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Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Harvest may be ending, but the fires and the heat are making the valley feel like the dead of summer in Los Angeles. For the first time in years, I drove home through a dirt yellow sunset, through horrible smoky air quality. It wasn't like the riots of 1991 when the smoke was so thick I couldn't see the other cars in the parking lot, but it was pretty darn ugly, stinky, and funky. The crap in the air was palpable, slimy. The fire burns still, and word is that it was intentionally set. What forking idiot would do such a thing.
I just finished watching the debate, and I'm afraid for my gastrointestinal health (and not because of the Taco Bell 7-layer burrito that was dinner). I almost can't bear it any longer. I have this gut-wrenching fear in more than one facet of my life, and it's getting to be a bit much. I have about the same chances of success in my job that Kerry has in being elected and it's almost too much faith to keep right now. My job is much less important than the Presidency, but still, it's my job, and it keeps me in knots. My boss sat me down today to take a hard look at what is possible in our current project. Can my organization afford to pay me what I'm worth? Not bloody likely. Are our chances of success extremely high? Absolutely not. Do I want to do it anyway? Well... yes. I believe I can do great things in this position. I don't know if the community or the environment will allow for success, but by god, I could be the one to make it all happen. I could CHANGE something, I could actually have a positive effect on something larger than myself. And I love going to work every day. Give me another six months and I think I could truly make a difference. But... but... how do I balance that with my constant struggle for financial security? When will I have to stop begging and borrowing just to keep my car out of the shop? When does the balance become unreasonable? Will I ever love a job like this again? And the thing is, I'm good at it. I could work the rest of my life in this field. I found it, the thing that eluded me for my entire adulthood, and now I have to decide between continuing this work and being paid a living wage? It's not entirely fair. But if I could stick with this, at least for another six months, maybe a year, it would position me to do even more, further me in this particular world. Ugh.
Did I mention that the post office lost one of my grant requests? Can I tell you how much that sucks?
Sometimes I think back to coming home to my studio apartment in Brooklyn, and what it felt like to be me in that last year. How incredibly alone I felt. I feel different in this life, and I think my job has a lot to do with that. Well, and the extra pounds of chub keep me warm at night, but I can't really count that as a positive.
I just finished watching the debate, and I'm afraid for my gastrointestinal health (and not because of the Taco Bell 7-layer burrito that was dinner). I almost can't bear it any longer. I have this gut-wrenching fear in more than one facet of my life, and it's getting to be a bit much. I have about the same chances of success in my job that Kerry has in being elected and it's almost too much faith to keep right now. My job is much less important than the Presidency, but still, it's my job, and it keeps me in knots. My boss sat me down today to take a hard look at what is possible in our current project. Can my organization afford to pay me what I'm worth? Not bloody likely. Are our chances of success extremely high? Absolutely not. Do I want to do it anyway? Well... yes. I believe I can do great things in this position. I don't know if the community or the environment will allow for success, but by god, I could be the one to make it all happen. I could CHANGE something, I could actually have a positive effect on something larger than myself. And I love going to work every day. Give me another six months and I think I could truly make a difference. But... but... how do I balance that with my constant struggle for financial security? When will I have to stop begging and borrowing just to keep my car out of the shop? When does the balance become unreasonable? Will I ever love a job like this again? And the thing is, I'm good at it. I could work the rest of my life in this field. I found it, the thing that eluded me for my entire adulthood, and now I have to decide between continuing this work and being paid a living wage? It's not entirely fair. But if I could stick with this, at least for another six months, maybe a year, it would position me to do even more, further me in this particular world. Ugh.
Did I mention that the post office lost one of my grant requests? Can I tell you how much that sucks?
Sometimes I think back to coming home to my studio apartment in Brooklyn, and what it felt like to be me in that last year. How incredibly alone I felt. I feel different in this life, and I think my job has a lot to do with that. Well, and the extra pounds of chub keep me warm at night, but I can't really count that as a positive.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
I'm not usually one to get out of bed at 8:30 AM on a Sunday, but you wouldn't believe the day. We were promised cool weather, even showers, but instead it is perfect. I can't really describe it beyond that. My writing studio has windows on two walls, one open to a wall of honeysuckle, the other to the trees of my driveway, and as I sit and read the news the cyclist of the valley occasionally parade by on the road about a hundred feet away. Mornings like this absolutely fill me with longing but also sort of with hope. Particularly when the coffee is ready...
Ahh. I'm thinking that my love of fall is really just a love of mornings. During fall, the cool of the morning, the sparseness of the light, is around all day. The colors of the slanted morning sun are translated, in autumn, to enduring reds and golds and yellows. And maybe that is what is so spectacular about the beginning of fall- cool mornings and the hint of what the days will be in just a few weeks. I can't say I'm ready for the winter rains, but days like this, I'll take. And maybe, just maybe, if I didn't have a regular job, I wouldn't treasure this moment so deeply. Maybe if there wasn't somewhere I'm supposed to be for many hours of the week, I would have just stayed in bed and slept until the morning was gone. Instead, the from the windows is blowing gently on my coffee. This morning makes me think of the house upstate a mile or two from Ian and Tessa's farmhouse, the white house with black shutters and a sun room and big, plush chairs visible from the street. I want to buy that house someday. I want to live in it and send my rug rats to go play with their cousins at the farmhouse.
I wish that the sun would stop climbing, just for a few hours.
I dreamt last night of my trip to Iowa. I leave this coming Friday, and I'll be in Iowa and then Chicago for nine days. Nine glorious days. When I told my co-workers about this vacation, they stared at me blankly. One said, "Uh, is Iowa really the best use of your vacation time?" Oh, yes. But in my dream, I was doing something wrong. I can't place it now, and I know that it was another case of dream transference- I often take safe events and people and then transfer ugly events and people into those situations rather than directly dreaming about the ugly stuff. But I was doing something shameful or disrespectful, and even though I can't remember what, the feeling lingers. I've done plenty of stupid stuff over the last couple of years (hell, my whole life, but I can only count backwards so far), but probably the ugliest thing I've done lately is a series of blogs just over a year ago now. I couldn't really see it at the time; actually, I couldn't see anything. I was just in pain and the only thing that made me feel better was pouring poison onto the internet. Honestly, though, it didn't make me feel better. I think it perpetuated the pain rather than assuaging it. The shitty thing is, it was a relatively sustained outpouring, for like a month or so, and I can't take it back. I can't believe some of the things I felt, and I hate that I made them public. Ian and I were talking the other day, and I made some comment about being thankful that I wasn't big on being vindictive, and he made an immediate reference to these blogs, and it socked me in the stomach. It's been a year, and yet, in the immortal words of Harry's Sally, "It's out there". Nothing to be done about it, except for to do better next time. Small consolation, though. I'm not ashamed of the pain I felt, not even ashamed of the anger; I just wish I hadn't acted in a way that was ugly enough to still come back to haunt me.
But the day calls. If you, dear reader, have not visited this glorious part of the country, this Northern California coastal/wine country world, I suggest you do so immediately. It will cure all that ails. And... better yet... it's almost Halloween. I'd like to dress up as a thin person. Does anyone have a thin person suit?
Ahh. I'm thinking that my love of fall is really just a love of mornings. During fall, the cool of the morning, the sparseness of the light, is around all day. The colors of the slanted morning sun are translated, in autumn, to enduring reds and golds and yellows. And maybe that is what is so spectacular about the beginning of fall- cool mornings and the hint of what the days will be in just a few weeks. I can't say I'm ready for the winter rains, but days like this, I'll take. And maybe, just maybe, if I didn't have a regular job, I wouldn't treasure this moment so deeply. Maybe if there wasn't somewhere I'm supposed to be for many hours of the week, I would have just stayed in bed and slept until the morning was gone. Instead, the from the windows is blowing gently on my coffee. This morning makes me think of the house upstate a mile or two from Ian and Tessa's farmhouse, the white house with black shutters and a sun room and big, plush chairs visible from the street. I want to buy that house someday. I want to live in it and send my rug rats to go play with their cousins at the farmhouse.
I wish that the sun would stop climbing, just for a few hours.
I dreamt last night of my trip to Iowa. I leave this coming Friday, and I'll be in Iowa and then Chicago for nine days. Nine glorious days. When I told my co-workers about this vacation, they stared at me blankly. One said, "Uh, is Iowa really the best use of your vacation time?" Oh, yes. But in my dream, I was doing something wrong. I can't place it now, and I know that it was another case of dream transference- I often take safe events and people and then transfer ugly events and people into those situations rather than directly dreaming about the ugly stuff. But I was doing something shameful or disrespectful, and even though I can't remember what, the feeling lingers. I've done plenty of stupid stuff over the last couple of years (hell, my whole life, but I can only count backwards so far), but probably the ugliest thing I've done lately is a series of blogs just over a year ago now. I couldn't really see it at the time; actually, I couldn't see anything. I was just in pain and the only thing that made me feel better was pouring poison onto the internet. Honestly, though, it didn't make me feel better. I think it perpetuated the pain rather than assuaging it. The shitty thing is, it was a relatively sustained outpouring, for like a month or so, and I can't take it back. I can't believe some of the things I felt, and I hate that I made them public. Ian and I were talking the other day, and I made some comment about being thankful that I wasn't big on being vindictive, and he made an immediate reference to these blogs, and it socked me in the stomach. It's been a year, and yet, in the immortal words of Harry's Sally, "It's out there". Nothing to be done about it, except for to do better next time. Small consolation, though. I'm not ashamed of the pain I felt, not even ashamed of the anger; I just wish I hadn't acted in a way that was ugly enough to still come back to haunt me.
But the day calls. If you, dear reader, have not visited this glorious part of the country, this Northern California coastal/wine country world, I suggest you do so immediately. It will cure all that ails. And... better yet... it's almost Halloween. I'd like to dress up as a thin person. Does anyone have a thin person suit?