Coffee, morning internet, and clean clear Autumn sunlight.
I haven't been updating much, and I'm not exactly certain why...but perhaps it's because I feel that my life is inherently un-postworthy these days. I have a steady job; it is occasionally awful and occasionally fun. I watch movies but I do not review them at my movie LJ. I think about my stories but I rarely write them. I am constantly trying to stumble back into a regular religious practice.
Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm very sad, sometimes I'm reliving days of adolescent angst.
I've been thinking of this time in Kentucky as a necessary intermission; here is where I can shore up my shaky financial situation (the inevitable result of divorce + struggle + road trip), fill in the gaps in my "I am a Grown-Up" tool-kit, and prepare for the next adventure (because MCR will tour again and now I have a taste for the road). But that's dull work, and the effort to transform it into something readable is usually siphoned off by Twittering inanities.
However, there are still small adventures to be had.
Two weeks ago fuschia and I met at Secaucus Junction and proceeded to spend a day getting lost in New Jersey (despite generous directions from an adorable hotel manager appropriately named Frank Super). It was marvellous fun, and gave me my first ground-level look at the area I am considering for my next home. Admittedly, one day is not enough time in which to make an informed decision, but oh...I was smitten with New Jersey, indeed! While being in New York feels like plumping down onto a comfortable couch, driving through the neighborhoods of Rutherford, Clifton, and Hoboken felt like exploring a lost land I used to know, sparklingly new and familiar all at once.
And Hoboken was truly delightful. We walked around for hours, out to the waterfront park with its views of Manhattan, up and down streets crammed with quiet architectural treats, through a noisy block party (not once, but twice!) where we were greeted by cheerful dogs and smiling people. We sat in Maxwell's before the show and had a bite to eat (though I only had a juicy martini concoction, being suddenly attacked by a case of nerves at the thought of seeing Drive By again, and the simultaneous possibilities that they would/wouldn't remember me from last spring's road trip). We stood in a tiny room with black walls and imbibed the best intoxicant of all: live rock. (And I was remembered.)
And afterwards, the night was spent driving down the dark rainy Parkway to Asbury Park like a dedicant in a mystery religion, watching burlesque in a bowling alley, and drinking in the night sound of the shore like communion at the end of the rite.
Returning to Kentucky was impossible, and necessary. I'm not done here, not yet, even though it's duller now than before, even though my heart is more than ready for the curtain to rise and the play to resume. And even though I know that what I do here is required, that there are foundations to be built if I am to go forward, still every day here feels like a day lost, a day wasted, and I hate that. I always fear that I don't have many days left.
There's a quote from The Women's Room by Marilyn French that has always stayed with me, two characters talking after an evening of revolutionary discourse: "'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes."
Alas, for the time being, it seems I am stuck at the sink.
(But I'll be doing my best to sneak away for small adventures.)
Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm very sad, sometimes I'm reliving days of adolescent angst.
I've been thinking of this time in Kentucky as a necessary intermission; here is where I can shore up my shaky financial situation (the inevitable result of divorce + struggle + road trip), fill in the gaps in my "I am a Grown-Up" tool-kit, and prepare for the next adventure (because MCR will tour again and now I have a taste for the road). But that's dull work, and the effort to transform it into something readable is usually siphoned off by Twittering inanities.
However, there are still small adventures to be had.
Two weeks ago fuschia and I met at Secaucus Junction and proceeded to spend a day getting lost in New Jersey (despite generous directions from an adorable hotel manager appropriately named Frank Super). It was marvellous fun, and gave me my first ground-level look at the area I am considering for my next home. Admittedly, one day is not enough time in which to make an informed decision, but oh...I was smitten with New Jersey, indeed! While being in New York feels like plumping down onto a comfortable couch, driving through the neighborhoods of Rutherford, Clifton, and Hoboken felt like exploring a lost land I used to know, sparklingly new and familiar all at once.
And Hoboken was truly delightful. We walked around for hours, out to the waterfront park with its views of Manhattan, up and down streets crammed with quiet architectural treats, through a noisy block party (not once, but twice!) where we were greeted by cheerful dogs and smiling people. We sat in Maxwell's before the show and had a bite to eat (though I only had a juicy martini concoction, being suddenly attacked by a case of nerves at the thought of seeing Drive By again, and the simultaneous possibilities that they would/wouldn't remember me from last spring's road trip). We stood in a tiny room with black walls and imbibed the best intoxicant of all: live rock. (And I was remembered.)
And afterwards, the night was spent driving down the dark rainy Parkway to Asbury Park like a dedicant in a mystery religion, watching burlesque in a bowling alley, and drinking in the night sound of the shore like communion at the end of the rite.
Returning to Kentucky was impossible, and necessary. I'm not done here, not yet, even though it's duller now than before, even though my heart is more than ready for the curtain to rise and the play to resume. And even though I know that what I do here is required, that there are foundations to be built if I am to go forward, still every day here feels like a day lost, a day wasted, and I hate that. I always fear that I don't have many days left.
There's a quote from The Women's Room by Marilyn French that has always stayed with me, two characters talking after an evening of revolutionary discourse: "'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes."
Alas, for the time being, it seems I am stuck at the sink.
(But I'll be doing my best to sneak away for small adventures.)