A gut-wrenching time
Today was great.
Anyway, so I don't go into too much detail, here is the ending:
I'm sitting by the fire place all Cinderella-like--because it's freezing--and the embers are all that are still going. Everyone's off to bed (or smoking in the basement) and I'm pretty much alone with a T.V. set to some reality show about actresses. I nudge the last bit of log and it eventually lights up again but in the process I've botched the whole thing and there are glowing embers in the ashes that I spend a good amount of time squashing with the poker.
I pick up a black one that is so obviously not going to burn me and remember something. I go to the computer room, grab some papers, settle back down on the hearth, grab one of the music books (literally, it's nothing but sheet music and that reading experience was so awesome and familiar I almost cried) and used it for a stable table. I drew.
If any of you remember my days of trying to draw, not much has changed. I have avoided pencils for obvious reasons and this was so...cool. Not only was I returning to the work force (I'd spent all day at a temp agency) and not only am I remembering how to read/how much I don't know how to read music, I am drawing again. And reading poetry. By a fire. A fire.
We never had fires in Georgia. But the family thing isn't as good there as it is here. They have fires all the time here, and drink and talk and...it's familiar and completely alien to me.
And today, there was a weird lull in the chatter when everyone went to separate rooms for different things, leaving me on the couch--again, by the fire--with all my library books and my slacks/blouse. I read. I read poetry. By a fire. And not just any fire. A fire place. In Georgia, I never used my fire place. Hell, in Germany we didn't even have one, but I doubt we would have used it. And in Arizona, we had them and even if there was no reason to have/need/use one, I doubt we would have done that either. Not even for the hell of it.
Earlier that week I'd sat on the hearth and was unofficially the fire keeper as I was too tired to join the party. I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The sun was setting. I met a lady I had already met and saw her awesome three-year-old show off how much she'd learned in physical rehab (she was a victim of SBS).
I miss the South, but only its memory, or residue, or...ideal. The book made me...just....Ugh.
Really, I just love history. And the North has a lot of it too, particularlly this town. I was born here, man. And, like a slave from the South, I ran up here to freedom. I'm not joking. Apparently, there are some Underground Railroad stops here. I just have to find them.
And the race thing is so lax here. I think. I'm not sure. I've been kind of grid locked in the black part of the South that I always went into culture shock whenever I met someone else, but I wanted that. I wanted to get out of that suffocating kind of familiar. I can't stand staying in one place for so long, with the same people, same culture, same prejudices. It made me paranoid and cautious and it makes everything seem like a magic trick. I hate being so gullible and sheltered. It wasn't always like that. It seems like everyone's accepting or mixed here.
I also went to Harvard with Starr and her family--she's my new confidante--and visited the Lolipop grave yard and a museum with tree people. They were freaky.
My aunt took me to Fitchburg so I could get my SS card at the post office. We met a guy who was so out of it I swore he was an undercover cop or an agent of Candid Camera. My aunt encouraged his outrageous talk because she likes being entertained but even she stopped talking to him when he took out some paper and a bag of "tobacco" and rolled a joint for himself...in between two people (both of whom he'd tried to hit up for cigs and pills)...in the middle of the Post Office. He lit it up, offered it to us, and when we declined he just shrugged. (She says it really was just tobacco, though, but I never knew you could buy it like that, with a bag and a logo and everything.)
The guy next to him looked like an original punk rocker. Leather jacket, spiked hair, old eyes, not caring, calm. But when he talked, his voice was strange. My aunt pointed out he had hearing aids. My uncle concluded later on that he must've busted them in a gig. Which made sense.
As we left, we ran into to very raggedy lesbians in the elevator. One looked like she was once beautiful but was being eaten from the inside out. Even her hair had shrunken into her skull. SHe was older. Her lover was so covered up in bulky sweat shirts I couldn't tell what she looked like, but she was very aggressive and was probably laughing at me. I don't know why.
My aunt sighed as we made our way to the car. "Welcome to Fitchburg."
That town does not have a good reputation. Even in my childhood I can remember it being a "bad" place. Right now, there are supposedly Blood refugees taking up shop, but mostly I think it's just always been very poor and therefore very violent.
I spent my earliest years there.
Instead of going home, she turned off onto a street and told me to look. She said she was going to show me some of the places I had lived. The first one only fit parts of the criteria my memory had clung to. It was a run down "apartment' house. Here, the houses are big, with several doors, several floors, and several units. But they look like they could have once belonged to a single, rich family, or belong in the Victorian era. At the moment, they belong to Section 8 people and such. The only thing I recognized was the back yard, which consisted of cement and a brick wall that rose two stories and had a chain link fence to keep the parking lot separate. I remember the brick wall because we used to play there with the other kids of the building and I remember the height because we used to look out of our window and drop things.
There was also a church across the parkinglot/backyard, which was also one of the things I have been struggling to match up. I don't remember that one in particular, though.
The next house I don't remember at all. It's in a nicer place, a complex, so all the places look the same. She says the building might have been painted a different color, but there was, at least, a park nearby. There was Dunkin Donuts not far from there, which was another thing I had always harked on. It still doesn't seem right.
Apparently, from all the stories I've been hearing and the people and places I've gotten reaquainted with, I had a very strange, dangerous and possibly "hard-knock" early life. I don't remember it that way, though. Not that it was ever sunshine and daisis in my head, but I'd always taken things as fine; now that I'm grown, I can put reason to things and just...gawk.
I got my birth certificate and I now know my biological father's middle name. Much as I really don't care for/about him, I do want to know the family history. I want to know Daddy's family too, but they're still being hostile. And mom's bio family is lost in the drama that is Korea. I refuse to look into anything else.
Ari is now in a group home. This is, if it is legit, the best thing that has happened to us in months. The Social workers will be forced to do their jobs now and investigate what the hell is going on with my mom and those damn prescription drugs and that fuckin' idiot she took in. And Dez is all alone there, with all the animals, and when I say "alone" I mean "sane", though I'm sure she'll be just as scarred as the rest of us.
Not all is well on the home front, but I try not to think about it too much.
I finished Cassandra Clare's first book and couldn't find the second one today, which got me a bit miffed. I scoffed and complained and gawked and squeed the whole time because I read things that seemed familiar. Really, really familiar, man. But, ya know, not every one of her readers will catch things because not all of them were around a few years ago. The references will be lost on them.
I broke down a few weeks ago and got Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony. Because I can. Because the library rocks. I have never appreciated those places before, but, man, you get books. FOr free. And you get to just...sit there, in chairs, and read. And return them. And these ones have dvds--real movies-- and I can ask for any book and if its in a few states away, they'll send it my way. It'll be waiting on the desk after they send me an email.
Anyway, I finished Artemis in two days. I only feel slightly embarrassed because it's technically a childrens' series, but I started it as a preteen so there. In the year away from it, I've been hounded by spoilers and fandom rants and I had to read it for myself. I just wanted to KNOW.
I got the last one (unless he goes for another in a few years) a few hours ago. I just got it two days ago. It was...awesome. I guess it's just the part of me that watched the characters or had grown fond of them. And maybe the girly part of me that just squeed. I'm gonna get all emotional. I dunno. it was...jarring. Not the story, just the experience. SO much is ending right now.
HI SANDY!!!!!!!!! (I owe you bunches of replies and emails and phone calls)
Um.
I just meant to write down: I reached in the fire place, took some charred wood out, and drew blank, rudimentary figures. Got my hands and socks and pants dirty. Probably gave whoever ends up looking at them more insight to my state of mind than I'd have liked. Washed my hands. Had a strangely gut-wrenching time.
I am so fucking lonely. It's sad. I'm sooo sad.
My hair is braided.
I ate alone in a diner today. My cousin's boyfriend was my waiter. He might have poisoned my cookiencremesundae or he might not have, but he did look uberly freaked that I showed up. They're fighting, which I didn't know, and my quick assurance of "I'm not stalking you" did nothing but make him smile and nod. It just so happened that the temp agency was four doors and a few feet away from the only food place I could get to, and I was cold, and I knew what would be in there. Plus, I was hoping he'd give me a discount.
I hope they figure out what they want. I don't like teen drama. Especially if it messes up perfectly good ice cream.