pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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EXTRAPOLATING POSSIBILITIES

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse.

I'm surprised at myself talking in this way. I'm young, the world is before me, there will be others. I feel my first streak of defiance since I met her. My first upsurge of self. I won't see her again. I can go home, throw aside these clothes and move on. I can move out if I like. I'm sure the meat man can be persuaded to take me to Paris for a favour or two.

Passion, I spit on it.

That passage is from The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, one of the most original and poetic novelists writing today. My favorite author in fact (although I am really liking Carole Maso and Coetzee's Waiting on the Barbarians is an amazing thing).

Interview calls this book a meditation on pleasure and its limits. The Passion is, like all of her work, almost breathtakingly beautiful, raw, full of, well, passion and insight and expressive longing and lines of poetry set in paragraph form. Winterson incorporates magical touches into her works brilliantly, better than Gabriel García Márquez—better than any living author I can think of—puts you right inside those interior worlds that make you ache and yearn and remember and resolve to live life close to the bone even if you're exposed there.

Once in New York City Filmgrrl and I sat behind Winterson at a dyke film. I admired her hair and buff body, but did not recognize her in the dark (and from the rear). She jumped up and ran out as soon as the film was over and I didn't realize who she was until she was already in the aisle (not that I would have done anything if I had, mind you. I try to respect privacy, people just trying to live their lives. Not sure what could possibly make me interrupt someone else's life out of context like that to ask for an autograph).

Went to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter tonight and enjoyed it, although it was a really short show. It was also the perfect night for sitting out under the stars. The place was swarming with dykes. Wonder why a straight singer attracts so many dykes? Joan Armatrading does too. What gives?

Chapin was a local singer when I lived in DC, back when her album Twist and Shout was so popular. I like her quirkiness, although some of her songs are way too over-the-top sentimental for my tastes. No one should ever be allowed to get away with singing This Shirt with a straight face, for example. (I was so going into a sugar coma when she sang it, but thought I'd be able to retain consciousness until she sang that saccharine line about the friggin' puppies. Ogoodlawd!) And can I just say that I agree with her that "it's been too long since somebody said ooo shut up and kiss me"?

She didn't sing the beautiful Mary's Land, but did sing a cover of Lucinda Williams's Passionate Kisses:Is it too much to ask? I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back ...) —which almost made up for this oversight.

The venue let's promising musicians play for 30 minutes after shows, a feature I really like, and Jennifer Daniels, a singer from Chattanooga, played. She was good too—good enough that I bought her CD and made a note that she plays here August 5 (when I am supposed to be at the chorus board retreat, damn it all).

Anyway, after her performance, I was just sort of hanging out in the tent, talking to a couple of sexy chicas who came to the show with them, and overheard this woman talking with the performer:

your music just spoke to me. X happened to me in 1981 and Y happened to me in 1987 and it was so hard, devastating...

and then she proceeded to bleed all over the singer.

Now I know I bleed all over my blog but SHUT UP ALREADY! We are talking about public performance in a public space and lines of fans waiting to chat up the singer up, not a blog that readers click on voluntarily.

This happens sometimes when I give readings. People hear something that speaks to them and seek me out, share incredibly intimate details of their lives with me in a way that just floors me—and they do this in bookstore with people in line behind them—although I have also gotten calls at home.

People really need to tell someone about their lives—which is a disappear fear line: "I>Won't you explain to me the pain of your life?"

Tell me about pain, yours. And I will tell you about mine. Meanwhile the earth keeps spinning. Meanwhile...

Who wrote that? I want to say it's from Oriah Mountaindreamer from The Invitation, but will have to check that out.

The singer from Chattanooga was, by the way, very gracious ... and very adept at moving on to the next person.

Suzie drove us to the concert in her convertible (bless her) and reminded me that my gawd do I miss having one and feeling the wind blow my hair like that!

There is something so wonderful about riding with the top down and feeling for all the world as if you are sitting on the front of a boat with your legs dangling down toward the water and getting splashed as your hair blows straight back from your face. I miss that so much and may just have to trade in my little VW bug for another convertible one day soon.

Stared up at the sky on the Interstate the whole drive home and picked out Cassiopeia and Corona Borealis too. Nice.

I have really isolated myself this past year, distanced myself from family and friends alike, trying to lick my wounds and get back to me, intact. Have been desperate much of the time too, raw and on the edge, gravely wounded. But trying.

I told myself last July, when I hurt so much that I could hardly bear it, that I had to give myself one full year to mourn, that I couldn't end it all because of the temporary pain I was feeling, that I would recover and forget how godawful I felt back then.

In some ways I have recovered, but it has been almost a year now and the fact of the matter is that I mostly have not recovered. I can't seem to bounce back and find the me I used to be. It's as if the sorrow just erased me.

I told Musicgrrl last summer that I may have to leave this wonderful place in order to move on, and I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the case. I think I need to make a whole new life for myself somewhere far away from this campus (where I am apt to run into Dickboy and the Ginger) and this town (where I loved the Ginger in so many places that I can hardly even go for a walk anymore without wanting to break down).

So yea. I'm thinking maybe I should just move the fuck on already and make a clean start. Then I can be just me again, can define myself with possibilities and newness, pare my life down to the essentials and create a new life that I can bear.

Maybe I need to quit talking about how much I love the Pacific NW and actually GO there. Live by the water in that dyke-infused beautiful town. Or on Whidbey Island.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Yeah. Right.

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Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how to get to the Adirondacks with Filmgrrl. Seems like this trip has been cursed from the start!

With three people in my division out indefinitely, I just don't think there's any way I can go without getting fired, despite the fact that I really need a vacation (and especially one with my BFF).

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Finally, another favorite line from The Passion line:

You may set off from the same place to the same place every day and never go by the same route.

All righty. It is 2:45 a.m. and I have to be up no later than 7 a.m. I am wide awake, but am going to at least lie down and stare at the dark ceiling and hope that I can drift off to sleep at some point.

Computergrrl and I are meeting for lunch tomorrow, then Tree and I are supposed to go for a walk or do something after work. (She has a lot going on emotionally right now and wants to sort some of it out, talk about it.)

This is one of our busiest weeks at work and three staff members are out indefinitely, so I will probably be there much of the weekend otherwise. And there's that looming 1,200-pp. contract manuscript that I absolutely must finish by the end of the month. (I gave myself till the 24th, and still want to meet that deadline.)

SINGING IN SHOWER: I was suicidal again this week, and so am cutting myself off from folk and limiting myself to upbeat for right now. It must be working because I sang The Eurhythmics (feels just like I'm walking on broken glass....)

LISTENING TO: Neil Young's screaming guitar (Down by the river. I shot my baby. Shot her dead. Oooo. Shot her dead....) Yeah man. Pass that roach.

READING: A white paper about XML and publications project management software.

SELECTED SPAM: Your penis on call instantly [yep. sure is]

9:19 a.m. - 2005-06-17

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