(no subject)
So I dream of writing my memoir. I see some authors who do nothing but memoir: that's their genre, not just one title and you're done. I write little bits. But mainly I write to my friends these days, or to anyone who wants to write back. Remember Mr. Va Jay Jay? He must have sensed that he couldn't get more without giving something, so he wrote me what sounds like part of the speech he gives when he talks to church groups. It tells a story of neglectful, drug-abusing parents, a community ready with mentors to give when asked for the basics, and a focused teen who became a successful home owner, church goer, father and husband. I don't know what he does for a living.
I told him he has much to be proud of, and I can turn the camera around and kind of watch the story he tells, how we went to the same high school but lived in different towns. Technically, we were both in Palmetto, but on a map you could see we were in Ellenton, or maybe even Parrish. Rural. Palmetto is a small town in a rural part of the state. It has family owned furniture stores and banks on the main street, and they paint "Go Tigers!" on their storefront windows. The whole town shows up for high school football games. VJJ dropped out of football to support himself. So obviously, his life has been about making serious sacrifices, but I also see that he can raise himself on the comfort of knowing he's doing the right thing, what people will admire him for, that there's a community who'll see him as a brave and capable man.
He annoys me by writing that he's not a "fan" of whatever it is I've done, but a fan of me. All he remembers of me from high school is that I was a pretty girl. Now that I'm not that, he only knows what I've written to him on Facebook. Likewise, I have little memory of this guy. But I elevate him, because I have this idea, a belief, that the class I graduated with was exceptional, that the people I went to high school with were fine people, mainly sensible and dependable, and conservative, but mainly kind, too. The salutatorian was a Jehovah's Witness and I'll probably never see her again because of that. She'll have married, changed her name, won't be on Facebook, won't go to the reunions. The valedictorian is a guy I met in eighth grade, and even then I thought, if he weren't too smart for the job, he'd be a good funeral director. The only word that fits is "gravitas." He had that even in middle school. When he found my transition journal, he wrote me a really touching letter. It's just part of what makes him such an admirable person. VJJ is not this guy. We have nothing in common except Palmetto. But that is something. It's something I've tried to cut off, forget, leave behind. I've wished Florida would vanish into the Gulf of Mexico, because it's full of all of the backwards, redneck bullshit I hated when I lived there, and also full of enormous flying cockroaches. They're called palmetto bugs, and they're about the size of New England house mice.
I was thinking of VJJ all day yesterday, and for a few days now, and having bouts of paranoia. There are still people who will only ever see me through their filters, and their images of me are anathema to me. I have to live with that, and so does everyone else, though I suspect most people just don't confront that fact often. I am bothered by how VJJ sees me, at least some of the time, but he is not bothered by how a freak sees him, I don't think.
Who am I that still is who I was then? I've lived as a velocity, not a line or point. I assumed that whatever choices I've made, how I've changed in consequence, is all of a piece, and that it equals a whole life, not fragments or waste. People like VJJ make me remember that great numbers of people live the lives prescribed to them, choose from among a slim folder of scripts. It's the most ordinary thing in the world, to grow up and get a job and a spouse and a house and some kids, tinker with cars and watch sports and chat with the girls over coffee and go to PTA meetings and maybe some group therapy or knitting, and vacation and retire on your careful savings and get sick and die. I've blown through some of them, fucked up some, written off some, and act like some of it just won't happen to me. Am I reckless, a lesson in what not to do? Am I the jester I think I am, a hopeful beacon to the new generations of freaks who will be coming along someday? Knowing there was a New York City, a gay community, a punk scene, hippie communes... I was willing to go out there and look everywhere for them, if I knew they were there. This is all pre-GPS, pre-geocaching, pre-Internet. For a while I even convinced myself the world had gotten that flat and slick, totally searchable, but it's still all out there, unindexed, just better connected in some ways than before. The freaks will look for Northampton, and it will be somewhere else for them, but the existence of my Northampton is necessary for them to have something to find.
Where is Lola? I missed her at reunion. She's not on Facebook. She was crazy in high school and I want to know what kind of crazy she became and if she survived. I want to know if Tamara is still odd, too. Amy was, but now she works at Wal-Mart and prays for Republican candidates for office. I worked with someone who went from touring with the Dead to writing instructions for tax software, and by the end of our acquaintance, it was all software, no Dead. People dull down. I still see so much to do, so many more possibilities in getting more sharp, reaching farther. I'm 34 and still too young to worry about when I'm going to die. It could happen any day. When I got hit by the car I thought I was going to die, as I flew through the air. I thought it was my last impression of the world, being alive, and it wasn't scary. Being alive, having to deal with that, is the only possibly scary thing. I spent a lot of time being afraid of suffering. Risking pain is part of living, and trying to avoid all pain and suffering, both feeling it and causing it in others, will just keep you from living, keep you in your PJs watching daytime TV. So is anxiety about what to do next. If you don't pick something, you're still watching TV.
I'm reading Joey Comeau's book Overqualified and recommend it wholeheartedly. The form is a series of cover letters he sent to real employers, but the kind of letters that your employment counselor would faint if she knew you were really sending. I knew it was just what I wanted to read, given my identity crises and how they can come out around what kind of work I do. I thought I was just going to laugh through the book, but he makes me so sad, too, and I want to do intimate things with him in the dark, because of how much he shares of himself in these letters.
It's a beautiful spring day and I haven't been outside yet. I am going to correct this now.
I told him he has much to be proud of, and I can turn the camera around and kind of watch the story he tells, how we went to the same high school but lived in different towns. Technically, we were both in Palmetto, but on a map you could see we were in Ellenton, or maybe even Parrish. Rural. Palmetto is a small town in a rural part of the state. It has family owned furniture stores and banks on the main street, and they paint "Go Tigers!" on their storefront windows. The whole town shows up for high school football games. VJJ dropped out of football to support himself. So obviously, his life has been about making serious sacrifices, but I also see that he can raise himself on the comfort of knowing he's doing the right thing, what people will admire him for, that there's a community who'll see him as a brave and capable man.
He annoys me by writing that he's not a "fan" of whatever it is I've done, but a fan of me. All he remembers of me from high school is that I was a pretty girl. Now that I'm not that, he only knows what I've written to him on Facebook. Likewise, I have little memory of this guy. But I elevate him, because I have this idea, a belief, that the class I graduated with was exceptional, that the people I went to high school with were fine people, mainly sensible and dependable, and conservative, but mainly kind, too. The salutatorian was a Jehovah's Witness and I'll probably never see her again because of that. She'll have married, changed her name, won't be on Facebook, won't go to the reunions. The valedictorian is a guy I met in eighth grade, and even then I thought, if he weren't too smart for the job, he'd be a good funeral director. The only word that fits is "gravitas." He had that even in middle school. When he found my transition journal, he wrote me a really touching letter. It's just part of what makes him such an admirable person. VJJ is not this guy. We have nothing in common except Palmetto. But that is something. It's something I've tried to cut off, forget, leave behind. I've wished Florida would vanish into the Gulf of Mexico, because it's full of all of the backwards, redneck bullshit I hated when I lived there, and also full of enormous flying cockroaches. They're called palmetto bugs, and they're about the size of New England house mice.
I was thinking of VJJ all day yesterday, and for a few days now, and having bouts of paranoia. There are still people who will only ever see me through their filters, and their images of me are anathema to me. I have to live with that, and so does everyone else, though I suspect most people just don't confront that fact often. I am bothered by how VJJ sees me, at least some of the time, but he is not bothered by how a freak sees him, I don't think.
Who am I that still is who I was then? I've lived as a velocity, not a line or point. I assumed that whatever choices I've made, how I've changed in consequence, is all of a piece, and that it equals a whole life, not fragments or waste. People like VJJ make me remember that great numbers of people live the lives prescribed to them, choose from among a slim folder of scripts. It's the most ordinary thing in the world, to grow up and get a job and a spouse and a house and some kids, tinker with cars and watch sports and chat with the girls over coffee and go to PTA meetings and maybe some group therapy or knitting, and vacation and retire on your careful savings and get sick and die. I've blown through some of them, fucked up some, written off some, and act like some of it just won't happen to me. Am I reckless, a lesson in what not to do? Am I the jester I think I am, a hopeful beacon to the new generations of freaks who will be coming along someday? Knowing there was a New York City, a gay community, a punk scene, hippie communes... I was willing to go out there and look everywhere for them, if I knew they were there. This is all pre-GPS, pre-geocaching, pre-Internet. For a while I even convinced myself the world had gotten that flat and slick, totally searchable, but it's still all out there, unindexed, just better connected in some ways than before. The freaks will look for Northampton, and it will be somewhere else for them, but the existence of my Northampton is necessary for them to have something to find.
Where is Lola? I missed her at reunion. She's not on Facebook. She was crazy in high school and I want to know what kind of crazy she became and if she survived. I want to know if Tamara is still odd, too. Amy was, but now she works at Wal-Mart and prays for Republican candidates for office. I worked with someone who went from touring with the Dead to writing instructions for tax software, and by the end of our acquaintance, it was all software, no Dead. People dull down. I still see so much to do, so many more possibilities in getting more sharp, reaching farther. I'm 34 and still too young to worry about when I'm going to die. It could happen any day. When I got hit by the car I thought I was going to die, as I flew through the air. I thought it was my last impression of the world, being alive, and it wasn't scary. Being alive, having to deal with that, is the only possibly scary thing. I spent a lot of time being afraid of suffering. Risking pain is part of living, and trying to avoid all pain and suffering, both feeling it and causing it in others, will just keep you from living, keep you in your PJs watching daytime TV. So is anxiety about what to do next. If you don't pick something, you're still watching TV.
I'm reading Joey Comeau's book Overqualified and recommend it wholeheartedly. The form is a series of cover letters he sent to real employers, but the kind of letters that your employment counselor would faint if she knew you were really sending. I knew it was just what I wanted to read, given my identity crises and how they can come out around what kind of work I do. I thought I was just going to laugh through the book, but he makes me so sad, too, and I want to do intimate things with him in the dark, because of how much he shares of himself in these letters.
It's a beautiful spring day and I haven't been outside yet. I am going to correct this now.