they say i'm great at first, but then the magic fades into an awful hue of dismal views and pessimistic attitudes...

it doesn't seem fair. now, i hope i'm not "betraying the sisterhood" or setting back the feminist movement's efforts or anything (david...remember what i said about tainting. DON'T), but there is at least one arena in which women receive preferential treatment. ready...?

...in the world of the "romantic" (as usual, the quotes are not accidental. my, my, my, SOMEONE is feeling cynical again today!) more specifically, heartbreak.

you see, when a woman gets her heart broken...wait...when a woman's heart breaks (let us not assume to know who or what is responsible here. stay calm), she gets to wade and slog her way through a whole spectrum of emotional gack.

a woman gets to indulge in sadness. she gets to cry, and not just cry, but WAIL and sob and HUC-HUC-HUC as her breath hitches in her chest because she just cannot get enough oxygen in. she is suffocating from the amount of sadness compressing her lungs. nobody judges her for this, in fact, people gather around her and hold her gently and support her suddenly infant-heavy head and ease her back and forth and tell her, "shhhhh...shhhhh...it's going to be okay" until it IS okay.

a woman has at her disposal myriad responses, all appropriate, all which will illicit sympathy, and all carry the potential of a ring of sisters, female friends, and "female friends" (and by that i mean gay, male sistahs), each waiting to nod and scowl and purse lips and say, "mmm'hmm. i KNEW he was not good enough for you, gurrrrrl." there is solidarity in their schadenfreude, and even as they click their tongues in disapproval, she lets go of her grip on the poison swirling in her chest and the sadness becomes anger. of COURSE he's not good enough for her.

a woman gets to enjoy the movie montage of self-reinvention. the soundtrack will probably be chaka khan or gloria gaynor sheryl-fucking-crow or something equally grotesque. she gets to "rediscover" how amazing she is by launching into an exercise regimen or creating some kind of new physical appearance via clothes or makeup or a drastic haircut. this is part faux "phoenix rising from the ashes" crap and part "just LOOK what he lost!! tsk! tsk!" again, nobody judges her for this. in fact, they gather around her and congratulate her on "how brave" she is being and "how strong" she is. they even tell her how beautiful she looks, and how "he'll regret it someday." the whole world applauds her efforts to move and on and cheers when she finds someone new...all of which she deserves. i am certainly not begrudging the emotionally destroyed this plastic surgery for the soul.

however...

what about a man? a man does not get a forest of arms to hold him up or caress his aching head lovingly. he does not get to bleed the sadness out of his lungs, and heaven forbid he have the need to cry. there are not enough high-fives in the world to redeem the "dude points" he would lose. a man does not get an army of ferocious support to turn the sadness to rage. the best he gets is a friend slapping him on the back and saying, "that chick was SUCH a bitch, dude!" a man does not get to go out and conjure up a new image that will "make her jussssssst DIE with jealousy" when she sees him. raised eyebrows ensue. in fact, most men don't even allow themselves to feel the heartbreak. if they do, they wouldn't DARE let anyone know.

and don't even get me STARTED on the way the world perceives the man who moves on and finds someone else.

today's word of the day is dacryagogue

and now the only piece of advice that continues to help is anyone that's making anything new only breaks something else...

domestic bliss is a misnomer. the two words in conjunction almost NECESSARILY cancel each other out. when one is domestic, one can never be truly blissful. when one is blissful, it seems that domesticity (and domestication) fly out the window (poor idiomatic expression/pun intended). in order to "get shit done", i need to be undomesticated. i spent all day yesterday and part of today cleaning apartment, classroom, car, then self. okay, the "self" got cleaned more than once, seeing as the act of cleaning causes oneself to become ironically dirty...like a never-ending mobeus strip of housework. sigh. the mind reels. i was far from domesticated, arms and scrub brushes flailing scarecrow-like (anyone else hearing "the wizard of oz? "if i only had a ma-a-a-a-a-a-aid!"). my off-key singing always sounds like a screeching, feral yowling that terrifies my pets and neighbors, but it helps me feign the enthusiasm i need to keep my cleaning inertia. did i mention "sigh"?
sigh.
add to that the latest plumbing catastrophe (still drying out the ceiling), the task of replacing batteries in every, single smoke detector (which screamed for attention at 4 a.m. today), AND
the herculean job (LOVELOVELOVE the word "herculean". roll it around your vocal chords for a while...her-KYOO-lee-un) of reorganizing my classroom after two months of blissful neglect, and you have a very tired puppy, indeed.
but, as life is wont to do, negative capability has stepped in and revived me. we got our test scores back...remember the "high stakes" standardized tests that (cough) leave no child behind? (snicker...snickersnicker...snicker) there were the obligatory shuffles, some kids improved, some declined. much of the shifting can be directly attributed to "how the kids were feeling that day".
...honestly.
picture this: he is a gang-banger. he is all bravado as substantial as spun sugar. his swagger enters the room before he does and kicks each desk on the way by. each step is a challenge, scuff, scuff, scuff; he is daring me NOT to be afraid of him. i'm not. he tips his head back, aims his chin downward, and evaluates me down the bridge of his nose. then it comes, "i ain't gon' learn nuffin'. you can't make me", followed by the mother of all preemptive strikes, "besides, i'm dumb anyway."

THERE it is.

i'll spare you all the dangerous minds/lean on me/freedom writers/"IF I CAN JUST REACH THIS ONE KID"-type of psuedo-inspirational film montages. fast forward to the day of the test. same pose--head back, chin down, staring at me over the bridge of his nose as i hand out the tests...he smiles. the upshot? this kid, this self-proclaimed "dummy", this behemoth of enormous self-doubt and tiny rage jumped 40 points in his test scores to land in a new bandwidth. in case you're wondering what this means, the state labels the kids using categories ranging from "far below basic skills" to "proficient" to "exemplary". this kid who has existed in a world "far below basic" has jumped and landed with both gigantic feet in the world of "proficient". sometimes, being told you are "good enough" feels like being told you are unstoppable. i hope he believes me NOW. way to go, kid.

today's word of the day is actually a phrase... coup de maitre.

cold face, carved in stone, amongst friends but all alone. why do you hide?

it's amazing to me that a day can start off in a certain way and end up metaphorically GALAXIES away. yesterday, i was considering magnets...yes, the pieces of iron or other alloys that contain atoms that are ordered to attract like components (you're welcome, michael.) THOSE magnets. in particular, i was thinking about the nature of attraction. take two magnets, one in each hand, and hold them gently between the thumb and the forefinger. notice the pull...that pull when they get close to each other. that pull is what makes them so very remarkable. they have something innate...something intrinsic that pulls them together (holy personification, batman! [holy allusory interjection, english teacher!]). perhaps this is why people like to use the expressions "magnetic personality" and "animal magnetism"--because there is something unexplainable tuggingtuggingtugging from the core. here is where the analogy (hopefully) falls apart, however. if you take those two magnets and move them e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ever so slightly past the point of "attraction", the pull disappears. it's like, if the two parts are not close enough, the attraction doesn't register. this is the way i ALWAYS feel when i leave. every nerve is mousetrap-tense, dreading the longing to return. sigh. a swift turn of the head from rearview mirror to windshield and the feeling goes away little by little. wishing only hurts if you let it. frankly, wishing can kiss my ass.
so...
seven hours of caged, complaining cat (poor moo), halitosis and neck crick-inducing airplane sleep, and a tree-blurring car ride home, and i was SO READY for a shower (the shower in my mother's house feels like a cross between a clogged watering can and a group of evil children spitting on you in unison. hardly satisfying.) imagine my surprise/horror/terror/anguish when, upon hearing the screee-eee-eee of the rusty faucet the line leading the water from drain to shower head EXPLODES, sending the scalding water
directly
into
my
face.
i screeched and made that pblblbththttllppbpbblltthth!!! aack! aack! noise and hand-flapping gestures (because, you know, you can slap water into submission) one makes when confronted a faceful. tres graceful. seriously, you would have thought i was on an episode of "i love lucy". it was too funny to make me terribly angry, though my laughing fit almost drowned me again (IDIOT!)
sigh.
and that, my friends, is how one can go from being in a charles baudelaire poem to being in a charlie chaplin skit in two seconds.

today's word of the day is...clodpate

...you’ve got no time to lose. you are young men, you must be living...go now, you are forgiven...

that was it.

the hard part is finished.

the reasons i worried about being in the car for four days were prioritized badly, and it turned out i didn't need to worry in the first place. boredom, anxiety, navigational woes, not having enough music to properly distract me from the void left behind by the hugs i wasn't able to collect before i left, and fear of pulling up to a tollbooth and being out of money were quickly supplanted by the quick drag of air i took every time some new sight stole my attention from the last one.

i loaded the very last thing that could fit in my car (okay, technically the last thing i fit into the car was myself) and gave the trunk a resounding slam. i hoped this would convey a world more certainty than i suddenly felt about this decision...is second guessing the self a feminine birthright? though i tried, very romantically, to maneuver my departure so i could choose whose was the last face i would see diminishing in my rearview mirror, the last face, arms, scent i wanted to cram into my skull before departure were already at work...i didn't get to do the leaving.

...it didn't work, of course, and the ceremony of the goodbye fell to my family. the tears finally staunched themselves in indiana when the crying and the need to pee pointed the needle towards 'dehydration'. though i am too tired right now, i'm going to record the things i saw that amused me soon. for now, i take comfort in the inhale and exhale of different coastal air, the sense of time-travel gleaned from setting my watch back three hours, and the misguided, yet ABSOLUTE belief that when i breathe in, i can taste the ocean.

finallyfinallyFINALLY.

...i made it.

let's call me a baptist, call this a drowning of the past; she is there on shoreline throwing stones at my back...

jack-o-lantern grinning in front of my computer, i must paint a funny picture right now. i am poised, arms raised and hands curled a la daffy duck as the phantom of the opera, and preparing to allow those hands to descend furiously on the keyboard.
this weekend involved a visit to chicago for lollapalooza, and there was plenty to see, do, and enjoy. i got to see people i haven't seen in years...16, to be exact. i got to visit with some of my favorite people, and spend extensive amounts of time gazing surreptitiously at some of my favorite faces (TOTALLY undetected, of course, because i am a SNEAKY girl).

...but this is not about that.

i feel a visceral joy in music. i drape its layers about my shoulders, dangle each note from my earlobes, and pretend that i am a queen just like i did when i was five. i savor every lyric as it tickles its way into my brain, through my skull, down my throat, and into my belly. when the music is live, both sight and touch are added to the sensory delight. i get to imprint each image onto the inside of my eyelids so that when my eyes roll back into my head, i still get to see them. the muscle of the speakers pummels the sounds through the ground and my sneakers, rattling my bones and teeth. see? visceral.

this show was no exception. many, many, MANY bands played, and each brought something new and delicious. but, oh, frightened rabbit...hhhhheeerrrrrrrmmmmmmmffffff.

consider pain, not a sharp pain, mind you, a dull pain that registers violet like a bruise. now, consider what it feels like when that pain suddenly, and for whatever reason, dissipates. it's more than just the lack of pain that makes you want to smile, it's the relief of all the other things that go along with hurting--tiredness, sadness, and the meanness you sometimes can't help. listening to frightened rabbit reminded me of the first moment when you realize that it doesn't hurt...that everything is going to be okay.

wait...i'm not explaining that well.

listening to their words (and you KNOW that the words are my food, my rest, my armor), feeling the waves of each song through the ground, actually SEEING the faces of the people responsible for creating it AS they are creating it...? how can i explain it? it's like finding an unknown room in your house, but saying to yourself, "of COURSE it has always been here!" but it's better than that. it's like opening the door to that room and finding every blown dandelion, every expired birthday candle, every boxcar, every shooting star, every eye-squinted, fist-clenched, oh-please-oh-please-oh-please wish that was made silently and secretly (and probably sheepishly)...and finding every one of them granted.

THAT is what it is like to watch them play, and i'm glad for the face that was there to see it with me.

today's word of the day is troglodytic.

i miss your broken-china voice. how i wish you were still here with me...

ACCHH...i am an idiot! at least, i have been ACTING like an idiot. i once described the sensation of joy as magnets in my belly, hummingbirds in my head, and bees in my mouth. this fizzyfuzzy buzz induced tizzy always puts greyhounds in my blood too, and OH do i enjoy listening to my pulse at that point. eventually, all the buzzing melds into one low hum all over me. i have ignored that feeling lately. boo.

i have been moping and sulking and spreading out my unhappiest things on the floor so i can see them all at once. the only thing this accomplishes is that it makes the floor dusty. (whine!) i miss my dad! (wheedle!) i broke up with my boyfriend and will spend my life alone! (whimper!) job complaintsjobcomplaintsjobcomplaints!!! (mewl!) i wish i were prettierfunniertallermoregracefulany-any-ANY-one but me.

sigh.

i am an idiot. yes, i miss my dad, but i also have good REASON to miss him. someone very kind recently made me realize that perhaps it is better to have lost a dad who is miss-worthy, than to have access to one who isn't. it DOES make my memories of him sweeter. thank you.

i am in idiot. yes, my relationship has ended. i may very well spend the rest of my life with just me, but (despite the obvious idiocy) i am not such bad company. i mean, we have a ton in common. we like all the same books, movies, and music. we never argue over who pays the check. i never interrupt me. i never have to tell me when i'm upset...i just know. i never steal the covers from me. i always give my jokes a courtesy laugh...even when i don't mean it. loneliness, though it is intimidating is not a country i am unable to explore.

i am an idiot. yes, summer is almost over, and my job is not without its...peccadilloes. there will always be disrespect from people who are CONVINCED that they can do it better, but will never actually DO it. as an added bonus, i have met some of the best poets, artists, actors, huggers, and listeners...and these are just the students. if i need reminding of why i love my job, i need only remember the relief on their faces when they told me that one of the poems that we...VIVISECTED in class actually ended up on their terror-striking, creativity-sapping, no child friggin' left behind-fueled, state mandated, high stakes test. sometimes "want to learn" and "need to learn" have the teensiest, most delicious overlap.

i am an idiot. i took another walk to shut up the pack of hounds baying loudly in my brain, and laughed at myself. i am paranoid that people will think i am walking for exercise, and assume that i am walking because i'm not strong enough to RUN...at least that's what I think when i see OTHER PEOPLE walking for exercise. i know, i know. i'm a bad person. to guarantee that nobody makes this mistake, i always walk with a backpack, and always have an errand to run--post office, video store, etc. now, it isn't exercise if there is a DESTINATION. see? pa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aranoid!!! after the sunset, i stumbled into a mass of sticky filaments, probably evicting about a hundred spiders in the process. rather than doing the "1000 volts of electricity" dance to brush all the webs off, i walked calmly, allowing each strand to tickle my nerves and map out the parameters of my arms, legs, face, neck...i cannot explain the sensation of that tickle being the roadmap around me. i guess my body is not such a bad place to be, either.

and all i needed was a walk and some music. the lyrics for each song line up the tumblers in the lock and swing the door open. wordswordswords constantly drifting around my head, waiting to be plucked from the air and popped into my mouth. the contents drip from my tongue because i cannot devour the words fast enough to satisfy my starving brain. the best part? all the words swirling around the ether are in infinite supply. not only will they never run out, but more words will constantly be created. the only thing i'll need to send my heart spinning like imponderable birds from the trees is the words words words, either FOR me or FROM me.

why don't YOU choose YOUR OWN word of the day. mine is SONANT