The Year in Review: Swift-Footed Winged Mess

Firstly, I forgot to say that Mom and Lewis guilt-tripped me into breaking my important "2007: Year of No Movies" resolution. Yes, that's right, on Jesus's B-day, I was forced against my will to attend an afternoon show of Juno, Hipster Movie of the Year. Wizard, that ain't no etch a sketch, I'm down with the lingo, yeah, it was pretty cute & precious, a good flick to ease me back into the movie-going experience, and always good for family time as there's not a lot of intra-family communication during a film. Afterwards, I offered: "Anyone who believes in love now, raise your hand!" and Lew and my Mom both raised their hands, as did I. How about that? I'll watch anything with C.J Cregg in it, but also, speaking of cute ... Ellen Page: I'd like to lie down w/her in a field of brightly painted flowers and play with her hair, if she's got the time, whatevs. Michael Sera reminds me so much of my brother Lewis, thus I imagine Lewis's girlfriend looking like Juno McGuff, which's a nice mental image of my brother and his girlfriend, in lieu of any actual images provided by my brother. Speaking of girlfriends w/o photographs, let's get on to the Year in Review. [Oh! Also! If you're wondering what's on that CD you got w/your clothes ... check it out here]

... in April & May I was more alive than I've ever been before or since ... which is just to say that I had a lot of feelings. Every moment was rich and full: terrifying & beautiful, perfect & ugly, heartbreaking & heartbursting, devastating & hopeful, thunder perfect shameless strength & fear. We lived lifetimes in a day. My brain was called upon to perform daily & hourly emotional, logistical and intellectual leaps rapidly & unexpectedly and the crazy thing is that it actually did -- and coming down took months. I was and often still am a Post Traumatic Stressed Out Mess. [Also, April & May: a picnic compared to June.] It's been a long path towards my "recovery" and she, too, after a few false starts, is truly recovering now, and by doing so is making this particular story one that actually ends well, instead of one that ends with me damaged & reeling and her still manic-as-ever. I lost all my faith in everything at one point: and sometimes you have to lose everything in order to get it all back, but more grateful & humble this time around.

It's tough to figure out how to write about serious madness and mental illness respectfully but truthfully, and here. I'm scared of TMI and unfinished thoughts ... I dunno ... so ... I don't know how to write about this. I may've been better equipped to when I took a stab at it in August. I was still pissed and suffering in the aftermath, she was still mad, and I hadn't even acknowledged on my blog the wide-scale internet attack launched at the height of her madness that most readers witnessed (the elephant in the cyber-room) ... and I had to say something, and so I did, and now, I'm at peace with it. Number "One" on that Top Ten covers what we've determined was defo The Weirdest Day of My Life and kinda gives you an idea of what April and May was often like -- moreso than I can communicate now. 'Cause I'm not angry anymore.

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"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;
but that the world through him might be saved."
(The Holy Bible. St. John: 3.)
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"To err is human, to forgive divine."
(Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism")
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Because to be honest: what I've gained in the aftermath -- which I think (I'm not sure) are things I wouldn't have gained, or not quite in the manner that I did, had things w/Tara worked out better -- are beautiful things. It'd be rotten not to admit & recognise that many friendships and creative collaborations were enabled by my damaged aftermath and most of all, that my increased and loyal readership was enabled by my unavoidable vulnerability and the devotion I developed to this space because of/following that.

I've been blessed by so many heroes, and angels, since. This almost killed me, but it didn't.

"Between angels, on this earth/absurdly between angels, I/try to navigate
in the bluesy middle ground/of desire and withdrawal,/in the industrial air,
among the bittersweet/efforts of people to connect,/make sense, endure.
The angels out there,/what are they?"
(from "Between Angels," by Stephen Dunn)
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It'll all be in the book. It takes chapters. There's no way I could do any of it justice here, but I'll try sorta, whatevs. Bla blablatypetypetypememememe.

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There's this Dave Chapelle skit that was super popular, everyone quoted it all the time, the "It's Rick James, bitch!" skit? Remember that? This might seem like the most randomized association of all time, but there's a part in that skit where Rick James, following a story of him acting crazy, goes "Cocaine is a hell of a drug." I'd often think, in that same voice: "Bipolar is a hell of an illness."

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
-T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Anyhow, these months were like the mega-important transitional period of this blog. Number "5" on Live Through This holds the most important point.

April/May

4/22/2007

5/24/2007

WTF 2007 EVENT #4: Girlfriend begins her worst & most damaging manic episode ever, a.k.a. becomes TB.
WTF 2007 EVENT #5: While girlfriend is in hospital, my article gets killed.
WTF 2007 EVENT #6: While girlfriend is in hospital, the doctors do nothing productive.
WTF 2007 EVENT #7: "6" a few more times, and all of that. That happened.

The first weekend of April, my Mom visited -- totes charmed by Tara & Haviland and vice versa. We had dinner with Peter & Natalie. Tara took her out so I could finish my article. The next weekend, TB got arrested, a photographer from [redacted] magazine came. Then it was Easter, then ... and then. I published a Second OurChart post, about how I met Haviland. And so on.

So: holy shit, I totally funneled boatloads of energy into April and May posts ... hyperlinking, Tara's copyediting, needing somewhere to focus all this ridiculous energy ... each blog post was like a full scale project, like a mini-zine every week. Like, reading these, is just like ... surreal, and it makes me happy that I learned how to spell. Mostly I knew people were actually reading so I felt legit about putting more effort into it. This is where some of the stuff I like best is, like the Top 15 Clubs thing: Part One, Part Two.

There's a lot of first comments, like Razia, Crystal, Carly, LK, Caitlinmae, Brooklyn Boy and so many it makes my head explode to even begin to list them. This kinda got me a job: The Unpaid Internship You've Waited All Your Life For (later, we'd joke that I'd actually hired Carly for this unpaid internship -- she did apply) and prompted genius responses from everyone. Aw, the short-lived obvs segment Carousel of Progress Parts One and Two, my first run-down of my Automatic Skills. Yeah. Urm. A lot of over-compensating for things I couldn't say.

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Great Moments in Commenting

I Heart HPSDiva The Most Award (@Top 10 Opposites Attract 4.03):

Haviland: "i have tried to comment about 14 times and the blog rejects my words. waah. obvs so happy for you two. let's go get on a big gay boat!"

Anonymous: "Haviland I am in love with you. I will track you down and find you."

Haviland: "oooh, really? This is exciting, can't wait to see how THAT unfolds!"

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The Drunk Comment Award -- Before Semicolon, There Was This Brilliant Gem From Moonkiller ("seconde" is the new "ettempy"):

Moonkiller: "To start if this makes no sense it's cause i'm semi/VERY drunk. I love this entry I can relate to it an awful lot. It's fabulous if you will. Like I nearly alwys say U never fail to make me giggle and donnt half cheeeer me up. I thino tojnihght I might be the drunkenust I've ever been inmy hole lige ever. So sorry if I'v said anythinnng offenive lol. I wil most prbhely cokmmt angain in teh morning sorrecting mistakes in thikis scomment

ps. Taken me 4 ettempys to do the word veri."
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Subtext Award: Presented Only to Myself as only I Know My Subtext
Nalia: "Tara is so stupendous/arresting looking, like and I hate to be intrusive, but what genetic mix has produced this?"
Riese: "Arresting indeed ... the literal irony here is INCREDIBLE."
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The Lozo Award for Bold & Inappropriate Sexual Come-Ons: Presented Only to Lozo
Lozo's First Time: "i'm not sure who you are, and i'm not sure where exactly you linked to me, but i just wanted to say you really remind me of elliot from scrubs, so i'm going to fall in love with you in about 7 minutes."
Lozo's Second Time:"i just wanted to say that you are my new, what people would call, "blog crush." i think i've only had two ever. but i prefer to call it what it really is, a blog horniness-toward-a-girl-i-really-don't-know-who-may-or-may-not-be-a-lesbian-because-i-haven't-read-everything-yet-but-i've-seen-"L-Word"-a-lot-so-i'm-not-sure-but-i-totally-want-to-have-sex-with-her-anyway-because she-looks-like-elliot-from-scrubs.
i hope you appreciate all that hyphening."
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Best Comment Posted in October, Six Months After the Post Went Up In April, (while I was reposting my whole blog after deleting it all):
Tara: "Um. I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw this. I forgot this was here. Sigh ... I'm such a weirdo. And, I just look frightening I think. Anyhow, good morning Autowin."
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Best Response to Commenters Wanting to Call Her Out [for Repeating the Dead-Dog Story]
m: "My OTHER friend, unknowingly ate a bag of pop rocks while she was drinking a coke, and exploded. I swear."
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Best Suggestion for Saying Goodbye to All That
merc: "Peace corps sounds fun? Like you'd have a lot to make jokes about in blog posts? It would totally, like. EXPAND YOUR WORLD. And um, have this wole new element to your writing? Like, DIMENSION or DEPTH or SHINE -- oh, sorry, I was thinking about hair."
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The Earnest Award -- featuring excerpts from -
[stef's first time]: "totally no reason for writing this comment but whatever, i fucking love this blog. i originally wrote a long comment about how i found it and what i love about it and it was so cheesy and i am too new york cool for that, so let me just say i love this blog."
[stef's second time]: "ps, this blog is still awesome, but i live in brooklyn and it's illegal for me to be enthusiastic about anything. i am bound to a life of wearing sunglasses on the subway and sneering at tourists."
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Putting Graduate School to Good Use Award
Ingrid: "Ri, From my reading today, I would guess that being an African woman forced to strip down naked for photographs to be published in 19th century Anthro-porno-gynecological medical books, books that would be perused (and probably jerked of to) by Picasso as source material for paintings that have come to symbolize modernity, would have been worse than software breakdowns. But this isn't meant to take away from your pain; it's all relative! Love you!"
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I'd Like to Quote Awesomeness from the Intern-Applicant Thread ... but I already basically did that in this post about the comment awesomeness from the intern applicant thread (in the "teleportation" section), so, you know. On with it.
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"If they say in the car that I am insane, I will take over the wheel." (Thomas McGuane, 92 in the Shade)
-My senior quote in my high school yearbook

For my 25th birthday, I wrote a parody of the Esquire "What I've Learned" feature -- one of my favorite magazine features, and when I was reading this month's Esquire, entirely devoted to "What I've Learned"s, I decided that this is how I'd write about April and May. This format assumes a certain authority: its subjects, e.g., Evil Kenivel, Tim Burton, Mia Farrow, Otis Redding, Muhammad Ali, Homer Simpson, Carrie Fisher, David Bowie, Mel Brooks, Yogi Berra, etc., generally have authority. I don't. I'm totally irrelevant and highly unwise. If you're not familiar with this format, you might think I'm a pretentious fuck. I assure you, it's a guise, I'm totally insecure, otherwise I wouldn't have to talk so much about myself or need all this attention.

-Tara described me as "sunshiney/bright" and herself as "moonshiney/dark" in her guest Sunday Top Ten. I'll take that.
-Zoho Writer crashes and the help-line is not helpful, they are outsourced and speak fuzz. Don't use it.
-Actually ... use Zoho Writer. Because that crash was serendipitious, proving even the most frustrating things happen for a reason: I asked silent readers to comment on their own electronic tragedies, and they did, and then I shared their stories, and then they kept talking, and that's everything.
-The mental health system in this country doesn't focus on "curing"/helping the mentally ill, but rather directly on ensuring the mentally ill won't become violent criminals. Sanity for sanity's sake? Ha! Every single employee of every NY psychiatric institution she checked into let us down. Nobody did a good job. Nobody did a mediocre job. Everyone did a notably terrible job. [I know: they're overworked & overburdened, tired, beaten by the system too] Instead they cared only if she'd possibly kill herself or others and once that liability seemed muted, they'd let her go. Everyone just held their breath til it wasn't their problem anymore, and thus it became mine. It turned out, not surprisingly, I wasn't qualified.
-The Auto-Win Equation of Coolness: x+2x=y (x=quality and rockstar factor of my actual life, y=quality and rockstar factor of autowin's life), unless my whole life is falling apart, in which case, x=y.
-"We're in love with our sadness sometimes" (Chris Pureka)
-Yeah, it's true, you're better off than the third world children who live in shacks. Do you feel better now? Urm, me neither.
-The psych ward is actually nothing like Girl, Interrupted. But they do have karaoke on Friday nights, there is yelling, and the nurses subscribe to the general philosophy that it's always easiest just to shoot 'er up with Ativan.
-It's really crazy how fast you can get used to really crazy shit.
-We had fun, too. Like, a lot of kick-ass fun.
-I think the world could do a better job of proving its lunatics wrong. Could've provided better material for me to argue against impending mass apocalyptic extinction and the human race's desperate unknowing need of redemption. Seriously: the snow in April, the Virginia Tech shooting (one of my favorite posts, I think), the Bush Administration, national disregard of moral responsibility in favor of celebrity, mirror, artifice, false idol worship and consumerism. You know, your average, run-of-the-mill firstworldian douchebaggery. (Auto-Lexicon)
-There comes a point when you've gotta cut your losses -- usually it's the sixth or seventh time you've thought to yourself "I oughta cut my losses."
-Miss Girl Nation, Haviland, is pretty much the hottest thing ever. Howevs, Miss Hot n' Fit turned out to be like amateur night at Deja Vu but with more expensive drinks.
-In high school, I watched a lot of "Slacker" films. These movies, best watched when it all seems so far away, characterised the unemployed/underachieving twentysomething as a beer-guzzling, television-watching, psychic-hotline-calling, mall-crawling, pot-smoking, shampoo-foregoing, ironic-vintage-t-shirt-wearing quasi-hipster who spends 95% of their time tucking their hair behind their ears and pontificating. But I'd never been so busy as I was whilst 100% unemployed: reading like crazy, playing Sancho to crazy adventures, looking for employment, writing, trying to figure out how to save someone when I still thought people were things you could always save without killing yourself, or leaving.
-I'm not entirely convinced that a liberal arts education prepares its graduates for anything aside from a career as a liberal arts educator.
-I love Rosie O'Donnell because she's moved so much by national/global problems that it affects her, deeply, and makes her depressed. We should all feel that way but if we did, we'd all fall to pieces. She does what I hope to do: create a relationship w/the mainstream through non-controversial entertainment to eventually earn the "power" to speak out and be listened to by people on all sides.
-I'm still an advocate of "running away" as a top ten coping mechanism, but I'm glad that I didn't.
-There's a book out there to validate everyone, whether it be The Bible or Kathy Acker, Elizabeth Wurtzel or the Marquis de Sade, or my old friend Matty's choice "The DaVinci Code," there's a book for you. Reading a lot of books about crazy people can make you a little crazy. Look what happened to Don Quijote. Don't even get me started on the internet and what that's done for maniacs all over the world.
-There's a fascinating cultural history related to madness. It's enough to distract you from its logical application to your actual life for a long time.
-Scattergories is the best game ever and fun for people of all ages.
-I deleted my MySpace because it made me feel safer -- one less public & vulnerable space, also cutting off my friends' ability to keep close tabs -- that day was, we agree, one of the worst, TB-wise. I was drunk when I wrote that post, because I was fully resorting to such things, anything for oblivion. Officially surrendering control of the situation. I was sad to lose all my friends' comments, but I think it's good, sometimes, to delete all of something. I still find the click-to-impact ratio stunning.
-Cream: the color. My blog became much better the day I switched from black to cream.
-Poland Spring Water Bottles Will Explode in your bag every time. Unlike people, they will never change. They will not stop exploding.
-If you are sad, try highlights and a manicure.
-It is impossible to argue with someone who is totally both wrong and 100% convinced of their own absolute rightness. I mean; where do you begin?
-She'd ask "What do you need, autowin? Are you okay?" but by that point, I was done accepting her offers cause I knew they'd be used against me later. My answer, which she affirmed proudly, was always: "I don't need anything." It was untrue, unfair, and I've always believed strongly in the validity of relative needs/wants, but for me to lose, temporarily, the privilege of my small tears, the forum to freak out over nothing, the ability to even buy stupid things for myself w/o inciting a fight ... it was very humbling. It wasn't the healthiest way to earn humility, but nevertheless, I did.
-Really, you save yourself by checking in -- therapy, emailing Haviland, ichatting w/Lainy and Chase, phone convos w/Natalie. That's how I maintained perspective, and was able to participate, strategise, without losing my mind myself ... errr ... mostly.
-When you've been on the Metro North with a woman yelling at the entire train about messages from her father in heaven and their first world Angelina Jolie-worshiping-problems, you develop an extremely high tolerance for being embarrassed in public. Seriously, just try to embarrass me in public, I dare ya. Impossible. Also I'm not ticklish.
-I am a decent writer. I'd never taken myself seriously enough to even proofread before, and hiding behind sloppy syntax was part of my subconscious announcement to the world that I didn't think I was good enough for it to matter. But yeah, I believe in myself now, holla.
-I now know: that [TB] wasn't her [Tara].
-The difference between crazy people that run corporations and have huge record deals and crazy people on the street yelling at strangers is money.
-One of the most fascinating aspect of mania is how it challenges commonly accepted limits of the human body. Maybe R-Kelly really could fly, you know, 'cause he believed? It's incredible what some bodies can tolerate, it is amazing how much the mind's conception of its own capabilities translates into what is commonly conceived as hyper-human power. Consequently, being able to break barriers we all could break if we desired to (but why? why would we want to walk barefoot on glass? get mugged and walk 105 blocks?) proves, to the manic mind, superpowers.
-The Book of Revelation is a manic's wet dream. It has become, over time, fodder for thousands of manic-bipolar-schizo episodes the world over. It validates the following: hearing voices, delusions of grandeur, the validity of yelling at people as a way to change things ...
-Also; Revelation probably was a manic's wet dream, like that literally might be what it is. There's a lot of theories. I know all of them. Also, it's beautifully written, stunning, a fantastic grand story. It's kinda awesome, as long as you don't think it's actually true.
-Being forced to accept the possibility of certain circumstances -- a solider, resolutely alive but always prepared for the fatal shot -- and the lasting impact of paying heightened attention to the immediate possibility of highly unpleasant circumstances -- can change the way you think a whole lot, can make you care a lot less about things you used to care about.
-It is possible to survive on Ramen noodles, eggs, peanut butter crackers, vodka and coffee.
-Madness is highly contagious.
-Taking too many amphetamines is a lot like madness.
-From an article about the double suicide of Jeremy Duncan and Theresa Blake: "You could, in a sense, rationalize their occasional erratic behavior. They were artists, after all, and artists are allowed a degree of lunacy." (The article's title: "Conspiracy of Two: A Chronicle of Their Descent Into Madness.")
-If you give money to every homeless person you pass, you can go broke in approximately two blocks. Also, as the only one doing so, many will ask for more. Another five, cigarettes, baby formula (seriously), another ten. A sandwich. Crack. JK about the crack. Crack is expensive, probs, otherwise there wouldn't be crack whores.
-You should probs still give money to homeless people, sometimes. Or food. Whatevs. I understand why you would or wouldn't, and why I do or don't.
-People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but if you're totally chilling naked in your glass house like, what's up, here I am in my glass house, and someone starts throwing stones at you, you should probs reconsider your battle plan.
-[From the Club Blog, Part Two]: "No one ever guessed anything about me just from looking: no one'd guess that I'm queer, or a writer or a or even smart. "I would never guess that _______" I can be anybody, I can be anything, tell me what to do, you say jump I say I'm already jumping, look-- For every apparent revelation: a million secrets, stories denied and squelched by each reincarnation. A love/hate relationship with everything I've stood behind. Gay/straight, Jewish/Quaker, Genius/Airhead, Sane/Insane, Artist/Robot, Social/Recluse ... It's like I've been everything and it's opposite, and've gathered enough narratives to hold my own amongst any of them, now. Though I refrain from anything of import following "I am." Maybe here's a place where I can be all of those things at once and be validated instantly simply by the very fact that I'm writing it and I have a sitemeter. In fact, this particular truth feels indulgent, why should anyone care, that even acting as though I think you should care is breaking into another character, which's the only one I've yet to actually play: confidence."
-"You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't." (Emily Saliers) That's what I did more often than not, was try to turn it into a joke. I mean, it was really fucking funny sometimes. We laughed a lot. You take what you can get, you know? You wait for the next joke.
-Madness + Genius = Toxic
-Anything that can be said in three syllables can be said better in one syllable.
-There Were Good Times. More Good than Bad, srsly.

Auto-Lexicon:
Like Emily Dickinson: Seriously, I've really never read any of her stuff, I just think it's awesome that she spent so much time in her attic.

-I do not regret visiting every day, or trying to understand/rationalise or sticking it out. I wanted her back, I needed Tara back, she needed me there. There were moments when she'd return, and those kept me going through the truly gruesome terrible things. The ups and downs in one day -- mind-boggling.
-I don't regret losing what I lost, because I eventually got it back and then some.
-I only regret ... no. Nothing.
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I weathered the accusations: masochist, depressive. Trying to distract myself from my own problems. Enjoying the drama. Voyeuristic satisfaction. Doing it all for the good writing material. I guess if I'd felt like any of those accusations were remotely true, I would've been more self conscious about my choices, but they weren't -- and I know this because before Tara/TB, I'd made a lot of choices for those reasons, those up there, and I know what that had felt like. I was bored and tired of all that. But no ... I went into the relationship seeking stability. I didn't want or expect what I got. And I wasn't going to turn my back on someone I loved because they were sick, I just couldn't -- I've compared this inability to the basic web template you can't change, no matter how much HTML you learn. That seemed awfully selfish to me? Eventually, I had to lose everything in order to walk away -- eventually, she had to lose everything¹ in order to choose, willingly, medicated health "forevs and evs" over the endless highs of provided by oh-so-seductive immortal mania. I tried to make the best of it -- "I never would've read The Book of John, it's a good thing to read!" -- which really isn't the same thing as being manipulated into believing it's okay. Trust me. I knew. Things.were.not.okay.
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Why'd I stick it out? Because of love, obvs. Because she would have done it for me. Beneath this white-on-black retina-burning agoraphobic cynical depressive emo exterior is a heart made of cream and purple, fo'serious.
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¹ TB's Sunday Top Ten: "And meanwhile, back @ Marie's shower, she's blasting showtunes. I'm cringing. Cause music is nearly everything to me. Therefore, Marie and I agree to disagree, re: tastes, and that's cool. Cause now she's nearly everything."^2
2Speaking of music, I like these: "A Better Son/Daughter" (Rilo Kiley) ["And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on, and your friends they sing along and they love you, but the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap and it teases you for weeks in its absence, but you'll fight and you'll make it through, you'll fake it if you have to."], "Manic Depression" (Jimi Hendrix) ["Music sweet music, wish I could caress caress caress"],"This is Everything" (Tegan & Sara).

Sunday Top Ten: Temporary Battles Can Take Up Half Your Life

Just so y'all know, I'm leaving this blog to become a Slam Poet, like in that movie SLAM!. I've never seen it, but I saw a poetry "slam" once at Sarah Lawrence, it was retarded, Sarah Lawrence students shouldn't try to slam anything besides each other. The poems were the lovechild of Ani DiFranco lyrics and the sound of fake mall waterfalls, and they were read out loud with lackluster slam-spirit by cherub girls in camisoles smelling like Tom's of Maine. I'm gonna replace Auto-Win with an auto-play flash-player that'll cycle "Umbrella" by Rhianna and the Tegan & Sara "Umbrella" cover over & over for all of time. That'd make y'all way happier than I ever can. Seriously, listen to that song and tell me if you are still sad? I doubt it.

This week's Sunday Top Ten might sound kinda like, glum? But it's not. Also, I'm gonna do "Things That Are Easier Than I Thought They'd Be" later this week, to like, even it out, or something. Feel free to tell me what to think, I'll believe anything.

Also, Lozo put up our vlog. You should check it out, 'cause there's a really productive world-changing conversation on the comment thread w/r/t "Haviland & Riese: Hot or Not?"
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SUNDAY TOP TEN:
THINGS THAT ARE HARDER THAN I THOUGHT THEY'D BE

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10. Building This Dresser
So I've been building this dresser, the construction manual lists approximately 260 steps. It's taken about 100 hours to construct, thus inspiring this post. I'm totes thrilled to've even received it, and obvs putting it together is a small price to pay, and besides, it's good for my arms which don't get a workout now that I'm no longer toting heavy plates of food or working on the railroad all the live-long day. Speaking of hand jobs, I was in such a state with the state of the dresser that I offered Lozo a massage with a happy ending in exchange for dresser construction, but then I thought that'd be kinda awkward probs for our friendship, and wouldn't necessarily entail less upper body strength than the building so I took it back. Not officially, but I never arranged for the exchange. Also, I can do it myself, I'm Bob Vila. UPDATE: Totes DID IT. holla. HOLLA!
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9. Recapping The L Word

[original screenshot from a Season Three Recap]

I guess that if you look at it logically [something I willfully select NOT to do in most circumstances cause looking realistically at one's bank account or one's schedule is often a short-cut to depression and overwhelming sensations of futility. 'Cause if you don't think about it, it's still possible you could finish it in an hour, why not?] this show is an hour long --
-Pausing at least once a scene for screencaps, about 35 scenes per show: three hours
-Transcribing dialogue from the show and from friends: two hours
-Photo-shopping photos of my friends from the viewing party and inserting them: one hour
-Making graphics: one hour
-Actually writing about the show: endless/priceless.
All in all about 20 hours of nonstop fun. Then I added time to it by acquiring a well-needed but obsessive proper grammar & spelling habit [some of the S3 recaps that no one read but me were plagued with grammatical and spelling errors, and rarely cohesive.] Obvs I didn't anticipate this time commitment when I decided to do it. This is why next season I'm getting a screencaps intern. I'll give you college credit and a back rub if you're hot.

Anyhow, Carly and I re-watched the pilot the other day, and I'm excited to currently be hard at work at recapping it for AutoStraddle! I know -- why Riese? Why? The answer is: because I obviously love it.
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8. SAT Math, Five Years Later
I "auditioned" to be a Kaplan teacher and succeeded, I just had to re-take the SATs to prove I could maintain the same high score I'd had in high school. Easy, yeah? No. I brushed up on my math pre-re-test, but I hadn't realised how much longer it'd take to do math now that it wasn't second nature. I only finished half the math section when the time ran out. Then I added "Kaplan tutor" to the list of "jobs Marie thought she had between July '04 and January of '05 that Totes Fell Through, Therefore Ruining Her Life Forever. JK Not Forevs, Things're Better Now."
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7. Getting Our TeeVee Show on the Air Immediately
Sometimes I talk about something constantly then suddenly stop talking about it. I kinda did this with the teevee show but don't be alarmed -- nothing's gone wrong, we're just in a waiting period. Also we've got real clear and direct ways to improve the pilot when the time comes: things that seem obvious now that we've stepped back in order to see it fully.

I imagined the writing-the-teevee-show process to be like Field of Dreams, which is probs responsible for many similarly executed projects, like, there've been all these crap shows that make it all the way to air, surely someone'd see ours and greenlight it immediately. We shall write it, the development deal shall come, like it happens in the success stories you read about. I guess no one publishes non-success stories. Oh wait, yeah they do; it's called "blogs" and "World's Wildest Police Chases." JK. That'd be cool, if we got into a police chase and then, when captured, we'd be like "marie lyn bernard dot blogspot dot com!" that'd be the best viral marketing ever. Reality show marketing. We could get Carly on COPS getting arrested for crack whoring and she could plug the show in between "motherfuckers!" Would that be meta? I'm not sure. I think "meta" is the new "irony" -- "irony" being a grossly misused word these days, especially by me. Maybe Alanis should write a song about "Meta." JK. She'd really fuck it up.
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6. Doing my Hair
Short hair is totes harder than long hair. For example, first thing in the A.M; I look like Season Three Pilot Shane. It magically deflates within about 2 hours [I wash my hair post-gym, unless I'm going somewhere in the morning, which um, I haven't done in a while], but its post-shower behavior is highly unpredictable. Just when I think I've discovered the ideal combo of drying, ironing, product and styling, four days later my hair will rebel and say it's not down with that routine anymore, then I'm back to the drawing board.

Haviland thinks it's grown out to bordering-on-bowlcut and she'd like to trim it but I responded: "No, it's like the Beatles, I like it!"

John Lennon & Friends for Wax

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5. Writing my Book
Obvs this has been a bit of a challenge.
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4. Moving On
I searched my gmail for "harder." Aside from stumbling upon some suggestive "harder! faster! wetter!"s, almost half the results were from a few weeks ago, when I kept saying that I'm waiting for things to get easier, but instead they keep getting harder and harder. Things've been lightening a bit, though, lately. Not the weight of these untangled things aforementioned as "getting harder " [these untethered wrongs with no space to right themselves now in the clear where "real" means the same thing to everyone involved, where perception looses it's fog and becomes fair game] -- those things remain the same level of hard, like other striking losses I've experienced. But the coping part's become lighter lately and there are other areas in which things have been relatively bright, promising, brilliant, huge, everything, enough. I've been blessed, really, in so many ways, by so many things, and, not to sound freaky, or hark back to a time of apocalyptic predictions and various second-coming related verse, but the way things came together to furiously and gloriously distract me immediately and thrust me fully back into living with functional social normality before I had a chance to absorb the possibilities regarding what I might eventually face in the future as well as what I was truly experiencing emotionally at the time -- and then the way things started turning around just as I'd hit all-time incapacitation and agoraphobia levels a few weeks ago -- I was always honest that I believed in G-d, I really truly do, and I think there's gotta be something divine or spiritual and trying really, really hard out there, there's gotta be something like that who's aiming for everything, a strange, tempting, dangerous ideal ...
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3. Writing This Blog Post
Seriously, I feel like every day's mitigated by hardness, so this would be easy -- things that're heavier than I expected, lines longer, processes more complicated, people more unpredictable. But perhaps not, but I don't think that's because life is particularly easy or I'm good at it, I'm totes not, but that I manage expectation really carefully -- that's why when I give someone my heart, it's generally someone who's swept me away before I had time to weigh it out and determine likely I couldn't handle the suspense. This is pretty easy to analyze psychologically -- I've got this little girl in my gut who wanted a warning before she heard he was already dead, this like, fourteen year old who'd just gone to McDonald's with her friends from Theatre Club and had a two-cheeseburger meal with no toppings, who wished there'd been some kind of illness instead, some hours, days, years, to prepare for this premature death, to readjust her mind slowly to the way things really are -- it's not that I avoid unwise choices. I just try to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out better than that, lest it be taken from me suddenly and without warning. I can't prevent sudden tragedy, so all I can do is prevent anyone's loss being truly tragic. I'm careful of people. If I let them in, put something at stake [something=risking substantially life-changing loss], it means I've either been given no choice in the matter or, I guess, I've got no choice in the matter. Love's like that. When choosing -- I choose to not put it all on the line.

And also: I am, like Crystal said today too, afraid that as soon as I let someone in, they might see ME, and then be like, omg, this is not what I signed up for, and then I'm doomed. I know this moment will come eventually with people ... and I guess that's my guarantee that no matter how good and serious anything is, it'll eventually end when they see me, I mean, really see me, and so, therefore, it's best to not get into it to begin with, or to make the revelation matter.

Also: a lot of things falling under this category -- "Things That Were Harder Than I Expected" -- are Private Things or Obvious Things [e.g., "getting my life together," "reducing word count," "staying in touch with friends," getting a six pack" or other topics I often mull over], like I keep thinking of things and disqualifying them for one of those reasons. That's the main problem with writing this.
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2. Walking in High Heels

[This photo shoot was the first time I wore heels, seriously.]

I didn't realise there was really anything to it, aside from just being a bit more on top of things. But it's like, balance. That's fine -- the walking part is fine. It's the noise! I kinda walk like an elephant. I don't look like an elephant. I look like a human girl named Marie, sometimes called Riese. But when I walk, you might be like, "Is that an elephant lumbering by my room for a 3 A.M. drinkie?" and it's actually me, just regulating, just walking. I'm not saying I lumber because it's true, but 'cause people've told me so. And I trust them. In heels though, I just feel like I'm making my presence so unavoidably present, and I hate that. Click, clack, look, at, me, lumber, click/clack.
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1. Getting freshdirect to deliver Sausage, Egg & Cheese Lean Pockets.

I've put in a product request for this several times over the last few years, to the point where they probs're like "her again, really? Tell her to have some toast." Do any of you order from Fresh Direct? Because if so, please go to the product request area which's in the "New Products" area. There's an asshatty looking guy and an aesthetically pleasing graphic and you just click that there thing and tell them that you'd like them to carry Lean Pockets, Sausage, Egg & Cheese. Thank you, I appreciate it.

SomeDay Top Ten: Live Through This And You Won't Look Back

So, back on Monday night, I accidentally pressed "return" which became "publish." It may've come up on your Google Reader. Then I had an idea to do this in like, stages. And somehow this now fully-staged oft-edited posting experiment has become its own kind of testament. It's probably one of the longest blog posts of all time, but I like it that way, 'cause it's all here, started & finished: my name is Marie, and this is my heart. And--also--what I've found most stunning about this as it evolved in my head and on "the page" [I feel like such a pretentious fuck using that kind of language, hot!] is that it's such a strange full-circle because as much as I was drowned out at times, I cannot understate the following: She was the best writing teacher I've ever had. And I've had a lot of kickass writing teachers--official ones. She helped me find my voice, develop it, own it ... and punctuate it. And I'm saying that right now with that voice. The indisputable fact of That Gift is perhaps the only thing from all of this that I Know For Sure.

*

So I published what I had so far, and then I republished as each segment developed. I said: "Ideally this entire process, which will be approximately as exciting as watching paint dry, will be completed within 32 hours. Comment at any point. I'll probs respond to comments quicker than I'll update the post, which I think might be kinda interesting and fun." That turned out to be a big lie.

Also, I'd like to add that because Stef has forfeited payment for her kickass blog redesign, I have one free date with Lozo still to give away. Just something to think about.

I won't regret saying this,
this thing that I'm saying,
Is it better than keeping my mouth shut
That goes without saying.
- Tegan & Sara, "Call it Off"
*

I'm way behind on email/thank-yous/phone-calls[surprise!] everything right now. Obvs.

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Most Recent Update - 8.23/9:26 P.M. EST - Installment # 10


*

Sometimes, you go through something brief but intense in both good and bad ways and your whole life changes. That's a good first sentence, right? Okay, moving on then: I think I'm developing some sort of bruise on the lower corner of my right palm/wrist connector area from typing too much. I'm going to be injured from typing. That's pretty much the most looserish illness you can develop, besides whatever it is that people get from masturbating all day to Sailor Moon. Or dressing up like a Klingon for any number of consecutive hours.

So lately I've started to notice the wires of thoughts fizzing through my brain that don't take the same paths anymore; some things exploded or burned out or turned liquid on the way from [there] to here. But they feel real, too, and no less honest.

And ... I know there're so many factors going into how I feel here now ... and I'm still limited in what I can say and petrified, too; I learned the hard way that not only is the internet a free place to really go off at someone without any recourse for the attacker or protection for the victim, but it's also a place where you can actually attack someone on grounds that're not only ridiculous, but precisely the opposite of the truth. Reader: I'd've married her. [We considered ourselves "engaged."]

That [redacted] magazine article reminded me of how good things once were. I'd tried to forget, obvs, as The Girl I Chose became a totes mad twatwaffle ... It wasn't just the content that brought me back, but remembering how much she'd labored over the article with me, remembered her bringing home groceries and making me dinner while I sat glued to my computer ...

... and then ... remembering being yelled at for hours, and hours, and more hours, until the hours became my life and where else could I've gone every morning, really, than my life?

*
"Behold I come as a thief,
blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments,
lest he walk naked, and they see his shame."
-Revelation 16. The King James Bible.
*

So this week's Sunday Top Ten is a reflection, like the kind you get when you gaze into a small pond or other reasonable body of water, on the things that've changed that I didn't even notice were changing. One of those changing things is this blog; I'm trying to post more frequently but with greater brevity. So far my success rate has been about 0%.

On the topic of this Sunday Top Ten, I had Crystal read it, and threw the idea at Stef and Lozo. All three thought I should just say it. I keep trying to organise it, but I can't.

Sunday Top Ten:
Things That've Changed,
or
Things We Lost in the Fire
or
How We Live Now

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I know what I wanted,
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over.
- Stars

*
10. I Am Ready to Move to Someplace Sunshiney

Sitting on the subway with Natalie the other night it didn't feel any less true to say "I am so over this city," in the same way I used to defend it as though it's busted arteries were somehow still supporting my heart.

*
9. I'm Addicted to Email

Now that I have my Dash [Truth: my previous phone, a Sidekick--a gift from my mother--was stolen after (redacted) started a fight on a Philly street-corner, attracting a crowd that ultimately included thieves. Her wallet was stolen. She didn't replace her wallet--she had me instead--and subsequently didn't replace my phone. Besides, I had nothing to say to anyone.] I've become more addicted to checking my email than normal. Howevs, I can't really reply in anything resembling proper English, or comment on my blog, or read anyone's blog, or access Google Docs. It's like I can see in but I can't do anything about it. Like a Read-Only Doc or something. Nevertheless, I must check. I must check obsessively and constantly.

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8. I'm No Longer Afraid of Mice.

I'm not afraid of mice anymore. I used to be so scared of 'em that when we spotted one in our Interlochen dorm, I built a chair-bridge from the door to the top bunk and wouldn't let my feet touch the floor 'til we'd been rid of them for many days. Also, the top bunk wasn't even mine. I mean, mice're gross, obvs, but there was a mouse in our kitchen here and I didn't scream or anything. For the record, having a mouse in one's apartment in New York City isn't indicative of anything (bad cleaning habits, infected building) besides that you are alive and life is unfair. Also part of my fear comes from the Sex in the City episode where Carrie wakes up and there is a mouse on her bed.

Tears for fears, fo' real.

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7. The Final Playlist. 18 Carefully Chosen Tracks.
Heart/Stars. A Better Son or Daughter/Rilo Kiley.
Don't Cry Out/Shiny Toy Guns. Where Did The Good Go/Tegan & Sara.
Don't You Know/The Sleepy Jackson. Hear Me Out/Frou Frou.
Nineteen/Tegan & Sara. Who You Are/Tears for Fears.
Good Luck/Basement Jaxx. 23/Jimmy Eat World.
Floorplan/Tegan & Sara. If I Ever Feel Better/Phoenix.
Your Ex-Lover Is Dead/Stars. Explode/Uh Huh Her.
Soil, Soil/Tegan & Sara. Next Plateau/Longwave.
What the Snowman Learned About Love/Stars. Ave Maria/Franz Schubert.

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6. I Wanna Be a Robot

I got an email Monday morning, oddly enough, from a reader who worked at a law firm I'd applied to for part-time admin assistant stuff right around returning from the cruise -- basically confirming all my worst fears -- it was not cool at that time to google me when you're looking for someone to type and enter data and not cause trouble. Like O.K. it's possible that I'm is totally into Satan and a first worldian douchebag whore, and it's probably not true, but why risk it? I mean, Satan! That is serious business! The devil herself!

I ended up talking to this girl back and forth all day, and ... ugh. Things're better now, thank G-d, and though technorati remains deeply attached to old things, my heart doesn't [ha!], and, finally, neither does Google.

But still, I totes just say whatever I want and my name's right there. This would be fine if I wanted to work in publishing but I don't really -- mostly because I feel it's just more smoke and mirrors and the pay is shit. For some bizarre reason, as confusing to me as my recent desire to live in L.A., I want a randomized robotic office job. Yeah, weird. I always said I could never do it and now, when the temp agency called and asked if I could start the next morning at some office job they didn't even describe to me, which implies it involves sitting on my butt and inputting data while slowly transforming from human to octopus, I was like "WHEEEE!!!!" I think it's because I need some stability.

I'm running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. I'm tired. Also, I think I am not only losing my tan, but becoming perhaps transparent.

I started a temp job on Wednesday morning and said "I am so proud of myself for getting up on time, I'm pretty certain I'll end up being late." Obviously I was. Also I was told at 8:45 A.M. on my first day that I would be serving the next 9 hours of my life WITHOUT INTERNET. And then my phone, which has limited internet capabilities (read: not blogger, not grammar), died!! What the F?

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5. I'm Raw.

One of many enlightening activities I accomplished on Wednesday while WITHOUT INTERNET at work was reading through my notebook -- not my journal -- my sketchbook. It's mostly to-do lists, but writing too and I saw that at first, I was resentful & broke & bitter, but also ecstatic in a way, high on my strength at breaking free. I wrote: I'm feeling easier about it all of a sudden, and it's almost not being able to stop myself from stopping myself coming but not certain I ever will come.

I felt sad & guilty, too, a failure, like I could've done more. But -- post breakup, I remained sympathetic & sensitive [through more than either of us will ever say] 'til the online slander started, and that exhausted what remained of my tolerance for mistreatment. So. This's me right now being [semi] straightforward because I realize that lately, pieces of the story've been leaking out of me passive-aggressively, shards, 'cause I held my tongue so well then and it continues its reverb.

I'd say I want to scream and what I meant was: I am screaming.

I wanna clear what I can because air is a vast & tricky thing; it's hallucinations, ideas, the fog, the fallible mailable ridiculous air, which is, p.s., never enough.

I wanna clear the air so I can step out of it, go walking beneath the enormous sky.

I had such a reservoir of non-judgmental acceptance. So what happened was such a unique, maddening way to get to me. For one: as a writer, I've just naturally got a lot online. But mostly: this space'd become remarkably precious, both because it'd brought her to me to begin with and because I'd been so intensely private about my sex & dating life on my blog prior to her precisely to avoid any possibility of having to explain a breakup online, which's like my worst nightmare. I mean, I took sick days in junior high after breakups. I hate having to bring all that personal nonsense into the light. It's impossible for anyone to judge. Breakups are personal, complicated, subjective things.

I've always been careful how I tread the line between honesty and "dirty laundry," and I was pissed to see her try to demolish that in her mania, get to me, break me. I didn't want to air mine. I don't. But it's still out there, it's still flapping, I still see it, am asked about it, feel it, hear about it, know people wonder about it, remember it. So, I think there's enough behind us and enough before me to warrant some kind of something... said.

I didn't read her blogs for a long time. I still wanted what I'd always wanted: for her to be well. But I got really angry, too, that everything at that point had been left in such shambles and that there wasn't even mercy here. In permanent public space. That there was so much I had to say in response but didn't.

That anger's hard to shake: that 24/7 cyber-slaughter--the commenting on my stuff [the subsequent moderation], the day she asked everyone I knew to be her myspace friend. When she was emailing and commenting everywhere -- other bloggers, my readers, my friends, my family, drunken heterosexual Lozo. The phone calls, the texts. Those effin blogs.

Oh I wish my arms were wider
I wish that I could hide you
So you can rest and repair
-The Cardigans, "Feather and Down"

My natural tendency towards loner-hood amped up a bit when her hospitalisations started, and the social isolation reached it's peak during the last&longest one. I was traveling to Suburban NY every day. People stopped understanding altogether and the more things I gave up (jobs, money, stability, friends), the more I fought to cover up and keep it all together -- the more this blog meant to me. I let it become an actual outlet for the first time ever.

It'd been up and down like that for a long time, and I'd done everything I possibly could to help her get better. After all, in health she was What I'd Wanted, she'd been So Good. Even in mania, I'd loved her. I justified putting everything aside to be there. I incurred expense. I stuck around because I loved her, because she was devoted wholly to me, because she told me our whole lives before that point had existed to make our union possible and I agreed, because she loved me, because I saw glimmers of her old self and she made promises and I always hoped. And the more I threw in, the more I needed her to come out of it.

*How do you know when to let go?
Where does the good go?
Where does the good go?
-Tegan & Sara, "Where Does The Good Go?"*

We'd joke: "This is the longest relationship I've ever had. We've been together for 100 years, totes." Because we'd already been through so much together.

So then I fell apart, and I had to, before I could call it off. Thunder, Perfect Turtle:

From Original Draft of "Naked on the Internet" Panel Recap:

I squat on the heels of my cowboy boots, pull my dress over my knees, lower my head into my neckhole like a turtle receding into it's shell and--though this sounds as if it's going somewhere sexual, it's totes not--tell [her] I wish I was dead. I'm not going to the panel. Can you tell everyone that you killed me?

Her: Jeez, death death death's all you can talk about. I don't want you to die, is that okay? Why don't you want to go anymore?

Me: I just don't wanna. I don't have anything to say. I'm stupid and annoying.

Her: Aw, Auto-Win, [strokes my hair tenderly] Why're you being thunder perfect turtle right now?

Actually, I do know why death death death's all I can talk about: Kathy Acker. [She]'s advised me to stop reading everything she's been telling me to read, as clearly it's "too much for [my] little baby mind to handle." Don Quijote, Nietzsche, Kathy Acker, The Art of Love, Marquis De Sade, Bartimelle, et al. I have this thing where the voice of whomever I'm reading seeps into my mind and becomes my mind.

4. This Blog Like, Means A Lot To Me

So, I zoomed in here. I realized when I was out for dinner with Natalie last week that Wow, I say "blog" every other word, which's a lot for someone who only updates twice a week. It's become a big part of my life, which is really seriously hilarious considering my intentions when I started.

And it's resulted in so many fabulous things; my readers, who've become friends, many of them in "real life" -- I met K-Lily through my blog, and TB of course, and, obvs: Carly.

Rachel, who at one point was the only one who knew what was really going on via a private blog called "Too Much Information" later re-titled "Not the Mountaintops." Stef who's redesigning my website, Jaimie who invited me to read at her theatre.

Crystal, who not only fiercely believes in me and my choices/talent in a way that inspires ME to do more, but has also gotten me the most reliable freelance gig I've ever had and listened to me whine for about 50,000 words while enabling the development of new career skills.

Team Caitlin [Caitlin #1=Our Producer!, Caitlin #2=Santa Claus/Magic!], who hauled ass to get an audition space for Carly and I ... and then we found out that we need to join SAG or something, urg/whatevs. People who've read the teleplay and given us feedback, like Crystal and Abby, and "m" [who I actually knew in college and then re-found on the blog, true story].

I could literally go on forever. Wow. I mean -- I really could. To even begin to fathom it would be impossible. If you think I've forgotten you because your name is not in this paragraph, you are wrong.

All the people who've responded to my call to financial arms ... and anyone who's ever commented, or emailed, or offered a connection or a gig or a job or a girl or just advice. Or a story. Or an undercover-in-a-museum flickr photoset.

And Lozo, my masseuse.

3. Then I Became Not Too Proud to Beg

I've had many conversations recently, re: The New Starving Artist. I know several others who're misconceived to be "going places"-- at the top of their game, career in possible overdrive, just exploding everywhere. But truthfully they've got maxed out credit cards, tore-up shoes and a lot of Ramen. Also sidenote I love Ramen. TB taught me the "secret" which is to put an egg in it. I know that sounds gross but seriously try it. I know, I was skeptical too. Except you Carly, I know you don't like Ramen.

The internet's created a funny kind of psuedo-"fame": the Broke Successful Person. People no longer have to make a physical effort to find your work via library or movie theater or art gallery. You've volunteered to come to them, they can find you and enjoy you at their leisure and consequently appreciate you without incurring financial cost. I'm not complaining, I'm just getting to this point: now more than ever it is possible to appear as if you're doing good when you're actually not. It's beautiful because I think it's a meritocracy, unlike the other kinds of archy-s that've plagued the art and publishing worlds.

Oh yes: and credit cards. Are often vital.

Certain things imply success: you've worked with well-known people. You've been to some particular events of distinction. Perhaps you seemed, for a time, to forego work altogether to take care of someone you loved, who claimed to understand you couldn't afford to do this. You've been scraping together the most random kinds of income to support all the free writing and then one week everyone keeps calling to say wow! You're doing so well! And you're like: Whoa! But I'm broke!

You've appeared places, with it is what you do, beaming, well-received, glossy. You've become a "name" which is now possible, in certain circles, to just come up.

But also; you're broke. It's your fault, you feel. Not everyone would've been so pliable as you'd been. Not everyone would've been so vulnerable, embraced the smoke & mirrors. People ask you if you're getting by, you respond affirmatively, you can't admit the smoke, because you're choking on it ...

When it's not your industry, it's easier to imagine that things are going better, or are about to go better, than they actually are. I look at people who claim to be broke and think, "See, even as you're saying this I can't really believe you. How on earth could [seemingly successful artist or actor] be broke? They're doing so well right now!" but then you think; of course they can be! Because I sure am.

It doesn't mean anything that I was in a major women's magazine [the payment for that goes to the editors of my anthology, not to me] or that I have a sorta-popular blog. Even I assumed incorrectly that TLW Online was a profitable venture, when it's actually just their labour of love. But I heart LW recaps and all that's come into my life because of it -- things money can't buy. "Priceless" as Visa might say, ironically. I wish there was no money. Then we could just trade things according to worth, and depend on each other maybe, even, to get by.

You can be in a video watched in 1.2 million homes and it's entirely possibly you're to earn not a single dime from it. [I'm not, obvs, but some people are, I hear of these things.] Certainly no physical book or public theater could gather that kind of momentum and popularity on it's own accord, be transported via body and space, like the internet can. So.

Dacia wrote about this in September and I remember it distinctly. And kottke made some valid points about what we do as bloggers, and so that contributed to my fundraising drive. It's hard -- underneath it all I always feel like a fraud, which's perhaps why it's so easy for someone to attack me and I'll take it because maybe i feel that even when they are wrong they are secretly right, they've uncovered me, and what they see is worthless and undeserving. I do good things, but underneath is bad things.

I feel like I wouldn't like me if I met me
I feel like you wouldn't like me if you met me
-Tegan & Sara, "You Wouldn't Like Me."

All this good work is leading up to something. I love this & the people, and I wanna build an audience for future ventures that I imagine to be profitable. Lately I've had people providing concrete support, and now, also, even more people that've put money in the Damn-the-Man jar.

"I'm so broke" jokes and "I can pay you with a Lozo, but not money" jokes are fun jokes. But on Sunday as I pondered this paragraph, I've realised my pride and inhibitions related to talking about money hasn't actually changed. What changed was circumstances, some sort of touched upon in this blog in many areas of this post.

Broke people sometimes annoy me because they never want to do fun things, so I try to pretend like I am not also a broke person. Visa can tell you all about this.

It's true that I write full-time, but not with a full-time income, and I don't know what to do about this.

I won't go into the specifics of what's gone down recently in my life; I am now, and always have been, happy to do this for free--I believe in making agreements and mine here is: "This is my work. It is free." I never intended to make money from blogging because I do not have any exclusives on Britney Spears' sexuality or Judith Regan's latest book deal. And when I do get similar information, Haviland makes me promise not to say anything. Also, my ex slept with Maggie Gyllenhaall. JK. I mean, JK about being genuine about releasing that information as an exclusive. It's a joke.

So there's a lot of things in here that kind of explain what led to my question like, well, maybe if I could just get $5 from everyone, my problems'd ease up a little. My Mom said she'd read about someone doing it. So that's that. [Kinda?]

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2. Um,

I don't know why I think this is the most amazing book cover of any book I've ever been in, but I do. I mean, the title, the FONT! Wow. My story "Fucking Around" is in this book:

***
everything i love get back for me now
everyone i loved, i need you now
so conned, i lied i lied to me too (so what?)
hold out for the ones you know will love you
hide out from the ones you know will love you
-tegan & sara, dark come soon
****
1. Formerly "#7"
A True Story:
Live Through This,
And You Won't Look Back

One morning I woke up knowing something was wrong, and so I went to New Roc. I'd never been there before so I just got on the Metro-North to the stop called "New Rochelle" and then I got off there, and got into a car, and asked the driver to take me to City Hall, wherever the jail was, and so he did. I think it cost four dollars, it seemed like a bargain.

It was an impossibly sunny, warmish-spring-perfect day, I walked up the marble-y steps of City Hall and went inside the sanitary, chalky building. Everyone inside it looked tired. I was tired. I'd grown less good at eating and sleeping. I gave them her name and said I thought she'd possibly spent the night there. The woman told me she'd actually just left but: Oh, she was just walkin' all over the place talking to everyone --

And so I decided to find her. I didn't know how I'd do that because I'd never been to New Roc before. So I just started walking, and I asked G-d, because I knew of that for sure, to lead me to her. I walked down a few sidewalks. This wasn't a good part of town, I could see that already. All the stores sold booze or greeting cards. Like, drink some Jack Daniels, then get a card to apologise to your wife for what you did afterwards.

And I walked down these streets and then I saw her, waking out of a store with a fresh pack of cigarettes. There she was: my girl, she was right there. I'd come there and found her, and so I thanked G-d for that. I jogged a little but she was in her own world so she didn't hear me coming up behind her. She had a million bags, it seemed like, always carried five or six books with her at a time.

I caught up and blocked her in the street. She looked up, saw me, stopped.

She said: "Hey," as if I'd been planning on meeting her there, as if she'd spent the night in jail simply to be nearby when I made my first visit to New Rochelle. She seemed surprised but not surprised enough, as if strange things like this happened all the time because of her or for her -- they did, after all. Of course I would just psychically know where she was. Of course I would just find her with no clues whatsoever and no knowledge of the area.

She hugged me -- a quick, tight, glorious flash of real -- she held me, said she'd missed me and that she was sorry they hadn't let her have her phone in jail. She kissed me. Those were still her lips. I thought her arms were still her arms but I looked closer and they were covered in bruises, even more than there'd been on Friday or Saturday, when we'd covered them in foundation for the photographer from the magazine for my article.

Then she stopped walking. I stopped. I turned and took her in: she was a slick black shark that day: in her sunglasses & Trinity black leather jacket, like her fingernails might shoot into laser beams and then burn me up, like in a fancy movie. Sometimes, when she wasn't around, I had a strange urge to sit on my bed and stare at the wall and move my lips in the shape speaking usually makes.

I stopped walking too, because she'd stopped.

She commanded: "Walk. And don't look back."

She let me take ten steps ahead of her and I started walking. She started walking behind me. This was easy. I didn't look back. I started thinking and then I remembered that thinking wasn't the point. The only point was to obey.

We were at an overpass that went over the highways. Cars drove beneath us like it was an ordinary day in an ordinary world. Though I've been to New Roc for real now, I still can't figure out where we were that day: somewhere between City Hall and the train station, I guess.

It was a beautiful day, brilliant bright beamy sunshine. It was for us.

Then she told me: "Okay Lot's Wife. You can stop now." And so I did. "Knock knock."

"Who's there?" I receded, she neared me.

"I love you!" She said.

"Knock knock." She said (that's her second line in a row).

"Who's there?" I said.

"Interrupting weirdo!" She said.

"Interrpting we--" I started to say.

"I love you!" She said.

I smiled. I knew those words, I knew that person.

We walked together to the Metro-North. I knew that's where we were going but she didn't tell me, I just knew.

She told me she'd given herself the bruises to punish herself for being prideful and judging everyone. Then she gave me her phone and told me to call her work for her and tell her boss she was sick and wouldn't make it in. She told me she had no time for work; she had to to learn Proto-Indo-European.

"I feel like yelling at people," she told me. I didn't really grasp then that she meant that. This was the very first time. This was the day after Easter.

That's when it started: on the Metro-North, heading back into Manhattan. She started yelling. I was there on the seat with her in this normal train, with normal people, being normal, and I realised I'd just stepped into some kind of something scary. I remember I was reading The Book of Daniel that day off of paper, printed out from the online Bible @ bartlebys -- because the fact that I hadn't read it was becoming a major issue in our relationship. I just kept thinking I could try to go along with things and then maybe I could fix them.

She started in on me then for a minute because I'd said "Be quiet." She asked me why she needed to be quiet. Did I not want people to know that G-d is coming to condemn them, that Buddha was NOT hallucinating and we can WORSHIP our MIRRORS and we can go worship Angelina JOLIE and the BUSH AdminiSTRATION while in the THIRD WORLD people are HUNGRY they don't need ANYTHING because my GOD IS GOOD and my GOD IS KIND and my GOD IS WATCHING and MY GOD IS COMING ... she was next to me but her cadence was riding up up up up to elevated language, I thought this person was my girlfriend, where has she gone ...

I was eager to get off the train so we could start over out there in the station with new people. Maybe we'd have another chance in a new crowd.

We were pushed out into the station. All of me panicked for a second, like I was a mouse that'd just found itself in a brand new city all alone in a big train station. I wanted to scamper for a corner but all I could do was follow, I wasn't going to leave her. There was no way. I was going to get the Real Her back. I was going to do it.

Why would I leave this woman? I had to wait for Real Her to return so that we could talk, because I missed her. You lose your relationship to reality and the people who exist in it, you have to re-orient your social group to fit the insanity you've gotten accustomed to and usually there is only one other person in your group.

She apologised for yelling at me and said: "Let me buy you a flower," and so then she did. I carried it close to me like someone might pluck the bud right off it while I stood waiting for her -- she'd decided to "trannie it up" and duck into the men's room to save waiting in line. It worked. I thought she was clever. I held my flower to my face.

She said she wanted to go to Bryant Park. I said okay. She stopped to give money to every homeless person. I did that too. I like giving my money away. I bought $20 of fruit roll-ups from some kid on the street who seemed really down and out. She wanted to give the fruit roll-ups to homeless people but later I'd also see her eating them, poking out little cartoon figures, sticky on her thumbs.

So, she'd give, and then the next person wouldn't, and she'd yell: "Don't walk by homeless people like ROBOTS!"

I winced. I wanted to walk away and I also wanted to tackle her onto the ground and hold her there til help came, so instead I just walked beside her, my whole body totally evaporated. Tense vacancy.

We were sitting in Bryant Park and she hadn't stopped, she started preaching to everyone to from her seat, told me the secret to poaching/preaching was to call someone on your cell phone and go like this: Hello? Father? Is that you? What did you say about my gluttonous worship of Angelina JOLIE?

People were staring, whatever.

I leaned forward on the table we were sitting at and took her hands, which had cuts in the palms. I said: I'm very scared. do you remember when you talked about how you'd kept yourself off meds for so long and done a great job controlling your episodes? Because I feel like you might be having one, right now?

What do you want to do? She asked. Put me in A CAGE? Like JEEE-SUS? Like you killed SOCRATES? For preaching in the MARKETPLACE?

I said: I want you to get help, I think that maybe we should talk about this, I feel like maybe right now it would be a good idea to see a doctor and maybe think about meds or maybe stop drinking or --

She said: I can be alone, you don't have to be my bride!

My body lifted from the chair and I walked away. It's important to mention I was still holding my flower.

I knew exactly where she'd be and for how long just how I'd known she'd be in New Roc that morning; I just knew because we could communicate on invisible telephones wired to our brains.

I went to the subway station and then I turned around and came back.

I can't just walk away, I said.
I need to be alone, she said.
Will you call me later, I said.
I will call you later, she said.
I will see you later, she added.
Okay, I love you, I said.
I love you too. You are my wife, she said. Marie. I will never leave you. You are the last woman I will ever be with. Okay?
Okay.

I went home petrified. I went home a mess. And I stayed in various states of mess for some time, Haviland came over, we were on speaker phone with my Mother the social worker and I was whining, repeatedly going back into my survival mode where I just curl up and declare my intention to become a starvation artist (not a starving artist, that's different). I couldn't get in touch with her but I tried. She called me on accident once and I heard her yelling at strangers. At some point, her phone stopped picking up.

At 2 A.M., I was lying in bed, un-asleep, and she walked through the door to my room. I saw right away that it wasn't her. Her face changes, she becomes someone else. It was someone else. I saw her eyes flash flint and I knew it, I saw it.

"What happened?" I asked. I was almost crying already, but she'd told me there would be a place where there would be no more tears; and soon.

"Baby, I got mugged," she said, exhausted but not a trace of surprise, like it was one of many things she could've done for entertainment that fine evening.

"How did you get here?'

"I just walked here from the West Village."

Thank G-d she had keys to my apartment then. I was living on 106th. She'd walked at least a hundred blocks, probably more. She made herself something awful to eat. I held her like she'd come back from war. I listened to her and saw the bruises everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I felt like a nurse. I would feel like a nurse for a long time but I didn't know that yet. I told you I was a weirdo, she said.

She'd had everything lost or stolen, it seemed. Me too, I thought. But I hadn't, not then. Here's the thing, I've just realised: control. Pre-breakup, and with the exception of a few briefly topped peaks, she seemed to [usually] turn it off when she needed to; at work, in restaurants, in front of other people, even for doctors. That was the tricky thing. Why was it just me and the strange public who usually enabled it? Did that make me strange?

When was it that she made me throw a glass of water at her in public? Yes, it had been a few days prior, the night after a day we'd spend with the photographer from the magazine article she'd helped me craft into something kinda special but scary too. We were having dinner at Cafe Mode and she asked me to throw a carafe of water at her, I said I wouldn't. That was a lot of breakable weight and water to throw at a person: but -- a glass was not too much.

It was actually like, totally awesome. We laughed so hard about that. I'd really done it, thrown a glass of water at her and then she musta thrown one back because I remember being drenched.

We dashed into the night all laughter, hightailed outta that restaurant, I thought these are the adventures that are now my life. I thought, Choose Your Own Adventure I Choose ----. I felt very Sancho. We wanted to make Easter Eggs for Haviland. We were wet, it was too cold for April. The air beat us, our skin froze.

But also: I learned so much. About writing. Literature. Love. Myself. Madness. Sanity. Self. Spirit. Sacrifice. Humility. Ego. Soul. Words. And, perhaps, an erratic [but, in this case, conclusive] case of compulsive TMI.

So, yeah, that happened.