LaurieWrites

All in all and I'm loving every rise and fall.

2012-01-31T04:09:08-05:00

All in all and I'm
Loving every rise and fall
The sun will make and I will take
Breath to be sure of this
In the end and then
All will be forgiven when
Surrender rises high and I
Gave what I came to give

I didn't get Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets this weekend. I was prepared to do so, and through a technical glitch I wasn't able.

I've been acting like it wasn't a big deal, because oh my God, do you see what else I have to spend and save my money on? Tickets to this show aren't a big deal. I need to learn to practice moderation in the every day and then I know I won't be so pressed when the big things come. I don't even know where I'll BE when these show dates roll around. Who would even go with me? Why am I even concerned about this?

Because.

This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken, on the inside track at Pimlico five years ago when my boyfriend Anthony Kiedis and Flea and those other guys played Virgin Festival.

It was an amazing day. I was alone, I didn't care. It is a film shot from a disposable camera. I saw the Chilis and the Killers and some other people. It was fantastic. I crawled inside that music.

I loved every rise and fall. How often does that happen?

n. lacking courage; very fearful or timid

2012-01-29T02:43:47-05:00

He told me last week that I was a coward. I said get it straight: I was a scarecrow, not a lion -- a fool, sure, but not a coward. Except I guess in some ways I am pathetically afraid, the person I am with him, anyway.

I still didn't like it. It still wasn't nice to hear.

People, through some fault of their own or none at all, mostly make you what you are to them, and also who you are in their orbit. The way they talk to you, you to them, how they hold or discard your heart, how they smell (this is important), what they ask of you and how they respond -- it makes you this being that you weren't the minute before you met them, the minute-before person who you will never be again, although if it's not right that's who you'll always be after going back to. It's freaky and uncomfortable. It's science. It's something else, isn't it?

We scrapped out this long, heartfelt, baffling road, he and I. A coward could never have survived it, would have dropped dead eleven months in, the first time she was made to feel unnecessary, inconsequential, distracting from the truly important stuff. And more than a decade later, it's never over, sometimes it feels like, except I think that calling me a coward ends the game, even if he's even partially right. It's not something I ever want anyone to say. It's not something I want someone to have even a partial hand in making me be. It's not something I want to be capable of on my own.

It is not who I am.

This is me a little while ago, in the summer time, my favorite. Flawed, absolutely. I have so much work to do, always, always, keep on moving, doing the work. Figure it out. Make the calls. Be so much better. Do the hard stuff because if you don't, who will? Try to achieve some semblance of what you're capable of before you die.

I still, after careful consideration of this assessment, don't think she is a coward, at least not in the ways that count the most around here.

It's better that we don't talk that much anymore. I don't think we bring out the best in each other.

Wednesday

2012-01-26T01:15:49-05:00

People are living. People are dying. People are suffering in relationships and jobs and life situations all around me. People are falling in love.

People are doing what they are terrified to do and people are stumbling through the monotony of a job they hate or are just merely accustomed to enough that they don't know it's killing them. People are accepting the status quo. People are getting a dollar menu baked potato from Wendy's and going back to work to clock other people's hours. People are living with people they don't like because they pay the bills.

People are living. Dying. Suffering. Falling in love.

(Walt Whitman did this better, I know. He heard America singing. I suggest you leave now and reference his work.)

How we are not all in awe of the crazy power of what is happening to people all over the world, every second, next to us or thousands of miles away, is a testament to the power of our biologically-fueled function of denial, mostly, and also our hardwired need to put one foot in front of the other. To keep walking. To play our hand, to get what's ours -- to assure ourselves that June will be better than January.

People are numbed out.

People are pointlessly hashtagging stuff on the internet like our lives depend on it.

People are telling you every second who they are and want to be and aren't yet and what they need from you and holy Christ they are so frustrated!

People are settling.

A good friend had a baby tonight. Another just stated a big truth publicly, necessarily. Yet another is receiving care from hospice in her home. Another watched her shows and went to bed. Another is up way past her bedtime, not long before her kids get up, assembling a gift, a ministry from her hands so that a very sick friend will see tangible evidence of her contribution on earth -- the human collateral that says she has mattered in the way she absolutely has.

I just told a relatively distant relative a truth I needed to tell only her, because I know she will understand. I know she'd read a chapter of my story today or eventually and get it. I didn't feel like I had much today, but I had that, and all of a sudden that was enough.

On other pages, people are complaining because a huge corporation did not invite them to an expensive party in an artificial princess world, and as ridiculous as that is, who can blame them, really? On others, people -- people I love, even, or at least like -- call me names because of my ideology, my purely-felt interest in humane treatment for others, for equity, for the right to live right, as I see it.

Tell me this world is not an insane, complicated, beautiful, horrible, fever dream miracle. Go ahead. Tell me that tomorrow we'll do better and I won't believe you. Tell me that every day most of us try? I will.

New year's day

2012-01-25T00:51:49-05:00

I'm sitting at the base of a small mountain in a place I've never been.

I'm sitting at the base of small mountains all over the place.

I've been moving nonstop since August and haven't reported back. I'm going and going and going, knowing I need to make a move that for me is monumental, scared to death to do it, rolling over every possible (mostly horrible, obviously) potential outcome in my mind, worry stone synapses and rosary bead neurons.

When Mary Oliver asked what I was to do with my one wild and precious life, I doubt that this pattern of behavior would make it into the desired multiple choice options from A to ZZ. This is some nonsense right here. This is self-torture of an outstanding degree, my own personal lunatic fringe. If you were doing this, I would take you out for beers and tell you to run, run, run in the opposite direction from the insanity. I would tell you to go, consequences be damned, because wasting one more day on this was not advisable. I give excellent advice to other people.

*********************

My year began in water.

I stood in the cold shallows of an ocean I love for longer than seemed reasonable but I couldn't help it. I looked at the sky and couldn't stop crying, and thought in the cheesiest possible way but a way that my soul travels nonetheless that starting off this span of time here had to mean something good, right? It had to mean better? It was set up that way, anyway -- as a demarcation and an escape, a running to, not away, at all.

Seagulls are irksome birds but their cries among the waves are a peculiar kind of music, and I wanted to take that with me, too. I hear it in meditation when I finally get my mind to shut down, especially when I'm asked to visualize something that calms me, that makes me feel at home in myself.

When I'm particularly off my rocker I think that things like that -- sounds, pictures, words, signs -- can set me right. My burning bush is multimedia, I guess, and mostly invisible so far. It's a collection of minutiae that has answered no big question yet, and my signals are so crossed right now that even the ocean on a day that signifies the first of the next didn't make anything clear.

Normally when I walk down to the water to say a pitiful goodbye until the next time there is a second when I feel okay leaving that makes turning around possible, a natural end that did not occur this day. I had to force myself to go, to get in my car and go back into whatever was next. It didn't flow at all, which is typical lately.

There are oceans everywhere, the occasional mountain. I just wish sometimes the answers were clearer, that I could navigate these changes and questions and challenges with more grace and less hand-wringing, more quiet resolve than hysterical chatter and questions and reliance on the advice of my friends. It feels like, at 41, the path should be more obvious to the other side of things, especially things that aren't working, things that feel so difficult, that aren't on their surface life-threatening when I know that is the case for so many others.

But I can't and it's not, and I guess that just means I haven't done all the work yet, inside or out, to make that possible. Or maybe I haven't learned to accept the fact that sometimes the hardest is the simplest, that I have to let it be that way for it to be that way.

On the last plane I was on, I wrote "More joy" in my little red book, as an aspiration, I guess. I meant it. I don't know what it looks like, but I meant it when I said it. I dared to write it down. I think that is something of a start.

Hi. We're Your Serve Clever Girls

2011-12-20T23:30:00-05:00

This post is sponsored by Serve from American Express. Sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account!

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Serve works well if you know what you're doing.

Ahem.

When Clever Girls told me I was going to be part of the #CleverServe project, I was psyched. Things are nuts around here, and also, given the holiday, money is...well, what money is: a fun, elusive thing that allows you to eat well and have fun but is not unlimited and nor are those blasted elves on shelves bringing any extra for kicks (at least not that I know of.) So it was really cool to be able to invite Jean, Sue, and Sarah to a nice dinner at Grapeseed Bistro in Bethesda to try out the Serve card. These are three of the busiest working moms I know, and I jumped at the chance to spend some time with them.

Also, wine.

Dinner was great, as it always is at Grapeseed. My favorite thing was a Mediterranean wine pairing that kicked off the night beautifully, and the pork shank that was thankfully more memorable for how delicious it was than it sheer size. We sat and ate and drank and talked for a few hours, which as you know if you're trying to grab any kind of time with friends in December is a gift itself.

Then oysters with bacon buerre blanc. And I told you about this pork shank.

Seriously, so full.

I had activated my Serve card, and hoped I'd done it correctly because after all the wine and the oysters and the pork, well, no logistics, please.

And that is where I think I screwed up. Rather than go with the best, and intended, usage of the card, which is to split and easily reimburse people for dinner, I just thought I'd cut out the middleman and pay for the meal.

I am a dumb, dumb sugar sort of mama.

For some reason the card was only approved for part of the amount in the account, and therefore part of the cost of the meal. This left about $100 left over, which left Sarah and Sue in charge of making up the difference, and me, aka Failed Sugar Mama, trying to sort out the whys and wherefores with a waiter who probably hated me and my Serve card.

(This is entirely my fault and not Serve's.) (Please don't blame me if you go to Grapeseed with your Serve card and they process it, but look terrified while doing so. All my fault.)

Jean would like you to know that this was all my fault.

Anyway, the cool thing about this, and the silver lining and the cherry on top, etc., is that I was just able to go into my Serve account and reimburse Sue and Sarah from the account. And voila, that is, apparently, how the card is supposed to work, which is the point that I missed although it was clearly pointed out to me several times.

Is it New Year's yet?

So all things considered, this card is cool if you use it correctly, plus it's hooked up with American Express, so it's easy to get any problems resolved and customer service is solid. The neat thing about it is if you do split dinners, amounts can be reimbursed to bank accounts right from the table, via the Serve app, or you can handle it from a desktop later, as I did. Also, sign-up was very easy, the card came very quickly in the mail, and all communication was great.

You just have to read the directions, Laurie. (These directions would have told me to go to the Serve blog to figure out just what in the world I was doing, and also that I'd get an extra $50 credit to somehow embarrass myself with if I referred a friend! And if you comment below? You'll be entered in a giveaway to win a $100 credit to a brand new Serve account. So do it! If you want to know more, they're of course on Facebook and Twitter too.)

And all in all I don't think the ladies were too bothered by it. They hang out with me enough to know to expect some...gaps here and there.

Also, wine.

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Remember to sign up for Serve and receive $10 credit towards your first use. Comment below within the next 7 days for your chance to win an extra $100 credit to your account! Official sweepstakes rules and regulations may be found by clicking here. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

Head shots and Tiny Prints and cute blogger babies.

2011-12-16T01:24:51-05:00

I hate to have my picture taken.

If you ask many photographers, they will tell you the same thing. "There's a reason I stay behind the camera," is a common theme, or, quite simply, "Hell no."

And mostly it's easy to avoid it. When I'm with friends or family who consider me the designated shooter, other people slack off. Occasionally they'll force me into a group shot or catch me doing something stupid, or in a moment that they think is important enough to document and share.

Like my birthday.

Like for instance, my mother was so entertaining, taking pictures of me in the emergency room this weekend and texting them to my family as "Laurie on Morphine." Haha. Ouch. My side.

Pretty! (Ugh. Obviously I have no remaining pride where it comes to posting unflattering photos of myself on the internet.)

But for the most part I can count on staying under the radar.

This of course does not count times when I'm with bloggers. If you've hung out with bloggers, who you know are obsessed with capturing every moment, every facial expression, every unfortunate eating photo, every ill-advised late night gang sign you're way too old to throw so it shows up on Flickr and now Instagram and maybe therefore Twitter and sometimes randomly on a PERSONAL WEBBLOG and so when those blogging events both large and small throw down you just practice the chin tuck Carson Kressley TRIED to teach you in Chicago in '09 and hope for the best.

Sometimes with little success.

Sometimes with a little bit more.

And some people? Should just always be in the picture.

A couple of weeks ago it occurred to me that I was going to need a new website soon and that for that site I might need a shot or two of myself, not the self-portrait variety, although I can handle those pretty well too at this point.

(That one was a lot harder than it looks. It's good to have goals.)

So thanks to the lovely Leticia Barr, I scored an invitation to a truly lovely evening at Mary Gardella's LoveLight Studios in Savage, Maryland (one of the coolest spots within driving distance from my house, a place that has good restaurants and fun shopping, and also artist studios/residencies on site, which is where Mary works.)

I got to hang out with some bloggers, talk about Tiny Prints (no hardship at all because I've used them before and was very happy with my holiday cards last year) and also have Mary work her picture-taking magic.

It was a lot of fun.

And Mary took my picture. She made it less painful than it usually is, because I especially freak about portraits. I feel weird. I obsess about my lipstick, and my hair (oh dear God, my hair.) This particular day I had come from a sad family event, so my eyes were puffy and my sweater was wrinkly and...and...whatever.

I like this one.

I even posted it on Facebook, where it has a number of "likes" that I'd like to share with you because I think it's hysterical, but I am not the kind of girl to be liked and tell.

That is Mary's way, it seems -- to make the picture-taking process as relaxed and low-pressure as possible, which is not only gerat for a person like me, but works wonders in family and child situations, too. I enjoyed it, and I feel good about the images. (There were more, but this is all I feel like posting.) And besides this particular picture, what it did was force me out of my comfort zone, with a person who knows perfectly well what she's doing, in a place with blog friends who when it comes down to it are very, very supportive of all of us feeling good, and feeling comfortable in our skins, both in the moment and on the screen.

I think that's pretty cool.

Plus I got to spend some time with my new friend Huck, who is wonderfully good for any picture-taking nerves. (Babies!) Thanks to his mom Stephanie for letting me borrow him for half an hour. He's a lover, not a fighter.

Here are Mary's photo tips, mostly for working with kids, but I always assume this can be transferred to grownups, too. We're not much different, really. And thanks to Leticia and Tiny Prints for giving me a nice night out at the end of a very sad day.

Things can swing back into balance from unlikely places and things. Thats my favorite.

the sidewalk bends where your house ends.

2011-12-10T02:03:29-05:00

I broke you down that time, remember? I wasn't in my right mind, you said. I told you about yourself. I said things I ought not to have said, you said, except really those were the things I ought to have said all along, especially the time that you did that horrible thing.

They were just dogs. They just had to be taken to a professional conference, and left in a hotel room where I was terrified someone would steal them -- rare breed, crated, unaccustomed to anything but the sun shining on them through our kitchen and dining room while I was gone.

Just dogs.

I was sorry if you didn't like the image you'd constructed with my assistance. I really was. It's so much easier. It keeps it going so much longer -- the minimizing, the less-than, the biting of tongues and the self-edits.

"You are not yourself right now. I just can't even talk to you right now."

Except I was. I finally was. If you couldn't handle that -- the unusually harsh tone of voice, mascara smeared from an exhausted crash interrupted only when you finally chose to show up three days later with demands and judgments -- I just didn't know. I couldn't help you. I couldn't adjust my volume. I finally didn't know for sure you wouldn't hit me. I finally saw an edge in your eyes my soul couldn't tolerate.

I finally acknowledged an absolute willingness to take responsibility for pretty much anything that I couldn't abide from a bag boy at the grocery, much less a man who stood up every day and said he was there for whatever.

You rejected even the things you knew I was right about. You handed me all that you could find in the vicinity to shut me up, the things that worked, the things that never did. You didn't care. You just wanted it to stop, to end -- not even just opposition, although that was the worst. Just, everything. Noise. Input. Opinions. Girls. How we thought and felt as a result of what you said and did. Yeah, no.

My understanding is that you have some measure of fulfillment now, that you landed safely, probably when it all got to be too much. I understand that there are three versions of you running around in the world, three! (I'm also quite the internet snooper, truth be told.)

I think of you sometimes. It's a pathetic Jack Kerouac thing, it's middle-aged people reminiscing about acid and my compulsion to tell them about my cracked concrete steps on that unseasonably warm April day and you asking me if I'd sign on, if I'd go to Santa Fe.

It's knowing I knew so hard that no, I'd never go, and wanting so hard for you to wash your face and straighten up so we could leave.

It was everything then. You were everything then. And I'm sadly sure that your likely delightfully sober wife hangs the lights and gave that precious U2 t-shirt of mine away long ago, the one I gave you when I gave you other things except you had no other clean clothes so I decided I needed to give you my coolest garment too, you know, for some reason.

I miss that shirt, still, like I don't miss you at all. I earned it. You took it.

No one gets to miss the storm of what will be.

2011-12-09T00:30:36-05:00

December. I cannot believe it. Another year just about burned and what? How did that happen? What happened? Where did it go?

I've been running since September, it feels like, inside and out, and with four days of rain and a winter weather advisory today I want to stay home and in bed and let it all shake out. (I have the best bed in all the land. I recommend getting a slightly shittier bed so you don't want to be in it all of the time, but I'm already screwed. I love my bed like a person, except slightly more appropriately.) It's true that things are circling back to some kind of center -- I've been having that thought lately, incessantly, actually: "sometimes the center holds." And I don't know where this comes from except it's what I keep thinking in spite of some data to the contrary from this stupid, irritating writer brain.

I could give you a list of where I've been beyond the bits and pieces I've shared here, but that's probably really boring. I could tell you about the people I've been with and that is so much less of any kind of boring, given as I am to hanging with compelling people whenever possible. But those stories will have to hang themselves on the line one by one. I don't know where to begin, so I'm going to let them pick and choose.

I don't ever know how to catch up after so much time away. But I can say that I've been to Pittsburgh, California, Philadelphia and then back home. I've been in a place called the Mississippi Delta that I knew nothing of before some friends pointed me there, and it will take a good long while to share just what I think and feel from that experience. I've been consoled by rain on a tin roof and delighted by the sight of the Pee Wee's Big Adventure dinosaurs from the highway enough to put returning to see them on my ever-in-progress life list.

"Au revoir, Simone!"

"Au revoir, Pee Wee!"

Such is the state of affairs, constantly, around here.

(The rain on the roof part is as good as you'd expect, and if you've heard it, you know.)

I've shriveled from three hours drinking Champagne in a steaming hot tub under desert rain with some of the smartest and nicest people I've ever met. (I am not making that up. I am not.) I have chopped up and roasted a sick amount of winter squash hours before I got on a plane simply because I didn't want it to rot on my friend's counter. I have chaperoned a field trip. I have gawked at William Faulkner's story notes from where he posted them on his bedroom wall a long, long time ago, and watched a late-day southern sun slant beautifully through trees in his backyard. I have bought one single Christmas present that now I have to take back because someone else bought it too. I have won a football helmet autographed by this year's NFL rookie squad, and I have had a genuine Hog teach my best friend and me how to pour a Guinness. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, twice. I have won a $500 Apple gift card. I have lost a camera. I have held Crow for .5 seconds. I have not been eating my vegetables. I have communicated, incessantly, and mostly well.

And that is just the past 30 days. I've been lucky, mostly. I'm guided and supported in some kind of providential way by some of the smartest and most compassionate people I have ever known. I have had friendship and love of an insane level thrown at me from various quarters. I've sung my way across four or five states in vastly different parts of the country. I have come to some kind of comfortable truce with not knowing much, with throwing my best light and dark intentions in the washer of the world and sort of hoping for a change that they'll run together.

I have not been stopped once, not on the highway or in security. I have had two plane rows entirely to myself. I have been -- remarkably, and there are a few people out there who will know just how much -- almost entirely unafraid of flying, for the first time in my life.

And in the middle of all of the problems and confusion and absolute lack of clarity that I've suffered for months on this latest go-round, I have a core of something now that I know is relatively solid in spite of the fact that my brain is porous and short-sighted enough that surely it could all come undone at any time.

It's been an interesting span of days.

December First

2011-12-01T01:45:51-05:00

It is your birthday. You would have been 90 years old today.

"90?" you would have said. "That's too damn old anyway."

There is a reason why I'm like this.

I went to visit you in the cemetery on Thanksgiving for the first time since you died.

I didn't think for these two years that I could do it, so I didn't. I put it on my life list, even, because it was something I really wanted to do this year, but I had no idea when I'd manage it. And then I went to this two-hour yoga class that morning for the holiday (yoga people like giving thanks and gratitude and all of that bullshit. It's why it's probably good that I hang around them a lot.) And in savasana I set a couple of unintentional intentions (because that is also how yoga messes with your head. It clears a lot of the garbage out and makes you think good things are your idea.)

So I decided to go see you, that it was time, and that I was capable, and that it was a good use of my time on that particular day.

I told Sarah on the way that I was going, in the context of another conversation, and she kind of went with me, because she shows up for me like that. She was in my phone in my pocket, anyway. She said she would help me do it when she saw it on my list, which I thought was the most uncommonly sweet thing that I'd never have to take her up on, and yet that's how it turned out.

(You would like her so much, because she is straightforward and not sketchy and truthful and fun, like you. You would appreciate that she is a good friend to me, that she is available to me at times like that when I am sad and resolute, when most people would have nothing to do with me at all, also like you, as it turns out. You would make her pancakes and bacon and point her to the Jack Daniels under the sink. And for that, among many other reasons, she would like you too.)

I stopped at My Mom's Place and the same lady who has been there for 20 years was selling flowers. I cried behind my sunglasses because I suddenly couldn't stop when I told her I was there to see my grandparents. She probably hears so many of these awkward stories a day, but she responds like they're new. She's a nice person. She and her son sold me some roses, the color of fall in the sun.

As I told Sarah, she is always open in daylight, even when you pull up there most afraid she won't be.

You were there.

There is no nameplate quite yet, which made it easier, I admit. It eased me in. But I knew you were there, because I remembered leaving you there almost two years ago.

I talked with you, with both of you. I sat scraping dirt and leaves away from the granite while the most amazing late November sun went down around us. I told you things weren't great, but I was pretty sure that they would be okay. I told you that I knew you weren't just there, that you were everywhere I went, because that is true, although I guessed you'd know better than me where you were? I don't know.

I thanked you, again, to the air where I hoped it mattered, for giving me so much of whatever it is that makes it possible to carry this on, responsibility, faith, family, whatever, I don't know. I asked for your help. I did. I need it, not knowing where it will come from, but asking anyway.

I miss you every day. I will, in some way conscious or not, until I die, because you were one of the indelible prints upon my life. We were buddies since I was born. You taught me to read, and to regulate myself in certain situations, and to ease into someone loving me for no reason. You made me sugar bread and beat me at Yatzhee almost every time and took down the clothes while I walked round and round the oak tree with the dogs.

You also taught me to fight back, to (maybe ill-advisedly) say the thing not quite appreciated in mixed company. You walked with me hand in hand down the street to Nanny's and you were the only person in the world who could always, always remind me in a way that didn't piss me off but instead felt like a Valentine that Jesus and Mary would always love me even if I didn't see it right then.

You were to me like breathing, and no matter how old you were when you died, which seems to be what people use to measure the impact of a death, it was still the worst thing I've had yet to endure . And I wish I believed what you always taught me to, the part where we are together, but I'm not so sure about that. I just know that every thank you, every memory, every action that happens in my life as a result of what it meant to be your granddaughter for 38 years matters enough to me to create some kind of secular heaven, even if I'm the only one who ever sees it. That is enough for me, and I am grateful, for you, so much, the most.

November

2011-11-29T02:06:44-05:00

People die. They marry. Rain falls, and then, an oddly warm sun shines.

None of it makes any sense. Moments of it make every kind.

We walked up the hill behind the car with a beloved body inside that it made no sense was dead. It was an impossibly beautiful day, radiant with late fall sun. We didn't know where we were, really, literally or figuratively. We'd seen this church, but never the cemetery. We'd seen her dead, but never where she'd rest. And when we saw it, this sun-crazy place, we were, I could tell, unexpectedly, collectively pleased. Who would not want to rest here? Who who had loved the outdoors would not want to eventually land here, leaves and birds and trees?

Besides the obvious answer of a person who died entirely too soon, there was some kind of seemingly collective calling in of eventual redemption among what had just seemed a waste, a fight against a disease that took and tested and eventually killed.

I have a phrase that I've come to use over the years, "locate in space." If you matter, if it matters, if I can locate you in space amid the inevitable chaos, I'm okay. If I feel you must need me, must need to find me for any reason, I'm available. You can locate me.

That's what we were doing. We were located in space, you could find us all there, your spirit, I guess, if it needed to. You were there, I'm sure, because you were powerful like that. We were locating, all lost in whatever our perception and processing was of this event, and no matter what the hem of Daddy's suit, the sun glint off of Patrick's phone, Jimmy's cigar smoke, Billy's grieving dog on a leash. It brought us back.

It's weird, the things that call you home. You may have to work harder for them over the years, older as you are, more inured. They're still there. They will always be.

You leave someone you loved for better or for worse in the ground on a sun-speckled hill in a county just north of where you live. You make a phone call or wait for a text message from someone you're not sure at all you love but you're fairly sure you do -- although maybe you do or don't or probably you shouldn't -- from states away at the same time. Your relatives ask you who you're seeing and you can't appropriately answer according to the family construct, because there is no acceptable answer besides yes, this. Your job sucks.

All of this swirls around you.

It swirls around me.

It is so hard.

And meanwhile, amid this, you know that ease is around the corner. You know for goddamned sure that there is one brave, impossibly difficult step between you and the next part, before it all smooths out, as it must, to make the second half so immeasurably better than the first, as you know you need it to be, in this particular combination of human body and brain.

And you know you have to take it. You know the story is playing out -- like Sons of Anarchy, like Hamlet, like The Facts of Life. You know that you are merely the instrument to see it through.

And that's the part that's hard. That's the part that exposes what you're paying for, whatever past-life-things you think you did, and that after that, after you accept the hugeness that you may lose and the beyond-hugeness that you'll gain? You know although you don't want to know at all, really, that that's where it is.

That's the real thing. That's the good stuff.

You're kind of ready, though. You're done. Alert Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the media, the people in boxes underground who would have ultimately loved you no matter what, who do not care at all from where they lay beyond what it looks like except please, please, please be happy?

You know like they would have ultimately, like maybe they knew before you. That you are so, so beyond, so overdue.

Life List 2011

2011-11-12T18:50:22-05:00

Camp Mighty begins tomorrow night in Palm Springs, and I'm late with my life list.

Oh hey! Here I am! Already here, just finishing this post now. (Actually this is last night, pre-space party, to which I went without a "costume" that met the theme. This spurred another list item. Please see below.)

Of course I'm late. Water is wet, etc.

And oh, here I am, again! Just now posting this, on Saturday, at 3:47 PST.

Can you tell this exercise freaks me out a little? Well, it does, to tell the truth, and to top off my problem here, the list I drafted last week (sitting in a bar, impulsively, after Kris intelligently got in a cab to go home) is in a notebook that is way, way back in Maryland, in a purse I swapped out the other day. Change bags carefully, people. Sigh.

Anyway, I just thought that since this is supposed to be a positive, aspirational thing most of all, I'd do it over again, stream of consciousness, here. And that also I would shut up and just start writing. So here we go.

1. Shoot an Operation Smile surgical mission.

2. Have Boston Terriers in my house again and work more actively with senior rescue.

3. Have a yard.

4. Pay off all student loan debt early.

5. Embrace my most hated holiday: go to a Halloween-type event in a costume and not feel like a fool and also not complain about it.

6. Hike the Grand Canyon.

7. Finish the Ancestry.com family tree for both sides of my family.

8. Travel the regions in Ireland and Germany where my relatives originated.

9. Digitize as many of the White family photos as possible and share them with the whole family.

10. Have an online presence that reflects my personality and my skills, and what I have accomplished so far in writing and photography -- a portfolio, a business site and a blog. Also, to help Draft Day Suit be the best that it can be, along with the other sites I write for.

11. Have Washington Capitals season tickets.

12. Have competent knife skills, and a really great set of kitchen knives.

13. Have somewhere I can go to stay on a beach that is mine, anytime.

14. Be self-supporting strictly through writing/photo/media work.

15. Grow a hydrangea and a lilac bush.

16. Print out and organize copies in books and frames of all of my images that move me or that I want to keep off of the computer.

17. Find the courage to visit my grandmother's grave, at least once.

18. Be able to hold crow, headstand, side crane, wheel and all other yoga poses that I currently cannot successfully hold.

19. Visit the rest of the 50 states.

20. Have a 41st birthday party, because I wasn't ready for 40.

21. Have my grandmother's ring resized and made more stable so I can actually wear it.

22. Go to a Super Bowl and a Stanley Cup championship game with Sarah.

23. Grow a garden -- even just an herb garden or a few flowers -- without killing it.

24. Get overall financial house in order so it is not a constant source of anxiety.

25. Have a Christmas Eve tradition that brings me joy.

26. See every country in Europe.

27. Go back to Vietnam, and to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.

28. Find a place called Dodge and get the hell out of it.

29. Understand how to competently use Speedlite flash and studio lighting.

30. Work in a darkroom again.

31. Publish an article in a national magazine.

32. Get my 200-hour yoga certification.

33. Visit the White House, go into the Washington Monument, and other things I've never done because I live in the D.C. area.

34. Actively support surgeries for at least five children per year through Operation Smile.

35. Go on one silent weekend retreat per year.

36. Drive cross-country.

37. Find a way to give back to my parents in the significant way that they have given to me.

38. Go to Michael's Virginia Tech graduation.

39. Get another tattoo before I turn 41.

40. Host a Thanksgiving dinner.

41. Have a regular practice of having people over to my house for meals and conversation.

42. Have a women's weekend in a pretty place by the water with some of my closest friends.

43. Read every classic novel I feel I should read before I die.

44. Purge all belongings that have no purpose in my life -- clothing, books, stuff -- and be at peace with the basics that remain.

45. Spend some time with Elisa and Maria in the Bay area.

46. Visit the Alamo. Remember it.

47. Go back to Houston and see my remarkable group of women of the blogs who live there.

48. Catalog and recognize all birthdays for all important people in my life. Send the damn cards.

49. Finally -- finally! -- visit Vicky in Seattle.

50. See Duran Duran in London.

51. Take trips on all major Amtrak routes in the U.S.

52. Do something hands-on and helpful in New Orleans.

53. Do the Edgar Allen Poe touristy stuff and other fun things I've never tried in Baltimore.

54. Throw a crab feast for my half-birthday.

55. Learn to pack a suitcase competently.

56. Have Maryland basketball season tickets -- men and women.

57. Publish a book.

58. Understand New York -- the subway system, visit all boroughs, know Manhattan like the back of my hand.

59. Cultivate a competent slap shot.

60. Learn to play the drums.

61. Go to an Orioles-Nats game.

61. Actually record a fun and ridiculous podcast with Sarah.

62. Go to Ireland with my sister.

63. See all the oceans.

64. Buy myself a pair of diamond earrings.

65. Have someone who knows what she is doing rewrite my resume to reflect my skills and experience.

66. Photograph a birth.

67. Drive on the other side of the road in England.

68. Own a pair of ruby slippers.

69. Pay someone's college tuition.

70. Have a photo site with Laurie.

71. Understand how to design a basic website in a variety of platforms.

72. Publish an op-ed.

73. Visit Karen and Shannon in Ottawa. See the rest of Canada and all of my friends there, too.

74. Throw a great 50th anniversary party for my parents.

75. Take a food and wine trip to Italy.

76. Spend a whole summer and a whole winter at the beach.

77. Publish a piece in Salon, Slate, Washingtonpost.com,

78. Understand wine, maybe at the sommelier level.

79. Take my mom on a trip anywhere of her choosing, on me.

80. Know how to give a basic haircut without ruining someone's life.

81. Consistently practice receiving compliments with gratitude, not apologies or self-effacing comments.

82. Hike a (smallish) mountain.

83. Sing backup in a band

84. Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

85. Complete my local Mental Health Association hotline training, finally, and volunteer there.

86. Write a short story I don't hate.

87. Become a doula.

88. Learn American Sign Language.

89. Own a core wardrobe of green dresses.

90. Have a king-sized bed with really good sheets, an actual duvet, and pillows that don't drive me crazy.

91. Create an annual tradition with my cousins.

92. Perfect a variety of vinaigrettes.

93. Become conversationally proficient in French again.

94. Have a full Christmas tree of my own ornaments, and also a beachy, small tree with the ones I've bought on vacations.

95. Go to Bonnaroo and the Virgin Festival in London (or at least see a show at Wembley Stadium.)

96. Refinish and use an awesome antique writing desk.

97. Outfit my whole kitchen with good small appliances and all gadgets I need to make me feel like I'm not in college anymore.

98. See every artist live who is left on my list -- Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and I know there are more.

99. Drink coffee in a Parisian cafe.

100. To acknowledge the possibility of falling madly, yet sanely, in real, live adult love with an actual functional human being who feels the same way. Maybe let them live in my house.

And most importantly:

100. Be able to confidently say that I love what I do, that the structure of my daily life reflects what I care about, what I'm good at, and how I can best contribute in words and pictures. Oh, and that I love where and with whom I live, and that I am content in my life.

I picked five big goals off of this list to share with my group, that I'm going to work on extra special over the next year. There are some that I know I can do more easily that I didn't put on my five-things list. I saved some tough stuff for that one. I'll share that later.

And if you've ever thought this activity sounds lame or ridiculous or like something you shouldn't really have to do in an organized way? Well, I thought the same thing. I blew it off and shot it down as stupid for a long time. And at least in my case, I was totally and completely wrong. I just sat in a room with 20 strangers for three hours. I stood up and I said what I wanted, I acknowledged that I need help with some of it, and I listened to the rest of them do the same. It was one of the most powerful, uncomfortable, cool, inspiring, and sometimes just plain enjoyable things I've ever done.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll keep you posted.

Additions:

I keep thinking of new stuff.

102. Go to the Olympics.

103. Go to a Sox game with TwoBusy and ClumberKim.

What I Love

2011-11-08T23:59:13-05:00

I wrote this post almost exactly a year ago. It's partly why I'm going to California, so I'm going to do the whole "don't blow NaBloPoMo by doing dumb things like repost posts" and repost it.

As much as I really am my very harshest critic (seriously -- the trash you talk about me will never surpass the voices in my head) there are some things I like about myself too. For instance, I have better-than-average taste in music and a sense of responsibility to other people and the world at large. I understand how to competently merge on the highway. I make a kickass grilled cheese sandwich and I do not purchase cheap beer.

But when it comes down to the very awkward -- for me, anyway -- question of what I love about myself, I think the most important thing is something that I can only describe as my constant engagement with life, and a commitment to learning and experiencing new things as much as I can until I die.

That sounds wrong, and vaguely awkward. I can't really sum it up.

EXCUSE ME WHO CAME UP WITH THESE PROMPTS ANYWAY?

But all I know is that my willingness to try new things -- to learn them or go to them or hang out with them or eat them or purchase them -- has made a profound and positive difference in my life.

It hasn't always felt like it was so great at the time. I climbed a rock wall once, for instance, and that pretty much sucked. I am a terrible rock climber. I don't have an extreme sports bone in my body, and I fear the destruction of years of reconstructive surgery and invasive orthodontia, to tell the truth. But when a (cute!) man with very serious looking climbing gear and an earnest expression handed me the little shoes and the helmet, at some point over the past decade I learned not to cry about it, but to put it on and try it until I either accomplished the goal or failed.

In this case I almost achieved the goal before I nearly stroked out -- major anxiety attack -- at the top. But the point is, I tried.

Over the past ten years, especially, I've had several opportunities to respond to negative situations -- heartbreak, depression, the impossible grief that comes with the deaths of some of the most important people in my life. And although some days it felt like swimming against every imaginable current just to meet the basic demands of my life as I was going through those things, I really never stopped living. I caved in all but the most basic, essential of ways. I raged and drank and babbled to my friends, but I never stopped, in very small and some very big ways, reaching for better.

I miraculously never stopped trying, even when the last possible thing I wanted to do was try anything. Even when the last thing I felt capable of was another activity or thought or plan.

This is the characteristic that led me to take a trip almost every month in 2005, the year the supposed love of my life left to follow his me-less dreams. I cried my way through the American Southwest for the first time, and ended up in California for the first time the following year. I also signed up for my first photography class in the deepest throes of depression following that breakup, and it would take an entire blog to describe the effect that has had on my life.

This is what led me to blogging and the rack of great friends I got from that, and back to school and across the world to take a cab across Hanoi alone and sit with kids who couldn't hear or speak, which was only one of the reasons that it didn't matter that our languages were different.

My rolling stone brain gives me my stories, by virtue of the hands and feet it sends on various travels and the mouth that goes along. And although my life may lack some of the fundamental things I still kind of believe I ultimately need to think it was what I wanted it to be, in the meantime I live it every day.

Because the alternative is horrifying. Because when I'm idle I'm insane. Because there is so much to do -- can't you see it all out there?

I don't wait for anyone to go with me, because I can't afford to.

Even when I'm sitting still, I'm planning. I'm dreaming and imagining and knowing that no matter how many years I have left, it will not be enough to do all of the things that I have the capacity both to rock and to fail on the face of this planet. And as much as that could be overwhelming, I'm just glad I still think that way.

I want to go everywhere.

I want to learn languages.

I want to see so much more live music.

I want to be the writer I've always wanted to be, in every way that I can possibly make that real.

I want to be part of a community -- a real one, one that is physical and that I can feel around me in my house or on my street.

I want to take your picture.

I want to understand major political conflicts and economics and learn sign language and how to change my own oil.

And they're not all big things, either, the things I pick up. This fall I made chicken soup from scratch for the first time. It was a pain in the ass, but it was completely rewarding and now I know how and I can do it again.

As long as I'm alive and capable, I won't ever stop learning. I won't ever stop doing stuff or going places or trying things. And I kind of love that about me.

No, not that kind of cuff.

2011-11-07T21:04:59-05:00

I am so tired of bad or just annoying news. I'm trying really hard to be positive because although some things are making me sad and some things are really on my nerves and I don't know how to handle some other things, I've got some other things to be very happy about.

So I'm trying to be good and I'm trying to be a grown-up and I'm trying to take care of some of the things that no one else but me can do. Like, I need to go to the dentist. I needed to find a new doctor. I need to get the bloodwork done that I've been putting off for a year. I need to get a (blech) mammogram.

So I found the new doctor, and I made an appointment a couple of weeks ago, after my mom nagged and nagged and nagged for days. She just started going to her and said that I would like her, and when people in my life say that I tend to believe them, as prepared as they are for me to call bullshit on what and whomever.

I don't know what the ethics are of disclosing a doctor's name online, but let's just say that her last name? Is almost identical to that of a 140-character message that I send way too many times daily, except with a d in between the second "e" and final "t". Trippy, right? Gave me some serious joy. She was also lovely right off the bat -- maybe a little younger than I am, not creepy or distracted or cold, just warm enough, focused, direct. The office itself was also professional and fairly quiet, in the basement of a newish medical building, really nice except for its lack of any kind of 3G or regular G reception. Seriously. Phone dead the whole time, and you know how that flies with me.

The medical assistant did her thing and then she took my blood pressure. It was 150 over 100, she said. Did I normally have high blood pressure? I told her no, and she said okay, the doctor would check it out.

The doctor came in and asked me again what my normal blood pressure was, and I was all, I don't know, pi cubed? I don't know math. It's usually pretty normal, never been a problem.

"Okay," she said. "That's something to keep an eye on. Plus, people are sometimes anxious or under duress when they come here."

Under duress. Bingo. She just described everything. I neglected to cry like that "I MISS YOU JESSICA" jackhole in the State Farm commercial, but I kind of wanted to. Oh Dr. Twitter (not exactly, but that's what I'll call her) I am. I AM! Thanks for noticing.

Then she decided to take it again, and I started to freak out a little. She spoke in slow, measured tones that make freaks like me crazier, as she wrapped the TOURNIQUET I MEAN CUFF around my arm and squeezed it and leaned down and read it and said "Hmm."

The 150 was the same, but we were down to 92 on the bottom.

Then she sat down on her little stool and started pounding away on her keyboard, making notes, no doubt, about my descent into hypertension and cardiac disease at 40.

"Okay. We need to monitor this. Let's have you monitor it at home daily for a month to see if there's any change, before we talk about other interventions."

Neat! Where would I procure a blood pressure cuff? Does Target carry blood pressure cuffs? MISSONI BY TARGET BLOOD PRESSURE CUFFS? Actually, what really immediately occurred to me was the blood pressure machine at the Giant that I'd stick my puny arm in when I was little just to watch it expand and retract, expand and retract, no doubt enraging a then-40-year-old woman whose doctor just told her the salad days (with dressing, anyway) were over. Oh hi, future self. Sorry for being a little asshole.

I nodded calmly and didn't ask her what kind of cuff to get or how I was supposed to do all of the actions associated with a blood pressure reading, including the occasionally impossible task of interpreting numbers, by myself, upside down. Were there left-handed blood pressure machines?This would probably be its own special kind of hell.

I also started to feel a counterproductive pounding in my head, and I told her that yes, lately, I had felt this. I told her that sometimes I don't sleep very well and that on mornings after that I feel a little weird, a little more odd lately. She nodded her head and said yes, yes, yes to all of these things and I just wondered the whole time if there was a blood pressure app, if I could press my broken iPhone screen up to my bicep and have it spit out ridiculously accurate numbers.

I'm really not sure I'm equipped to care for myself in my middle age, even, forget when I'm actually old.

Anyway, I left, some crazy orders for tests I don't want clutched in my hand. I walked out into the sunny day, and I did what any mature woman of an advancing, withering age would do.

I texted my mom.

"I finally have high blood pressure like you said I was going to give myself. Yay."

She asked me several questions and then she said "You'll need a cuff" and "What are you doing to follow up on the other stuff" and "Is she going to treat it" and what and when and then I went back to work.

You know, 40? You're a riot. Lol.

Lists suck generally so here are some lists.

2011-11-07T02:20:23-05:00

It's not tomorrow in California, so I'm claiming that for NaBloPoMo. Also it's not like I'm doing this for a prize. And if I was? Oops.

It's a little early to phone this in, but I'm in a jam because I was traveling this weekend and then there was this entirely engaging football game, so let me give you some lists rather than nothing at all.

Five things my life eats, as in consumes them without my permission or awareness so that I can never find them when I need them, which is frequently, and have to replace them on a consistent basis:

Hair ties.

Contact lens holders.

Corkscrews.

Camera chargers. (See also phone chargers, computer chargers, any kind of charger, basically.)

Olive green eyeliner. (I feel like I buy green eyeliner whenever I see it to prevent this problem, but yet and still, nowhere. I can always find the random brown I never use. No green.)

Five main current earworms:

Moves Like Jagger, Maroon Five (Hell. Hell on Earth. Plus no one will stop referencing it online, so, it's all SHE GOT THE MOOOOVVVVEEESSSS LIKE JAGGAH, SHE GOT THE MOOOOVVVVEEESSSSS LIKE JAGGAH around here)

You Should Hear How She Talks About You, Melissa Manchester

Whip It, The Dazz Band

It's Raining Men (Hi. We're your Weather Girls.) (Horrible. Unmanageable.)

Any of Dr. Hook's only three very famous songs, most likely When You're In Love With a Beautiful Woman, based entirely on mine and @parentopiadevra's latenight transgressions at Blogalicious.

"You watch your friends, you better watch your friends."

Five top-played songs on my main iTunes:

Take It Easy On Me, Little River Band (shut up)

Heavy Cross, The Gossip (have you heard Beth Ditto's voice? Because you should.)

Jackson, Hem (Ditto Sally Ellyson)

Jungleland, Bruce Springsteen (I went a little nuts when Clarence died and this upped the play count, for sure. This song will break your heart and put it back together a little. )

Where the Boat Leaves From, Zac Brown Band (shut up.)

Five places I would live with little hesitation if someone presented me with a worry-free move and at least a lateral move job:

San Francisco

Charlotte

London

New York

Baltimore (I know. What can I say? I'm a Maryland girl.)

Five best concerts I have ever seen (I'm just pulling the first five that come to my mind, because it's impossible otherwise):

Metallica, Capital Center. Just, holy hell. Holy hell.

Elton John, Red Piano, Las Vegas

Prince, Nutter Center (ha.), Dayton, Ohio

Hem, Ram's Head, Annapolis

Raconteurs, 9:30 Club, DC

(And now I'm thinking Patty Griffin at Constitution Hall during most of which I cried, Duran Duran at Constitution Hall, 2000ish, the first time I saw them live, Pearl Jam at JazzFest in New Orleans, Red Hot Chili Peppers at Virgin Festival in Baltimore, The Killers at the Hard Rock in Vegas...I can go on and on for days. This is a tough one.)

Five of my most frequently-stated words and phrases according to my own unscientific deduction, proving that I am neither articulate nor original in casual discourse:

Seriously?

Really?

Whatever.

Right. I know. RIGHT?

Thanks. (I am a grateful sort in spite of myself.)

Edited to add that I didn't include "fuck" which makes this the most inauthentic list of all time. And we hate inauthenticity around here, don't we? WE DO.

Five things I wonder if I have enough of every time I go to the grocery store:

Olive oil

garlic

protein sources

Milk (although I hardly drink it anymore.)

avocados (am compulsive avocado buyer.)

Five people who made me laugh this week:

Five most very favorite yoga poses:

Pigeon

forward fold

dolphin

legs up the wall

Clearly I can't count. That's four. Returning to add:

tie between savasana (corpse pose, where you just have to lie still.) and downward dog, because it makes me feel strong.

Five most loathsome yoga poses that make me question my relationship to my namasted center:

Chair (GAH CHAIR SUCKS OUCH CHAIR MY THIGHS BURN CHAIR BURN)

goddess (ironically named as goddesses ought not to suffer so.)

headstand (because I can't do it, mostly, and that gets on my nerves.)

crow (see above)

tree (I have no balance. My balance sucks.)

There you have them. Boring. Wrong. I may supplement them later, but I think we all know that when I say I will I totally will not.

Day Five Stream of Consciousness

2011-11-05T23:59:00-04:00

I love NaBloPoMo for how it makes you scrounge a dark corner in a room, desperate for words, with five minutes left to spit them out.

I love it for how it makes me remember that the reason why I picked this stupid name -- this LaurieWrites that I hate so very, very much -- was because I was halfway into my wine six years ago, broken hearted, desperate for an outlet, and this exact same space is what I found.

I love it for how I know that other people I love and admire and respect are doing it, for how there is a quickening pulse in my strangely small collective of a writing world, that this year feels so much more vibrant, for some reason.

I love how we have become more urgent as a result of what I'm guessing is our strange exhaustion.

I love how there are three minutes left.

I love how we're all still here.

I love that I still think that I have something to say, that I agonize over topics and conclusions and constructs, even though there is no defined audience.

I love that these posts don't get the perfect picture, that I don't care about the pixels and the diagrams.

I love the messy and insane and the stressed and the everything of this.

As a card-carrying glutton for punishment, I'm sure I always will. And I kind of love that knowledge too.