Mix up all the fancy ingredients you want.  Ship your cheese from Holland and your beef from Kobe.  Have a pig ferret out your mushrooms and have a virgin stop on your wine grapes.  

You still can’t beat the best meal ever:

Macaroni and Cheese (with bacon and those crumbly bits on top)

Tomato soup (with a bit of basil)

Salad (and a few extra sunflower seeds)

And a PEEP for dessert.  

That’s as fancy as I need.

*Courtesy “Quaint” in Sunnyside, New York

I’m used to New York.  I’ve been here, I’ve lived here, I know the town and it’s native inhabitants.  I am not one of them.  I just couldn’t let go of that last small shred of manners and politeness.  

For instance: To me a locked bathroom door usually means that someone is inside the bathroom.  Probably peeing.  More than likely half way in their lower clothing.  The locked door probably, in my opinion, means that they do not want you in there while they are peeing/taking off their pants/etc.  Wait patiently and you too will have a chance to pee/take of your pants/etc.

Unless you’re in New York in which case a locked door means that you start yelling “Why the f*** is this door locked!  Who would lock the f*****g bathroom door?  Open this s*** up now.”  And when the door locker says “Um, just a minute.” in response (probably because she is peeing AND has her pants around her knees) a good New Yorker will demand that the waitress unlock the door.

See, it’s that kind of stuff that made me move to Maryland.

…but it’s not advisable.

So I’m headed out of my hometown. I was excited to start an adult life on the island I grew up on. I thought that this nurturing place would give me the same kind of support I got as an adolescent finding her way. Being an adult I was sure I’d finally be given a look into the worlds that are closed to children, and an entree into those communities that would help me become a healthy, happy, grown-up sexual being.

But once you’ve done high school in a place, you will forever do high school in a place. Sex is always high school sex, community is always high school cliques, and relationships are eerily similar to lunch-time gossip brawls.

Except now everyone has potbellies and gray hair.

It’s a sad thing to know that that nurturing I remember from my fair island is so tainted. Children I knew grew up to be spiteful and angry. With the added benefit of legal alcohol. I’m back were I started. And it’s not where I want to be. So I’m headed away. From Maui to Korea with a new found appreciation of how good it is to leave home.

I have secrets.  Like most people my true self is covered in layers of conformity.  In order to fit in, fill in and fall in I have my many personas.  It is only in those rare moments that I share the elements that make up myself to myself.  When I do share them I become raw.  I tear away deep layers of personality epidermis and leave myself exposed to all elements.  It is this danger that has made me so reticent to really be myself, much less share myself.

However, I’ve just found out that three of my inner-secrets are shared.

1)  Auditory Hallucinations – I hear things.  I always have.  Conversations when I am alone.  Voices in empty hallways.  The silent whispers of people and things that never were.  I hear them often.  They speak to me, repeat my thoughts, create my psychic landscape and give me my ideas.  I spend so much time ignoring them that I depend on any other auditory distraction available.  T.V., music, radio, my own voice.  

2)  A list of “don’t die yet” books.  I keep a list of books I -must- read before I die.  It is less than 200 now, but I’m adding to it daily and when this list has been crossed off completely a new one will take its place.  This is the list I refer to in at my most suicidal.  It is the list that tells me that yes, I can kill myself, but I might as well wait till I’ve finished this next book.

3)  Pill stashing.  I know this is not new to anyone, but I am glad I am not the only one that hordes pills of questionable use in case I ever finish the book list.  They’re a comfort, not a temptation.  They let me know I have control.  

I just found out that other people do these specific things too.  In fact someone has the exact stash of seroquel I have.  

 And that means three of the things that make me “me” also make me “you”.  Things that are me are us.  I am part of the whole, even when I’m only part of me.  It’s a weird feeling to belong without trying.  But I like being like myself once in awhile.

Even though I don’t live in U.S. right this second, I am still a citizen and plan to vote in the Presidential election the same as I have in the past two (which covers the amount of Presidential elections I am old enough to have voted in).  So, being the good little voter I am I watched the debates yesterday.  In this case I woke up on a Saturday morning to watch the live debates of Friday night.

Most of the time I find debates dull and useless.  I hear the same old catch phrases in the same old way and there is never really any answer to any question posed.  Usually, I’ve already researched the candidates enough to know who I like prior to the debates anyway.  Of course, this might color my debating-judgement a bit.

This year however I’ve felt cold towards both main candidates.  McCain, the once great-white-hope, has been disappointing me for the past three years.  I’m not a fan of is health strategy.  I’m not a fan of his desire to appoint justices that will constitutionally interpret Roe-v-Wade out of existence.  I am certainly not a fan of the fact that everything he said while running for President the fist time he has unsaid.   And frankly I gotta say, it looks a little like Karl Rove is pulling the strings over there.  And Karl Rove eats puppies.

Hey, that’s just what I heard okay.

However, Obama didn’t seem all that great of a choice either.  I like his health plan only slightly more than I like McCain’s.  I don’t like McCain’s nuclear power plan, but I sure don’t like Obama’s clean coal either.  Obama never felt like he understood who exactly he was going to represent.  He’s a Harvard elitist who knows very little about how to raise a family on one minimum wage job.  

That being said, after hearing him at the debates, I like him a bit more.  I like that he’s ready to talk actual strategy.  I like that he wants to pull us out of Iraq and is willing to say so bluntly.  I like that he is for negotiations and against pre-emptive strikes.  

I could sorta be persuaded to vote for this guy.  You know, debatably.

Apparently, people agree with me.

I have this great desire to write.

At one in the morning I have this insistent need to pour forth with something of my own.  I want to place my pen on the paper and move.  I want to pull out my paints and go to town with a thousand different colors.  I want to stretch out my arms and create something.  Type and type, the keys clicking in that comforting way, while my soul sings its quiet tune.

I want art.  I want to do art.  I want to create art.  I want a poem of angst and joy.  I want my emotions to take a form that will release back into the world.  I want something that has no function, but functions none the less because it exists.

Yet, all I can think of as I consider the different mediums before me is how bad I want to create.  How bad I need to write.  I much I need to put forth something that is not school work, that is not an email, that is not a response to someone else.  I need something that is me.  That comes from me.  That issues forth from inside.

All I got:  I have this great desire to write.

It as swimming day for kids at the base.  I was treading water in the deep end, poised to strike should any military-brat suddenly go down or decide that poking one another in the eye was fun.  

We had the typical games going.  Some went diving for the penny.  Some were playing water basketball.  And of course the biggest-splash contests where they’d take turns jumping in feet first to see who could cause the most commotion.  Only on a military base filled with kids whose Fathers and Mothers go to work covered in camo and packing gas masks in their “briefcases” the game took a different spin.

“Let’s play dead soldiers” one of my girls said gleefully.  

“Okay!  You shoot me.  And I’ll die first!”  

Those were the only rules.  Each girl took turns shooting one another and dying, rather realistically, into the pool.  While my other students got bored with the penny and the ball game within five or ten minutes, the dead soldiers game lasted a good thirty minutes – and attracted more kids as it went.

Over and over I watched children die of various bullet wounds.  Some took a guerilla approach to their attack.  Some simply aimed and shot.  They all died well.  None of them cried out for help dramatically or pretended to draw out the final death moments.  They all took the bullet happily and died with silent splashes.  Over and over.  

I can remember as a child having my own morbid games.  We had cops and robbers.  My father had indians and cowboys.  There are always variations to the games.  But I recall, in my own childhood, thinking that death was an automatic “out”.  Something to avoid.  Even when we were clearly shot we’d dispute it.  I recall arguing my way into hopping around with a missing leg and two missing arms (all shot off) all because I refused to accept death in the game.

Is it because so many of these children know their parents are facing their own game of dead soldiers?  Is it the hours and hours of real-life footage kids see, followed by patriotic music and narrated by proud voices?  Is it the lack of funerals?  The lack of a sense of sadness surrounding dead soldiers that let them all accept play death as stoically and enthusiastically as real death?  

Or is this just the new mutation of childhood morbidity?  Are we at the point now where death is an automatic rather than an automatic out?

I was lying on my back blinking up at a haze of white that alternated from bright to dim  over and over.  Occasionally I could feel the corner of the haze lift, then settle against my cheek again.  I knew there were people around me, above me, but I could see them.  I could hear them, but I couldn’t understand the things they were saying.  And worse, I knew they were doing things, but I didn’t know what they were till I felt them, until they started to hurt and even then all I knew was that it hurt, not what it was or why they were doing it.

The surreal part was that I had asked for this.  I wasn’t strapped down.  There were no bonds keeping me lying down.  My hands were free to defend myself, but I kept them tightly folded together over my stomach.  I could have kicked if I wanted too.  I could have jumped up and torn the shroud from over my eyes and left.  No one would have stopped me.  But even as my knees jerked at each prod and sharp pain, I stayed put.  I willed myself into that chair.  And when it was finally all over, when they finally removed my blindfold themselves…I’d pay them money for the privilege of this torture.

The dentist is a funny place.  

One wonders, if we bind ourselves so willing for these small things, where will we find the impetus for resistance?  Here we are, ignore our most basic protection instinct: pain.  If it hurts, it’s wrong, it should stop.  Yet, I will myself to remain as still as possible, only acknowledging my hurt with small whimpers and only receiving in recognition a sigh or a “I know” while my dentist continues to jab sharp things in my nerve.  If I’m so willing to lie still for this…how still will I be, will society be, for things that don’t hurt until it’s too late?  Is our willingness to bind ourselves systemic?  How far does it go?  How much torture are we willing to endure before we get up and walk?

Also, why do they always say “I know” when you start screaming?

It was a nice night.  The sky was clear and the city was cooling off after the heat of the day.  Looking up from my book out the window I noticed a large spider floating right in front of me.  Her legs were working hard and after a brief pause she climbed back up another invisible thread to connect in the middle.

I watched her for awhile.  She wasn’t systematic, the way I expect spiders to be when creating their webs.  She was flighty, bouncing from working at the top to working at the bottom.  She’d lay a few lines here and there, then jump over to work on the more foundational lines that she had forgotten earlier.  She remind me, in fact, of myself.  Running from doing a few dishes, to writing a few lines, to folding half the clean clothes, and then off to another task.  The curse of a multi-tasker in an ever more distracting world.

I once read that workers in an office will only work on any one project for 11 minutes straight before being distracted by something else.  A pressing email, a phone call, the birthday celebration in the break room.  There is just no way to focus on one project for very long.  

Somehow, though this spider moved in unpredictable ways building her nest, she didn’t seem harried or confused.  Her movements were still graceful, purposeful, but erratic in an artistic way.  She was like a painter who spends a full day getting one tree perfect while the rest of the painting looks like stick figures.  Or a sculpture who obsesses over the shape of their subjects nose, and ignore the face.  Her web was her art, not just her source of food, or home for the night.  It was her creation.  Her little contribution to the beauty that is nature.

And the more I watch her work away at this part and that part the more I could swear I saw a bit of pride in her movements.  Maybe a swell of her chest, or a triumphant move of her legs.  She knew I was in awe of the thing she was creating.  And she was proud that someone noticed.

Finally, tearing my eyes away from the small web in front of me to the larger world beyond the window I started to worry.  Here this small spider was, working for hours on a one of a kind creation.  An expression of herself as a creature of the world.  And in a little while rain would come and wash the work away.  Or a strong wind would snap the threads holding her up.  A child could come back and, in an act of humanly selfish curiosity, smash this delicate net.  The idea filled me with a kind of despair.

I wondered, if this spider worked the same way I did, if she shared my same predilection for multi-tasking and creativity, did she also share my feelings on the destruction of creation?  Tomorrow morning would this spider feel the overwhelming depression of a destructive and inattentive world.  Would she have just as much trouble starting her day as I do?  Did she need to screw all her courage up with the rising of the sun just to convince herself to begin all over again?

And, more, did she look at me from the other side and feel the same need to reassure and protect me as I felt for her?

Is there hope for the webs we weave?