For Marek

Bush Radio - uses the weekly Bush radio address from right before the State of the Union, which is when this was written. Due to peaking or something random, the recorded version of this sounds almost nothing like the "real" live version. There's a lot more data-bendy static, basically, I think digital peaking, which you don't hear when this is played live, but has screwed up the recording quite a bit. Although, I kind of like it this way.

Untitled thingee. Sounds like the real-life version. Written January 28th

taking an assesment of what's important

I have a sound file of dubya speech where he says, twice, "in fact what the terrorists have done is caused us to take an assesment of what's important." I'm taking an assesment too.

I think I must have thought that the slogan "think gloaball, act locally" had an extra clause of "and indoctorinate your friends and family." I tend to get involved in cult-y movements to improve the world, like veganism or Esperanto. things that would work if a critical mass of people started doing it. So I'd try to convinve other people around me of what a good idea it was, to help reach this critical mass.

Christi makes the most awesome Quiches and Dutch Baby pancakes. We used to have a dutch baby every weekend. She would get up and start making one. I would slice strawberries and roast coffee. Often our neighbors came over and shared with us. But I read Fast Food Nation and became more militant about my diet and quit eating eggs and milk. I was making a sacrifice for the good of the planet. But I was also sacrificing Christi's amazing cooking skills. Does that really help the planet, or does that just alienate loved ones? How is the world in any shape a better place because I haven't had one of christi's great dutch babies in years?

I was getting more and more inflexible and more militant. Christi likes/d to make cookies. Her favorite cookie recipie calls for brown sugar. Brown sugar is the most processed food on earth. Some processes use animal products. I told her that she had to use the raw sugar stuff I was buying from the hippie grocery store. We had poor boundaries. We didn't know how to talk things through. We argued. I won. How fucking important could brown sugar possibly be? Why on earth would I argue with her abut her great cookies? What was I thinking??

Then my mom got sick and died and I wanted to compartmentalize that. I would go see her five or six days a week and when I wasn't seeing her, I was going to live a normal life. I was going to put the pain behind me and carry on. I was going to supress all negativity and look at other things and I was not going to ask for help or talk to anybody about it. this combination is somehwat explosive. All this stuff about moral purity in consumption seemed really important. but what good is moral purity if it chases off people you love?

In short, I've recently been shaken to the core. All the stuff that I thought mattered didn't. All my "radical" ideas are for naught. They're stupid. I bought brown sugar the other day to make cookies for Christi.

I know that Christi doesn't want me back. The last few years have been hard. I might hurt her again. And maybe she thinks if she took me back, she's have to throw away her brown sugar. but I think having boundaries means that (as long as it's not hurting me), she can do whatever she wants.

We were poorly individuated. We got together when we were 18. We had virtually no boundaries. We grew together like two trees that have been planted too close. this is not healthy for the trees. It wasn't healthy for us.

I look at these ideas that I had and wonder how I could have been so stupid. I know that I need to learn from them and go on. and part of learning from them means forgiving myself. why did i do it? youth. foolishness. a misguided desire to avoid pain. because i didn't like myself. according to feeling good, dichotomous thinking (aka: binary oppositions) is a thought pattern that depressed people fall into. i wanted all-or-nothing moral purity because i was somewhat depressed and because i was mourning in a destructive way. and this is why i need to forgive myself, so i can like myself and stop acting like an angry, bitter, untreated depressed person.

So I'm telling myself that I like myself. I'm smart and funny and creative and cute and kind of charming. I've made terrible mistakes, but so have most people at some time in their lives. I'm doing my best.

My dad came over yesterday and i spent several hours crying on his shoulder. for some reason, it's easier to cry with somebody else there than it is by myself. splitting with christi is the hardest thing that's ever happened

Two weeks ago

I woke up to a grimly pleasant morning and got up thinking that despite major turmoil, I was still on an even keel, and thus was now, finally an adult. My shrink disabused me of this notion. I thought that to be grown up meant to supress despair and to never ask for help. I also thought that criticism was an acceptable part of normal discourse. Not to be overly dichotomously binary about things, but these ideas were wrong wrong wrong.

And the two weeks since have been a lot like being caught up in a tornado and getting wacked repeatedly with flying debris. Not a happy event at all, but an opportunity for growth, as my shrink might say. I'm going to be a happier, more stable person at the end of this, but getting there really sucks. I would really like just to drop down in Oz right now.

not standing alone

I wrote something a few days ago about standing alone against pain. what complete bullshit. nobody can do that. that's why people have friends and shrinks and religion. i am not standing alone, thank god. i tried that once. it was a disaster. i don't see the need to repeat that experience. stading alone is sort of masculinist. supporting communities is a "feminine" ideal. there's a reason that women live longer than men.
if i can't undo the past, at least i can learn from it.

working out angst via supercollider

Anger

I just got email from my (soon to be ex)mother-in-law about anger, saying I had every right to be furious about things in my life and I need to find a way to deal with it. Ok, yeah, so I'm angry. I'm angry that my mom died. I'm angry about all the shit that happened then with the insurance company and the doctors and my family. I'm angry that the anti-seizure medication they gave her was an appetite supressant when she was eating three bites of food per day and I called the doctors and they told me to give her ice cream "there's a lot of good calories in ice cream." and i'm angry at the indignity of it all, that they didn't see her as a person and that all the doctors were on vacation when we needed to be meeting with them and rather than find people to fill in for them, they just made us wait even though the treatment couldn't wait. And I'm angry that I was only 26 when she died and that I didn't really know her and she had just barely begun to accept me and I had barely begun to accept her. And I'm angry that she didn't accept me for so long and tried so hard to change me by being mean to me about being queer. And I'm angry at her for getting sick and I'm angry at myself and everyone around her for not noticing until it was too late and I'm angry that she died. And I'm angry that I couldn't solve these problems. I couldn't make things go right with my mom or with Christi.

And my anger changes absolutely nothing. My mom is still dead. Doctors are still assholes. All the stuff we never said to each other will always be unsaid. Christi is still gone. And all of this anger is just a protective shell over a whole lot of hurt. Life isn't fair and people I love leave me.

One website says it's very important that we express our anger and adress the cause of it, but do so with I statements. I can picture myself calling up my mom's now-defunct insurance company (they went bankrupt while she was in hospice care) and saying, "I felt very unhappy when you refused to cover the costs of speech therapy for my mom, so she never recovered any of her speech even during the brief time that it seemed like she was improving. And I'm extremely upset that we had to threaten to sue you before you would cover raditaion therapy because I felt like you didn't care about my mom."

another website says not to express it, but to find the root emotion under the anger and deal with that instead, because anger is always the second emotion. Really, I just felt very frightened that she was dying, so I just need to go learn how to deal with fear and go launch into another web search.

another website says to look out for getting easily frustrated and angry in traffic or at plane delays and other bits of impatience that are signs of unresolved anger. But that stupid shit is so trivial. who cares that your plane is a few hours late when everyone who cares about you will eventually die or leave, thus stranding you entirely alone to face your own mortality? yeah, i spent six hours trying not to cry in the dallas airport. and in a hundred years, i'll be dead. so why be mad? i wasn't crying because my plane was late. i didn't even fucking care until i tried to find food in the airport.

Anger seems more proactive than other negative emotions. If you put it into a binary opposition with another emotion, like sad, anger would be the more masculine one. By our patriarchial standards (which I unfortunately subscribe to), anger would win. so what? so what do i do? do i try to talk it out by explaining to my friends and posting in my blog that i'm angry? is my anger just sublimated sadness? should i take time to let myself feel anger? do i turn it in another direction by writing a loud orchestra movement with a lot of trumpet blares and tritones and minor seconds? do i try to distract myself and put it behind me?

the only thing I think I know is that I should speak and act in a loving manner to people I love. I should keep love in mind. Because one day everyone I love will leave me whether on purpose or not and they need to know in their hearts and their minds that I love them.

goddamn it

And then there were none

Christi has moved out. the walls are basically bare. she left one of her grandmother's paintings, perhaps by accident. she also took the imac, which is hers, but i can't see what use she might have for it, not that it matters, as it does belong to her. she left behind a little terra cotta horse that her grandmother gave her, a replica of the ones in those imperial tombs. her grandmother was one of the first american tourists allowed into china.

She said she left some stuff behind. It was too much for just one day and just one pickup truck load and just one broken heart. as hard as this is for me, it must be much harder for her. She's doing the best she can and so am I.

There is nothing I can say that I haven't said. There is nothing I can do that I haven't done. I need to be quiet and give her space, which is perhaps the hardest possible thing.

I don't want to find a new relationship, just a series of meaningless flings. I'm out of meaning to share. New love seems too hard right now. I want to simultaneously forget and remember. I want to forgive my tresspasses as I forgive those who tresspass against me. I thought a few months ago that I could get away from my problems by moving far away, but my problems were wiley and followed me. I cannot avoid the crushing pain of existance, I can just find ways to ameliorate it, to face it head on and survive, to know that I am stronger than pain and that I can stand alone and prosper and then stand with friends and be truly blessed. I have wonderful friends.

Still accepting applications

While applications are being received and processed, to date, no single candidate has been chosen and there is still time for you (yes, you) to apply. Preference will be given to applicants that actually live in California or are at least within hundreds of miles from here. All applications will be kept stricly confidential and the final candidate must agree to a non-disclosure agreement. (I know it's hard not to kiss and tell, but such is life.)

In the beginning

I remember when I first fell in love with Christi. We were both 18 years old and freshwomen at Mills College. She was studying music and I was studying computer science. We lived down the hall from each other in Mary Morse, the freshwoman dorm. I was dating an art major who had a nice room at the very end of the hallway. In the evenings, she liked to brew a huge cup of coffee and hold court. People would come sit around her room and we would pass the big cup of coffee around. I remember the excited way that Christi would exclaim "coffee" and how she would smile and her eyes would sparkle as the cup got passed to her. She was so funny and so enchanting. I remember telling my girlfriend one night that I hoped that Christi would come over. She said, "I don't. She drinks all the coffee!" Who could begrudge a cup of coffee to somebody's who brown eyes percolated so happily?

Christi was facinated with sound. She would walk around tapping on things, looking for new sounds for percussion. She would tap everything, lightpoles, street signs, pieces of junk. I was facinated and I started tapping thigns too. She changed the way I looked at sound. I list John Cage as one of my major influences, but really, it was John Cage through Christi. All sorts of sounds could be beautiful and could go into music. Christi so brilliant. I was convinced that she was going to be the greatest composer who ever lived (actually, I still think this). I was following her around and telling her that I would write her biography when she was famous. I remember one time, we were in one of the three places that Mills used to dump junk and she picked up some glass object and smashed it. She was looking for glass things to break. She had been a tiny bit distracted as she was combing through the junk yard, but the glass smash focussed her attention. She said, "oh! that made a nice sound! I wonder what it was?" That was the moment I fell completely in love with her.

We weren't dating (I thought christi was straight) but were spending all of our time together. A receptionist in the dorm told us we were like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb and Christi and I got into a very chivalrous argument about who was whom, each insisting that the other was definitely not Tweedle Dumb.

I had already declared to Christi that I was going to live with her after school. she was so beautiful. so smart. so talented. She had such a beuatiful smile. She was always smiling. she was the closest friend I had ever made. I was wondering at how strongly attached I felt to her and how it was odd that it was completely platonic.

One night, after several months of this, Christi told me she had a huge crush on me. So we started dating. she wasn't out, so she didn't want me to tell anyone right away, but everyone who saw my huge smile just immediately knew.

Clearly a lot has happened and changed in the nine years since then, but Christi is still the smart, enchanting, beautiful, talented person that she was then.

Reaching me

Send email to the wesleyan addr4ess or call my cell @ 860-301-2508. Please specify if you are contacting me about the tumultuous affair (women only need apply).

adventures

Christi is having a lot of exciting adventures right now and I'm happy for her. I think she thinks that being with me would mean having to give them up. And it might mean a bit of compromise on some things, but on the whole . . . we live on seperate continents. even if we were together, i couldn't control what she did when i wasnt around. I wouldn't want to.

So I went to have breakfast with Christi this morning. Spent the whole time trying to convince her that it would be a good idea to try to work it out. I'd been telling people that even when I did stupid things, it always seemed to me at the time to be reasonable. Well, as I sat in the restaurant, untouched food cold in front of me, manically explaining how things could be really great because we'd both learned so much, I was ...um... kind of aware that i was not being reasonable or even rational. This didn't exactly put christi at ease, or convince her. I'd think "I have to stop. maybe if i just say it a different way!"

Yeah, so she's kind of extremely mad at me. We tried talking about my mom being sick a little bit. She said she was hurt. I didn't come back with "my mom died!" which was my previous responce. I said that I was sorry I had been so angry, etc. She explained that, no, she was hurt because my mom had died, as in, it was really hard for her.

I blinked a bit. It surprised me to hear her say it. But I don't know if it was a wow-she-was-upset-about-that-too kind of surprise or a that's-really-not-what-i-expected-her-to-say kind of surprise. I mean, I got kind of caught up in my own devastating loss of my mom and wasn't really foccussing on how it was affecting other people. On the one hand. On the other hand, of course it's obvious that it would have upset Christi. She knew my mom for 7 years and they loved each other. I don't think I would have failed to notice that, but I dunno. I feel very confused right now. And my memory from times of stress is all jumbled and unclear. This morning is jumbled. A year ago is more jumbled.

Christi really does not want to work it out and I need to accept that. Just because I think we could and should is not going to change her mind, no matter how I say it or how many times. Harping on it for over an hour is just going to make her not want to talk to me at all.

I wonder if I'll ever see her again.

I need very much to have a tumultuous, reboundy-type affair. Now accepting applications. I'm in California till the 22nd. Why not have some short-term drama?

Lately, I've been very "now, now, now." It's because the future scares me.

Christi is gone

She's gone to La and Ellen is using my room for other guests, so by the time I get back here, everything that Christi decides is hers (things get blurry when they're acquired together and i don't care about stuff so much anyway, just symbols) will be gone.

I'm still breathing

Other minds festival

is this weekend. christi and I are both planning to go. It'll be the first time I see her since breaking up with her. I feel anxious about this. but I beleive it will be ok. i really want it to be ok. i'm really glad that i'll get to see her.

After many plane delays, gate changes and a cancelled flight, I am now, finally, in Berkeley.

I don't understand why people get angry and yell at gate agents about these things. there were weather problems. being angry won't change anything and yelling at a person won't cause a plane to appear. given all the indignities of life, late planes seem so small a thing.

Sometime in the last year or so, I quit being angry. I was an angry youth. It didn't serve me well (see yesterday's long post). I'm glad for this change.

I put Christi throught so so much and she still loved me. and i threw it all away. while this is incredibly painful, i still feel happy to know i was loved so much.

what does it mean that it took me breaking up with her to realize this?

Looking Backwards

The best case scenario, for a couple in a time of crisis, is that they will support each other. One will be able to turn to the other for love and reassurance. In the worst case, they will make each other miserable and end up making the crisis worse. When my mom died, Christi and I fell into the latter group.

Until this week, I blamed Christi for this. "She wasn't there for me." I broke up with her because I thought if I had another major crisis, like my brother, my dad or myself getting cancer, that she "wouldn't be there for me again." I thought she was unable. Trying to talk through it would bring up incredibly painful memories and at the end would fail, so why put ourselves through that?

My strategy for dealing with stress from the time of my mom's death and the aftermath, was not to think about it. I didn't think about it. I didn't talk about. I started thinking about it for the first time over winter break. christi and I couldn't even talk about the period and still can't without arguing. It breaks down into "my mom died!" "i felt very hurt!" "I felt hurt too!"

After a couple of weeks of being broken up with Christi, it occurred to me that she was very very present for her brother. He had a nervous breakdown, which is worse than what I experienced (at least more personally debilitating . . . ) and she was there for him the whole way. Maybe is she was there for him, she would be there for me. I called her up and asked her if she wanted to work it out. I told her that I had some demands, but that I couldn't ask them except with a shrink as a referee, because each of us is carrying an incredibly loaded stack of hurt and an attempt to discuss this without help would explode.

When my mom first was sick, I was sad, I was scared and I was angry. I wanted Christi to be there right next to me the whole time. And she was. She took time off work and sat with me and my mom in the hospital. She brought me sushi every night. She did everything she could for me. She knew my mom for about 7 years then, so she was directly feeling sad, stressed, etc too. My support network was primarily Christi, but was also some south bay friends, including Tammy & Vince, Mitch and the Kazes. Those guys were way cool. Christi relied upon them and her brother, who was living with them at the time.

The situation with my mom got worse, she was angry at me and I was supposed to be caring for her and she wouldn't let me. Then her insurance company was declining treating her. And it was completely terrifying that my mother, the woman who raised me, was trying to run away from the house in her pajamas. I kept a list in my head of all the terrible things that might happen (she might fall, she might take all her pills at once, she might run away, etc) and how to prevent them and fixated on it. I also became increasingly angry.

I was angry at my dad for not implementing my list and for being afraid and for not realizing sooner what was going on. I was mad at my brother for running away. I was furiously completely angry at the insurance company. Christi and our friends began strongly encouraging me to get therapy. I remember trying to figure out how to work the therapists door system and becoming completely, totally furious and wanting to smash it. Then I spent an hour in therapy, stressing about my mom's treatment plan and the insurance company, in a bitter rage and so so so much pain and the shrink kept saying, "it sounds like you have a lot to think about." I went in wanting to figure out what to do about this problems. The shrink didn't give me a plan of action. She didn't make me feel better. It was clearly a waste of my time and I felt angry about it and angry that people made me go see her. Clearly my problems were all rooted in the physical fact of my mom being sick and that's not something that you can talk your way into fixing.

I don't remember my overall mood at the time, except upset, but it seems to me now that if I was that angry at a shrink and her door, I must have been angry at many many things. I wanted Christi to be right next to me as a crutch, but also as a human security blanket. I wanted affection from her when I needed it, but I probably also did what kids do to their security blankets and bit her when I was angry, which was probably most of the time.

Christi was leaning more and more on her brother, who was very kind to her and more and more hostile to me. I wanted him to move out because of his hostility. Christi saw that as me removing her primary source of support. He stayed and she leaned on him until he completely fell apart. He went to the hospital and then he went to Portland. Christi went with him. She didn't want to come back. I insisted that she should. She had to be there for me! So she did.

We couldn't be in the same room without fighting. We couldn't work out the problem with so much stress still pouring in. My mom was still getting worse all the time. we told a shrink our tale of woe in factual terms. My mom had cancer. The insurance company hadn't wanted to treat it. The surgeon messed up the referrals. We couldn't start treatment until it was too late. And then Christi's brother had become very ill and was living with us. The shrink was horrified at the awfulness of it, but said she could see how much christi and i loved each other. She gave us the temporary advice not to talk about it, so that we could at least co-habitate.

My memory is that Christi didn't like that shrink and wanted to find a new one, even thought I liked her. Christi's memory is that I didn't like the shrink and she did. In either case, we went to find a different shrink. We would start telling our tale of woe, and it seemed to me that Christi would rattle off a litany of my misdeeds. I felt attacked. I nixed all the shrinks. I walked out of one of them. So we never talked about what happened with her brother and my mom at that time. We still haven't.

I don't remember feeling rage at this point. I remember having a panic attack and Christi taking me to the emergency room and me sobbing in the ER, but I don't know when that happened. My memory is all jumbled. but I feel "comfortable" being angry. It's an emotion that doesn't scare me and than I can settle into when things are negative. I'm sure I was still angry. (actually, as i re-edit this, I remember being angry then....) I would have pointed this anger out in all directions. As the person closest to me, Christi would have gotten a whole lot of it.

Christi wanted space from me. She didn't want to be my security blanket anymore. Her own source of support was gone. She was increasingly distant. Her brother blamed me for his problems. She agreed with him and was angry at me.

after my mom died, I was a mess. I didn't get out of bed until christi came home from work. My conversational skills were shot. And I quit talking to my south bay support network or really anyone but Christi and Tiffany. Christi had to deal with me alone. I wanted to go on a trip to LA to visit my cousin. Christi did not want to go with me. she said she couldn't get off work. I started arguing with her constantly about her work schedules and whether she could get time off (my mom was a major donor to the organization she worked for, it seemed to me that she could get time off . . .. ). I thought that she just didn't want to travel with me. She might have foreseen a long road trip, trapped in a small car with the world's angriest woman. It only occurs to me now that using work as an excuse might have been an attempt to spare my feelings. Or maybe I wouldn't accept "I don't want to" as a reply.

My rage must have gradually subsided. when I'm grumpy, tho, I can be snippy, so I must have been snippy for a long time. I think that the last summer went relatively well, but it must have been a relief to Christi, when I moved out, that she could be sure of no snippiness. then I came to visit her in Paris and was stressed with school and was kind of snippy . . .. Now things are as they are now.

When my mom was dying, I needed to find a better way to deal with things than being angry. even after she was dead and I was calming down, I didn't want to see a shrink and I refused to discuss it. Christi was using increasingly forceful ways to communicate with me, probably out of necessity. We were angry at each other. It was a bad time. And I looked back on it a little bit and remembered feeling alone and Christi being angry with me and decided that she "wasn't there for me." I was bad, but I hurt and she should have cut me slack, I thought. But how much anger should a person have to absorb before they've cut enough slack? I pushed her too hard.

Trying to work it out based on "you weren't there for me" would have failed. so I was right. Lucky me.

More navel gazing

I tend to see the world as a series of binary oppositions. I just read an article about this for my english class by Hélène Cixous (a french feminist) called "Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks / Ways Out / Forrays." In this article, she documents the essentially masculinist (phalocentric) nature of binary oppositions. She makes a claim that inherent in these oppositions are value judgements. Things binarily opposed are not equal. One is better than the other. Moreover, it is how some chooose to define themselves, but labelling on thing as "me" and another thing as "not me", opposing them, and then comparing them to rate how we are doing in relation to everything else.

I do this and it has not served me well. For starters, it means that there is always a hierarchy and thus I can never equally relate to anyone or anything I put myself in binary opposition to. Furthermore, it creates false dichotomies. There are a lot of grey areas in life. Real life is not "do X or be a loser." this has been harming my worldview and my relationships.

I think it might relate to my trying to supress mourning and not feel sad, something that has also not served me well. I wanted to bravely soldier on and put the past behind me and not look back. It's like I formed my self image from outdated ideals of maleness and manhood. How did I get such a masculinist viewpoint? It's bizarre. Reading my blogposts from last winter is bizarre. I know I must have been in turmoil, but I barely acknowledged it.

So I'm confused about how I have formed my concept of self, but, while I cannot change the past, I can effect the future. I'm not going to say "these things must go now (or i'll be a loser)," since this would just put me in another binary opposition, but I can look at how I am reacting to things as I react to them and see if I am falling into a pattern that might not serve me well. I will feminize myself. But don't expect skirts or lipstick. I have boundaries.