Up against your will
Less than five hours of fitful sleep, one too many Widmer Hefeweizens at the Echo and the Bunnymen show last night, the usual predawn wake-up after a week of bad nights and early mornings: I am tired.
Two years ago my husband and I went to another Echo concert, the Ocean Rain tour, and I spent the first three songs of it sobbing in my seat, bathed in the sounds that accompanied my abandoned adolescence. Ocean Rain came out in 1984. It was the soundtrack for the long lonely time when I lived almost on my own, the years of isolation and pregnancy and death and the relentless sameness of life afterwards. The music tugged the emotions out of me. Not so much at last night's show. Until the encore. "The Killing Moon" killed me and there I was sobbing and sobbing on my husband’s shoulder, crying like I’ve been crying a lot anyway these days.
Before the Killing Moon tears, I cried in the lobby. Before the tears in the lobby, I went up to get yet another beer and then stood alone, back against the wall, until my husband came to find me. We’re stirring up a lot of stuff right now, both together and on our own, and it’s good, it’s all good, but I am one with these feelings that I used to keep at bay by focusing on the stories, their origins. It’s not the why that is so important now, it’s the is-ness of the feelings and sometimes I can’t believe the depth of them. These are just feelings. They won’t drag me down or threaten my very being or toss me off the edge, but for a while last night I had the image of my body flipping over and over again after a leap off a cliff.
There was no bottom to hit, it was just the fall and the flip. My old-fashioned dress swirled around me. I looked like I was twelve years old. My body turned like a pinwheel in the wind and I fell. I fell. The image wasn’t soothing and it wasn’t disturbing. It was representative.
We’re in the middle of it now, me and him, we won’t give up until our psyches are shining, clean, clear, the emotions floating out of us like words, meaningful, changeable, whole, complete. It’s a long journey, the end is murky. I’m grateful for my tendency to worry at relationships like a dog gnawing at a bone. I’m grateful for my husband's presence, too, for the fact that he is there with me, listening, trying, supportive.
So I float, I flip, my tears stream. I stand alone with my back against the wall. I feel the threat of love’s promise to always be there when such a thing is impossible.
From the prompt "I won't give it up."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. I edited this -- a tired brain is a slow one and adds unnecessary words. Took the extra words out, made the language clearer, and there you go.
Image by James Dawson.
Artifacts
But these tapes don't necessarily show that part of my musical history. They contain shared memories or were meant as part of my musical education. I've held on to them because I hold on to everything, old letters and pictures, ephemera from boys long gone. I hold on to people in my mind, too, keep them close and safe, warm in the glow of a shared past.
In no particular order, here are three samples:
The relationship mourning tape
The this is music you need to know about tape
Part of my musical education, a tape made for me by a Hollywood Beach regular, M, who was about seven years older than me and had a plethora of albums from the sixties onward. This was my first exposure to the Velvet Underground. It still has the best version of Jimi Hendrix's Little Wing that I've ever heard (and haven't been able to find anywhere else). Sometimes I track down Heartbreaker's Beach Party on YouTube because I want to remember M and the Hollywood Beach crowd, the beach bonfires, the alcohol, kind M hanging out in the background.
The college friendship tape
This mixtape is from freshman year in college, made for my roommate Martha and me by fellow Third Floor Nerd Floor resident Kitty Hill. Kitty lasted at our small liberal arts college for a year before going back to Cincinnati (and that is her real name: I'd love to find her). I lasted slightly more than a year and Martha finally graduated a few years behind schedule. I'm attached to this tape less because of the music than because of the fleetingness of the time it represents, that brief strange period I had in the dorms. My memories of Kitty include her drinking Purple Jesuses (grape Kool-Aid and vodka) and singing Unhappy Birthday on her birthday and the spring 1988 trip we took to Annapolis in Imran's crumbling Mazda RX-7 to see the Navy boys.
If I were to represent my current life in a mixtape, I'm afraid it would be high on the melodrama. That's where my emotional musical tastes lie at the moment, in songs that can coax the feelings out of me. I do better when I can cry about something else, something unrelated to the present, like a memory from 25 years ago or a song about someone else's pain.
I'll spare you the drama. Let's start with something fluffy and light, danceable, a nice accompaniment to a glass of white wine or sparkling water, that 80s classic, Things Can Only Get Better (thanks, Kitty).
Top image: Keep it in Mind, a clip from ZigZag magazine that used to be on the wall of the Little House. I regret tossing the old issues away.
Clove-scented memories
I've barely gone through the letters yet, but one thing is clear: I was obsessed. With D, with R, with being bored, with feeling depressed, with obtaining alcohol (aka "impedimential liquids"). I cursed a lot. Joking insults between the two of us were common. We had code names for everyone -- common pink marshmallow, the Yick, the Dick. We covered the backs of the envelopes with jokes or long notes to the mailman.
And I mixed my metaphors, my music, my thoughts. In one letter, written on January 14th, 1985 on Susan Boynton paper (picture a mouse dragging an elephant, with GO FOR IT written in floppy yellow letters on each page), I wrote SKANK OR DIE! in angular print on the first page, as though I was some skateboarding fiend. I moon over D, who was seeing someone else at the time and apparently showed up at the Little House one weekend, which confused me. I worry over an English presentation. I quote extensively from Careless Memories, a Duran Duran song (also the name of a post I eventually deleted, but lives on in ignominious glory on feedburner), then conclude with an Echo and the Bunnymen line. On the envelope, I have other lyrics: Darkness, by the Police and Ha Ha Ha by Flipper. Geezopeet, as I used to write. Was I a fan of pop or punk or post-punk? At fifteen, I could afford to be flexible.
I'll probably be posting some of the letters here. Maybe. Most of them have peoples' names in them, too many to redact. I sound like a teenaged idiot. I sound like a broken record.
Here's a sample, part of a four-page letter I sent in September 1984.
First, the back of the envelope:
Then, my diatribe against Maureen's phone. Here I show my talent for the delicate insult. In my defense, I think "moralistic bitch" was kind of a pet name for her at this point. "Dumpkopf," however, is not only misspelled, but goes beyond the pale. Still, it's nice to have proof that I once talked regularly on the phone:
Image: Letter to Maureen, September 1984. Is this interesting to anyone else but us?
I had other post plans today, worked for a while before daylight on something, but it will have to wait for the weekend. Still have to finish my assignment for class, too.
And in the room locked up inside me
I remember what it was like to care about fashion and boys and what the other girls thought, all the other girls with their money and their bright sweaters in primary colors and their designer clothes. When you’re a teenager you think everyone else is better off than you, except for S. whose brother would beat her up or F. whose father didn't know he existed or N., who lied about her address, too, and had an alcoholic dad. My friends were the exceptions, but the rest of them, the money flowed like water from a tap and their parents, they might have been strict, but it was in good ways that showed they cared instead of being random like my mother. The other kids had stable parents who drove newer cars. They lived in the suburbs, not the middle of the city where the houses slammed against each other, where you knew everyone's secrets, could smell the neighbor's dinner burning.
It was a time when I joined the consumer world with its fashion and makeup and music to buy (Def Leppard morphed to Wham! and Duran Duran bled into the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks, Echo and the Bunnymen) and then retreated from it. In the Little House I was stuck with the dull depression of being fifteen and separated from the world, first alone, then alone and pregnant, and then the survivor of both, still alone, and with life experiences that made me feel so, so old.
But there was beer to drink and a guy who bought it for me. He eventually came around more often, was there for real, for love. D. still lived at home, was the youngest of four in a tight family. They got together for big extended family dinners, would greet me with a hug, kiss my cheek when it was time to say goodbye. The womenfolk prepared delicious food and it always seemed like there were at least twenty people at the table, with toasts ("Proost!") and heated conversation and endless bottles of Grolsch.
I loved that family, their sheer number, their passion and personality, the safety net of so many people. In the photographs, however, I look small. Contained. A little scared, like I knew a secret that could destroy me.
Image: Me, late December 1984, in my grandfather's yard. This was before I moved to the Little House, but I still spent most weekends and school vacations visiting. I remember this day very well, the abnormally warm temperatures, the feeling of anticipation that D. might show up that night, that he actually did show. Ah, redemption, brief and sweet.
The original prompt was a photo. You can look at it here.
The post title is a line from a Yaz song that I listened to a lot in the Little House: In My Room.
Knobby and the xylitol squirrels
You've got the wrong Jennifer. Or you've got the wrong Fred. You've got the wrong both of us.
George "Knobby" Michael?
You can try to get to this blog directly by searching on just my first and last names, but Google won't send you here. Despite the fact that writing to survive is mine and I have the metadata to prove it, most people who are looking for Jennifer Lastname arrive by way of my guest post at La Belette Rouge or via PublicLiterature.Org. At least Bing puts writing to survive on the first page of results when you search for my name. But the blog itself doesn't have enough Internet power or back links or whatever it takes to convince most search engines that it's mine.
Some people who end up here via Google or Yahoo are looking for information on myelofibrosis. Although I did write a post about Kevin's death from the disease, I want you to know that his ending was dramatic. Atypical. He lived almost ten years after his diagnosis, which is also very unusual for someone who was diagnosed relatively young. Kevin was waiting for a stem cell transplant when things fell apart, which may have saved him, but might have hastened his death, too, if it hadn't been too late anyway. Every time someone lands here looking for information on the disease I feel guilty, since the ending of his story was so idiosyncratic and terrible. It's not like this for everyone. It isn't, really. There's hope.
But at least these searches make some sense, are tied to a particular name or a disease that I discuss in a bit of detail. And the searches for writing prompts or writing to survive have led people to the right place, though I think that the person searching for writing prompt using a toaster really needs to visit one of koe's blogs. Based on the keywords, however, a lot of you who end up here through an Internet search leave disappointed. Writing to survive is a friendly place. I want to answer your questions, want to give you what you seek, so once again, I will attempt to provide clarity, to transmit information.
Yes, this is not a squirrel blog.
Perhaps you were looking for birching stories, or variations on the theme (victorian birching stories, birch corporal punishment, bad boys birching stories). Or you were looking for information -- or something else -- about drunken teenage hookups. One person arrived by searching on the domain name submissivelouise.com. There are no birching stories here, though I did once mention a neighbor's birch tree, and while I took part in more than one drunken teenage hookup back when I was a drunken teenager, I don't tend to write about such things, at least not in the way you might hope. As for submissive Louise, I wrote a brief post about a dog with that name who was not the dominant type.
Some searches are from people looking for answers to matter-of-fact questions: Why is George Michael's nickname Knobby? (Beats me.) Can stork bites spread? (Not the birthmark variety.) How do puffins survive in the cold? (Sweaters and booties.) Can one survive on writing? (Not alone.)
Other queries get me wondering: How did Duran Duran's John Taylor cut his foot in 1984? Was he badly hurt? Was the search on an interesting story about me is i was 8 i was trapped inside of a burning building. it was about 2:00 a.m. when my father smelled smoke in the kitchen a misplaced copy and paste or was this person hoping that someone else in the Interlands had written about his or her private life story? Who "gestures and halts and falls"?
Footsie, neighbor?
I can tell you the good and bad about xylitol. Bad: it can kill your dog, though our dog survived her small exposure. Good: it is low in calories and oh so sweet. Will it make your gerbil listless and cold? Perhaps. But I don't know a thing about xylitol squirrels and this is definitely not a squirrel blog (Or a blog about autodidacticism).
Google leads you here, seekers of information. You are hungry for stories, for hard facts, for the light of knowledge. But once you get here, do you stay? Do you note the address and come back and visit from time to time? Not necessarily. I need better keywords, need to provide the right breadcrumb trail. I need better search engine optimization.
I need clarity.
Confidential to I'm in love with a childhood friend: Most of us have all been through it. Examine your feelings and figure out what's really going on. If it is really love, fess up and get it over with. Good things may happen. Maybe you can become footsie neighbors, or at the very least, you can move on with your life.
Squirrel image from here.
Foot image from here.
Living proof at my fingertips
My husband and I were standing against the wall at the Fox Theater in Oakland, this over-the-top restored venue from the late 1920s, drinking our beers and waiting for the group Echo and the Bunnymen to come onstage. We'd already had a lot of laughs that would be almost impossible to explain here (for example, the image of us wearing cucumber and cabbage outfits, just to find our moment of glory in the truly ridiculous [but very cool-sounding] Echo song Thorn of Crowns). Without warning my dead son winnowed his way into the conversation, which lead to talks of alternate lives and then my father showed up, too, unrepentant, demanding the old song and dance of anger.
My father and stepmother visited us last month, which was a truly wonderful visit, one for which I am grateful. As a result of nerve damage in his back, he is in constant pain and traveling is very difficult on him, but they made the trip and we all had a good time. There was just one ripple in the visit, one that I tried to ignore, in a discussion that would have been impossible without the blog. He found writing to survive over a year ago and read through it in its entirety. Eventually he apologized via email for any pain he had caused me, which was the extent of our interaction on the topic. During this most recent visit he asked "Are we ok?" meaning, I suppose, "Is everything all right between us?". Yes, I said, we were ok -- when he read the blog I felt like he was listening to me. Did he feel like we were ok?
Well, sure, but he wanted me to know that, despite my accusations to the contrary, he had tried. I had no idea what he was talking about, but his response was probably to this post, where I write about my anger at my parents for doing nothing when I desperately needed help: "My mother stopped parenting; my father never even started. They deserve my compassion. It's no use getting angry at those who don't see their own worth." It's a heavy accusation and I stand by it. The truth hurts. We didn't dig any deeper into that particular pit, but our discussion bothered me, still does, and that was what I was talking about in the lobby of the Fox Theater, that and imagining my never-to-be-24-year-old son, dressed in skinny tapered pants and an ironic t-shirt, angry at me for my own form of neglect, of the fetal variety.
The band started. We hustled to our seats, suddenly surrounded by the music that was a part of the soundtrack of my mid-teens and I started to cry. I sobbed through the first three songs while my husband patted me reassuringly, probably feeling bad about the tickets, which were a birthday present. The music transported to a bleak time in my life, when things started really getting bad and I was indescribably alone. I felt the direness of my situation at fifteen and sixteen, combined with the beauty of my current life. I am forty years old, married to a good, supportive man. We have a healthy, creative, wonderful child. My life is in enveloped in love and warmth. How did I get so undeservedly lucky?
Our conversation in the lobby -- the clinical look at my father, the ghostly appearance of my son, my guilt over that time of terrible fear and anger -- began to make sense. No matter how much work I've done here on revealing secrets, writing out my pain and anger, trying to forgive my parents, I can't take the experience of what happened in the Little House away. Even thinking about the music we were about to hear brought me to the edge of that past, to the isolation and neglect. And my father's main reaction upon reading this entire blog, apart from a generic, though I'm sure heartfelt apology, was to tell me that he tried. He has never acknowledged any direct responsibility for (or curiosity about) that time. I wish his acknowledgement didn't matter. Maybe someday it won't.
I've put so much effort into trying to forgive the unaware that I've forgotten to pay attention to my own grief. I still carry around sadness for things lost, for not mattering enough, for acknowledgment that will never be. So I cried and cried until Ian McCulloch started singing about vegetables. My husband turned to me and raised his eyebrows. We started to laugh.
I really am lucky.
Echo and the Bunnymen play "Silver" in Oakland, courtesy of some fellow fan: