

Thin might as well be “celebrity” because it doesn’t change the deep stuff.  Yeah, I’m in The New York Times, but “it” hasn’t hit yet.  And, I hope it never does. I'm just doing my thing, and I'm not afraid of challenges, though I do find the really mean comments hurtful sometimes.    Mostly, I don't understand where they're coming from and what the writer's goal is in conveying his/her nasty remarks.  What, to make me feel like shit?  That makes you feel good?  Please, this isn't an after school special.  It's easy to be courageous behind a cloak of anonymity, try doing things you’re proud of, things that take real courage.

You know the first things that go through my head aren't the excitement I'm feeling.  It's now having to deal with more assholes.  A friend just called saying, "Just read it.  You must be really happy."  I am.  It has nothing to do with the really nice article Ms. Rosenbloom crafted.  At the end of the day, this isn't about attention, an abundance or a dearth of it.  It's about doing what I love.  Being recognized for it feels extraordinary, it does, but really doing it, actually writing, is what really matters to me.  Getting paid to do the thing I love most in life is a dream.  The kind where when you wake up, you try really hard to fall back into just so you can ride it out a little longer.

The excitement comes in waves like pain.  When I first learned The Times wanted to write a piece about me, I was surprisingly calm and matter of fact about it.  What it would mean for me hadn't settled in yet.  It's a story; it won't change my life.   Whatever.  I'd hang out with a reporter and my friends.  I wouldn't have to worry about what I wore or how my hair looked.  Then she told me there would be a photographer.  "Unobtrusive," she promised.  How exactly do you go to a bar with a bigass camera and remain unobtrusive?  Exactly.  I'm obtrusive all the time.  Payback.

Then my friends began with, "well you don't know what she's writing.  I mean, what if it's all bad?"  Believe me, on some level, that's a fear too. But it was not substantial.  I put it out there because this is just who I am.  If you want to hate me and spend your time complaining that all I ever write about is a whine laced with sobs about not having a guy, then you're not reading my writing, not all of it.  And that's just the thing.  Just because you read something I whipped out in a matter of minutes doesn't mean you know a thing about who I am.  You won't know me unless you KNOW ME.  That's just the way it is.  But, it's nice to know you're trying, even if it is to only be infatuhated with me.  I can live with that.

writing puberty

When you're first trying to be a published writer, you just want to be heard.  How do I get people to read my stuff?  You have that feeling, that "it" nagging you, so you talk about trying to get published.  All you do is talk about it.  I didn’t talk about it; I started a blog.

Location.  Location.  Location.  That’s what it came down to for me.  I needed a space to house all my thoughts and photos, a space I could access from work, home, a lackluster “this is all there is to do?” vacation.  Chris hooked me up.  “You so need to start a blog.”   

I wrote daily; no one was reading it.  Then instead of hitting reply to the “how was your weekend?” emails, I just sent ‘em a link.  Here’s what I did, what I saw, and by the way, how craptacular I feel about my life.  Cool. 

I believed I had what it took to be a writer.  I knew because writing was my gym.  Some people get that pent up-not so fresh feeling-look on their faces when they haven’t been to the gym.  They need to run.  They need to eat.  Cranky no mas.  I become ornery when I don’t write.  It’s my exhale, and when I do it, I lose track of time.

I knew I had what “it” takes, like a woman wearing leg warmers and a leotard, practicing the sheet music to A Chorus Line’s “Nothing.”  I knew it from the bottom of my soul, and despite what anyone told me, I believed I’d be a writer.  If only the right person would read “it.”

I wrote honestly, uncensored, without self-consciousness because whenever I’d read anything that moved me, I realized it was the truth the writer revealed that evoked such an emotional reaction.  (Even now, posting this, I struggled.  I had to honor the honesty written here, but I was afraid by posting this it was admitting some kind of success.  I worried it would be seen as a self-indulgent and haughty effort at self-everything.  But I followed by lead.)  I wrote with my fingers crossed. Intermittently, I’d read reference books about submitting SASEs to a list of publications.  Hell, I’d even buy the book, then flip it onto my night table.  WTF?  Why can't these places take email submissions?  I attended a class at the local Y about getting published.  Damn, there’s certainly a lot of paperwork.  I don’t even own a checkbook, and what’s a stamp for?  I’m a mouse tomato; I never sent anything to anyone.  It wasn’t fear of rejection; it was sloth.  It’s the same reason I never send in rebates: you can’t do it via email. 

London found my blog.  That’s where it all began.  Eventually, the most fantastic thing happened: my dream came true.  The big one, the one I’ve wanted since I was on my elbows in the fourth grade dreaming it up.  Holy gobstoppers!  It came true, and along with the squeals of excitement comes a heavy cloak of red panic. 

Having a dream come true is like coming into money—even when no money is involved—and you don’t want to pull an M.C. Hammer.  You want to invest your luck properly, be conservative, despite being young, you want to hoard the moments and keep them.  Terrified you’ll piss off the fate gods, you think before speaking, worried you’ll say the wrong thing and jinx things.  You don’t know whom you can tell, or how much telling is an overindulgence. 

I didn’t know what to fight for in a contract or which lawyer to sign.  The one who charges two Manolo Blahnik’s an hour, or the one who charges much less at 6 bottles of Reserve Veuve Cliquot an hour?  I picked off my new manicure.  Is this really happening?  Like, can I tell the cab driver?  Is that safe?  What if I whisper it?  It will stay closer to me if I just whisper it.  I don’t want to sound braggy, but I need to tell people.  I can’t not tell people!  I knew I should’ve been playing it cool, like I’d imagined I would if I ever came into good fortune.  I fail miserably.  How can I relax?  I can’t even play hard to get on my dates, and now I have to be Cool Hand Luke when it comes to my life dream that only gets actualized once?  I so don’t think so.   I’m about to scream and notify the asshole who never called when he said he would, to tell everyone who ever shrugged when I’d confided my secret wish for myself, to inform each individual who told me, “nah, not interested.”  But I didn’t because there’s something called humility.  I was also vexed it would all be taken away, the way I imagine new parents of an adopted newborn feel in their first weeks as family.  You don’t think your heart would be able to bear it.  You remind yourself to breathe. 

You take precaution with your hopes, trying to measure them and keep things neat and leveled.  You’re used to calculating your MTBU.  When you meet a guy who gives you the “this is its,” you remind yourself.  You were perfectly happy before you met him; you’ll be happy again once this ends.  Your pessimism doesn’t even shock you.  You conjure clichés, “this too shall pass,” to prepare yourself for the moment when you awake to find your dream has been yanked back and the sun does not continue to rise! If the dream remains intact, you'll soon have to face the nightmare critics, ghouls crouching in your shadows. 

Then I heard, “well, keep your feet grounded.”  And I’m like, what the hell does that mean?  At the end of the day, with all the new and exciting things that will happen, I’ll still be picking up Linus turds and letting the kid lick up my nose.  Why are people cautioning me with the word “grounded?”  I’m terrified; the last thing I’m doing is getting ahead of myself.  My fears are doing their best to keep me down.  Have no fear.

Jennifer tells me my fate gods are like fear in that they hold me back.  They don’t keep me from doing anything like fear does, but they keep me from “truly reveling and appreciating and taking in your happiness.  Don’t be neurotic.  Love life like you know you do!”  Then we squeal together because she’s a true friend.  True friends aren’t just there to commiserate and support you through the hard times (some people get high off counseling the wounded); they’re there to celebrate and bask in your successes.

When all the celebration is over, you come home, too terrified to do the one thing you considered your breathing.  You’re afraid to write.  Now that the piles of writing books on your bedside table are justified, you’re petrified you’ll fail at it.  You won’t live up to the high expectations, even in your best heels.  A few days go by, things sink in, and you’re over it, back to writing.  But now you’re trying.  I mean now it really counts.  But you’re cautions and wary, worried “trying” is disparate from “doing.”  You and your Dangerous Mind have been discovered, but it’s like first charming a teacher.  You want to keep your A, and "darlin' keeping an A is harder than earning an A."

So now that you’re a signed author, now that you can say, “I’m a writer” at a bar and mean it, now that you can hope they’ll ask if you’ve been published, you begin to revisit things.  You reread.  You start to believe everything you used to write is better.  Your “used to” is worth more because then you weren’t trying so hard.  Then you weren’t worried.

You were worried then though.  You weren’t worried about word choice or sentence structure.  Then all you wanted to do was move someone, touch them with your writing.  You wanted to illicit an emotional reaction, but now you believe that’s not “writing;” that’s just a story.  That’s where things get complicated.  When we stop thinking of the story and fret instead about its telling.  It’s the struggle you face when you’re only on your first lap.  It’s writing puberty. 

You focus on the pleasure it brings you to write.  You begin to read more.  Now there’s competition.

Sometimes I read things—Nabokov, Irving, Munro—and I shake my head.  “Yeah, in my entire life, I’ll never be that good.”  Then I read other things—I’m choosing not to share what I find wretched writing—and I’m like, “If that can get published, I certainly can.”  But now it’s not about being published; it’s about feeling proud of my work, every single sentence.  Every word selection and storytelling tactic magnified under a critical glass of assessment.  I was born to do this; I won’t fail at it. 

Then you can’t sleep.  You’re addicted to the refresh button on Amazon’s Top Sellers list, eager to find your position in the lineup.  You know when you awake the reviews will be out.  A critic will tear you a new asshole, and you’ll weep, realizing not just your dreams but your nightmares came true.  Your writing is only popular because of the subject.  Your sentences are forced, and you and your life are unoriginal.  Your work will be summarized into one laconic phrase: “She tries too hard and fails at that successfully.” 

That will happen.  Rejection happens to everyone. But I’ll keep writing because I’m not doing it for praise or condemnation.  I’m doing it just for me, being true to myself and what I know I was put on this earth to do.

my most obnoxious post

Blogger and photographer Stephanie Klein's STRAIGHT UP AND DIRTY: The Life of a Young New York Divorcee, a humorous tell-all tracing the author's return to single life as a "firm, fashionable, and let's face it - fetching" twenty-something, plus a memoir based on the author's childhood experience at Fat Camp, to Judith Regan at Regan Books, in a major pre-emptive deal (including TV/film rights), by Diane Bartoli and Joe Veltre at Artists Literary Group. UK rights are with Patrick Walsh at Conville Walsh. Artists Literary Group will represent foreign rights, on behalf of Regan Books.

It was a Sunday, God’s day of rest.  Clearly, God does not rest on Sundays; she makes phone calls to me.

I didn’t even know my book proposal for Straight Up & Dirty went out on Wednesday.  I was still waiting for confirmation that the cover looked presentable.  Friday morning, my agent asked if I was sitting down.  “An absurd amount of publishing houses want to meet you.  They all loved it.”  She said "loved it" as if I were a molten chocolate dome cake.  Meetings were inked into calendars for the next business day.  Monday, booked.  Tuesday, booked.  House to house like an Avon Lady.  That night, I hit The White Horse Tavern and then Salon.  Hard.  But I didn’t do dirty; I did whiskey… and champagne.. and Florent until 4am?  When did that sneak in?

On a hungover Saturday afternoon conference call, Judith Regan asks me, “So what do you envision for the cover?”   

“Please, for the love of God, it cannot be pink.  Pink makes me want to vomit.  And no loopy letters or caricatures of pointy shoes or shopping bags.  Besides, I’m a redhead; pink is so not my color.”  When we hung up, it was decided that we'd still be meeting on Monday afternoon.

Now fast forward to Sunday.  My date and I just walked through the construction site that is now Crapass Central Park Come Orange, thanks to The Gates, to find ourselves on an excruciatingly winding line for the coat check at The Museum of Natural History.  "My God, they're slow.  I feel like I'm at Duane Reade."  We survive Slow and Slower, and between telling him “I never do museum dates” and “I hope you know you’re an exception” I feel my phone vibrating.

I’m on a date, so I’m not about to answer it.  It’s probably the girls ready to recount our Saturday evenings.  They’ll understand.  The buzzing doesn’t cease.  “Do you mind if I just see who it is?  I know it’s rude, and I’m really sorry.”  Reader, please take note.  All I did for the rest of our date was apologize.  “It might be my agent.”  I’ll never get used to saying that; I giggle every time.  How affected.  My agent.  It's so  Entourage.

You hear yourself doing it.  “I’m so sorry.”  And you want to stop hiccupping it, but you can’t.  I do the same thing when I’m sick and someone takes care of me.  “I’m sorry I’m sick.”  How dumb.  It’s not like I want to be sick, but there I am apologizing for being helpless.  So on a date, I’m sans phone for all of 10 minutes, apologizing for being on the phone the whole time.  At least I know he’s a good sport.

He was mid-sentence over our dinner at The Park--we were sitting on the floor by the fireplace eating polenta and lamb—when I pulled the, “I really have to take this.  Hold that thought.”  I genuinely felt sorry.  Thankfully, that was the last incoming phone call.  “I have to call my mom.” 

All is fair in love and writing.

let's not ruin this with words

I saw it written on a tee-shirt.  I ought to have bought it and worn it.

I don't want to know if your song is about me--
or if it's something that I did yesterday.
I don't want to know if I've been your muse
or if your feelings are still the same.

Uncomfortable was the wrong word. 
Complicated.

I don't want to mess things up
more than I already do.
Using words that I shouldn't.
There's so much more I want to say.

Things just come out crooked
despite it all seeming straight
up in my head
you're with me always--
my analysis, spell check, and thesaurus--
but there's no synonym for you.

Uncomfortable--I got it all wrong.
That's what happens when it feels right.
I was afraid of messing this up
because you've been all
I've ever had that's lasted.

You're invaluable.
Without you here, there's more room
to spread my wings, I can kick out
when I'm sleeping, without
wondering if I've hurt you.

You're the only one who gets me to
write in stanzas.  You keep me
honest with myself.  I strive to
be better when you're in my life.

glinda

I crawled into bed last night, my red notebook and red pen easily accessible on my bedside table, and fell asleep to the most appropriate bedtime story. I've decided to keep a dream journal.  I'm convinced I'll get premonitions about my future.  I know that sounds very tidal chart moon sign of me, but I believe the power of the mind is our greatest strength.  Look how fcuked up we (read: I) make ourselves by over-analyzing everything anyway.  We use our minds to escape pain, to create drama, and to lose weight.  I'm using my powers for good this time.  Just call me Glinda (I'm so desparate to see Wicked).

I've been a wandering stranger looking for a soft place to fall for a long time.  I'd complain about it. A. Lot. Spewed letters and hiccuped words all over this monitor... "I haven't been able to commit to a relationship. I am too intrigued by others stories, the way they handle stress. I love the intimacy and learning that comes with them, but I want a lot of those, so I can learn more about people, and about myself. Or maybe I just haven't met the right guy. Realistically though, I think I sabotage any chance of a relationship right now because I have an idea that I'm really not ready for one yet. I think I will be come September. In the fall, I'll be in love, and it will be right. I've convinced myself of something based on nothing."  I posted that once upon a short slice of time ago. 

I think our dreams hint at our core desires.  It's not about predicting the future as much as it's seeing what your real hopes are.  Self-fulfilling prophecies are hopefully going to find their way onto the pages of my red notebook.

I saw a man in a thick green sweater near our front door.  I knew it was ours.  We had an SUV in the driveway.  I was coming into the house, my hair in a long braid down my back. I had to kick mud off my feet at the door.   An enormous tree stood like a force in our front yard.  I loved our front door.  It was everything I wanted, right there, in a heavy stately door.  I love the voices and sounds of homes.  If dreams could smell, this one smelled of fall leaves and firewood.  We had children.  One was still in a car seat, the other grabbed the man's hand and pulled him toward a red tricycle.  I loved that dream.  I awoke feeling yummy.  I braided my hair... and then I remembered, in my dream, my mother told me my haircut was too drastic.  She said she didn't like it because it looked like I had two haircuts, like a mullet.  (When my hair gets too long, she says I look like a country western singer... and when I get layers, she complains they're not gradual enough). 

Freud said artists and cooks have an innate desire to play with their feces.  They learn appropriate as they grow up. I love learning more than French fries.  I adore learning about people, hearing their stories, following their gestures, and lingering on their observations.  And when I got into mini-relationships, even, that process was stymied.  I didn't realize I could get that need of the "new" met without involving another man.  It's called friendships.  It's called volunteering.  It's called reading.  I felt more myself when I wasn't in a relationship because I was able to "learn" and love "new" without feeling guilty.  I've learned how to do appropriate.  I now know how to sublimate.