i have a lot of really lovely stories for various people on my flist. this is not one of them.
i think my life is pretty much ridiculous right now, and i don't know what i'm doing AT ALL and i feel like i'm doing this big crazy pretend grown up thing, like going to work downtown everyday, nine to five, in a big building with six elevators, except i work for save the effing planet and i never have to wear a suit (or even shoes, really) and my office sounds like rock and roll music and i have the most massively hilarious tan line ever from my glasses. if there was a prize for looking like a reverse raccoon, i would get it. and what i am really trying to say is i definitely feel like this is another one of those things i jumped head/feet first into and am making up as i go along, just like every other thing of note i have ever done, and it's pretty eerie. but i definitely have this vague but definite half-formed plan for how i want my life to be and what steps i can take to accomplish this, and for the first time ever it's not something ridiculous and/or unattainable, and that's really comforting. a librarian is not a torch singer from 1962 or a pirate or time machine inventor. a librarian is non-capitalistic. a librarian is traditionally one of the only careers open to unmarried women. a librarian is often code for la-la-lesbian. all of these things, i ought to mention, are best taken in historical context. did i ever really explain why i want to be a librarian? those are the core issues. and also because when i was little, i would go to large gatherings of people and hide under tables and read books instead of ever talking to anyone. and because i always won every summer reading game the local library ever had. i went around the board so much they stopped giving me erasers shaped like things. they thought i was cheating, because no seven year old reads so many pages in three weeks. when i was ten, i read eightteen books over the summer holiday and wrote book reports on all of them and got to go to the store with five other kids who read more than ten books and buy new books for the school library.
i don't know if this is a legitimate transition, but The Girl™ is coming home in two days (i just found this out ten minutes ago) and she will be here for a week and i have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. last summer? i had to work all the time. crazy hours. never knew when. time was limited. what does this mean? it means we sewed ourselves together and thought nothing of it other than "yeah, this is pretty great. let's do this all the time on the left coast". now there are stupid new terms to think about like "spending too much time together". wtf is that? we only ever said it once before, it was winter or something. "do you think we're spending too much time together?" "actually, i don't think we're spending enough time together. time is limited. why? do you?" "i definitely don't. i was just worried that maybe we are". and then we never mentioned it again, and then i think maybe we might have spent too much time together. is this a valid concern? to have now? in this situation, i also have vague, unformed plans, and i can't tell yet if they are as distinctly comforting as the other kind. librarian-wise, i mean. certainly they are a bit, but i don't know. are we just astronauts and rock and roll stars again? it's one thing to dream big, it's quite another to be paralyzed by all of your dreams and never know what any of them actually mean. this is crucial to my continued existence, and possibly even happiness, if such a thing should actually exist.
currently, i am reading a kathy acker book i got for free because no one wanted to pay fifty cents for it. if i didn't want life to make any sense ever, i would only read acker and breedlove and burroughs and murakami. instead, i read moraga and renault and thurber and wagner. i never, ever speak in metaphors. don;t trust the stuff.
something else i have been reading off and on when i can stand it is a zine i picked up at quimby's when i canvassed near there on monday, called SUPPORT. you can probably all guess what it's about and why i'm only reading it sometimes. i think it is by cindy from "doris" zine, but actually i'm not certain. i probably heard it was, or read it, but maybe i made that up. one thing i can say that might enrage some people, is i am fucking sick of seeing covers drawn by cristy road. i mean yeah, so i like her art. i think she draws pretty excellently, and the first few zines i saw that used her were pretty much amazing stuff and i may or may not have been blown away or something. but, like, (and i don't know how much of this i think has to do with her) the word "formulaic" is hovering around the edges of my consciousness. the word "friends" is also hovering, in the way that people are friends with each other, not the way all punkrock bands are friends with each other and love each other so much and are somehow always on tour together. but, i mean, that doesn't mean i can't be horrifically sick of those damn identifiable drawings.
i think i am talking smack like this because i don't want to say whether or not that stupid zine which is not stupid at all made me cry or something, or if i just put it down, or if i thought about finishing that essay i was writing three years ago that started off with the judy grahn quote that said "if you don't remember it, how do you know it happened to you?", or if i wondered just why i wanted to be an astronaut when i was five, and why i have been known to say "but don't all little girls want to be astronauts?" and whether when i say "astronaut", i am actually speaking in hated metaphors. i'm not. i mean it for real. the earth out the window of a space ship.
that doesn't make it any less terrifying that a certain girl is driving across the country in two days which means that i will see her for the first time in six months. something i didn't realize before, but which, at one point, would have meant more to me than all the half-formed plans in the world, is the symmetry of an unexpected week. i do know, from personal experience and physical evidence that it could just as easily end in disaster. or the opposite of disaster. for once, or twice, something could actually go right in my life.
tl;dr.
i don't know if this is a legitimate transition, but The Girl™ is coming home in two days (i just found this out ten minutes ago) and she will be here for a week and i have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. last summer? i had to work all the time. crazy hours. never knew when. time was limited. what does this mean? it means we sewed ourselves together and thought nothing of it other than "yeah, this is pretty great. let's do this all the time on the left coast". now there are stupid new terms to think about like "spending too much time together". wtf is that? we only ever said it once before, it was winter or something. "do you think we're spending too much time together?" "actually, i don't think we're spending enough time together. time is limited. why? do you?" "i definitely don't. i was just worried that maybe we are". and then we never mentioned it again, and then i think maybe we might have spent too much time together. is this a valid concern? to have now? in this situation, i also have vague, unformed plans, and i can't tell yet if they are as distinctly comforting as the other kind. librarian-wise, i mean. certainly they are a bit, but i don't know. are we just astronauts and rock and roll stars again? it's one thing to dream big, it's quite another to be paralyzed by all of your dreams and never know what any of them actually mean. this is crucial to my continued existence, and possibly even happiness, if such a thing should actually exist.
currently, i am reading a kathy acker book i got for free because no one wanted to pay fifty cents for it. if i didn't want life to make any sense ever, i would only read acker and breedlove and burroughs and murakami. instead, i read moraga and renault and thurber and wagner. i never, ever speak in metaphors. don;t trust the stuff.
something else i have been reading off and on when i can stand it is a zine i picked up at quimby's when i canvassed near there on monday, called SUPPORT. you can probably all guess what it's about and why i'm only reading it sometimes. i think it is by cindy from "doris" zine, but actually i'm not certain. i probably heard it was, or read it, but maybe i made that up. one thing i can say that might enrage some people, is i am fucking sick of seeing covers drawn by cristy road. i mean yeah, so i like her art. i think she draws pretty excellently, and the first few zines i saw that used her were pretty much amazing stuff and i may or may not have been blown away or something. but, like, (and i don't know how much of this i think has to do with her) the word "formulaic" is hovering around the edges of my consciousness. the word "friends" is also hovering, in the way that people are friends with each other, not the way all punkrock bands are friends with each other and love each other so much and are somehow always on tour together. but, i mean, that doesn't mean i can't be horrifically sick of those damn identifiable drawings.
i think i am talking smack like this because i don't want to say whether or not that stupid zine which is not stupid at all made me cry or something, or if i just put it down, or if i thought about finishing that essay i was writing three years ago that started off with the judy grahn quote that said "if you don't remember it, how do you know it happened to you?", or if i wondered just why i wanted to be an astronaut when i was five, and why i have been known to say "but don't all little girls want to be astronauts?" and whether when i say "astronaut", i am actually speaking in hated metaphors. i'm not. i mean it for real. the earth out the window of a space ship.
that doesn't make it any less terrifying that a certain girl is driving across the country in two days which means that i will see her for the first time in six months. something i didn't realize before, but which, at one point, would have meant more to me than all the half-formed plans in the world, is the symmetry of an unexpected week. i do know, from personal experience and physical evidence that it could just as easily end in disaster. or the opposite of disaster. for once, or twice, something could actually go right in my life.
tl;dr.