LaurieWrites

Video killed...me.

2009-12-20T11:51:25-05:00

Okay, a few things to contend with at the moment, I'm just warning you.

I am buried in my house. Not literally, of course, but given that the Washington area received almost two feet of snow over the past 30 hours, there was naught to do today but sit around and work on stuff, really, in between bouts of guilt-induced activity. I had purchased some supplies for this crafty thing I have on deck (I know, I know) and some Vodka and a variety of cured meats and was fairly certain I was set. Also I was going to finish watching Elf which I cannot finish and if you read Twitter and/or my Facebook newsfeed (get out of my Facebook newsfeed, freak job) with any regularity you would know that everyone is watching Elf. It is a four alarm Christmas conspiracy.

Where my Christmas Vacation people at? Doesn't anyone around here watch Scrooged, one of the best holiday movies ever?

No it's all ELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELFELF. Screw Frank Capra, says the world. I want my Will Ferrell.

The world is a hollow tree.

Anyway, it is really beautiful outside now that I am not doing last night's white-knuckle ride of death from Germantown to my parents' house, which is not and never will be funny even in retrospect, it will always suck just as very much as it did last night. Horrible, friends. HORRIBLE. I refuse to fair weather pray so I was doing that ridiculous, "Oh my GOD I'm a good person right?" litany in my head. "I still have things to accomplish and DO oh SHIT is that Jacob Marley over there behind that tree? I can't tell because of the white out conditions on this icy snow emergency route that is generally a deer-laden death trap anyway."

The early sleet was the issue, because it made things slippery on the road immediately and no matter what the idiots in SUVs who are going 50 miles per hour think, there is just no way to tell what will make a little movement turn into a slide and some of the hills I was on are not hills I want to slide on at all in thousands of pounds of metal heading towards trees and buildings. I am the dork who will go five miles per hour no matter how loserish I may appear because I trust nothing, especially not black ice and other drivers, and guess what? When I'm alive when I get home the person flipping me off will never see me again.

I should probably indicate that among my weird issues with life is a real sadness about people who die in weather events - like the morning after when it's all sunny and melting it's horrifying to know that someone died because they were on the wrong icy road at the wrong time, just passing through. Same deal when the water calms down after someone died in a squall. Unbearable to me.

It was no joke and the worst part of it was that I knew I was out until after the snow started falling for perfectly illegitimate and stupid reasons. This involved a trip not only to Wal-Mart (where I never go. Desperate times.) but to the grocery store at 11 p.m. that resulted in this sort of view of the chip/snack aisle

Those things in the gold bags down there at the end must really suck. Must be an off-brand pretzel or something.

And then a hellish wait in line that included a few special souls, first of all the lady next to me who was inspecting the cart of the young couple in front of her going, "All you need is BEER, DVDs, and your PREFERRED METHOD OF BIRTH CONTROL I SEE YOU HAVE CONDOMS why are people concerned with TOILET PAPER and they crack me up with their PAPER TOWELS."

Sorry, she was a yeller who spoke with no punctuation. I was also plagued by those people who do not understand that protocol when lines are out of control is to STAND in the vertical aisle directly across from the register you are going to so that you are NOT blocking the main HORIZONTAL aisle. And this protocol does not entail moving as closely up on my ass as you can and being all weird like if you stay on the appointed vertical side until there is reasonable room to move up that people are going to cut you off. It's not going to happen, and if they try, you have the power of protocol (I couldn't care less about protocol usually but in the grocery store I'll invoke it a million times over) and like 50 other people on your side at that point.

Because you know what I will do if you move that close to me, destroyer of my happiness? I will refuse to put the little grocery barrier thing down on the belt that removes mine from yours. I will do that because I am a mean, mean little girl with anger issues who solves problems ineffectually in large groups of strangers. And also because you are an ass and I am your karmic justice in black boots.

Actually what I did last night because I was so over her huffing and puffing with her five items behind me was move out of the way and gesture to her to go ahead of me, not because I'm a nice person but because she was driving me crazy breathing down my neck and sighing (I hate sighing. I hate when people set off my personal space alarm.) And then she had the nerve to get irritated: "I wasn't mad at you." (ed. note Good, thanks. I'm hiding my rage sufficiently well myself. Just put. your. stuff. on. the. belt.) I've done it before and I'll do it again. I will move out of the way to get you on yours, for both of our sakes.

The grocery store really is a horror show.

Another wintertime rant while we're at it and I'll just get it out of the way: the people who drive around with piles of snow on their hoods and roofs should be fined huge sums so they will stop doing this or they lose their right to drive. They are related to and are often the same as the people who brush off a circle of snow on their driver's side window and clear nothing else off, so they're basically driving with windows - all windows, including rear views - covered with snow and I don't know how this is possible. When pressed I have to say that I'm more bothered by the first group though because it's really not helpful to be driving behind someone or the road and have whatever frozen mass is on top of their car come flying off and slamming into your windshield.

Do the right snow thing, really.

#########################################

I am agitated perhaps because I spent three hours in my basement last night trying to record myself on video.

I knew it would be difficult but I had no idea to what degree.

I'm applying for something for which I need to submit a video of myself primarily and I wasn't at all sure I could do it given my total hatred of being on video or watching myself on video or worst of all having other people watch me on video.

So I decided I had to do it, because even if I don't win (and it's entirely almost 100 percent certain I won't, just saying) there's nothing like a totally awkward and uncomfortably self-revealing activity to add to my current end-of-2009 review.

It's really, really difficult for me.

It's almost like it triggers dissociative identity disorder, like there's this person I think I am, I mean, just the shell of her, you know - and then there's this person I see talking at me in the computer box and it's very strange and difficult to correlate the two because they are NOT THE SAME.

I mean, I know all about the chins, trust me. I just don't necessarily feel like watching them played back at myself.

And not only is there the wacked out way I feel about watching myself talk, it's what I hear myself saying. There is a content and flow issue here, and it's horrible. I have to admit at some point - like, oh, maybe about 10 seconds in - it starts to get funny because I'll try to address the question I'm supposed to address in this clip and I start talking about stuff that has absolutely no relationship to the question at hand. Or I'll start out on topic and then all of a sudden it's like, "Whoo, let's take THIS left turn right here, it's a PARTY" and I'm talking about something completely ridiculous and unrelated and...yeah.

So then I have all of these odd screen shots of me making faces at myself as I go to hit the "stop" button and I'm saying stupid things like "Well that won't work," and "GAH, DUMB" and "What the HELL did I say that for?" and "Oh well, that was wrong too." I also have strange facial expressions. Why has no one told me this? I cannot sit still. I cannot keep my eyes still and I have an odd tendency to look up at the ceiling. I move my head back and forth with reckless abandon. The hell?

Anyway, I am struggling with video.

There is deeper commentary here about self-esteem and pushing one's limits and why can't the world be kind and why can't I be BEAUTIFUL and the type of person who chases video cameras around to show the world my 1,000-watt awesomeness. But that's really not anything I can analyze right now without plunging myself into some depressing intellectualization of something that doesn't need so many words to describe it in the short or long run.

And believe me, I truly know how fairly unimportant this is in the long run. I do not think it is more important to be comfortable with one's appearance in a moving picture show than it is to be good or kind or whatever fa-la-la-la-la else. I have some friends going through some heavy life things right now, some stories this weekend alone in this crazy snow that tell a lot about why we're really here and just how difficult this life can be and it makes me feel stupid to be focusing on the surface.

But this is just part of my story in the here and now. It's a pretty simple fact that it makes me uncomfortable and I think I'd be better off if I didn't feel that way. I think I'd be more functional and productive if I raged against this bullshit a little bit, if that makes sense. It's something I apparently feel the need to contend with and do, maybe to inoculate myself against it in the future.

I have so many things I want to do next year and that's where my focus already is. If I could I'd skip Christmas and go straight to the new year, and I say that in the most non-nasty way possible. I'm tired of it, honestly, and again, I don't mean this in a bitter or unfriendly way at all. It's just the way I feel.

I don't have any time to screw around, and all the barriers are, really, in my own head.

This dumb video is also totally due tomorrow and I have no game. So I'm going to go for a walk and take some pictures.

TK

2009-12-18T13:29:49-05:00

Look, it's a video I took of absolutely terrible quality of you playing a song at Celia's coffee house!

Oh wait, no it's not. Lie. I can't get it to embed. It's just a picture of you at the only open mic I will allow myself to attend at this point in my life, solely because you play there on occasion.

You are one of my favorite people, someone from whom I've learned a lot about the measure of my words and a little bit about boundaries too.

I've been proud to play a tiny part in encouraging your musical efforts, because as you know I've spent a lot of time listening to dudes play guitar and it is the measure of your talent and of my healing ears that I can say very honestly that I would choose to listen to yours even if you weren't my friend.

And I'll go to an open mic night. On purpose. I just wanted to reinforce that point.

Selfishly, you give me hope that some good ones are still out there. I admire your family and the way you embrace your life and your home, your personal integrity and your spirit.

And although I will never, ever, EVER root for the Philadelphia Flyers or stop short of wishing them anything but a crushing loss against any team but the Pittsburgh Penguins, it is in your honor that I really usually hope the Eagles and the Phillies win even though I don't really care so much about football or baseball. I may even pull for them mentally a little bit. I figure it's the least I can do. Because it's a real friend from Philly who feels genuinely bad for you when the Capitals flame out in the playoffs, even if it is at the hands of that jackass Sidney Crosby (but if that shared loathing doesn't bond us I don't really know what could.)

Happy birthday, dude. I hope this year finds you living the dream even more clearly. You deserve everything good.

Sarah.

2009-12-17T23:22:00-05:00

On the day you were born I was threeish years old and I like to think that somehow I was rambling around in my toddler state and all of a sudden my little baby hands went like this towards Ohio.

\m/ \m/

Because I would find it very strange that I didn't have some kind of telepathy where you were concerned even then.

I think sometimes when you get older you think that you won't find friends like you found when you were younger. This is not to say that you will not find friends, because surely most of us will at all places along the path. But what is unusual is finding a friend who you feel like, if there were ever a place where you had met that person that they would have fit right into your life right into that spot, wherever it was or what was going on.

Like say you were drinking in a parking lot before a really dumb show, if you were ever inclined to do that kind of thing? Like that person would have been the person you'd most want there to do that stupid shit with you. Like that person would have been there anyway and if she had it would have been better.

And maybe even for some of the smart things too.

Exactly.

Ha!

The day I met you for real in person I sliced my finger almost in half in a door and then we ate prime rib sandwiches that we should go have again because they were very good. And I think you felt more sorry for me than you were inclined to laugh at me because I didn't feel stupid and that was very nice. I also recall feeling like I'd talked to you before although I hadn't and that pretty much sums the whole thing up.

So I could really stop this there. But why, when I don't have to?

Oh, and I took this a couple of weeks later. This is the first one I have of you besides the giantess/Melissa/Devra picture. I totally forgot about it. Nice one. You see this?

And it turns out it can feel a little weird for some reason, when you're reasonably used to being cool and collected and stuff and just down with the enjoying of the people in general when all of a sudden you're thinking wow, who the hell are you? Because you're kind of teh awesome in tiny letters?

It can feel a little weird while it also doesn't feel weird at all.

Bloggers are weird.

Admit it - it was disorienting at first, like we'd been in some of the very same places although there was obviously no way that could have been true, and at the very least had come to some of the very same conclusions, wherever it was we'd been. Mirrors. Parallels. Echoes. Poetic crap like that.

I recall a lull in the BlogHer madness between the Shutter Sisters party and whatever drunk lobbyfest came after it (not that BlogHer is a drunk lobbyfest, if anyone else is actually reading this. I mean, there is wine and there are generally lobbies and sometimes the twain do meet, but BlogHer has changed my life in a very profound way that has nothing to do with alcohol. Case in point: I would not be writing this very thing I'm writing without it. I'd be writing about something entirely different and it would probably not be half as good. So the wine is just a big, fat bonus that I consider my prize for the rest of the year where I stare at the little white square of death and die of writer's block and feel inadequate as a blogger all by myself with my own wine and without a thousand of my closest friends. You think this is easy? Try it.)

ANYWAY we had gone back to your room so you could change your shoes, maybe, I don't know. And I said something and you said something like "No one thinks that usually except for me. Is that weird that we think the same thing about that?" And I said something like "Well, welcome to the new world order, bitches."

I'm curious to know what it was we were talking about, because it seemed like a profound thing in my memory, which maybe it wasn't.

And I really didn't say that thing about the new world order. I really didn't. He would though. Jerk. :

(Sorry to steal this from you. It's habit-forming, goodNESS.)

I probably just said "Yeah I usually think that too." And you said something like "Are you noticing that we think the same things a lot of the time. Are you sent here to toy with my brain?" (Not really. I made that last part up.) And then I really do recall saying "We'd probably just better get used to it."

And I think that's when we came to terms.

You understand this:

And this:

And this:

And other things also, too many to list. I think sometimes that we are the same person but then I really think that you're just the person I know who is most like me who isn't related to me, and in that I find a very real sense of comfort and relief that I never have to pretend to be interested in your stories. I am so happy that you were born and that I had a blog and that you finally had the good sense to locate it even if you didn't come to the community keynote and FIGURE IT OUT A YEAR EARLIER HELLO.

But then again I wasn't so sure what a goon squad was either until I really had a reason to find out.

That's all water under bridges now and the important thing to focus on now is that if I had a friend fantasy team you'd be my first round pick for countless reasons both silly and profound that somehow make perfect sense to me, even the giblet parts.

You are so much better than you know, even though I know you know you're fine.

I love you to pieces. A Hot Metal Street of badass pieces.

And I don't think any of it is weird anymore - just nice.

Happy birthday.

Heather.

2009-12-17T20:52:00-05:00

I don't remember when we connected exactly but I know when I lost my gig writing about photography that it was because of you and also really because I blew deadlines but of course I blamed you even before I knew you because really, this blaming myself thing? Tiresome, right?

So I was expecting greatness when you showed up, dammit.

And when I realized it was really you - that you were inherently great and it didn't matter what pictures you took or what you wrote about or why or where - then it was just that you were immediately my friend that mattered.

You were another amazing human being arisen from the beautiful mess of the Internet, the sort of person who, like all of the deepest friends I've found in this medium, I would have immediately liked in real life so really the fact that the computer was the initial matchmaker made no nevermind. It just made knowing you possible, whereas honestly, the odds of us meeting in real life otherwise, were slim to none.

Maybe. We both kinda get around.

Minutes after the above photo was taken (really, could someone have helped me to attend to my hair?) and hours after Obama accepted the nomination, we were walking through the streets of downtown Denver. And I, altitude-sick and exhausted, prat-falled straight off the curb, face-planted into the cement. Ugly. And that guy came out of the mist, literally, to help me up, and you were like, "Holy shit, you just conjured him up. You fall down, there's a dude stepping out of nowhere to pick you up."

That never happens, or maybe almost never. We both know that. But it put a little bit of fun and funny into the road rash, and as much as I miss my Nikon from that week and as much as my knees have never been the same since they hit the street that night, I'm glad you were there if it had to be anyone.

I'm sure I'd have met other cool people were it not for the computer, it's true, but they wouldn't be you.

We share something very specific, a similar experience that the very vast majority of people don't and that is a way of looking at the world because of the way people look at us and the lens through which we have always seen ourselves. We share the experience of people taking our faces in their hands from when we were babies, literally and ostensibly to heal them. And you know and I know what that does to you, what kind of a person that contributes to turning you into. You'd no doubt describe it in some different words, and it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to hear them at some point. But I think, empathetically, I understand, at least the broad brush outline.

When I think of you I think of long hair and a love of pictures and animals that I share, I think of a simultaneous constant engagement with and yet energetic search for a sense of origin and place that I relate to so deeply that it is occurring to me in this moment that it might be our deepest similarity, others notwithstanding. I I think of someone who knows California and loves Colorado and the Gulf Coast, a sharp contrast to this stubborn East Coaster. I think of someone who writes and shoots like a champ whose damn blog should be more widely read.

I think of someone who risks - for love, for life, for self, for sanity. I think of someone who knows how fucking funny this all really is - the bitter and the sweet, all mashed up together. And who not only knows this but lives it.

And that is why, beyond any other similarity, I think we connect so very very well. It's why I'm the most glad that you're my friend.

Robert T.

2009-12-16T23:19:00-05:00

I am not in the place where my scanner is so it being your birthday and all I got some photos out of the albums and just used the iPhone and the ShakeIt app instead.

It occurs to me that the scanner you were obsessed with was of the police variety and the kind I use wouldn't have made any sense to you at all.

I like this image, though. You were overexposed in the bottom shot originally so there wasn't much to be done with that but that is the place and stance that I really remember you in most besides the front porch so it may as well stand.

You would have been 88 years old today, which seems very young to me when I do the math. You've been dead since 1987 and that feels like such a long time that it seems that you should be ancient by now. When I first thought about calculating it I thought, wow, he'd probably be almost 100. Wrong, but I can see why I thought that.

You were one of the most challenging people I've ever known but it was difficult not to appreciate some of the things that could be the most off-putting about you. One of the things I've inherited in a few different genetic ways is a struggle with the art of compromise and while I see how that can really bring me some problems what it also carries with it is a near-inability to back down from representing my own point of view when I know in my heart that I'm right not to do so. It's a trait that when flipped on its head and used for good is not such a terrible one to have, and I definitely try to flip it. You are a significant example of the fact that I do not come from wishy-washy people. I guess there are reasons why I usually speak my truth.

There are things about your life that I wish had been easier not only because no one really needs an especially difficult life but also because I think it would have made life easier for everyone else too. And I really wish that your body had not been ravaged by disease quite so young - 65 is still young to die, to me - because I can see now from my adult vantage point that you were growing into being a grandfather, mellowing out a little, and that would have been the best time by far to have you around. I think you could have made a positive difference. I think you were finally genuinely enjoying yourself.

But that is not what happened and it's only worth the few line of speculation and when I think about you I think about simple things for the most part, like food and the country and being a Marine and lottery tickets and a new car every two years.

I think about how when you were on oxygen all the time and nearly on your last legs you came to the play in my junior year that was really a defining experience in my life and you were obviously genuinely proud to be there. And I remember how in spite of my teenaged angst making me a little embarrassed - because, like I said, you weren't quiet or halfway or tactful about much of anything - I was really happy and proud that you appreciated it.

It's a good memory to have.

And I hope it's okay with you but I also use you as my cautionary tale to really try not to drink bad beer, and I'm especially grateful for that unintentional life lesson (because if you knew how much it costs to drink good beer you would die again and talk about it loudly for hours.) I did not have one for you today, because I was out with some of my friends consuming sangria which is definitely what you would have called a sissy drink. But I definitely will tomorrow.

The way that light attaches

2009-12-16T13:46:37-05:00

Disclaimer to you among the Google-hit masses (you know, all tens of them) who love me and read this stuff: This is where it's working for me to put this right now. And I thank you for everything, as always, especially for making me feel less like a misfit toy than I otherwise would. Now let's just have a drink, shall we?

One night a couple of weeks ago I was standing in the kitchen of an old friend's house in a southern state, looking out the window into darkness, pretty much. She wasn't there. She and her kids were still on a trip and I had come in early to hang out for a few days by the water and it is the benefit of having old friends who trust you that they'll leave the code to their gated community in your e-mail, the key to the house in the fern on the porch and a lasagna in the refrigerator.

And standing by her sink that night I realized that here I was in the space where someone else lived her life, a beautiful house, a place where I felt really comfortable moving through the rooms. And I soaked up knowing that someone with whom I'd sucked down many beers in parking lots had a house that could be featured in Southern Living, that had more than one hammock and neighbors who waved and a little spit of sand you could sit on by the marsh.

But it wasn't mine. I could walk around in it, borrow it for a bit, feel as comfortable sleeping and eating there as I really did.

It just didn't belong to me. And if I was honest, I knew so distinctly at that moment that I didn't really have that place that did.

And let's not talk about the space I do have. It meets the baseline on Maslow's hierarchy and for that I am grateful but beyond that it's...unsatisfying.

A few days later I was in one of the warmest homes I've ever visited - both in the way it looked from the curb and from the corners of every room and the way it felt. Again, the doors were opened to me and I found friends inside who if they weren't happy to see me are incredibly good liars. Sunday morning amazing light streamed through so many windows, and there was Elton John on the stereo, kids with serious plans and engaging conversation and an incredible homemade breakfast in the kitchen.

On my way home to my own life later I started ugly crying about 20 miles outside of Durham after a loud rendition of Last Christmas segued into some bs like Home for the Holidays and I lost my toehold in stability.

It turns out the line about the fool who goes all the way to Pennsylvania from Tennessee for a homemade pumpkin pie can be quite the little bitch of a trigger there, friends.

Anyway, there was something in that last place in particular that I knew I needed and I lacked, something I quite believed I ought not to lack at this juncture, something I tried to believe simultaneously in the car that I would be okay without if it never came my way while knowing that I absolutely would not. I knew that I would die, or might as well, if this is all there is.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

But it gives you something to aspire to shut up.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair.

You're not dead yet. Shut. Up.

It gets harder to repeat these things to myself the harder I'm pushing 40. And it turns out that it's tough for me sometimes to live on the fringes of other peoples' lives, although without other people I'm kind of screwed, and when I'm with the right people I don't feel fringey at all. This is all very difficult to describe.

I kept thinking this all the miles it took me to settle down between there and the huge I-95 discount store, that it wasn't fair, that I wasn't as good at this alone thing as I've appeared to be for a long time and I didn't understand why this had happened to me, that as much as I've traveled and as much as I've run and as much as I've tried to make things better for a very long time, that I really didn't know what to do anymore if I ever did know. That as long as this existential loneliness sticks that I would remain in this weird life I've been living for a very long time now.

Ten years, to be exact.

That I would always be unhappy.

I blamed the universe. I blamed my ex-boyfriend for the ancient things that always come up from the ether when I get like this. I blamed the media. (That's a lie but I really should, I mean they get blamed for everything else anyway.) I thought judging thoughts about just about every human being I know even vaguely who didn't deserve the surely blessed life of domestic bliss that they were living if I couldn't have this too.

I never said this was right or made good sense. I never said I had any.

I blamed myself. Most of all I blamed myself. I blame myself, for being broken, for not being the kind of person who can be connected to anyone but friends for the long haul, for not just hitching myself to someone decent even though I knew that wasn't what I wanted from them at all because it just wouldn't be right. I blamed myself for not being willing to pack up the next day and move to a place where I could maybe afford property more easily, because oh, wait, maybe I don't have a job there? And at least I have a job. I blamed myself for not being financially stable enough to have a house, a child that so many people seem to think I can just afford on my own in all the ways a child must be afforded (and I am not talking about money entirely here.)

I blamed myself. I blame myself.

And I blame myself for thinking these things, for not being content with what I've got and who I am and what I've accomplished, for not being happy for other people and accepting of what has gone down in my life at the same time. I blame myself for not knowing what to do, ever, although my job is essentially to tell other people what to do. I blame myself for faltering in hope and optimism. I blame myself for being afraid.

In truth I don't know what happened in my life to make this all happen. I don't know how I got here. I don't know what I did or didn't do, what other people did or didn't do, what way the stars aligned to make it pan out this way. I mean, I know. I know. It's just not like I knew in the moment, or even in the months and years when choices were being made, roads chosen and discarded.

I only knew what I was doing at the time. I only knew to follow my heart and to wish and to hope and to do the daily things we all do to get by. I trusted and believed and then I didn't. And that is how I got here, the short of it anyway.

I came home from this trip more unhinged than when I started and I was really hoping for the opposite outcome. I am completely untethered right now and I'm scared shitless. I am running out of coping skills and rationalizations and ideas and solutions. I am working too hard and not getting anywhere.

I don't know how this will change or when or what succession of steps I'll take to make it happen, although every day I still do some things that feel like they might be the right things to do. I reach out, although I probably will not answer the phone or call, and I'm sorry but that's just my own weirdness not talking.

At the same time it's ridiculous, really, how rich I am in friends. Quite specifically, several people have offered their homes to me while I figure stuff out and that has been amazing to me and so appreciated. And as an aside, two of these people are people I met on the INTERNET, and then became friends with in real life, so suck it, Internet haters.

It's embarrassing, almost, to think about it. It's awesome and nice but it's embarrassing, and that is another issue of mine entirely.

It's like I can't trust myself to be in anyone else's environment. I can't be around another family, another couple, another situation. I need to be in this limbo. I need to be uncomfortable. Because I think that's what motivates me. I think that's what will make the changes happen if they are to happen at all.

I told you I have no idea how I got here. I don't like it either. It is an unpalatable to describe it and it's awkward and disappointing to live it, particularly when I'm supposed to have a tinsel-like glow at the moment.

Sorry. Holiday fail.

So all of this is to say that this current whatever this is is why it's so hard for me to write right now. This is why I'm not living, either, as effectively as I ought to be. And that's maybe because I don't know what I'm doing it for. I honestly don't know. And once again, because I'm thinking there must be some reason why I'm here, I came back from that trip knowing that I have to tear everything down and rebuild it so I can figure it out in the process.

And I'm trying to figure out how to do some good at the same time, I really am. I am sick of myself, honestly and truly sick.

So every day I have to keep finding a reason to do this, even if it's just a self that I don't have a whole lot confidence in right now. And I really do have to keep trying to write it down, even though quite frankly it's the last thing I want to do. It's still really the only thing that helps.

Old December Views

2009-12-14T00:55:07-05:00

I am so far behind, I can't even explain what's been keeping me away.

This was on the table at a media dinner I attended a few years ago. I entered it into a Flickr Advent Calendar group that I was pretty dedicated too in December, 2006 (2006 - wow, eons) because I thought it was pretty then and I still like it now.

I had no idea what bokeh meant then. It's been a long, informative three years.

Micro This

2009-12-09T09:26:59-05:00

Melanie asked and I am answering.

I have been a TypePad user since April, 2005 (which reminds me I should update my credit card information to my new one so they don't suspend my account, yeah.) I was a writer and then a photographer first, concerned with design and content management very much second, so I was never that bothered by the way my blog functioned. I was concerned with getting posts written and shot and, well, posted.

Over the years I've been frustrated by my limitations here and have longed to move my blog. I wanted more freedom. What I really wanted - and still do - was to hit the design jackpot somewhere and have someone who really, really knows what she's doing to come along and love me so much that she just says, "Here. You're nice. Let me have your blog. I'll put it on its own platform and fix it and love it."

Needless to say that has never happened. I've haphazardly purchased a few other domains. I've downloaded WordPress and read about it thinking maybe that's the way to go. My primary complaints about TypePad have been about ease of use. As a way novice Web designer *which is more appropriately described as a wannabe, I'd like to have more obvious control over my masthead and my layout. I'd like templates that don't look like someone created them who's watched too many episodes of Microsoft Word. As someone who has paid for this service since day one, yes, I would like some updated stuff that isn't sixteen colors of the same pattern of leaves or paintbrushes.

And yes, I'm sure those hacks exist. I'm sure I could find them, but that's not the point. SixApart could do it, I'm quite sure. Vox looks kind of cool. I'm not sure why the ancestral platform has to look so...ancestral.

I just haven't had the time I need to investigate my options. When I did I didn't feel competent enough with the lingo and was overwhelmed enough that I was sure I was...doing it wrong. And in the meantime I have never stopped writing and posting except for a brief hiatus here and there, so I just kept logging in and doing my thing, even though it's felt a little more underwhelming all the time.

What I need from TypePad is a better way to design and manage my existing blog, and this is why I'm confused about why you'd move to the micro phase before the macro is the best it can be. I'd like better templates, yes, and also a less antiquated way to do photos (PLEASE!) I don't want to log in and post into a little box.

I want a way to do comment follow-up.

I want easier menus and help options to follow, instead of having to dig through a years-old library that feels like a rabbit hole.

Did I mention I want better photo management? And it would be awesome if it would sync with iPhoto?

I want a golden ticket, Father.

I want a better blog, here- not a microblog. That's why I come here. I can micro everything everywhere else. I do micro everything. I tweet all the livelong day. I also have an abandoned Vox, and a Posterous, and a Tumblr. I don't know what I'm doing with any of those things, but I have them.

My blog is not Twitter. I don't want it to be Twitter. Just like everything does not have to be skiing or cellphones or pizza, everything does not have to be Twitter.

I will say that I appreciate TypePad on my iPhone. I completed NaBloPoMo this year and it was cool to be able to post - a real, longish text post - from my phone. I'm satisfied with the interface and the way I can receive my comments there too.

But TypePad Micro, in my computer, is not what I need, because I can get it somewhere else. Call me crazy and demanding, but I'd like to get stuff I don't have here, where I pay for it.

Biscuit eater.

2009-12-08T18:21:45-05:00

I am just about there, just about caught up. December 5, yes? I promise this makes sense in my head.

I grew up in a household where "son of a biscuit eater' was an acceptable euphemism for the more profane iteration of that term. You know, like "fudge" and "mother of pearl" and the like.

What, you don't do that? You probably don't say "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" either. Whatever.

I am not a son at all, but I do eat biscuits. And also fudge, and I even bought some of that on this trip, too, but that's another story. This is about biscuits. This is one of the best ones I've ever had, perhaps the very best one. And whereas a very good friend of mine made me some in her own kitchen on my way home a few days later, I don't have a picture of it to share with you.

If you're going to have friends, it's nice to have the kinds of friends who will feed you biscuits they make from scratch in their very own kitchens, I'm serious.

This one was from Blackstone's in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the nice people let me sit down even though the kitchen was about to close and I had the most delicious shrimp & grits and this biscuit. And it occurred to me that I really ought to ask for one to stick in my pocket and take for the road, and I'm still really sorry I didn't. I had these insane thoughts like, "Oh, sometimes it's good to just eat one of something when it's really good, so you can remember it and savor it," and "Two would just make me really sick" and "There will be other biscuits."

Sometimes I am really not very smart. I am, however and in general, quite well fed. This is one of my favorite things about my life.

Walking in Charleston.

2009-12-07T23:54:00-05:00

And still catching up on December Views. December 4, now, I guess? I should really get with the program here.

178 1/2 , Charleston

Used.

2009-12-06T12:36:52-05:00

Harborwatch Books, Beaufort, South Carolina, upstairs in the used book room.

I love bookstores more than most places. After a few days solid with a bunch of people it was really nice to spend too much time in this space with shelves and shelves of old books.

December views from here.

2009-12-05T10:29:15-05:00

Karen finds beautiful things every day, and I am not shy about telling her that through her words and images I find inspiration.

I stumbled a little post-NaBloPoMo, not sure what to do for December quite yet, and since I've been away from home for a couple of weeks I've been a little more uncentered. This is scary because I'm in a largely uncentered period to begin with. She shared Hippy Urban Girl's December Views project, and I immediately decided to join in. I have a few days to catch up on but I think I can do it. I like the idea of an image a day anyway. I've been doing pretty well with posting photos more consistently and it's more fun to do it with other people.

I'm off to Charlotte to see my other Laurie, another person whose eye I admire and from whom you see all sorts of pretty and just plain awesome things every day. I'm sure I'll share a view or two from there, too.

December 2, catching up:

Surfside Beach, dunes, sunset

2009-12-05T01:39:06-05:00

laurie

Patrick - November 26

2009-12-05T01:25:07-05:00

I'm late with these birthday posts. I'm late with life. I'll catch up this week - with the posts anyway.

This year we had the Thanksgiving holiday at the beach we usually go to in the summer, because it was your 50th birthday and it was what you wanted to do, and when other people started saying they'd come down too it kind of all just came together.

It worked out really well. It wasn't very warm at all but the sun was shining anyway, rather nonstop, and your kids were there and your brothers were there and to me those were the most important things, both because of this milestone birthday and because of the year it is otherwise.

I chose to go because of all the reasons I could have been anywhere else, including face down on a couch by myself (which in so many ways would have been fine this season, really, no hard feelings) you are really very important to me. And it seems like my reasoning anymore is fundamentally tied up in the question of what will I be sorry I missed the most? What will it make the most sense, looking back, to say I did?

Showing up down south was in this case the answer to both of those questions.

And even though I wasn't excited about the seven-billion item dinner buffet on Thanksgiving and my back hurt so badly it was difficult to walk (seriously) and any number of the usual mindless complaints one can have about a day or a trip or a life, when you hugged me in the restaurant and thanked me for coming all that way for you and I said that I wouldn't have been anywhere else I knew I meant it long before I said it out loud.

I'll always be a little pissed at you for those days when you stumbled into the house at all hours and then the next day picked me up off the couch and pretended you were going to throw me down the very steep stairs in the way a youngest uncle will do, but not really. Because since then you asked me to stand up for your son 20 years ago, and you took me to a parking lot and taught me how to parallel park so I wouldn't fail my test for the third time. I've cried while I watched you graduate from college, and Rumours is still one of my favorite albums three decades after I laid on your bed and memorized the lyrics off of the record sleeve you taped to the wall. I'll never, ever forget you tearing up a little this summer over my tattoo, because we have loved and lost the same people.

You have been my friend for a very long time and for that reason it was at the same time no big deal and also very important that I be there at the beach on your Thanksgiving birthday. I'm a fan of the easy decisions, particularly the ones that make things even clearer than they may have always been.

December 1

2009-12-01T23:59:20-05:00

Last year I brought you Moose Munch and a green fleece jacket for your birthday before I left for California, where on your actual birthday as it happened I stood in the parking lot of a winery and cried and screamed into the phone at Mom because all of a sudden you were being transferred to a nursing home from the hospital where the assisted living had sent you the day after I left.

You didn't know what Moose Munch was anymore but could still comprehend "original milk chocolate" and, more vaguely, your birthday.

A month plus a day later, just over the threshold into the new year, you died.It's crazy, really. One month we're talking popcorn and chocolate, and the next we're not talking about anything at all, because we can't.

Seriously? So weird.

It still sucks, the missing you part. I can see back now, to the photos and the videos I've got and the images in my head. I can comprehend how frail you were, how hard it had become to navigate the world, how there were gaps in comprehension and engagement that weren't there the birthday before, the one where a bunch of us went to lunch and you dove face first into your sundae when they didn't bring you a spoon.

I know in large part that grief is selfish, but that's not anyone's fault, how it's felt, how it moves.

If we didn't love people so much it would have no origin or purpose. It's the constant push-pull, the crap reality of death.

I wish I believed in a situation that would even allow me to allude to things that people of faith allude to, like "birthdays in heaven," but I don't, and it's not even that on this count I'm that cynical or bitter. It's just that I don't really operate in that sphere. It's not something that feels genuine to me. Still, I honor the birthdays you were here and the 89 years total its been since you came to be a person.

Your birthday kicks off the holiday season for real, like it always has. It's Advent, right, the practice of waiting for someone new, for something new too, maybe, I don't know. I love it more than Christmas, really. It's one of the Catholic things I hold onto for some reason. There is nothing not beautiful about it, to my mind. It's so separate, to me, from theology - because it's the practice I love, not the reasons why, really.

As part of its beginning and of your day itself, I drove towards water. I thought of you, but not the whole time, as much as I knew what day it was all day. I remembered just as much as I thought you'd want me too, if I could guess, and I ate a full fat dinner.

I love you more than I can explain to anyone but myself. I miss you so much it's sickening and for that reason these are things I will always do. I will try to write about it and to talk about it when it makes sense because I think it should be said, how much people can affect our lives for the good, so much that we can carry them with us for as long as we live.

These things about you are things I will always remember, as long as I can remember things.