tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48524095925210540182024-03-05T10:36:53.371-08:00jzigJolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-33638692087536156742020-11-12T15:35:00.005-08:002020-11-12T15:39:58.316-08:00Answering tech calls from my kitchen<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today I saw a call from an unknown number flash up. I don't usually pick these up, but I am quarantining at home and have been talking to parents on and off about technology problems. I grabbed it. The woman on the other line seemed a bit confused, which convinced me that it was a parent who might have been patched through to me -- a salesperson would have been smoother and ready to go. The woman asked, "Did I call you already?" and I wanted to snort in exasperation, "how would I know?" but tried my best to put on my professional voice as I asked her who she was, and told her that I didn't think she had called me already.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="1ugsj-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1ugsj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1ugsj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">A month ago I had another weird phone call, but that weird October call was me phoning my therapist of ten years to ask if she was ok. I had sent her a few emails about billing questions, scheduling questions, and she hadn't responded. Sometimes she doesn't respond right away because she has "fights with her computer" but she's in her 70s, and she's Black, and she lives alone, and I got worried with Covid. I called her and she answered. We always laugh a little when we reach each other and I said, "Hey are you ok?" and she said, "No." And she started talking to me about not knowing what to do, and I could hear that she was short of breath, and she seemed so uncertain, like she was taking a poll about what people thought she should do, totally unlike her normal attitude, but I didn't put that together until I got off the phone and and tried processing the call with a friend, and my friend reminded me, "if she is struggling to breathe, she may not be thinking clearly."</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1ugsj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="1ugsj-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="aj16j-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aj16j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="aj16j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">On the call I told her she had symptoms and needed a test. I told her I was worried. I told her about how to get a test. But it was after hours and she probably wouldn't be able to get one until the morning, maybe not until Monday. I told her it was serious and I was worried about her. I texted her links and info and she texted me back a thank you. And then I got more worried and responded that she needed to call her doctor, maybe go to the hospital. She didn't respond, and I tried to figure out how much I could push. I'm an anxious person, and she's my therapist, so of course I have lots of extra anxiety about her. Her last message to me sounded like she was good, she had it under control, thank you and goodnight, and what do I know? I'm not a doctor, just a doomscroller. I've been calling and emailing and texting for the last month, trying to find out what happened, dreading, hoping that she was just "fighting with her computer" or her phone.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aj16j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="aj16j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="crbho-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="crbho-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="crbho-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">And in slow motion today I realized what this call today was, it was her colleague calling to tell me she was dead.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="crbho-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="crbho-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="e4rht-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e4rht-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="e4rht-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I am thinking about what she told me in our last conversation, about how she didn't believe she could have caught the virus because she was always at home, she only left to see two patients in person in her office that didn't want to (or couldn't?) meet virtually. I am thinking about how many people I know who are far less careful. I am thinking about people who think they won't get sick and people who think they won't get others sick. I am making stories up in my head about what happened after our call. I am thinking about how fucking angry I am, and what she would say about that.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e4rht-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="e4rht-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="31j3s-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="31j3s-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="31j3s-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">"There are no funeral arrangements, at this point," her colleague said. </span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="31j3s-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="31j3s-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="mo9h-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="mo9h-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="mo9h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">On the day of our last session, I was so stressed out from work that I forgot to FaceTime her. I was driving home in my own world and she called me, to see if I was ok, 15 minutes after our start time. I pulled over in an empty parking lot and unloaded an avalanche of worry about work -- when we were still teaching without kids in the building, but when it had been decided they were coming back. At the end of the call, she said, "I think you're in a good place now, I was worried about you when we started, but I think we've got you to a good place now."</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="mo9h-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="mo9h-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="3rg1j-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3rg1j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3rg1j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">Our relationship of course was one-sided. I know very little about her apart from the stories she told me to use as analogies. But she has been in my corner for years, listening and cheering and calming me, helping me to believe that I could do hard things and that I was worthwhile. She said "Good show," to me a lot. </span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3rg1j-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="3rg1j-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="95gga-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="95gga-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="95gga-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I wanted to scream when she told me she was still going into the office to meet with people in person. I was furious at whoever these people were who weren't looking out for her. But it goes beyond those 2 patients. I read that the CDC is now having to tell people to wear a mask to protect yourself, because the messaging to protect others isn't enough to get us to wear them.</span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="95gga-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="95gga-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div><div data-block="true" data-editor="7ioeq" data-offset-key="cprid-0-0" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cprid-0-0" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="cprid-0-0" style="font-family: inherit;">I hate everything right now. I hate that things are just rolling along like it's normal. It's not normal that asking people not to kill other people is an imposition. </span></div></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-13386348209996188892020-10-07T14:43:00.007-07:002020-10-07T15:40:39.167-07:0023 years<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">23 years </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-33f5f41b-7fff-e9e8-66a9-04379c39944f"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder if union leadership are listening to how scared we are. I wonder if they realize how many people I see and share air with everyday, so many more than a classroom teacher. I wonder if they know how many people I see without masks at work, maybe because we forget and are human, maybe because we have different assessments of risk, maybe because some of us are just little kids.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder if Field’s air filters look like Farrand’s. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder if anyone will even remember they walked in my office to ask me a tech question that we worked on together for 15 minutes, when they are doing their contract tracing after being diagnosed and trying to think of everyone they talked to.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder if I will bring the virus home to my high risk partner, to his even higher risk mother. I wonder if my department will be eliminated, if I will just take over classrooms as my colleagues get sick.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am scared, and I am filled with rage that we are in this place.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be nice to find someone to blame.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes I do. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But today I’m going to think about 23 years ago.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember how hard I worked to get in a unionized job. I remember what it was like before I was unionized, when I was delivering newspapers or working in restaurants and pyramid schemes, and applying for every union job I saw like they were the ticket to a new life.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because they were.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At that time in my life, our $1000 union dues would have paid an entire month’s expenses: rent, utilities, 4 weeks of groceries, gas, and still had money left over for two tires, which we needed constantly. Now it wouldn’t even cover one rent payment.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I would never have made that bargain to drop from the union even when that $1000 went so much farther -- because I knew what it bought me. I knew what it was pulling me out from.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was sexually harassed at my sleazy pyramid scheme job. I was bullied to do illegal financial things and I was too desperate to be able to say no, and there was no one to even ask for help. No one to even consider talking to -- I was alone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I paid hundreds of dollars in supplies, car repairs, and more for the privilege to deliver newspapers, and hundreds more in self-employment taxes. I didn’t have anyone to talk to who would tell me how to not get scammed out of my own money. There was no group advocating for us to get the company to chip in for supplies. There was barely an internet at the time, and what was there I could barely afford to use to figure out what I could legally do. I was alone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My restaurant job threatened to fire me when I called in sick because it happened to be the day after my birthday and they assumed I was lying. Never mind that I had never called in sick, and that I worked with food and had the kind of illness you definitely don’t want a food service employee bringing to work. I had to beg them to believe me, frantically promising I’d do whatever they demanded. I was alone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I got my first union job, my husband and I cried with gratitude. It represented dental care, birth control, and a tiny life insurance so I didn’t have to worry about my husband going in debt if I died and he needed to bury me, and rules. The best part was the rules, the safety, the sense that I was no longer alone. That no one could take advantage of me or make me do things that were illegal or unethical.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In that first job, I still was struggling -- this time by a supervisor who wanted me to destroy all the high school library books that had premarital sex in the stories, unless it was rape, which was ok according to her religious views. I developed hives from that working relationship, I hated going to work, where I felt pressured to do things I knew were wrong and where my supervisor clearly was out to get me. It took years to resolve. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But it did get resolved. I was better off than before, and I had never been in danger of losing my apartment, my health care, my ability to buy groceries. I always had someone listening, someone who was trying to make things better. No matter how stressed and upset I was, or how I felt like nothing was changing -- I was never alone. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every job since then, I have been a little more secure, a little more independent. I was able to buy a home, buy a car, to get divorced, to support myself without a partner. I did not lose all my teeth before 40 like the women I delivered newspapers with, or have to stay in bad relationships to make ends meet, or give in to bosses who were threatening me. I have been safe, because of my union. I was never alone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t love every decision my union makes as a collective, but I have served in union leadership long enough to know that there is literally no perfect decision in a group this large with so many competing interests. I know how to get more involved if I feel like my voice is being ignored, but I am also thankful for the opportunity to step back and go with the flow when I feel overwhelmed. I know that I can rely on the union as a collective, but I also know the cost of this, the price of being in a group.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe other people with my experience and qualifications in the private sector would be making more money or living more glamorous lives without having to acquiesce to group decisions, since they would be independently marketing themselves to their employers. I find that hard to believe, given how hard employers work to dismantle unions, and given the stories I hear from my friends in the private sector. But even if I could be making more money or only worrying about myself and my needs in a non-unionized job, I wouldn’t want that over what I have being a union member.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because I remember what it was like being alone. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d rather be scared inside of a union of people than scared and alone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’d certainly rather be angry with my union behind me, sharing in my anger, than one lone angry voice.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My relationship as a union member has been longer and more reliable than my marriage, or my family. The way some people think, “I can always move back home,” that’s the way I think about being in a union -- I may not have the backup plans and security that other people have, but I have this security, I have this backup plan.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being in a group sometimes means choices are made not for my benefit, but to benefit others. I have to keep an eye on that balance, for sure. I might need to select new leadership, or take on more leadership responsibilities. But I am a historian and I know what happens in economic upheavals to those who are divided and who have no advocates.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know that I am not better off alone. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know that this was the place I was trying to get to, even if it hurts or is crappy for the moment. I trust my past self that fought to get here. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I’m glad that in this moment of fear and anger, I’ve got my union with me.</span></p><br /><br /></span>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-20288604715326645422018-11-20T19:20:00.001-08:002018-11-20T19:29:38.832-08:00"My strength is in my legs," he saidI was in aqua satin, literal tap pants, with a matching top hat. It was my first musical, and I thought they all would be this fun, with as many chorus scenes and dance routines and costume changes. After <i>42nd Street</i>, other shows were a dragging letdown of waiting for the principals to finish.<br />
But I was still 14, and while I was a little awkward about sitting on a strange boy’s shoulders and chest, I also didn’t care enough to be embarrassed, about how heavy I might be, or how nervous he might be of being able to lift me. I just wanted to shine, to dance and be Baby, but in a tapping crowd.<br />
“My strength is in my legs,” he said. He was older, maybe a senior, maybe named Mark, maybe a swimmer. He was tall, and I was pleased to have been paired with a tall partner. I tried to figure out why he was telling me this. He said something about how he could lift anything with his legs. There was a moment when I wondered, “Am I supposed to go on about how I’m sorry for my weight, apologize, agonize? What does he want from me?”<br />
Either he explained more, or my 14 year old brain, refusing to apologize for a body I enjoyed, found another path — he wanted permission to allow me to sit on his shoulder as he crouched for the lift, rather than expecting him to pluck me up with his arms and place me in position. I was a bit confused, because it seemed so obvious to me that I would sit, and the “lift” was actually a stand. But as a 14 year old girl who had never lifted anything or anyone very impressively, I thought things were obvious that may not have been obvious to an 18 year old boy surrounded by cultural expectations of his upper body strength.<br />
He seemed satisfied with our negotiation, and he crouched, and I sat, and he stood, and I flew.<br />
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Most of the negotiations I would have with future dance partners would be so much more tedious, so much more full of angsty self-doubt, and so much less effective. The more I followed the script I thought was expected of me, to be self-deprecating, to offer solutions, to speculate on my partner’s problems...the less my partner and I found our meeting point, and the less I flew.<br />
There is something beautiful about a bit of arrogance, a bit of selfishness, tempered with a wary tongue. If you don’t rush to don accusations, or throw out suggestions, if you stand still, listening with cocked head and quizzical eyes, secure and content in your own borders, the insecurities of your partner may show themselves for what they are, defenses rather than offenses, and the knots of your problem may fall loose at your feet.Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-15117271147940416752017-01-11T21:51:00.003-08:002017-01-11T21:51:31.485-08:00I loved a man once<div style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-touch-callout: none; color: #2d2d2d; font-family: IowanOldStyle, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; outline: transparent solid 0px;">
I'm alone now, but I wasn't always. Once I woke when my husband did in the mornings and made him breakfast before work. He said he didn't really want pancakes with fruit in the batter before work - he said he wasn't really that hungry that early. So sometimes I stayed in bed. The problem with that was he'd kiss me before leaving, and his cologne which was nice when I was awake made me furious when it intruded into my sleep. So often I'd get up and try to cook breakfast anyway.</div>
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He liked big lunches. I'd pack them, or he'd pack them himself. He'd iron his clothes and shine his shoes and sometimes he'd cut his hair before work.</div>
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He was always on time.</div>
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He told me he loved me a lot. Sometimes he'd call home at lunch. While he was gone I'd do laundry and clean things and write letters and worry about money and the ATM fees from how many times he got $20 cash. I'd read cookbooks. I'd look for jobs in the classifieds.</div>
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After he got home he'd cook dinner, or I would, or we'd cook together. We'd watch Star Trek or PBS or read books or sometimes he'd garden on the balcony or maybe we'd write. We talked about his day, and things we'd read and heard and seen, and decide what was right and wrong in every instance. Sometimes we'd talk about what we'd tell our future kids about it.</div>
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We'd close up the apartment for the night and go to bed together. Sometimes we'd have sex, or maybe argue about whose turn it was to give the backrub. I tried to fall asleep first, because he snored horribly. Sometimes I'd get so angry listening to him snore because sleeping was hopeless. But I'd say I could sleep when he left for work.</div>
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In later years we worked together on newspaper routes, waking at 3 am to drive to a warehouse that smelled so strongly of rubber and plastic and ink he'd have to pull the car over so I could vomit. I tried not to get sucked into the Wall Street Journal articles because folding and wrapping faster meant more money for us in tips.</div>
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He always folded more papers than I did.</div>
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He also did all the driving.</div>
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And all of the talking to strangers.</div>
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For years he worked that job, and then would drop me home and work another full shift at another job.</div>
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And he loved me.</div>
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I'd ask:</div>
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"How much do you love me?"</div>
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And he'd answer:</div>
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"It's without measure."</div>
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We'd fight about money. Or sex. Or our families. We fought a lot about the future. I wanted a plan. He wavered. I wanted him to get a degree, then a career, and then I'd get a degree and a baby, maybe, or a career. He wanted things I didn't want, and was afraid to tell me, couldn't see how to get them and keep our life. </div>
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He was afraid I wanted things he couldn't give me.</div>
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I did.</div>
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But I didn't want to let go of his hand to get them.</div>
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Because he loved me.</div>
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He brought home kittens. Jewelry. Lemon trees. Furniture. A computer with internet. Plans to get dozens of CDs for "not too much."</div>
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I worried, constantly, about money. About paying bills on time. About debts. About lonliness.</div>
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I would ask:</div>
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"How do I know you love me?"</div>
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He'd say:</div>
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"I come home to you every day."</div>
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I cried and confessed I couldn't be a pastor's wife, sobbing about how sorry I was that I'd ruined his plans, that I'd deceived him, I just couldn't, just couldn't stomach it, couldn't live begging people for money and being nice to people I didn't trust and being an example.</div>
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He cried and confessed he'd never be able to give me the life my sister had with vacations and a house and two cars and cable TV and new clothes. And I hated myself for wanting those things when I was loved.</div>
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And over years the decisions and compromises and things you do to get along and make things better, and we made more money and got degrees and a house and cell phones and two cars and new clothes. But we didn't read each other's writing as much, and we didn't see each other every night. We'd work separately on different floors and made friends that weren't shared. </div>
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And I'd ask him:</div>
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"Why do I need to come home tonight?"</div>
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And he'd answer:</div>
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"Because you're my wife."</div>
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I loved a man once. He cried when I left him, and asked about my new boyfriend, and asked if he was a good man who took good care of me.</div>
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I was loved once. He came home every night and brought me gifts and called me his little German French girl. I saw him give a report to the police when he was mugged walking home from the bus. He got me swing dancing lessons and horseback riding lessons and taught me to drive stick.</div>
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I wasn't always alone. </div>
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I'm alone now. It's ok. But I wasn't always.</div>
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Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-56205603692421357012016-11-09T15:00:00.001-08:002016-11-09T15:08:29.675-08:00Turning our heads to the wallThere are men you can fight.<br />
Strangers. The ones that you are taught are dangerous, the only men who will hurt you. Probably dark skinned. You can fight them. You should. You must.<br />
And there are men you are supposed to trust. The ones that live in your house. That work beside you. That sit next to you in class, or hold doors open for you, or say hello when you are at the grocery store. You aren't supposed to fight those men. You aren't supposed to see the way they look at you, or take them seriously when they are just joking, or feel threatened when they are drunk or when they raise their voice at you. Anything untoward you see, anything you hear, from a nice man, a white man, a man you know, is a mistake on your part. You misunderstood.<br />
You learn.<br />
You get better calming those men. You get better looking out from their eyes and seeing things the way they do. Your body. Sex. The room. The world. You know what will upset him, what he needs to hear and feel and see. You know how to say things that would make you cringe if you saw another woman saying them. Because if you were watching your sister or your mother or your friend say these things, do these things, you would recognize their shame, the shame you learned to stop seeing in yourself.<br />
Appeasing a man.<br />
Because you are afraid of what his anger will damage.<br />
Because keeping the anger from happening is easier than fixing what might break.<br />
When you don't have a grown woman nearby as your ally, you have to weigh the consequences.<br />
What happens if I don't calm him?<br />
Who might get hurt?<br />
How will I get home?<br />
What happens once I get home?<br />
How many other people will know?<br />
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We left the bar sometime after Virginia and Colorado were called. In front of me as I walked home alone, an agitated woman in her 20s was talking on the phone and asking if she could spend the night at the apartment of the person on the other end. Her boyfriend was upset over the election, and had decided to stay out and get trashed, and she had not been able to explain to him how the election upset her as well, but how she didn't want to take care of him when he stumbled home, or be around him. He had gotten angry with her for being a drama queen.<br />
What belongs to you, once you have told a man you love him? What do you get to keep for yourself, and not have to surrender?<br />
Is it worth wearing things he doesn't like, or "making a scene" that embarrasses him, or showing your intelligence or success, unless he can prove himself better and smarter and more successful than you? How does he react when he feels intimidated? Insecure? Emasculated?<br />
Will he just belittle you, or will he yell? Will he keep it private, or will it become a spectacle? Will he take out his anger on passerby? How many people are you responsible for protecting in this instance?<br />
How much is a man responsible for the consequences of his emotions, once he has a woman to "take care of him"?<br />
I heard myself a few nights ago, soothing and shushing and changing the subject and not rising to the bait slapped down in front of me, over, over, over. I knew, he is feeling insecure. He is stressed. He is proud. He is hurting. He needs care.<br />
This man isn't my lover. Because I have learned, to a pathological degree, to run from this sensation in a lover.<br />
But how much can we really escape our female programming, no matter how strong we think we are?<br />
I heard myself saying the words, and told myself it didn't matter, because I would get to leave him and lock my door, because I wasn't his wife and could pay my own tab and get home on my own feet and I told myself it didn't matter that I was letting him scream in the street and have a temper tantrum and sneer at me and pontificate about how he, too, was going to run for President.<br />
Run for President.<br />
I laughed when he grabbed me, because we've known each other a decade and he's been there for me, you know? He wouldn't...he just wouldn't.<br />
Run for President.<br />
I cried this morning and my boyfriend listened to me talk about being sexually harassed by a man I was standing next to while wearing a suit, with two powerful women next to us that didn't even hear it. Because you stop hearing it at some point. There's too much. And my boyfriend said, "I believe you," and I cried harder, because I don't believe myself anymore.<br />
What does it mean to love a man when you can't draw the line any more between his feelings and yours, his perceptions and yours, because the ability to see the world through his eyes is what keeps you safe? When you can't distinguish the parts of your sexuality that are you and the parts that are him? When you allow your friend to tell you you aren't as smart as he is, but you run from your lover because you can't predict his next move, and not being able to predict a man's next move is just too fucking terrifying?<br />
I cried this morning, thinking about all of the white men who will feel stronger and more powerful because a pussy grabber is President. Will it make me safer, because they are more confident and not as threatened and emasculated? Or will it put me in more jeopardy, because they will know they can do anything, anything, and because the number of possible victims just exploded, because no matter how hard white women work to appease, they will not be able to protect anyone. Maybe even themselves. I wonder about women voting for that bastard, and I think about me, sitting at that table, trying to calm him down. We can't have them angry. We can't have the world set up in a way that makes them insecure. We need them to feel calm. Shh. Shh.<br />
White women's power comes from her relation to white men. It is a power he has to be in the mood to bequeath. She is his property, she is his reason for destroying other men, a tool, an object. A balm. She cannot stand alone. It is an abomination.<br />
Michael tells me we will all have to toughen up. Hard days are coming.<br />
My first step is not to answer the phone right now, as my white male friend calls to gloat about the election and tell me about his plans to reach the Senate in five years, wrapped up in a "Happy Birthday, let me buy you a drink."<br />
I know there is a good man inside there someplace. I have seen him, I have been his friend for years. But I cannot, cannot appease any longer. Appeasing the upset white man and making excuses for him, and tiptoeing around my stepfather/my friend/the man we should be able to trust.<br />
And this world you are building of humiliation and hierarchies will have to soothe you, and comfort you, and build you up when you feel threatened. The "subjective" values you despise are the ones that could have saved you.<br />
My care is a gift I do not owe you. And I do not know how to fight anymore. The models for fighting are based on the idea that your enemy is a stranger.<br />
But he isn't. He says he is your friend. He says he cares about you. He seems to care, sometimes. But only as long as he feels he is better than you.Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-50998967607595122622016-09-18T10:07:00.001-07:002016-09-18T11:06:02.151-07:00Responding to death<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">You can't say that you love someone because of how he handles death. You can't say, "When I need to remember why I love him, I remember how he treated me at the funeral." It is morbid. Mocking pain by making it romantic, like you wear black tulle and listen to songs about legendary suicides. But I think it a lot, even though I try to avoid saying it. I don't have the words to articulate it yet, but how someone handles death, how they react to death, process grief, respond to the grief of others...it is important. There is a trueness and a deepness to those moments, cognizant of mortality, that is so foreign to how we live and talk and act in "real life". Like the difference in how we talk and act in our sexual lives - us, and yet very not us at the same time. Wholly apart from the self we present to others on the street. And the self we present in the presence of death - it is again, wholly apart. <br style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none;">In my significant relationships in the past, the intrusion of death was always an incredibly awkward and terrible bit, not only for the loss itself, but for the change in my partner. For the strangeness and discomfort of watching my partner struggle and stumble and be foreign, a stranger to me. Not a person who "did it wrong," merely a person who was a newcomer to the realms of death, or a newcomer to grieving with another. A tourist: fumbling, stiff, detached. Maybe it wasn't a change in them at all - maybe it was a change in me, an unwillingness to continue being intimate once life became too real. But I know, even if I can't explain it, that there are people you want around you when you are grieving, and people you would rather avoid. And I think it has something to do with sensing who is real in those moments, in touch with their own mortality and weakness, and who is, for whatever reason, false.<br style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none;">One of the irrefutable truths about my love for this man is that his familiarity with death puts me at ease. Death is not something he treats as a secret, or an ill-fitted shoe, or a bus tour. It is for him a matter of course. Painful, yet inescapable, and transformative - like growth, or birth. Like waking up slowly, to allow the stiff muscles and joints to stretch. Like coming home to an apartment filled with water, from a window broken by the storm. He knows what needs to happen. <br style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none;">Death is a thing that happens. He doesn't turn into a different person, and I'm not afraid to look at him. I'm not ashamed of him, because he doesn't seem like he is cutting out grief's tongue, or surprised to discover grief can touch him, or acting out a part he expects he should play. He isn't fearless, he isn't always collected, and sometimes he is uncomfortable with his feelings, or with mine. But even if he runs away for a bit, he comes back. And there is a stillness deep inside of him, not of grief shut into a locked box, or barricaded outside of himself, but of grief that has been accepted, that will be acknowledged. A stillness more of a tree than a rock, yet more of a cat than a tree. Seeing, knowing, and considering.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The ability to allow someone beside you to fall apart, and to pick up the role of polite humor to the crowd not from discomfort, but to deflect attention so that person can grieve, undisturbed. The ability to be close, not through what is said but through what is unsaid. The evidence of a life lived in connection with others, relationships spanning decades, skimming along surfaces with charm and kindness because loving others means forgiveness and acceptance. No less rooted than a love that demands exhaustive honesty and constant inspection, but one in which the work of love is done alone, instead of in discussion.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In our responses to death we can see truth about ourselves and our loved ones. We can see the depth of character that is, or is not yet, present in people whom at other times we would judge and classify by traits which at these times fall into insignificance. </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Do you know what it means to mourn? Does your desire to connect with a person who is in pain overpower your fear? Jim talked about us all having a boat on the River Styx, and how we may freak out when it seems like someone is dumping water from her boat into our own. I see myself there, in all of the moments I know someone is asking for intimacy I cannot sincerely give to him, and I see men I have known, avoiding connection that they fear might overwhelm them. But even in the moments we choose to connect, we can choose to be sincerely present and vulnerable, or we can choose a level of falseness. And I think one of the lessons age is teaching me, is that being insincerely present is rarely better, for anyone, than being absent. </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is something beautiful about being with a person who knows grief. The kind of beauty in taking a deep breath, feeling the air fill you in forgotten corners, feeling your heart slow and your muscles relax. Perhaps being able to sit next to a person while you grieve is not, by itself, enough to hold a relationship or a friendship together. There are certainly people who were very close to my heart at certain dark times who have drifted out of my life, with whom I'm not certain I could maintain a friendship. There is too little in common between us. But out of anything else I've learned, the ability to find connection in sorrow is the closest I have found in our winding emotions and life paths to solid, true ground.</span></p><div><br></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-35272900844081820092016-08-25T13:42:00.001-07:002016-08-25T13:42:15.912-07:00"It'll be ok"How many times has someone said these words to me? How many times have I felt desperate to hear them, and angry and bitter that I was alone, and didn't hear them from a companion? Quieting my mind sometimes seems like such an insurmountable task...the worries about my bank account, how my life compares to what I imagine others have, my loneliness, my feelings of not being good enough or not doing enough to warrant love. And yet if I added up all of the times someone has told me, "It will be ok", would the sum of that care outweigh the pain I put myself through pretending that no one had ever loved me enough to stand by me, pretending that I've never been loved, that I am really alone?<div>"I<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">t will be ok" - the magic words that say something so completely opposite of what they seem to say. These words don't mean that your pain is irrelevant, though they may encourage you to consider a larger context, to take a moment for perspective. They don't mean that you will be the same, or that anything will be like it was before. They don't mean that you will be good, even. They just mean you will survive, and sometimes that is the most comforting thing anyone can say.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"It will be ok" doesn't mean the speaker can fix anything, or even that the speaker will be with you when the clouds clear. I've still found the words to be powerful, a belief of someone outside myself in myself when I feel utterly incompetent, a belief in goodness and hope when I can't see anything worth saving.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"It will be ok" has preceded a lot of adventure and joy in my life, and has been itself the source of a lot of intimacy and tenderness. I can never get enough reassurance, though, and almost as soon as I hear the words, I'm missing them, and building fear and voids and needs and worry. If I had a magic power, I'd want to be able to open a photo album that would display all of the "it will be ok" moments of forty years, fanning them out in colors and emotions and connections of a life lived among people who have loved me and supported me and believed I was valuable, people who haven't done what I may have tried to puppet them into, but who have shown up in unexpected ways to tell me that it would be ok.</span></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-42443041790679588922016-07-29T06:48:00.001-07:002016-10-07T08:44:05.188-07:00Hospitality of wishesWhat if I treated wishes with kindness? Listened graciously to the desires of others without hearing obligations? Was patiently attentive to my own hopes instead of snarling, "It doesn't matter what you want." What if?<div>What if I heard wishes not as needs, and not as insulting fancies arising from privilege...what if I could recognize wishes as something gentler, something more significant...respectful preferences of a guest, or trusting confessions from one heart to another, or from my own soul?<div>Would I be less likely to fall apart later, hysterical about my lover, family, friends not meeting my needs - my ignored wishes returned to me in disguise? Would I be a better friend, less resentful, more present?</div></div><div>Would I sometimes give joyfully to panhandlers without discomfort, and sometimes politely decline without guilt, without needing to pontificate about my decision? </div><div>Would I be less afraid of drama, secure in my own boundaries?</div><div>Would I be better equipped to listen to intense pain from those I love? Would I be less defensive and hurt when their pain is about me, and less likely to assume it is about me at all times?</div><div>Would I?</div><div>Would those I love feel more heard, seen...would strangers in my world feel more included? Would all of us feel less needy? If our wishes were treated more politely, if we ignored wishes less, and rolled our eyes less at disillusioned disappointment, and were less likely to tell each other that wishes matter less than needs, would those hopes be less likely to mutate into demands? What if it was ok to wish, without waiting for all needs to be met first? Is there a way to honor wishes, so as to be more discerning about needs, to limit what cannot be declined, to get better at honestly requesting care, to worship our fellow humans by giving them more sincere choices? </div><div>What if my gift to you is to give you the freedom to decline my requests, without punishment? To promise that I will take care of myself if you say no?</div><div>What might it be like, if there were more choices than obligations?</div><div>I can see Terence's smile at Olive Garden in 1993, "<i>Hospitaliano</i>." Can I learn <i>hospitaliano</i>, towards my own wishes, towards the wishes of others, moving beyond "niceness" - a land of repressed desires and cyclical explosions of resentful needs - into a place of attentive kindness and self-sufficiency and earnest free will?</div><div>What if I had fewer needs and more whims? What if I said no more often AND more kindly? What if I granted more wishes and refused more burdens? What if I was more of a dad and less of a mom? What if we all were?</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=APshr1dOhk4C&dq=the+experience+of+being+needy+private+exclamation">https://books.google.com/books?id=APshr1dOhk4C&dq=the+experience+of+being+needy+private+exclamation</a> </div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-87826644924314918182016-07-02T08:41:00.001-07:002016-08-25T10:42:51.401-07:00Two middle-aged Asian men with a selfie stick<p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A beautiful, laughing black woman in scrubs taking a walk with her boyfriend. A wispy white hipster girl with pixie hair & Risky Business sunglasses. I'm holding my coffee mug and a book, waiting for the signal at Fletcher & Huron at 10:22 am on a Saturday in June. I walk through the silent festival venue, passing a bewhiskered, muscley young man walking what appears to be a small red bear with a fox's tail. He's wearing the same glasses as the pixie girl, but without the sun protection. </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The fountain creates a calming backdrop to the maddening chirp of the chipmunk, who increases his volume & frequency as he notices me watching him. His voice echoes, after a moment's delay, in the vibration of the metal streetlamp post behind me. There are sirens, far away, like the sun, muted by the morning cloud duvets.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tiny gold florets in flowers that look like pieces of cauliflower - if only Sandra were here to tell me what they are. </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The echo isn't an echo after all; it's a second chipmunk.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Just outside my apartment building is a cement trunk, dumping its load through a chute angled into my neighbor's backyard. It is probably what woke me, along with the 7 am sunshine happy to find no serious resistance in my almost transparent window-shade. Michael loses his mind over that window-shade. It doesn't block light, doesn't darken the bedroom, doesn't provide privacy. I don't want it to. It does its job perfectly, which is to suggest privacy, and to soften edges, without denying me my window to the world. I certainly sleep sounder, more deadlike, in spaces with blackout curtains. But I am not convinced I sleep better. The disorientation of waking in a space that has no connection to anything larger, to opening curtains and finding a world that went on moving without me and seems not to give a damn...I find the process of reintegrating on those mornings very unsettling, the work to rejoin the stream of life seems to undo whatever benefit I gained from uninterrupted sleep. I don't want my waking and sleeping to be so divorced from one another.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tami mentioned last night enjoying seeing me re-emerge on Facebook, into my summer self. Slower, more thoughtful. I may have too much divorce between my winter and summer selves, between my work and leisure selves, to accommodate a fierce break in conscious states.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A butterfly landed on my bare toes and ran away when I turned to look at what was tickling me. Unless it was a lizard, or frog. It's in the cauliflower-flower stalks, small brown foot-tickler. Chipmunk Primo ran by the other foot to join his companion. My coffee cup is empty & I can't focus on Marie-Louise Von Franz. Bell towers and giggling teens on campus tours and the birds are so damn happy they don't have to wear a bra or be punctual or make good choices.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I gave up and laid down fully on the cool cement wall of the raised bed. I saw a woman who looked like Adrienne laying down on a bench the other night waiting for the bus, thoughts of "Rock on" warring with "Be considerate of others and how much space you are taking up." The former won, along with a bit of jealousy at her fearlessness, thinking I could never do that. I've sat up even </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">now. People judge. People expect you to anticipate their needs. They shouldn't need to ask you to behave yourself. </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I lay down again. The cement is so cool. Welcome back, Jolie.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The ribbon on the Mylar balloon scuffs the donation pillar. The sun makes a break from the duvet.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I wondered as I walked here about the work/summer divorce, and whether I should be more integrated. Does holding your breath for ten months so you can roll in daisies (or have your nose tickled by cauliflower-flowers) create more or less wholeness and goodness in my life? Would it not be wiser to be more moderate? </span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Education isn't a profession of moderation, though, for educators. No one expects a teacher to do a moderate job. They want a miracle. Miracles don't need to use the restroom at regular intervals and they don't accept "good enough."</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I don't have a classroom of shining child faces any longer. Perhaps this is the time to explore moderation? Even though nothing about me is moderate, even though I work best fluctuating from extremes, unable to leave the library stacks until the entire collection has been shelf-read, unable to open my work email or follow a schedule of any kind in July. Is my window-shade moderate? Or is it just a way to get away with another extreme?</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Michigan itself is extreme. This planter was the epitome of frozen desolation a few months ago. David commented last night on the copper dedication plaque for the fountain, how the plows had not been kind to it. How can his brain even connect the neurons required to look at sun-warmed metal & concrete and imagine snow plows?</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The air is soft now. The sun is reminding me I haven't applied any SPF. Chipmunk Primo ran back to his start point, and then went off searching for the foot-tickler in the flowers.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I notice my bladder. Marie-Louise wrote an entire couple of pages about the significance of human urination, the unstoppable force, its significance as a symbol of human instincts & nature. I smiled reading it, thinking she had never talked to a teacher. Everything she said about urination was entirely false for anyone who's ever worked a job where they were "on the floor": factory, retail. I suppose most of her clients and friends were of a certain social class.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I don't know if breathing more shallowly all year through would be better, worse, more authentic, more stable than the sprint/collapse I live now. I know last week's training during my first week off filled me with unreasonable rage & comical distress. I am not supposed to be working. I have ten weeks off and this three days is an unacceptable encroachment of my privilege. Not sure if it would have been so inconceivable if it had happened a bit later, after I'd had a week to start breathing again.</span></p><p style="outline: transparent solid 0px; -webkit-touch-callout: none; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The sun is hot enough now. I will join the crush of youthful drunk strangers at the river. I will separate my floatation device and wander down the river alone, with their voices in the distance. Slowly, thoughtfully, breathing.</span></p><div><br></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-73201066831992010152015-12-17T19:58:00.001-08:002015-12-18T04:29:04.356-08:00It is timeIt is time. To put away email, to text your entire phone list. It's time to announce your presence, to lean in, to let go. It is time to wonder, risk, explore. Time to try. Time to say yes. Time to breathe deeper, laugh with your eyes closed, and let tomorrow worry about itself. When it is time, all barriers will melt before you...except for those which stand, which will seem righteous rather than sinister, and petty rather than overwhelming. All puzzle pieces will fit, all tones are in tune, all emotions are true. When it is time, it is both easier than ever to attract a mate, and harder than ever to find simpatico with one. For when it is time, you are whole, as a child is whole onto herself, observing her world. And without the conditioning which tells us to pair bond, what girl-child would submit to the shame we serve up for our woman-selves each day? Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-13361035347388219372015-10-19T19:47:00.001-07:002015-10-21T04:11:46.572-07:00I'm better at having a broken heart than you areThe thing is, I'm just better at having a broken heart. I've been tossing it at boys since I was 8 years old. I know this letdown. I know the path. I don't like it, and the hill is a bitch. But I know it. Its grooves are familiar, and as much as I hate finding myself here, I know the way home.<div>But I bet you don't. And here's where my strategy of open-heartedness will pay off, while your choice to wall away in your castle denying you feel will fail. I love and scream and swear with a full throat and an outstretched hand and a constant willingness to see my faults. Your exacting nature does not permit such searching; you will never waver from your course, will never back down, will never reconsider. You are too careful to be broken, and you will quietly gather any disobedient hurt bits and hide them away. No one will know. And you will be even more precise in the future. Even more rigid. Impervious.</div><div>Messiness doesn't mind mistakes quite as much. A guileless love is unashamed of heartbreak; a childlike and effusive love knows and accepts the cost of emotional sincerity - or simply forgets it. I throw my heart away joyfully, with glee, with abandon, just to watch how beautifully it tumbles down the hill.</div><div>And thus I know heartbreak. I know it well. </div><div>And you do not.</div><div>All my exaggerated pantomimes and microscopic linguistic analysis of my own emotions don't seem to be encouraging you to express yours. And I cannot feel them for you, although I sense that part of what drew you to me was the hope that you could delegate this task. But if you cannot feel and express and make sense of the boundaries between your emotions and your responsibilities, if you cannot see how this is not "extra work" but is the foundation of being intimate with another person, you cannot have any patience or understanding for someone who lives each day on the floor of the sorting house, slowly sifting and classifying and making piles to organize the chaos, trying her best to build meaningful intimacy with the people in her life.</div><div>I saw you tonight, ranger on the move, passionately arranging some deal on the phone you told me was broken. Good luck to you. But I think you have more feelings than you care to admit. And I don't envy you that realization.</div><div>I am better than you at falling apart, and that means I have more experience picking myself up.</div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-3449473095682405662015-08-31T22:05:00.001-07:002015-08-31T22:48:09.090-07:00Shattered<div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I love seeing my friends. People I love, with whom I have history. I look forward to trips, excursions, parties, bar nights and brunches, operas and sledding and movies and dance clubs. I love getting spontaneous invites and surprise visits and hearing people I'm out with suggest "one more place?" - extending what might have been a perfectly lovely breakfast or walk or happy hour into a day or an evening of catching up, telling stories, and connecting. It doesn't sound like "one more place" as much as "I don't want to part."</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But the ends of things, the return trips, the goodbyes and partings and breaks in these connections get harder and harder to step through - the more excited I was to begin, the more planning and preparation I exerted to make the meeting happen, the more time that has passed since I last saw the person I meet.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The goodbye ought to be just as happy, if not more. I am loved! I love! The connection was evidence, affirmation, and a new treasure chest of stories and memories and beautiful things I can look at and hold onto when real life, and separation, come back. The beginning ought to be more fearful and sad than the ending - it might not go well, it might not happen at all. Yet beginnings don't crush me with worry and dread - I'm too energized by change and unknown and figuring things out. All my fear, all my sad, all my love twists inward at goodbyes. Returning home pulls my heart down into my stomach. It shouldn't - my bed is the most comfortable bed on earth. My apartment fills me with joy when I walk in. But to get there, I have to separate from these people I love.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">T</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">hese people I love so damn much. I knew I loved them, came to see them, looked forward to their company, but I had forgotten what exactly it felt like to be next to them, to touch them, to hear their voices. The shape of their faces when they smile and the texture of their skin on my fingertips and the exact span I need to stretch up to wrap my arms around their shoulders. I had forgotten what it was like to love them with flesh and voice and eyes. They were just an idea I loved, but I remembered when they hugged me all these other things that I had forgotten. How tender they are. How full of kindness. How open-hearted and sensitive and joyous. How brilliant. How beautiful, one right next to the other, a sofa full of heroic divinities. And now I know I will forget them again, and they will go back to being an idea, instead of this one specific unrepeatable utterly human being.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I want all of my loved ones within arms' reach, every single one of them, all the time. And I also want this feeling of falling in love with them anew, because it has been two decades and they have become entirely different gorgeous versions of the exact same person I loved the first time, fully bloomed and shimmering-winged, and I get to fall in love with an exciting stranger that is my best friend, has always been my best friend. This love, familiar as myself. I know you like I know my own dream world, but you have all these stories I don't know from these lives you've lived without me, and all I want is to sit next to you and listen to you and watch you be familiar and brand new in buttery baklava layers of sweetness. It is so good to be near you. And I am so very happy, and sad also, because I already miss you. I cannot hold this liquid moment still. I don't want to forget again what it feels like to be your friend.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Each summer my father would appear at the airport as a stranger that had gifts for me. And I wanted nothing to do with him and his foreignness. But ten weeks later after I remembered who he was I had to leave him at that airport and forget all the pieces of him again. And I'm tired of forgetting. I want my loves. Someday they won't be at that airport and I will have forgotten them and there won't be any way to remember again, how they smelled and how they cleared their throat and how they told a punchline.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And the lies Helga tells her son Freddie when he quite rightly sobs at every goodbye, telling him that he will see these people again, that there will always be another time, these lies we tell ourselves so that we don't fall apart like toddlers at every airport and train depot and bus station and repacked suitcase, these lies aren't doing the trick for me anymore. I miss you now. I miss you for every one of the hugs and laughs I will want to give you, that I wanted to give you for twenty years, that I will have in my heart for you, even though my head will turn you back into the idea of you, without your you-ness to surprise me, and hug me back.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I know that missing you is good, and beautiful. I know that I am lucky to have so much love in my life, so very lucky to have these pains of missing you because I have loved you well and hurt myself to sever from your sphere. I know. But I am in public, and I don't have the space or privacy to cry these heavy tears, to process this sadness, this love that wants to stay next to you and wants you to exist only for me until I feel like I can love you all the way through, a full saturation of color, until you can fully know and I can fully know you understand. Only then, only when you really really understand how I love you, until I know without a moment of doubt that you see what my heart holds for you, can I feel peace at you existing outside of my space, can I drive away from you with a bittersweet smile instead of feeling ripped, the quiet letdown of a finished ice cream cone rather than the wailing misery of a fallen scoop melting on the sidewalk.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is beautiful to love and to be sad at separations and goodbyes. But it is not beautiful quite yet, not until I can properly rage at the hideous injustice of loving people out of arms' reach, people who may not understand how important they are to me.</span></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-87134992257972886632015-08-28T10:40:00.001-07:002015-08-28T16:33:03.755-07:00"You haven't asked her"<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"But you haven't asked Jolie what she does." </span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">His statement froze the three strangers mid-stride. They had been about to melt back into the party; the olive-skinned woman who talked and danced and pealed laughter at her own jokes, her quiet partner whose face didn't seem to move even when it did, and the rotund man lecturing them all on holding cell phones next to their heads. They had chatted, or rather the dark woman had told stories, and Michael had drawn her out further, polishing her loquaciousness until she relaxed and remembered her personality, while the pontificating man had attempted to dominate with Mr. Wilcox-style wisdom. But the conversation had run its course; the kohl eyed woman and the tousled hair man were energized and glancing about the room, ready for further stimulation now that this intercourse - begun in hesitant fumbles - had given them courage, and the quiet still one was going to be the same wherever she was dropped next. </span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"You haven't asked her what she does." Michael repeated.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I wasn't ready to talk to any of them. I had tried, though not very hard, truthfully, but I had smiled and responded and nodded and opened my mouth and inhaled, ready to offer words. Other people had been quicker. Or perhaps cleverer, or surely smoother. I hadn't had anything truly wonderful to say. It is easier to let them have what they want. They want to hear themselves. But Michael's words had shamed them, and the Italian woman focused her sharp, striking eyes on me. "Well? What about you?"</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I stuttered. She was standing too close to me, and her eyes paralyzed me. She was waiting for me to be amazing and I was warm, and flustered. I don't need the attention. I already am getting more than my fair share of attention, just standing here in my new dress with the tulle-stiffened flounces, shifting my weight in shoes that are just barely uncomfortable. I just want to observe, and be in my head, and let Michael charm everyone else for me so no one notices I haven't said anything. I can't think of what to say. They are talking so fast and I don't know them and don't know what they want from me yet, other than for me to be unthreatening. It is easy to succeed at demure if you don't open your mouth, but now I have to speak and am going to give myself away.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She smiled slowly, watching me struggle, and remarked, "How pretty you are." I was surely supposed to have said something more clever here, but I did not. Michael told them how smart I was, and I watched the conversation form iron bars around me. He was looking at me with such tenderness, knowing I was twisting in discomfort but not realizing putting me on stage was making it worse. He is proud of me, he wants me to be shiny, but I can't be shiny right now, I have too many arms to be shiny, and I love him for being his business self and taking over the room but I just can't do anything more complicated than polite right now. I am slowly leaking life force onto the stripped wooden floor when she strikes, "When are you two going to get married?"</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I want to burst out laughing. If anyone who knew me, knew us could have been here in this moment. If he would leap in to save me right here. If she would stop toying with her prey and would have pity on me. "I've already been married," I reply lamely, goawayjustgoaway lady drumming in my brain. I succeed in dumbfounding her, just for a second. "I didn't like it."</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"But...but look at him!" she refuses to accept defeat. "Look at him! Of course you want to marry him, you haven't been married to him!"</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Yes, he is very handsome." He is, and God only knows what he is making of this exchange in that tight labyrinth brain of his. He is very handsome, so handsome I can barely look at him when I'm angry, or flustered, or supposed to concentrate on other people. He is very charming, walking into this party and cultivating every person here so that they eat out of his hand and thank him for the opportunity. He is very skilled, very clever, and very aware of how awkward I am. And perhaps I should be pleased that this is the only thing he doesn't do quite perfectly, setting me at ease, manipulating me. Because I think he misjudges the cause of my unease, never suspecting I could be insecure about him, about whether I've pleased him, about whether he thinks he got the bad part of the bargain with me on his arm tonight, and my head stuffed with sawdust.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I want to tell him I don't need the compliments, that the attention is crushing me, that I just need his arm around my waist and the freedom to be vacant and rest on his social skill. But I don't have enough articulateness to even make the attempt. I touch his hand over our shared plate of food. I try to mind meld with him, staring soulfully into his eyes. "What?" he asks, startled. </span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I didn't have a very successful evening. But for all of my personal stiffness and dullness, I did nevertheless walk away with this moment. You haven't asked her. All his smoothness and charm, like an athletic ability, and he so fit he is able to double back and pick up stragglers on the steep hill, without worrying he himself will tire. You haven't asked her. You haven't paid attention to my mate. You will stop what you are doing and show her homage. I will use my power to compel you to do so. And this millennia-old male power maneuver that would have enraged me if I were at full capacity, would never have happened if I were at full capacity, and breaks my heart with love at this moment. I am the one he cannot read. I am the lonely child and he is trying to bully his friends into playing with me. He doesn't realize the only reason I try to engage strangers in this mood is to be beautiful for him.</span></div><div><br></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-18403662969483643332015-08-02T21:24:00.001-07:002015-08-02T21:24:56.990-07:00Nighttime thunderstorm<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I will put my book down. I was disinterested in movies. Found myself no longer craving the noisy cheer of the bar. I hear the wind pick up, insistent and loud as it pushes the sultry air through the trees and the cracks between my air conditioning unit and the window sash. A storm is coming.</span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I will turn off the lights and open the drapes. The storm is supposed to last for hours.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The ceiling fan pulls the refrigerated storm air inside, where it tumbles to the wooden floor, past the dusty radiator which is warm from the slow sunset in my west facing living room windows. Their screens glitter with rain, drops I can feel bursting, brushing my hands as they settle on the peeling paint of the sills. It is my fault the paint is peeling from these sills, for I cannot bear to shut out the rain, at least not unless it is sheeting, violently, gushing in.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But this storm has perfect manners. Pleasant rumbles of thunder, popcorn soft, allow for plashing and trickling and leaf rustles and the quiet drone of the fan. It doesn't seek to destroy the paint left on the sills, any more than necessary. Lightning not meant to startle, but to decorate, revealing lilac skies with diamond highlights. </span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How can something so troublesome and disappointing during the day be such a blessing and a beauty at night?</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I need to move my car before I sleep, out of the university lot which will start ticketing at six am and into my paid parking spot, in the structure a mile away. It won't be an unpleasant task, not in this storm. But I hate to move away from the window. Placidity is a comfortable seat by double windows, looking out onto the dark, polite thunderstorm.</span></div><div><br></div>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-50267993586225952582015-05-17T14:40:00.002-07:002015-05-17T14:46:52.533-07:00Trust the ants<div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4b525b; line-height: 30.5999984741211px;">
<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 20.3999996185303px; font-weight: 600;">Love and Lies</span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love -- </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">By Clancy Martin </span><span style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 20.3999996185303px; line-height: 30.5999984741211px;">"Our feelings change from day to day, and yet if we don't expect too much from our feelings, if we don't react to those feelings too vigorously, if we are patient with our feelings, even a bit ironical about our feelings, we will remember that Friday will come around again, and we'll find ourselves once more in love."</span></div>
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I'm working on learning to trust the ants, in my own Psyche myth. I tend to want to leap up and do something, and feel guilty for sitting around thinking. I still sit around and think, a lot, but I don't give myself credit for that work - real work is something you can cross off a list. But what this tends to lead to, in my personal life, is a giant flaming disaster. My Eros is not a fan of being an item on the list, ever. He enjoys the mystery of his invisibility, and an organic unfolding of events and relationships.</div>
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I am much more likely to be wringing my hands over the phantoms the female chorus whispers in my ear, about the doom around the corner and about how I need to take a lamp and a knife in the dark and set about creating my own "real" solution.</div>
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But I am learning. Trying. Practicing trusting the ants. </div>
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Part of it involves letting the phantoms wash over. A few days can make a world of difference in how big and scary those phantoms look. Coming home from a feminist rally, ideas and horror stories churning in my brain, is NOT the time to sit down to have a serious conversation with my lover. A night out with the girls, listening to their worries for my ultimate lifelong happiness...A week of tidal hormones, cold icy waves under a dark sky...I want his comfort, immediately, I want to bring all of the insecurities to him and have him banish them away with steady solid masculine practicality. And yet, my Eros, I have learned, is not so good at that. His typical response when I reach out in tremulous, amorphous fear of an imagined future is a brusque rebuff, "What? [sigh] I'm really busy."</div>
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So I'm practicing letting the phantom hang out for a bit. Trusting the ants. <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">What if he's a Titan, a monster who will eat you and that's why he won't show his face?</em> Well, that is true, that would be really terrible. I'm going to put that on the shelf for a little bit, though, and trust the ants. <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">You need to pull out a knife and a lamp and slay him first, before he suspects that you know his true identity!</em> Well, there isn't really any undoing that path. But I can find a room I can lock, and go in there for a while. Peek out in a little bit when he can't see me, and make a decision then if he looks Cyclopean or mostly just regular.</div>
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Because the part that Psyche can never really explain or share is the way it feels the morning after he visits her. The languid happiness of connection. I am allowed to trust my own intuition, too. My third eye is valid and dependable, too - and is acting from more data points than yours. This feeling, of wanting to gambol around in the forest and string flower necklaces for him, is not something I have to set aside in order to find truth - it is part of the truth. </div>
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It isn't the only part. The fear is part, too. And pretending that the fear isn't real is not sustainable, I've been learning. I can't will it away when it comes. I can't logic it away or wallow it away or get it to go away, period. But I can find alternative responses to the fear, that are less drastic, more private, and that permit me a way to practice trusting the ants. Ways that permit me to feel, but still watch for them. To lock myself in a safe room if need be, but without shooting off missiles at people before I do. "What can I do at this moment, to honor and acknowledge this anger and hurt, and to get it outside of myself, without actually turning it loose like zombies or weaponizing it at a person?"</div>
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And if I can watch other women's relationships with new eyes, not the eyes of a child who needs to make people get along, or the eyes of a girl afraid for her fellow girl, but the eyes of a heroine, watching her fellow heroine, I can see new things. The disappointment that she feels, but does not allow to overpower her. The weighing she does between her feelings of anger and resentment and rejection, and the decision she makes to love, to listen, to understand, to choose patience and forgiveness and to respond with gifts of tenderness. Not perfectly - not as some strange saint. But as herself, with all her usual edges - and yet, a clear and conscious decision to act with grace. To trust, not just him, but her intuition of him, her choice to open herself, her ability to be ok despite his shortfall. To trust her ants.</div>
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And the magic, as an observer, to see this unfold, and to see a graceful response from the hero. Not gallant, not storybook - but a response of a human recognizing grace and returning it.</div>
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I can do this, too. I can be my graceful self, instead of my Medusa self. Grace is not a weakness. The grace is a choice, carefully considered and selected from all of your options. It is a gift from strength, because you have it to give, because you aren't in need, because you will need to rely on someone else's grace another time when you do not have reserves of strength.</div>
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And maybe the question to ask is not, "Am I ok with this?" and certainly not "What is the worst that can happen if I let this go?" but rather "Where am I, right this moment? How am I, right this moment? I think I am probably ok, despite this. Is this true? Can I leave this for the ants? Can I trust them?"</div>
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Because if I can trust the ants, I am free to act with grace instead of panic. I can enjoy the breath in my lungs as I watch them sort the grains, and make order out of my emotional disaster. And perhaps when it comes time to speak, I can speak both with sincerity and strength <em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">and </em>with tenderness and compassion, and I will not have to make the compromise that breaks my soul.</div>
Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-58350322541610312942015-03-07T09:47:00.000-08:002015-03-07T09:47:25.977-08:00Travel wish listI like to travel. I like spontaneity. When someone says, "Want to go [insert location]?", I always want to say, "Yes!"<br />
Sometimes this works out great.<br />
Often, though, I end up spending a lovely time with friends and wishing I hadn't blown my travel budget on a location I really didn't care to see the first time.<br />
I'm trying to get better about saying, "No, thanks," and being ok with the fact that I will probably be doing most of my travel alone, as a result.<br />
But if you are interested in going to any of the places on my current list, let me know :)<br />
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<a href="http://www.riadsmorocco.com/riad-fez/ryad-mabrouka/" target="_blank">Riad in Fez </a><br />
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<a href="http://judeandserene.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Singapore</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/germany/10223639/Germany-fairytale-highs-in-the-Harz-Mountains.html" target="_blank">Brocken, Germany</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/greek-island-hopping-basics" target="_blank">Greek island...Crete? Santorini? Corfu?</a></div>
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Paris</div>
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Tahiti</div>
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St. Petersburg</div>
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Tanzania</div>
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Viet Nam</div>
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Istanbul</div>
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<a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364" target="_blank">Great Zimbabwe</a> </div>
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New Orleans</div>
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Milan</div>
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Quebec City</div>
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<a href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/algeria" target="_blank">Algeria</a></div>
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http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/dz </div>
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Miami</div>
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Columbia</div>
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<br />Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-54123068631204710162015-02-16T12:10:00.001-08:002015-07-30T17:40:20.292-07:00Gifts I give myselfClean sheets<br>
<div>
A day off</div>
<div>
Quiet</div>
<div>
Bare countertops</div>
<div>
Vacuuming under the furniture</div>
<div>
Going to bed an hour early</div>
<div>
Looking at the sky</div>
<div>
Mending my clothes</div>
<div>
Polishing my shoes</div>
<div>
Oiling my skin</div>
<div>
Cooking for myself</div><div>A conversation with a friend</div>
<div>
A pot of tea</div>
<div>
Solo vacations</div>
<div>
Dining out alone</div>
<div>
Long walks</div>
<div>
Singing<br>Tulips<br>
Ironing everything in the closet<br>Window-shopping when I don't want to spend, and listing the items I'm most interested in for when I have money and inclination but no creativity or wisdom: personal collection development so the purchase order process can be cranked out later<br>
Doing something scary<br>
Learning something new<br>
Practicing a skill </div><div>Deciding not to be angry</div><div>Deciding not to be afraid</div><div>Giving not what is expected, but what gives me joy to give</div><div><br></div><div>Belief in myself. Not in what I will do at some future date, or my character, but in the choices I have already made, and in my wisdom to give myself good and perfect gifts, that are not merely shiny in the package but solidly pleasant. The most important gift I can give myself is the faith that the choices I have made have been good for me, the correct choices, that where I am at this moment is true, and where I am supposed to be. Whether someone else is jealous and wants my life is not what makes my life valuable - it's what makes another person unhappy. Belief in myself is the detachment from others' jealousy, both as a misguided sign that I matter and as a sin I must somehow repay. And the past pieces I look at with embarrassment and chagrin, were steps to get here, to this moment of being in the right place. I know myself. I believe in my own path.</div><div><br></div><div>http://www.rulit.me/books/out-of-africa-read-69333-51.html </div><div><br></div><div>"The tight place, the dark pit in which I am now lying, of what bird is it the talon?" <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigeyR4zf0I1rGxBhClynkVLdX1X7SYvWMlje75DiG6Ho9pQJjIrf0bJSfdV7cyOZjDRWl9039AYC1-iY7cuxyCohCiLm4BVs4aejYK_gXFhE4k3OU-I-PTY6CWp8C9IFoANqOGOLR97wQq/s640/blogger-image--1031081483.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigeyR4zf0I1rGxBhClynkVLdX1X7SYvWMlje75DiG6Ho9pQJjIrf0bJSfdV7cyOZjDRWl9039AYC1-iY7cuxyCohCiLm4BVs4aejYK_gXFhE4k3OU-I-PTY6CWp8C9IFoANqOGOLR97wQq/s640/blogger-image--1031081483.jpg"></a></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtfTWi2vO9ipeaFufk91KU_sBZFktReuF8IvlH0Q4b68GCbZAQBWpbhB5N9JKY3dsKnv8i_5s9K3wQxM_dKCkDzf800JaqutDAKxL0TSx5s7ZIkAsVUbZFaSr38o29KTDaRSPdpkYbn7m/s640/blogger-image-1024781740.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtfTWi2vO9ipeaFufk91KU_sBZFktReuF8IvlH0Q4b68GCbZAQBWpbhB5N9JKY3dsKnv8i_5s9K3wQxM_dKCkDzf800JaqutDAKxL0TSx5s7ZIkAsVUbZFaSr38o29KTDaRSPdpkYbn7m/s640/blogger-image-1024781740.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>
Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-68537156825411862102015-02-16T10:42:00.002-08:002015-02-16T11:22:12.786-08:00CrumpetsCrumpets are awesome.<br />
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I know a lot of people like scones, because they are everywhere. Any bakery you walk into will have scones. Even the bakery at Kroger. But I think of scones like I think of cake. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not so good, but the real question is, "why aren't you eating pie?"<br />
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<br />
<br />
So, why aren't you eating crumpets? If you eat more of them, it will be easier for me to get them.<br />
<br />
Soft crumpets are gentle.<br />
<br />
Toasted crumpets are crunchy.<br />
<br />
The butter seeps into the holes to create fabulous pockets of sunshine calories that burst on your tongue.<br />
<br />
Unlike english muffins, crumpets do not try to fight back by stabbing your mouthparts. And they don't have that weird taste - cornmeal? nutmeg? grody shortening? what<b> is</b> that english muffin aftertaste? ew.<br />
<br />
Crumpets are just mild, yeasty, soft vehicles for lovely things. That sentence makes them sound like breasts, which I won't argue against.<br />
<br />
Crumpets go great with:<br />
butter<br />
strawberry butter<br />
lemon curd<br />
bacon<br />
cream<br />
pots of tea<br />
soft ripened cheeses<br />
blackberries so you can pretend to be Peter Rabbit<br />
Turkish honey but avoid the mad honey<br />
me<br />
Nutella<br />
Jalapeño jelly<br />
ricotta<br />
peaches<br />
saag paneer when you run out of naan or don't want to pay extra for it and can't get the carryout place to substitute it for rice which you can clearly make yourself while you wait for the curry<br />
lox<br />
hot smoked salmon which is better than lox<br />
soft boiled eggs that Jamie makes for you and sets in egg-pants<br />
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avocados</div>
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things crumpets do not go great with:</div>
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people who are going to talk about scones while eating a crumpet</div>
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silk blouses</div>
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<br />Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-50667457430334393782015-02-03T16:56:00.000-08:002015-02-03T19:47:28.753-08:00Reconciling in the snowdriftI miss you. I do want to make up. I want to just walk into that wordless hug, or that childish awkward, "Wanna be friends again?" To drop the dispute. Knowing it will happen again, knowing nothing is solved. Realizing that the part of you that screams at me on the street is the same part of you that leaps onto the stage to belt out Modest Mouse songs, in a hat. Realizing that to love someone means loving them not in spite of their shortcomings, nor because of them, but that all these pieces are inseparable, the stained-glass artwork that is our beautiful beautiful loved ones. That if I didn't love you, I couldn't see this, that I wouldn't have this longing for you, that all I would remember is the shudder that once I knew a person who was insane and wild, that I didn't trust, that made me nervous. But when you love that person, you don't remember them with shudders, even the slamming doors and the fear and the scenes in public. You chuckle and you roll your eyes and tell the story with a lightness you didn't feel when it was happening, and you are glad that at this moment that story is in the past, and that in this moment you aren't wishing you could crawl under the table, or wondering at what point this situation becomes more than you can handle. You love them. It isn't scripted, it isn't something you'd recommend. It just is.<br />
<br />
Your family. Your lovers. Your friends. If you don't love them, their nutty moments stack up on the list, chalk marks you weigh trying to decide when to cut them out, how intimate is safe. And sometimes even when you do love them. But when they are gone, it's easier to see. The ones you don't love, slip so easily away, a fish back to the sea, and you can barely recall their face or why you were holding them to begin with. The ones you love aren't fish, though. They are your friends, your relatives, your lovers. Primus, Secondus, Tertius. Pieces of you. Pieces you miss.<br />
<br />
I want you in my life. Secundia. Not as a perfect story. As you. As this wild and unpredictable force with a laugh that, when you are really inside of it, can turn every head in the room. With all of your insecurities that make you avoid everything and suddenly, inexplicably, leap into a gigantic overwhelming project that you pour all of your talent and cursing and fervor into, creating something so beautiful that there is no possible gratitude that can make up for the outpouring of your soul, into this, this project unworthy of your art. I want you happy, content, but yourself - and I know you live a life that is so beautiful precisely because you spend so little of it truly happy and content. I know you miss me. I miss you, too. I don't know how to make up - to let you be yourself, when I know how unhappy you are, to remain true to myself, instead of giving in to what you want me to be. I don't know how to love you and also let us both be ourselves.<br />
<br />
I want you, Tertius. I want you in my life everyday, to wake up next to you, and feel your energy as I drift in and out of consciousness, safe and familiar and yet not me, not blood and not predictable. Unknown and yet steady, deep and true like ocean currents, so soft under the surface of the water. I want you to be yourself, to stand apart from me. I want you to be here, though, to be a part of my life, too. To be in arm's reach. I want to know you are safe, even though you don't wish it. You struggle against me wrapping you in bubble wrap, and thrash out against me spinning webs of protection and worry and pulling all my charms and resources to make your life more predictable. I know you don't want it. I know it isn't you. But I know I will keep doing it. And resent you for not recognizing it as love.<br />
<br />
Running away into the snowdrift like the characters from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Recognizing the dissonance between my need for perfect control, and my recognition of my heart as the one who will, when truly in love, toss it all aside, toss all wisdom and responsibility and rules, and run into the snowdrift. Recognizing that the snowdrift is always inexplicably safer, warmer, more ideal than this world I am so carefully building out of toothpicks. The toothpick world never comes close to the joy or happiness of the snowdrift, and yet I will build it, I will always build it. Refusing to make eye contact with you, Primus, insisting that this time will be different, this time you will not get to sweep it away that easily, this time you will acknowledge what you did. Feeling strong, in a female talk show way, but not good, not whole.<br />
<br />
We are supposed to be able to build that toothpick world, with enough therapy, and good choices, and sobriety, and selflessness. We aren't supposed to need the snowdrift, just as I shouldn't want to walk back into his embrace after that horrible night where he made me cry, hyperventilating in front of the bartender, this man who isn't even my lover, or family, who has no right, no right to hold this territory in my heart after these scenes. The family members who make you feel, over and over and over for decades, that you are worthless, that you have no value. And the people who tell you family doesn't matter, that you should do this and do that and tougher boundaries and less contact and family isn't blood but the people you choose that build you up and YES. Yes to all of it. And no to all of it.<br />
<br />
Because when you love someone it isn't the same. It isn't just about the mechanics of setting up a family-substitute. You aren't just being old fashioned. You know the costs. But one of the costs is that it isn't a fish swimming away, but a piece that is still connected to you. That the easiest thing to do is to distract and pretend and find excuses not to connect or think or remember, because the horrible awkwardness of standing in the room with this entity that both is and is not your loved one, because you are both so distant and uncomfortable and desperate to reconnect without having to build it back up, toothpick by toothpick, for the thousands and millions of toothpicks it takes to rebuild that world between you, where you trust each other and forgive each other and promise to do better next time, even though you know it probably will be just the same. Every month, a waning crescent.<br />
<br />
The snowdrift says it doesn't matter. It doesn't fucking matter. Set it down, and let it go. And walk back into that embrace, and yes he will make you cry again. And yes your family will make you want to die again. And yes your lover will say the cruelest thing imaginable and will stare at you vacantly when your heart is bleeding in your hands and you will cling onto your pillow one week out of each month, reeling from hormones bleak and bitter that paint so sharp and hateful a picture of the life you watch snap back into 'reality' a few days later. The snowdrift laughs at all the seriousness, so absurd all this pain when all you need to do is put it down and play with your friends, kiss your lover, call your mother, call your crazy friend and beg for a ride in the sportscar. And apologize even if it isn't your turn and even if he doesn't respect you and even though his behavior was unforgivable and even though the things he said/she said will come back, echoes whispered by your monthly ghosts to stab you over and over when you don't expect it and think its over.<br />
<br />
Because they aren't the only things that come back. Primus picking you up and feeding you lobster when you were sad, dropping it at the door and running his germophobic self away, listening to you freak out, and understanding what it meant to swing that pendulum of neurotransmitters. Secundia had your back, fierce and proud of you. Tertius rolling over and curling around you, seeking you out even in his sleep. And the knowledge that it isn't all up to you, in any case -- they aren't waiting in the wings, and apology or no, each break is there, and their choices matter as much as yours. Perhaps the moment will come to run together into that snowdrift, or to painstakingly rebuild those toothpicks, and perhaps they won't run, or won't build. In this moment, as "Float on" pipes through the women's washroom, as you watch the water spooling down the drain, and breathe gratitude for every intimate connection with every friend, every relationship of value and beauty in your life, each and every one with its own blend of joy and pain, moments on the stage and moments on the street, it is enough to admit that your love and your estrangement can exist in the same space. Because if you didn't love these people, you would let them slip back into the sea. The ones you keep are the ones who cause you pain. They're the only ones who can.Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-51458642971341861722015-01-18T08:09:00.001-08:002015-01-18T08:09:34.750-08:00The waiting<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Waiting to dance is the crushing destroyer of the most determined spirits. Dancing happens so late. So incredibly late. I've been awake for weeks at this point, teaching & cataloging & driving & doing female social duty & navigating to strange places & sending kids off to new adventures & disciplining & Christ, there are still hours and hours to go. Dancing should happen earlier. I should be able to stop into a club at 7 am on the way to my car & rev up for work, process some of the physical tension. No wonder I'm in knots - I can't wait the interminable wait for the dancing. </span>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-50461892013248042202014-11-03T18:52:00.000-08:002014-11-04T02:40:10.718-08:00Fire-rimmed eyes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px;">"11 </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><span class="text Luke-11-11" id="en-NKJV-25417" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="woj" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">If a son asks for bread</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"> </span></span></span><span class="woj" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="text Luke-11-12" id="en-NKJV-25418" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><sup class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">12 </sup><span class="woj" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?</span> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="text Luke-11-13" id="en-NKJV-25419" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><sup class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;">13 </sup><span class="woj" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” </span></span></span></span><br>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span class="text Luke-11-13" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="woj" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Luke 11:11-13</span></span></span><br>
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I give good gifts to myself. I should - I know myself and my desires quite well. Unfortunately, I don't always trust myself. I begin to suspect that there is a serpent in the box and I run away, leaving the perfectly selected gift behind.<br>
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How do you recognize truth? Can you feel it snap into place like a crisply-formed puzzle piece? Does truth look truer, or less true, in hindsight? Can you trust yourself, and how much?<br>
<br>
I write truth down. I highlight it in books, and record the words on scraps I tape to my walls and memorize and recite. Books I have been scribbling in for decades, holders of truth. Theories I'm working out, because it always seems like truth is evolving. Little bits added to a rubber band ball that never decreases in size, no matter how old and inelastic the rubber becomes. Newer, springier, fresher bits added to the outside, ready to withstand drops and scrapes, pressing the older pieces inward to a formidable core.<br>
<br>
Sometimes those inside pieces show up in my dreams, or in the speech of others, or in the contrapositions of new rubber bands.<br>
<br>
Sometimes I can recognize truth like I recognize a dog breed: I have no idea how I know that is a Maltese. It just floated up to me.<br>
<br>
But most of the time I think truth recognition is more work, more conscious. It happens like understanding factoring: slowly, building up the necessary bits in class after class, lots of frustration that it isn't coming easily, lots of guessing and getting right answers even though I can't explain how the process works, until one day in college it clicks in.<br>
<br>
Also, I feel truth. In my stomach. Lies feel like warm mayonnaise and albumen sandwiches after a heavy night of drinking Mai Tais and red wine. Truth feels like cool woodland breezes on your face when your toes are warm, like a singer hitting a note with perfect pitch, like the smell you forgot you liked so much until you open a door and meet it again.<br>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
Truth like my sister telling me most men are good. Most men want to protect women, to help them and take care of them. That the chances are, a random woman falls in a gutter and a random man will pick her up. Not to rob or rape. Just to help.</div>
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Every fiber inside of me resisting this logic, no no no. No. Men are mercenary. This is their nature. There is no altruism, there is only machinations and destruction you haven't yet decoded. Battening the hatches in my mind, even while some part of the rubber band ball recognizes itself, and is glad to wrap this truth around. </div>
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<div>
How would you live if you weren't always on guard against hit men? What would trust free you to experience?</div>
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I dreamed last night of my lover. He was walking toward me down a long road, at night. A voice from my team of warriors told me he was joining us in our upcoming battle. I watched his slow approach. His eyes were outlined in glowing fire, thin bright tracings like kohl made from white-blue lasers. I did not believe the voice. I watched him, expecting him to reveal himself as an enemy. He didn't, but he also didn't speak or hurry, just continued to slowly walk toward me with his glowing eyes. I weighed the possibilities of his loyalty, trying to decide how close I could allow him to come before I decided whose side he was on. I woke before he reached me.</div>
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<br></div>
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I want to weep and rail when things don't go my way. Swearing temper tantrums. I want to orbit & shoot sparks out of my fingers when things go the way I wish them to, embracing the world with endless arms. Hearing people, friends, pity me for my relationship is at once a source of consternation and amusement. Have you heard me? What do you hear? What do you make up in your head when you hear the story fragments I tell you?</div>
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The judgement of others, their emotional reactions to my life, used to be a scary movie, this forbidding thing I avoided but couldn't stop looking for, hating and hiding from and on some level craving. Tell me you think I'm wrong, you think I'm being wronged, let me prove you wrong, let me convince myself I am Amazon strong by the sound of my own defense.</div>
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I'm trying to practice just smiling.</div>
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<br></div>
<div>
The Zen monk story, "I put that woman down hours ago, why are you still carrying her?"</div>
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<br></div>
<div>
Let them be concerned, let them believe you wrong or weak. Let them. There is no screeching in minor key. Smile. How do you feel at this exact moment? Is it worth trying to explain? Let it go.</div>
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So many many grains of the texture that make up a relationship, a life, that will be largely invisible to anyone outside of your skin. And, it's ok. The lack of perfect understanding is not a threat. <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">My companion's feelings, or misunderstandings, are not my responsibility. As long as I can say I am true, and reflective. As long as I am listening to my tuning fork, the off-key note of another is not a problem. They aren't screwing up my song, they are playing one of their own.</span></div>
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His blue inside flame, like the oven that bakes my bread, heats my living room when the radiator is cold, its pretty periwinkle flickers that comfort & nurture. My hesitations are okay. It means I am learning. I'm not used to seeing inside, despite how many times I've said I wanted it desperately. What do you do once you get what you want, that treasure you couldn't admit to yourself you wanted, because it wasn't what you felt you should want? What if you wake up one day and realize there is no struggle, because the battle you were fighting was to give yourself permission to enjoy what you already have? When you have defined yourself as a creature of desire, what happens when you realize you've been unhappy at not having things which would make you unhappy to posess? What is left to long for? Can hope abide without decay, without ageing to fear of loss, possessive hoarding, dragon-guarding a clutch of jewels you dare not use?</div>
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Make a different choice. Want not what you think you should want, but what you actually want, and choose to enjoy the gifts you have given yourself. </div>
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Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-32215841548964655442014-07-29T23:13:00.000-07:002014-07-29T23:30:55.315-07:00Glissance<br />
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Be careful what you wish for...</div>
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<i>"October 11, 2009</i></div>
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<i>Wanderlust. Escapism. Noticing the bars on the cage. Hard to see the benefits of stability, every reminder of it becoming an unreasonable irritant. "I love yous" don't sound the same anymore that they have the ring of metal clanging shut. Irrational, foolish, spendthrift & wasteful. Baseless discontent...I don't want your care or concern, while you give your adventure away. I want space to breathe, and rage, and weep. I want my own adventures that have nothing to do with you."</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>"November 10, 2009</i></div>
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<i>...once again disappointed at being acquiesced to, disappointed that my words are automatically assumed to be correct, when I am forming my ideas after the words have taken shape in my mouth. How can I be the smartest person in this situation, when I know so little?<br />I don't know what he knows, or feels, or falsifies; I am not permitted access. My effusiveness traps me, the only words and ideas I get are my own. Where is the other voice to challenge me, to help me define my thoughts? It gave up on me, it takes my words as ultimate truth - me, who was always the first to point out how ephemeral, how mercurial, how chameleon my words are. I don't know what I think if all I hear is me. I need counterpoint. I crave comparisons, connections, dispute. I do not want to be right, if it means I hear nothing new."</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>"December 21, 2009</i></div>
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<i>...the siren call of my own solitude, the adventure I cannot quite peer from my place on your breast. What else am I missing, besides my time at sea? What does not wait for me out there, what wisdom, what truth, what new perspective, what experience I cannot fathom? I can only hear rustlings; your breath is too loud. Even a few steps away, I catch merely a faint hum, full of delicious promise."</i></div>
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<i>"April 11, 2010</i></div>
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<i>Recognizing my own need for solitude, to write, to think, to use words, reflecting and composing and synthesizing. And finding another who will interact with me in emotional language, hear me, and offer me new thoughts to consider."</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">When I am agreed with and believed, I want to be challenged. When I have a committed companion, I want to be free. Stability stifles me.</span></i></span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></i></span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So, I think, I need more freedom. I will reconstruct my world to allow for discovery. </span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">And yet, w</span></i></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">hen I have an adventure, I want to found a city on that adventure and put in plumbing. </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">I love my vacation so much, I want to move there - not realizing the very quality of a vacation is that all of your pots and pans are someplace else.</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></i></span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span></i></span></i></div>
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<i><i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>"September 7, 2009</i></span></i></i></i></div>
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<i><i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>And I wonder, am I really strong enough to be vulnerable for both of us...? Am I really so good at this and so powerful that I can throw myself under his feet again and again and be ignored, that which I hate more than anything? It is intoxicating to think so, to think that I can make a difference. And it is also true that I love without reason, because I can, because it is who I am, because once he was vulnerable and perhaps will be so again. He will come, or not come. He will be leaving the whole time, if he comes. And the child soul inside of me will cringe and cry to see him packing and leaving, and will think that there is a thing I can do to stop it, or delay him. But he will pack and leave over and over everytime, using his power to hold off the world...[H]is power is to say no, and if his power is to say no, how will he ever say yes?"</i></span></i></i></i></div>
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<i><i><br /></i></i></div>
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<i><i>"November 25, 2009</i></i></div>
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<i><i>There is gratitude also for the outside force, the other entity, pausing me, providing me with the chance to gather my wits and consider my actions. As much as I want to control, and as little as I enjoy being denied, I can appreciate that without [his] flight I was ready to do mad things..."</i></i></div>
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<i><i><br /></i></i></div>
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<i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span></i></i></div>
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<i><i>"<i>November 28, 2009</i></i></i></div>
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<i><i><i>Do you think of them, those moments? When I have thought I knew your mind, I have always been wrong, reading emotion & analysis into you, because I want it to be there.</i></i></i><br />
<i><i><i>I think you do not consider those moments, of me. I have been packed away like a copper pan you never use, impractical, easy to jettison, a charming illustration when the bar chatter calls<br />for something shiny, if you recall it at all.</i></i></i><br />
<i><i><i>But perhaps the copper pan is more useful, perhaps it gets more time in your synapses. After all, the pan was a thing you selected, and have packed and unpacked, carried and stored. I am just a person, so much more disposable to you, and not someone you chose at all.</i></i></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><i>I wonder about objects I put into your world: the scotch, the case, the letter...But I don't want to hear the answer, that the scotch has been drunk by strangers & enemies, the letter discarded the moment it was opened, the case storing ten thousand other things that occupy your brain that never thinks of me, not even once for all the times I have longed for news of you."</i></i></span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">
</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">I want growth, which always means wanting something I don't have. Is it better, then, to want something that is out of your control, than to want something you can have at the price of another's pain? Is it better to want in, than to want out? </span></i><br />
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<i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></i></i></div>
<i>"Our doom, then: the inelegant dance of intimacy, closer, farther, turning around. Tightening our grasp till we meet resistance, flinging apart to recover."</i><br />
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Are there any other choices besides wanting in or wanting out? Choices that don't require violence to my own soul, remaking it into a grotesque caricature? I can accept that there is not growth without pain, no living apart from change. But what I do not know is how to enjoy the wanting in, or the wanting out. And if the only enjoyment comes from the slivers of time in between them, or from refusing for a time to think about the stage I am in...Horrible. I refuse to accept it. There must be a better way. </div>
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I have always been a terrible Buddhist. I do not know how to want less. The wanting itself is beautiful to me - more of an Aphrodite-ist, I suppose. And maybe that is it, maybe I have to shift my gaze, just a bit, from what I want, to the desire itself. Maybe my most lasting joy and satisfaction is not from getting what I want -- a moving, impossible target -- but from the dance of wanting, itself. Feeling alive. Throwing my heart into the ring and seeing what happens. Isn't it wonderful to want, and to strive, and to enjoy the results of that desire? Sometimes it is caught, and it is joyful. Sometimes it falls, and it is awful. But it isn't awful in an ugly way, at least. Like Helga said, if you are going to be miserable, at least do it with style.</div>
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Maybe if I can take a step back, re-read my painful wanting-journal entries from the past and see how beautiful they are, maybe that is how I can find beauty in the moment of not getting what I want. </div>
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Jason said something last year about the dance men do, to pursue women. He told me that my honest remarks to men I've just met about how I am never going to sleep with them are soul-crushing, like sweeping all the pieces off the chess board. The outcome of the game is not the point. The point is to play. </div>
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"Let us pursue," he said. "Even if you know, we know, everyone in the room knows we aren't going to take you home. There is still a chance -- maybe the same chance we have of winning the lottery -- but we will still enjoy dancing and buying drinks and chatting and playing the game. We still watch recorded football games. Don't give us honesty, even if we asked for it; not that kind of honesty. Honor the spirit, not the letter. Let us be men."</div>
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Let us be men. Let Bartlet be Bartlet. Let growth happen. I don't read my journal enough. I always say this, and then I never read it when I need to. When I am happy, I want to stay that way, and don't want anything to snag at my silky happiness out of the murky depths of past insecurity. When I am sad, I think I might want to stay that way too - out of a fear of being inauthentic, or stuffing it down too soon, or being brushed off by my own past self who felt the same and yet did not waste away. </div>
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But my journal is full of my own wisdom, and strength. It is my record of growth, the height marks on the wall. It is, more than anything, a tool to get out of my own head - and the most effective one, because it is still inside my own head. Nothing else available to me can give me the distance and perspective that my own journal can. </div>
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The goal of a relationship is not to be stapled to someone. The goal of being happy is not to be frozen there. The goal of being sad is not to alchemize your pain into a time machine. The goal of everything, everything, is to grow. </div>
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Happiness without growth becomes a bore. Sadness without growth becomes a tapeworm on your soul. When I am sad, I don't want to grow - I just want to go back to the way I was before I was sad. But my journal can prove to me, actually prove in a way even I can't argue - that I can make it through. That even when I don't get what I want, maybe <b>because</b> I'm not getting what I want, because I have to just step back from the want and look at it, take pleasure in the fact of being alive and having wants...I am rich. Desire is beautiful in itself, the way a summer storm is beautiful. All you need is a tiny bit of distance to shelter you, and you can enjoy its power.</div>
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<i>"Sunday, March 7, 2010</i></div>
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<i>You are my wealth. You, men whose bodies I watch, whose smells I encode in my brain, whose stories I record, who I will my body to charm, changing my DNA pattern if need be. You are my wealth, because you give stories, touch, sensory data, charm, patterns. You give texture. You make the day brighter for me than it is for others. My step sways for you. </i></div>
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<i>You are my wealth, my treasure, my secret. How do I smile so bright, how do I feel so much joy, how do I bounce? I bounce, for reasons that relate to you, and relate beyond you. I bounce, because I draw from this land, like an octopus, like a tree with tentacles into the ground, drawing from the water, drawing from the swamp land underneath our civilization sheen, the bog eternal, the unending richness of decaying vegetation, I draw from this depth, I find richness in the land, connected to this air, this temperature, these trees, this water, this location in the universe. I also draw from you, you men with stories of pleasure and adventure, high seas and victory, I draw from you. I can reflect this all back to you, with prisms and mirrors, I can amplify. I can give you Spring, I can give you your own joy tenfold. But you are my wealth, richer than children, richer than hearth, richer than family crests and lineage. </i></div>
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<i>Your wealth is glissance, glimmers of the unreachable. Charm is the word we use for the connection between people that touches on something vast and amazing. We are charmed not by the person, but by the connection, the possibility of something larger and unknowable becoming known. You men, whom I love, for yourselves and for that which is beyond yourself, to which you are only the gateway. You are my wealth, for whom I will do anything, for you are precious and beautiful. Give me a story, give me a glimmer, I will give you the earth."</i></div>
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Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-61359338389720541542014-07-25T02:18:00.000-07:002014-07-25T10:17:46.768-07:00If I had Prince on speed dialI hate being predictable. I don't like blending. I can't chase stars ("he's in town tonight!"), or even go to casting calls for extras that I might, on some level, enjoy. Too many other people with wistful faces, too much straining in one direction - it creates an irrepressible urge in me to do the opposite thing. Being swept along with the crowd pisses me off too much - I can't even tie my raft to the flotilla on Eric's river floats. Whatever act of spirit that has to happen to allow that merging makes me angry. I will deliberately stop clapping as soon as the performer asks the crowd to clap. Maybe I was a sheep that stampeded off a cliff with the herd in another life. Maybe I spent too much time in spiritual warfare sessions where everyone was yelling at Satan. I don't want to be one of D.H. Lawrence's nightmare strong-willed women, the ones his heroes feel justified shooting, but I have this feeling that I might be.<br />
<br />
So if I did have Prince on speed dial, it would have to have been one of those totally normal things that happens when you are excruciatingly bored or trapped and have limited options. Otherwise while all the hundreds were swimming toward him I would have been swimming away. Say we both went to a terrible conference (I bet he goes to them all the time, for his 9 to 5) and ditched a bunch of sessions, and hid out in the bar with fruit smoothies and discovered we had some complimentary wavelengths in our mutual disenchantment toward lackluster presenters. And he was alone...because his entourage were all super interested in the conference. At least the ones that weren't trapped in the elevator. Totally normal. I bet he met half of his closest friends in similar experiences. Don't we all?<br />
<br />
I've carried on lots of long distance, crazy close friendships with men, though I guess most of them were in high school, guys I met in summer camps or summer jobs, and we were all full of words, words, words in that way that teenagers are. I'm not sure if that happens in adult life. Or outside of fundamental religions. I miss it, and I like to imagine that if any adult man were capable of that kind of friendship with a woman, it'd be Prince. But you don't develop those kinds of relationships in the surface pile and smalltalk crush of crowded rooms - they are built lounging on opposite sides of the sofa, his feet by your shoulders and yours by his, past curfew at the fundie Jesus camp, with the boy who is struggling to balance his sexual orientation with his faith and sees a kindred misfit in the sexually precocious lipstick girl.<br />
<br />
If I had Prince on speed dial, I would have called him today. Let's face it, I would have called him a lot in the last four years. If I hadn't allowed all of my crazy close men-dships from high school to die, out of a misguided sense of loyalty when I got married (or because they insisted my marriage was a terrible error I'd live to regret...true, as it turns out, but what IS that about men friends that they always want to torpedo your relationships?), I'd have been calling them over the past four years, too, all those guys to whom I wrote nonstop letters for years. There's something incomparably soothing in a man listening to your drama. Maybe because they never really get sucked in - either they are playing it cool, or playing a video game on the other end of the line, or whatever, but the calm, not-exactly involved tone of voice is very reassuring - lets you think out loud without having to worry about the reception. Maybe they just have the privilege of not living up to the girl-expectation of Showing Empathy, so they can just <i>listen</i>, and you can know that you have a friend because they took the call, wrote back, whatever, and not have to perform the little empathy seen-empathy accepted-empathy returned dance. Usually men can make you laugh, too, and say something mildly inappropriate, and suddenly the really horrible monster in the closet just looks like an annoying mess you can probably knock out with a day or so of work.<br />
<br />
Prince would be good at making a girl laugh, of course, but he'd also be tender, and there's nothing you are craving more when your heart is breaking than a little tenderness. Wisdom, yes, and the scrubbed-sand clean peacefulness of emptying out your tears, but neither of them are much good without the tenderness.<br />
<br />
It seems bizarre now to have those kind of friendships with men you aren't dating, though it seemed perfectly sensible in high school to talk for three hours or twelve pages with a single boy you weren't dating and had no intention of dating. I used to get home from school and immediately page the boy seven years older than me who worked in construction and put in my ceiling fan. I'd page him little messages for an hour or so, every day. I cannot imagine doing such a thing now, but maybe that is partly because I never forgave construction boy for marrying another woman. Not that I wanted to marry him, necessarily. But I certainly didn't want him to have anything better to do than to talk to me after I got home from school.<br />
<br />
Those relationships don't fit into the whole married with kids scheme. I know that I didn't like being on the outside end of them, when it was my boyfriend taking the call. So then, it has to be an untouchable man. Someone so far outside of bourgeois expectations of morality, so far above me in station, that I could not possibly be a threat to his likewise rarefied wife/girlfriend, and the danger of annoying her is taken off the table. Prince seems like a good match.<br />
<br />
If I had Prince on speed dial, I'd probably interrupt sometimes when he was working. Maybe he'd turn on the speakerphone so he could keep working a little at the piano while I blithered. There was a boy who did that once, let me sit next to him on the bench while he fussed over the song. I don't think I talked so much as held my breath - he was English, with the nice accent and the floppy hair. He sent me a demo tape with my song after he finished it, and he told me that I was unlike any girl he knew, which was also nice. Piano is good when you are sad, takes the sad and makes it seem noble. Sad with a purpose.<br />
<br />
Sad with a purpose as in, I'll never see you again but I want to play piano for you. Like the man who picked me up in a bar once and took me to the Michigan Union to play for me. It was really just like how I became friends with Prince - this guy was bored, too, though not with a bad conference. I think boredom is how all friendships start - if you weren't bored you would be too in tune with your moment to notice anything else. Thomas? Theodore? was in from out of town visiting some local notables, Ann Arbor business nobility, I forget which family dynasty. He was from Berkley, of course, properly bearded and compact of body. I was reading Anais Nin's diary. He sent a drink to my table, we started talking. He wanted to play for me, and even though it was broad daylight the idea of leaving with a man I'd met ten minutes ago for a piano excursion frightened me. The female chorus shouted, "ARE YOU INSANE??" So I declined politely, and he nodded and walked over to the bar, and let me know he'd still be interested if I changed my mind.<br />
<br />
About ten minutes more of Anais. Fuck the chorus. I want adventure. What happened to the teenager on the piano bench? And I liked that he had given me space to think. I walked over and told him I had changed my mind. He smiled. Took me to one of the large ballrooms, and played for the whole room. When I asked him later if we could talk, if I could have contact info, he smiled and said he wouldn't give it to me unless I promised to write, because no one really follows up. I promised. He gave me a tattered card. I never wrote to him but occasionally stab myself by looking at the card. What would I say? Maybe it's not the boys who have changed since high school, or the expectations of phantom girlfriend/wives. Maybe it's me - maybe I'm just not the same storyteller, the same original girl who'd break the rules for a good conversation, who'd assume friendship unless explicitly propositioned, and even then, would just say no thanks and keep on chatting. I was less considerate twenty years ago, I suppose, but also a lot less self-conscious, and less tortured.<br />
<br />
Prince's card wouldn't be moldering in a basket, though, because he would have just entered his number in my phone and put it on speed dial at the juice bar. I think there was another boy who did that a long time ago, which doesn't make sense, unless it was the programmable corded phone in my mom's kitchen. Maybe I'm thinking of someone from grad school. Hazy, hazy grad school. A boy actually chased me down the hall one of those hazy days to pet my hair when it was newly pink, and when I tracked him down later and asked him out he was scandalized. I never learn, I guess - I'm still emasculating boys a decade later, not taking them at face value, still assuming that something like spontaneous pink hair-petting means something else. High school me would not have assumed anything - hair-petting is just that. He doesn't likeyou-likeyou unless he asks you to Homecoming.<br />
<br />
The face of someone entering a number and putting it on speed dial is blank, but I remember the emotion - amused faux-outrage at his cheek. No obsessing for hours about what it meant that he put himself on speed dial, I would just have laughed and decided it was pleasurable and left it at that. Until he announced he was getting married, anyway. I am really unhappy about construction boy getting married, it seems. I'm remembering how he helped me move into college my freshman year, and consoled me when my mother screamed at me that day. He was a good guy who really should have remained not married so I could be calling him right now.<br />
<br />
It'd be terrible in some ways having Prince on speed dial, though, since it'd be torture not to call him constantly like that, torture to pluck up the courage to call now that I'm adult and know that men won't tell you they don't want you calling everyday after school, they will just marry someone else. Can't risk pissing him off, or he'd change his number, or his name, and you'd never find him. I'd have to have some kind of schedule or alarm clock or something, that would let me know when it was ok to call him again, when the window of "back off" time had passed. What would I say? You can't call someone up to reminisce about bad conference experiences. "So...whatcha doin?" Horrible. Prince's number <i>would</i> be moldering, on speed dial instead of the basket, because I wouldn't have anything to say, because I'm too adult to send upside-down pager messages about being <i>sans</i> boobs. <br />
<br />
It's hopeless. I'm hopeless. Even having Prince on speed dial isn't enough to make me happy.<br />
<br />
How would you build up enough intimacy so that you could call Prince when you really needed him? So that over enough years of friendship he'd draw me a bath? And brush my hair? It's very important to figure out how to build the intimacy enough to get to this stage, because it's nice to be soothed, especially by a man's hands. Adult conversations in juice bars are just not the same as the after-curfew church camp talks, they just don't automatically lend themselves to spontaneous offbeat physicality. You can get really creative when most everything is off-limits.<br />
<br />
He'd have to employ me. He must need a librarian. (Everyone does). Or maybe he'd provide me with a breadcrumb path...like the offer to "come over anytime you want to use my new washer and dryer" on which I followed up recently. I'm a sucker for front-loaders, and a numbingly-normal chore makes the initial, awkward bit of the intimacy quest a little less screamingly awful.<br />
<br />
Maybe no special transition is needed between the meeting and the spontaneous "I need a friend, my sails are in shreds" call. Perfectly wretched at basketball and table tennis, I am quite adept at negotiating how to sail my storm-tossed ship into safe harbor when needed. Probably anyone who's known me for more than a year has gotten one of those calls, whether or not the receiver realized that I was calling from my ship. You can't use the shredded-sails call too often on any one person - got to spread that shit out. It's exhausting, picking up that call. Not terrible, though - it's strengthening, in some ways, to know that someone trusts you like that, and to be able to see yourself as a nurturer, as a calm port, a sanctuary and shepherd and sage. But I know I've avoided the shredded-sails calls sometimes, so I know I've got to have a broad base of calm ports from which to choose, enough so that I'm not wearing out my emergency welcomes. Prince is almost old enough to be my father, but not exactly, so he knows a lot more about heartbreak. He'd understand.<br />
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If it was the shredded-sails call that poured concrete onto our bad-conference foundation, I'd still have to come up with other things to call Prince about, so he didn't always see my number flash up and roll his eyes knowing I was in a pity puddle again. I'm not sure we really have that much in common, though, so that might be tough. I'd have to keep notes on what he was up to, what projects he was tinkering with, so I could ask pertinent questions after his work and his pursuits. Again, I really don't think I did this twenty years ago. I said whatever I was thinking, and expected it to turn out great. Improvement? Deterioration? Surely being considerate is better, or why would I have changed?<br />
<br />
Maybe we could swap stories about fundie religion and door-to-door witnessing experiences. I am kinda missing out on someone to debate Bible trivia with. I actually had to look up Absalom's story yesterday because I had forgotten who his mother was and why his Dad was so pissed off with him. That hilarious day when I thought I'd found a Bible debater, the Calvinist technology professor all the fashionable pessimists loved to love, despite their disaffection for religion and earnestness. I showed up after a day reviewing my aged Greek sentence arcs and diagrams, ready to take him to the mat...and saw him blanch. Another man I emasculated. He just wanted to have a beer with his adorers. Not deal with the ball of intensity carrying the briefcase.<br />
<br />
If I had Prince on speed dial, I might even find I spend less time struggling with shredded sails, because I would be way more in touch with my intuition. Or more able to direct the misery in some channel that did not lead to sailing into friends' ports on the Yacht of Pain. He seems to be pretty decent at pouring his pain into securely buried vaults, or transmogrifying it. I need a bit more of that. In fact, that's how I got to this particular voyage, chasing after another master pain-wizard, who had this uncanny talent of seeming to always have shit together, no matter what, deflecting the storms that I'd absorb and suffer through. I thought he could teach me. Maybe he tried. Maybe I needed more distance from my teacher to be able to process his lessons. Maybe just more repetition and practice.<br />
<br />
Pretty sure that having Prince on speed dial would be good for my psyche. I might be able to re-invest the money I currently funnel to mental health and chiropractic. And maybe I wouldn't even miss the booze. Able to transition off the doom track with my Prince-tutored spiritual acuity, I'd be better at letting go and embracing forgiveness and hope. No one cries at Paisley Park.<br />
<br />
Maybe. Or maybe I'd just have a really cool deep-voiced friend, who'd make things seem better simply by not being a part of them.<br />
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<br />Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-42406374096697567672014-07-09T22:22:00.001-07:002014-07-11T07:53:53.280-07:00The danceChances of staring at the walls are great. But the fear of being a wallflower is enough to stiffen my spine. I'll go out. I'm <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">not backing down, sensibly cowering in my apartment though I'm longing to dance. Fuck them. I've done it before. The worst that can happen is I feel stupid, with a drink. Courage needs to be practiced - the fact that I'm afraid makes me more likely to do it. </span><br />
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"I like your energy," they say in the beginning. Ah, yes. My energy. My fearlessness. The part they will mistake later for anger, for snobbery, for disdain -- a judgement of them and an affront to their dominance -- but which in the newness of time reels them in, seems exciting & fun. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">At once the creator and the destroyer of my happiness...m</span>y energy, which propels me forth into <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">situations I fear, feminine charms blazing, lashes lowered, shoulders thrown back, hips swinging. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Why I will always laugh at the things they say in the beginning, because I know, I know this very thing that captures your imagination and pulls you across the room is that which you will learn to hate in me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">My energy. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">A smokescreen to fool them into thinking I'm not afraid. Not beating, counting the minutes until I can run, under the forced prescriptions of a ruler of my ego which demands I not shrink, not hide, not cower. I will let the screams of the drunken man on the street wash over, a wind blowing reeds, safe in my music cocoon. No angry rejoinder from me. I am water. Hard as you hit, I simply absorb, disperse. My</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> energy is the oil in my amphora, carefully carried into the loud and crowded bar, where I know no one, where everyone is younger than me, where my heart will not reach out to me, but another impossible charm boy will dance with me. Dance with me. Dance and tell me the parts of my face in Spanish. Dance and charm. Tell me you like my energy. My energy, the smokescreen.</span></div>
Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4852409592521054018.post-57086388255809750812014-07-05T12:58:00.000-07:002014-07-09T22:06:44.965-07:00Masculinity, the emotional man, the man who needs me. My ability to
take care of myself.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">I have a visceral reaction to men needing care. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Men needing me, or being soft.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">I hate it being there, but it is there. It is there, so I always will choose the calmest, most emotionally detached man in the room, and find him wildly attractive. </span><br>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">wanting to be able to be a woman. to be with a man who is strong. but even then, i can barely relax, always looking for signs of weakness. and then, i want him to romance me, soften toward me, respond in softness. can only accept softness from a man i know will not fall apart on me. but those men are not soft, they will not fall apart because they do not experience the emotion that leads to both softness and sometimes falling apart. wanting both. wanting stability, wanting romance and emotional chaos. </span><br>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">i am afraid of the emotional man. because i need to be strong. because she is standing in that room watching. because i can't be left by her, she holds my world together. loyalty. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">i am afraid of the emotional man, because i want him, but i feel like i have to choose between him and survival, and i know i don't need him. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">i am afraid of the emotional man because he is a luxury. he is in a tuxedo. he is a liability. he will drag me down, and then i will not be cared for, either. we will both be alone. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Afraid if i start nurturing a man, it will not stop. it will bleed me dry, like a child.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">I recoil from the emotional man because I do not trust him. Because it seems fake. But that is not my view - I am emotional, and I want emotion, want to trust it like I trust my own. I am smarter about emotions than about anything else, and it cripples me that I cannot talk emotions with men I am involved with, this thing that I am so good at.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Hating men needing me, hating them wanting care, like I hated my father for wanting me, mother - women who didn't want him. i wanted him to be strong, like mom - wanted him to move on, to show some spine. wanted him to play a masculine role, like she was.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;"><br>I need to be able to make choices with men that will actually get me closer to what I want, to what is good for me. That means I have to stop being afraid of emotional men, stop hating them, being ashamed of them, being angry and full of rage toward them. Because what I am feeling toward them is not about them. It is about being 13 and watching him act shamefully and then demand love for his actions, manipulating me by seeming pitiful.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></span>Jolie Valentinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09811659377507108510noreply@blogger.com0