Monday, June 24, 2019

I miss ... and therein lies everything

I miss her. She and I weren't truly close until our twenties, but we knew each other from the age of twelve. In high school, we shared that certain world of boys we liked (I have never been famed for liking the same boys as everybody else, so this actually does have specific meaning). She seemed brave to me, more daring. Once we got out of school, and were together because we wanted to be, we were daring together - more and more often, until she was my sister.

Sister.

She's in my DNA. And she is gone. And I hate that. Even practicing gratitude, even counting the blessing that she was - that she IS, dammit. Even being glad I got to love that girl, and was loved by her. Nope. It's not enough, because I was only good enough on my own schedule. I was too little, and too late, and we both did that, but the last too-late was mine.

She's left us all to deal with these scurrying circles. She, bless all of her ashen bones, is at peace, I pray.

Today, I listen to old music, and Dokken seems to be transforming to make me think of her. Alone Again and Heaven Sent, no longer cis/het/sexual love songs, but longing strains of my lost friend.

I miss her.

She was SO alive.


***


I miss him.

Even in a dream, all I have left is "that you ARE" - telling myself in a dreaming brain, that it is enough only knowing he exists, and telling myself that by way of "telling" a chimera of him: "just knowing you exist."

It *is* enough - knowing whom I have loved, knowing I was loved. But distance. Depression. Distortion. They make it hard. He's a Daemon of air and darkness, and I miss him. It's all we have, to make life bearable.

If only he could be alive as she was. I pray it for him. Never sure if it does any good.

He's in my heart and head and soul. He isn't "gone" - not dead; only curved into himself; too distant. I can't even know whether to love that or hate it. The wall I am pressed against is blank.

Scurrying circles. Small ones. Vicious.

I shift to Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here - and it is nothing like him. And its drawn-out softness, its langour and melancholy and desolate gorgeousness transform me. And I am quiet.

I miss him.


***


I miss writing.

It means so much, and it means nothing. Gets me through, and on the other side of "through" I find nowhere.

Even so.

I miss writing.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

"Passion" is dumb




The English language once had a word expressing romantic or apopleptic fervor, a word that even sounded like a sibilant storm, opening with a plosive, ending with softness. It denoted special extremity.

Now we have this.

My brother and I discussed the bewildering primacy of the term "passion" back when we attended the second JRW conference, many long years ago. Agents reacting to first pages, or discussing what they were looking for in queries and stories, bandied it about almost more than any other word. I began to wish it were possible to mute words on the entire internet, early in my first experience of querying.

Even when I was young (again, this was many moons ago), the word actually embarrassed me. Maybe because it still did have some power - and implications - back then. But I've never in my life said or thought or felt I was "passionately" in love with a person, and as proud as I am of my career and invested as I am in my work, "passion" is not and I actually hope never will be a word I apply to doing it. That would be ridiculous.

So The Atlantic's takedown of the absurdities we attach to job listing and hunting resonates with my cranky old heart - passionless as it may be.

Like that job, and like so many things, I spent a decent span of my twenties and thirties under the impression that I was supposed to feel apologetic. I didn't have a sexy job for which I held a white-hot torch; I hadn't even gone through specific education geared toward it. My teen years: I was a kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do or "become" and, as much as it was clear I was supposed to, I honestly didn't care enough to develop any fake passions for business or law or even the arts. Majoring in theater where I did cured me of interest in going into THAT - though it probably laid some groundwork for me as an author.

Students in the 80s who seemed into business degrees bewildered me for directing their lives at, basically, just making money - not even making actual things, or having any impact on anything. Graduate school seemed like a lot of work, so a lot of what are referred to as "The Professions" (as if nothing else is) didn't draw me for a second. School for creativity seemed oxymoronic, and yet was the only way I could comprehend to become any sort of artist, and so if there ever had been a visual or musical or other sort of artist inside me (there wasn't), I'd have killed it myself, striving for it.

I never developed a groove that had anything to do with making my living.

Beloved Ex, now. He was a different story. He wanted very much to find a way to make a living that energized him mentally, emotionally. It didn't help our brief marriage, unfortunately, because by the time a truly stunning opportunity came for him - it meant rooting ourselves in Ohio, and I freaked out hard core, and ... yeah, I didn't want to sabotage his opportunity, but I did, AND I didn't want to stay in Ohio. And I didn't. Lots of birds killed with that boulder, and that boulder ... welp, it was passion, in its way.

For me, life's always been lived outside of any office. I make friends, sure. I have experienced strong loyalties and many emotions, in a hundred offices from here all the way back to Ohio. But, at the end of the day, I would never have gone into any of them if they weren't paying me.

Passion's for poorly written poems. It's been no way for me to get things done.

Doesn't make me any less excellent at what I do for a paycheck. Doesn't mean I do not care. I'm not a customer service ninja (which sounds like a bad idea, honestly, what with the kill-y parts of ninja-dom - though, really, the Orientalist stereotyping of "ninja", "sensei", and "guru" is a problem, and also, why are so many of the terms noted like this?), I don't lose sleep at night dreaming naughty dreams of vendor management or the passionate joys of meeting preparation. You want an obsessive or any other kind of job-extremist, I'm not your candidate - and, honestly? I think MOST PEOPLE aren't.

MOST JOBS, let's be candid, are just jobs. They're not sexy, they're not hot lovers, they're not things that get our motors revving. If we're fortunate, and have the right kind of approach, the best most of us can expect from employment is the opportunity to work a good puzzle. Figure out how best to do a thing, then do it, and feel like a rockstar for widgeting, or networking, or calming down some numbers that get uppity.

"Job" is not a word stormy with sibilance. It doesn't start plosive, but with a chop. It ends utilitarian, not reassuringly with a nice, soft N. It's short and ordinary and gets its work done efficiently, nondescriptly.

And it's one of the great words in most of our lives, when we're lucky enough to get one that doesn't beat us down but does provide security. Maybe it gives more than merely that. Great!

But work is work.

They don't call it rapture, for good reason.

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Collection

Fella babies, today we start off with the direct line from representation to racism. (The click beyond.)

Marketing ten thousand steps for fifty years. Man, what a triumph - but not of healthcare information.

It's been my policy to view actual moving/sound footage of Trump as little as possible, so I rarely end up seeing Melania either. However, during his recent visit to the U.K., I caught a little of their welcome to Charles and Camilla ... and was car-wreck fascinated. Go to about :45 and watch her attempts to maintain a smile. It's eerie.




And then there's the light FIST she makes as she turns to enter the house. Yikes.

Welp, and if like me looking at those two (not meaning Charles and Camilla, but hey, YMMV) makes you feel dirty ... maybe it's a good thing. On the relationship of microbial bacteria and depression - not what you might think! (Or: hooray for pets!)

And here we have the final nail in the coffin as to my old argument with my bro: I am NOT a(n) historian.