Sunday, May 10, 2009

This Weekend

Friday I came home from taking my last final and a friend met me at the house with something for us to put a lighter to. After we had, I started looking around my house and getting a little disgusted with myself. When I'm busy, or when I'm stressed, or when I'm depressed my house gets messy. I've been all three lately and let me tell you this place was looking condemnable. I ran him off and started cleaning.

Completely rearranged my front room while vacuuming all around and under everything. Tore the room apart, picked up papers, books, clothes, everything. It looks nice now. I also got maybe two thirds of the way through my kitchen, so that was also awesome. Some friends came by bringing me food (moving out of dorms, didn't want to take it home) and another couple of friends, and then the first friend came back with that flammable stuff again and THEN

my gay boyfriend got there. He's in AA and part of the way he deals is to get me super drunk and laugh at me. He did, and I was, and he laughed and it was great. We went out briefly and had some great antics and talked about life and our feelings because that's what we do and it was wonderful.

I woke up Saturday and got ready to head to Hot Springs for a visit. My BFF is going through radiation for a breast tumor so I've been trying to go back more frequently lately because it kindof sucks for her and she's having a crappy time of it. We hung out until she had to go to work, and then I did a TON of laundry that I brought with me at her boyfriend's house. Let me just take a moment to mention what an angel her boyfriend is and how amazing they are together - I'm super happy about them.

I met her at work and we went to the bar. I didn't think I would get shitty since I already had the night before, but people were happy I'd come to visit and these shots of my favorite whiskey kept getting passed my way. I think grand total I had six or eight or so? Smoked an Oliva Serie V cigar and it was the second best cigar I've had yet. So delicious. Flirted with a cutie and danced to an amazing band. I took some poetry books back because I needed gas money and thought I might sell a few to drunk people - it worked. My BFF and I took a ton of pictures (other people did with the camera too) and there's a lot on there that I don't exactly remember. We got super sauced, we were in rare form, and it was perfect. Lots of great friends were there, lots of hugging and laughs and fabulosity.

I woke up the next morning still drunk and I'd promised to go to work with her. It's my old job before I moved away and the chef was going to be short a hand in the kitchen so I offered to come back and wash dishes for shits and giggles. I made myself throw up the last of the whiskey and went with my BFF to pick up donuts, a gallon of milk, and chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk with. We took it in to work early and had nibbles and sips and then I worked a shift as the happiest dishwasher in town before getting fed some delicious Atlantic salmon and a dark green salad made of local leaves and house dressing.

Nothing in this entry is really important, except that I had an amazing super fun weekend and I love the people I got to see. I'm also really glad that I got to spend some quality time with my BFF. I still have three or four papers to write before I'm done with the semester, though, so it's bright and ugly tomorrow morning for me!

Monday, May 4, 2009

Whoops.

I woke up Sunday wishing I could remember what my mother's voice sounded like. She used to record stories for the local library, and you could call a number to hear it over the phone. I knew they used her stories for years after she left the job, so I called it up. It was a new voice telling a bilingual story. Guess they finally got with the times.

So I hung up. Checked my email and found a message from her.

It was hit and it was miss. There was a line in particular that gave me deep pause, but I won't go into it here, mostly because when I replied I neglected to edit out my signature with the link to this blog in it, so it's possible she's finally found it and maybe even stalking me right now. Ooooooh, spooky. It's a bummer because this has been a place where I felt free to talk about it and write it out. I may migrate over to my livejournal to do this in the future.

But I do want to catalog the things that helped me get to the place where I am today, and that is a place where her memory can no longer hurt me. I just found myself here recently.

1) Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. The movie works better than the book for my specific purposes. The book is a little too different from our particular problems, but the movie is general enough to apply. I watched it and wished somehow someone would knock me out and take me out of my life and explain everything about her and what made her the crazy woman she became. Never happened.

2) Big Fish. Another movie about a kid who hates his/her parent for the person s/he perceived the parent to be and how s/he goes about reconciling that issue.

3) Postsecret.com and a few secrets in particular that resonated with my situation. One said "I am sorry I can't be who you want me to be, Mom. It's a shame cause I kinda like myself the way I am." Another said "Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering." It's nice to know that even though other people are having lives completely different from your own, our individual sufferings match up on overall themes from time to time. I made one card about us and sent it in, but I never saw it posted on the blog. Lame.

4) Rachel McKibbens's "Central Park, Mother's Day."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlqQzKBfNFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-k-d-dbWHI&feature=related
Neither of these are as powerful as the version I heard for the first time at the finals of the National Poetry Slam in Austin in 2007. It was the first time I really thought about our situation from her point of view and thought, gee, maybe she didn't *mean* to fuck up so badly.

5) A documentary my father gave me about forgiveness. I can't remember the title right now, sorry, but it got me thinking about the process and working toward it.

6) Writing lots of poems about her.

7) Writing lots of letters to her. I never sent the poems or the letters, of course. Because at the end of the day, they were really just for me.

8) This American Life episode 175:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=175
The story that starts at 32:49 wasn't about us at all at first. It wasn't until it got to 53:36 that the neon signs lit up, and they were all arrows, and they were all pointing right at me.

I'm doing this catalog just in case we do meet up, and it turns out to be a terrible idea and nothing but negativity comes from it. These things (and a few more, but these have been the real beacons) can help bring me back to this place where I realize that she quite probably did the best she honestly could, and I can't hate her any more if her best was really that awful. I don't know what happened to her to make her who she was, and it may happen that she's someone else entirely today. Here's hoping.

The saddest part is that I've found two amazing substitute moms and I've loved them so much and valued having them in my lives more than I can ever tell them. One lives on a mountaintop outside Hot Springs and always gives the best hugs and the hugest heapings of unconditional love and delicious tea and is so giving and so loving. The other is actually a transgendered woman (gets her pussy this week, god bless her!) who is the ass-kicking I-got-your-back kind of mom who doles out brilliant amazing advice and delicious dinners at the same time.

I worry that they may suffer in this. Either my bio-mom will turn out to have changed into someone I can have a relationship with and I'll neglect these amazing women (unlikely, but I'll surely have guilt anyway) or she'll turn out to be the same person she always was and these women will have to help me rebuild myself all over again.

Dear God: Thanks for the amazing mothers you've sent me. Do please keep an eye on me for a bit while I deal with this. Love, Ginna.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Volume 4

I'll be putting together a new collection of words this summer. If you've got any poems you liked and would enjoy seeing in the book, speak up now. Even if you can't remember the title or date or whatever, "The poem that's about this or that and has the one line that sounds like such and such..." Now's the time if you want to have input.

Friday, May 1, 2009

NaPoWriMo 30/30 Challenge

I'm DONE suckas!

Hopefully I'll take some time off and then work on revisions and then maybe soon will be out with Volume 4 fo yo bookshelves...
The other day I ran into God at the grocery.
"Listen, God," I said, "I've got a question.
You remember that dream I had
when I was like twelve and I flew up to heaven
and you were there with
all sorts of animals and I asked you
that question and you gave me that answer?"
and God nodded and said "mm hm" she likes
to come across as obtuse sometimes,
you know, just to keep you guessing.
"Well God," I said, "I just wonder what all
of that meant," and she stood there
for fifteen whole seconds just saying
"hmmmm" and then she asked "But I thought
at the time it all made so much sense"
(you know God likes to answer with questions
sometimes she's tricky like that)
and I said "Yeah, God, but that was then
and this, as it happens, is now." and she
laughed and laughed and laughed and then
asked me "Well how did you lose all that
wild understanding? When did you last use it?
Try and retrace your steps.
Can you remember the place you were when you last
held it, warm and buzzing in your palms?"