elly.org / journals
May, 2005
May 2, 2005 - 10:49am
safe plant
in the window of Den, a furniture store on sunny Valencia street, there was a plant commonly known as a philodendron but actually called devil's ivy. i have a few of these in my home and love them very much. i have grown to understand a bit about their care. i walk by Den often, and had noticed their plant becoming increasingly unhappy. wilting, fading. yesterday i walked by in the afternoon, and there was the plant, fading more in the full sunlight. i decided to take action. i went inside and asked the lone salesguy in the empty store: "want some unsolicited advice?" we had a brief friendly conversation. i explained that the philodendrons/devils ivy hate full sunlight. it's too much! he moved the plant from the window before i left. victory! i was so happy!!!!
a gentle day of careful attention to detail, yesterday. not a chore but a dance, worshipful and present.
reading aj ayer and nagel on the meaning of life. apparently, there is no purpose, but this is liberating and not depressing.
May 3, 2005 - 4:42am
magic hour
strange realization. my body woke me up at 4am with cramps and nausea. now, on the couch with tea, i feel comforted by being awake at this hour that i rarely see these days with full time work. is my body asking me to see this magic hour, for emotional comfort as well as physical? being awake at this gentle time is good for me - it gives me a kind of peace that i always feel is so lacking in the world, when my blood starts.
May 3, 2005 - 5:30am
also
today, i promise myself a break from worrying about the long term. i have a few short term tasks that need to get done. i'm going to do them, and not worry about moving, academic goals, or any of that. just taking care of today and this week.
May 5, 2005 - 3:09pm
i wore my new hat,
i wore my new hat, and i went to hear diane diprima read. charlie was there.michelle tea made cookies, they were good, i got one for asking about discouragement. i had on stripey socks!!! i felt very jaunty and involved with the world.
then i went to the east bay for dinner with friends. amy and nick were there, was amazing to see them. thai noodles, chocolate cake.
eve was there, we talked about bleeding,
and erik davis and techgnosis and all the things we tend to talk about which fall roughly in the category of "galactivation." wb and i talked about our bodily functions. taurus!
later i was reading the rest of the AJ Ayers and the Nagel about the meaning of life, it felt really good. the concept of the absurb. human life is absurd - but maybe that's not something to struggle against, says Nagel. Ayers seems to think that a meaningful life is not an easy life.
May 8, 2005 - 1:38pm
leaving water on while you go in the other room to be on the phone
i am having all these really complex thoughts about the meaning of the second and fifth chakra, the meaning the third house ruling the voice and driving, and my chart specifically with regard to those things. also something about the fibroid being a hard mass of unexpressed art. i'm also writing a paper right now so my mind is working in a more structured manner than usual, so i can't really express the mystical details of my life with any poetic ability. so, i will just report some things that happened in the past few days:
yesterday, i had my first voice lesson. i am really really excited because i feel like having voice lessons is the most correct decision i've made for myself in a long time.
after my lesson i went and met heidi at the farmer's market in the ferry building. it was a beautiful sunny day. she scored me a free coffee. oliver showed up, looking hot from bicycling, with his gloves on. we all journeyed to north beach where we ate fried dumplings that made us sleepy. then i went home and had a perfect nap.
i have a new handbag that's a real honest to god grownup ladies handbag, and i carried it yesterday for the first time. it's rad but i have two concerns:
- i'm smelly, and i carry it in my armpit. it's going to start to smell.
- what if i leave it somewhere? last night during my nap i had a bunch of dream vignettes where i left the handbag in different places.
...
on thursday we went to see hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and i finally know where all those jokes and references come from!
last week i saw egg and nick and eve and wb and more for thai dinner in oakland... i wore my new hat and eve and i had a great conversation in the car on the way home. oliver and i sent about a million text messages.
that same night i also saw (heard) diane diprima and charlie anders read at the RADAR reading series in the sf public library. it was good, i felt connected to the idea of writing and making art. sometimes seeing artists in that audience/performer format causes a weird feeling of alienation or discouragement, but it didn't do that.
...
last night, i slept tensely but happily. i had some coffee near bedtime so i was a little amped and kept waking up all tense. but i liked it because i could pet oliver and tuck the blankets over his shoulders, then sleep some more. strangely, i woke up at 3:30, just in time to feel the earthquake
that happened at 3:35. heidi and i had just been talking about earthquakes earlier in the day, so i was a little freaked out. i also just finished reading a big article about them in san francisco magazine. some preparations need to be made:
- need to get some bottled drinking water in the house
- need to make sure i know where yoko's carrier is
i know where the gas main shutoff is.
like with every earthquake i've felt here, by the time i figured out what was happening and formulated a plan, it was over.
...
it's been a really pleasant and wonderful weekend, and i feel safe and happy with myself and my goals and desires. the world is opening up for me in a gentle and ongoing way that i can only associate with adulthood.
today, it rains. i work on paper, give myself permission not to leave the house or clean anything. permission to just work and do, not feel angst and ennui about matters i have no ability to have perspective on.
reminder: drink a lot of water, eat a lot of vitamin b.
May 10, 2005 - 11:07am
the material world blows ass
guys, howcome i can't just get normal real world things done? it seems like everytime i try to take on the beaurocracies of the world, i'm shut out by circumstance. from the outside it appears to be lack of effort: i'm a "flake." but fuck, i have been so vigilantly on top of the paperwork, faxes, and phone calls necessary to lubricate my insertion into the Establishment. only to find the following obstructions:
- busy fax machines
- lost faxes
- never getting the same customer service person twice
- no record of the last time i called
- mail going to the wrong address, but it's 'against policy' to change it to the right address
- accountant out of town
- unreturned phone calls
- health insurance company doesn't know i exist
- etc etc
does this happen to everyone who is trying to wrangle the systems of the modern world? do i have bad luck? oliver says it's just that i have a bad attitude about it so i make it harder. but all this stuff just seems to have nothing to with how much effort or "positivity" i face these tasks with... i think maybe it's just this annoying for everyone and i'm just learning about that.
May 14, 2005 - 10:40am
vocab love
from oliver, i learned to use two words that i never used before:
litany
as in "a litany of issues"
and
wildly
as in "oliver is wildly hot"
May 14, 2005 - 5:43pm
life, goals, general update.
today, it seems very simple: i'm getting older every day. i just want to enjoy my life. i want to do good work, have enough food to eat and take care of my health and my body. i want to make art in whatever ways i can, even if it's just to draw pictures in my journal with crayons. doing artistic things is the most soothing thing in the world to me, and when i'm navigating some kind of artistic output it seems that the rest of the world drops away. today, it was singing, but it could be anything. there are some things i'm not too interested in, like wall street and what happens there, for instance. and there are other things that i seem to be made to do. that's ok with me. if it was possible i might just sit in a grassy field with fingerpaints my whole life.
speaking of grassy fields. yesterday, i was a little stressed out and upset. it could have spiraled into something kinda bad but i hung on as best i could and oliver helped a lot. he came and got me and took me to the park, where we walked through nature and i was free to talk about devic gardening, hold trees, and throw myself into the grass. i felt the stress and fear fall away. when the hormones start to take hold, buildings and computers seem to be the least helpful items. nature, with its soft edges, is the right place. it was such a relief to not need to freak out.
today is hard to describe. we woke up to discover that the car was hit while it was parked outside. it's in pretty bad shape. i'm not sure how to feel, i keep trying to say "god that's so shitty" but it doesn't strike me as shitty in the normal 'angry at humanity for being so awful' way i usually feel about these things. i'm just disturbed at the jarring nature of the event and very sad to not have our special car which we like to drive around in. and worried about money and frustration surrounding fixing it.
:(
May 16, 2005 - 8:11pm
dreams for chris, and everyone else too
i am in a tunnel that is also a swamp. i'm swimming, but also levitating just above the murky water. very near me, below my exposed belly, there are many small alligators. i pass them without harm, one by one, and they turn over and show me their whitegreen stomachs as i go by. they are lit as if by spotlight or very strong headlamp, as i pass, then fade into darkness behind me. i see moccasin snakes too. i pass by an alligator that i think is dead, and i swim over it without concern, but it wakes up and bites me.
...
i am in the kidrobot store. i want to buy a dunny or three. or twelve. i am happily imagining how i will display my twelve dunny figures on my shelf at work. when i get there, i can't find any dunnys, but end up opening up some similar mini figure boxes. the boxes are so slick and shiny, just like they are in real life. i eventually buy some figurines that look like bear heads on sticks.
...
i'm on a cruise ship. we are watching a huge demonstration of what a ship looks like when it sinks. the demonstration is in the form of a lifesize boat, just like ours, which is dramatically capsizing right next to us in the water. i watch the wicker-looking boat break in half and become vertical. people are screaming with fear but it's just like watching a movie. the sight is majestic and there are enormous frothy waves rushing up the sides of the boat.
a little later, i turn to see that we've rescued a smaller boat full of people who were shipwrecked or had been abandoned. i reach out my hand to help one of them - he turns out to be dweezil zappa. he's hot and shirtless and looks very keanu. the rest of the dream is in black and white and involves him falling in love with juliette binoche, who is actually audrey tatou. they are very happy and i feel somehow responsible since it was i who helped dweezil aboard.
...
this isn't a dream, but today, oliver and i looked at the clouds over the bay, and they looked like mountains, as they have been doing lately. i thought about this and talked about how it would be awesome if the bay was sometimes mountains. just sometimes, perhaps it would change with the seasons. mountains all winter and bay all summer. i started to imagine a fairy tale or fantastical story centered in a town that had seasonal mountains. i had a vision of how the mountains might look, growing out of the earth during the fall, and i felt that my thoughts were somehow bordered by red and gold brocade or special red paper, like a perfectly framed painting or drawing.
May 18, 2005 - 12:13am
sweetness
i'm in bed with oliver and the cat. we are in our new special sheets. oliver is sleeping peacefully. i looked at him and felt a horrible sadness about him being an only child - i don't want him to ever be lonely, even in the past.
yoko is having a bath, and it occurs to me that maybe she is so needy and yowly in the mornings because we have been kicking her out of the bedroom at night. sure, she wants to be fed, but maybe she's also lonely.
school is almost over. i can't wait. i had a big plan about trying to take a summer class but decided against it. i opt for relaxation instead.
i forgot to eat dinner but it seems too late now. i crave sushi.
today i longed to hold kittens. why do they elude me?
note to self: tonight in the shower you thought about listening to your body, and the separation between what your body asks for and what your mind craves. don't forget. you also had a plan about your diet, don't worry, you don't have to tell the internet about it. just don't lose resolve about it, it was a good plan.
May 23, 2005 - 12:57am
hello
yoko is twitching in her sleep. i've had a kind of hard day. i have terrible allergies that nothing seems to help.. i think they are a physical manifestation of stress. in a way, i'm thankful that my body is making itself heard, even if it's in this really fucked up way. i had beaten it into submission before, and it had been so silent.
but i blew my nose so much it bled! ugh.
May 28, 2005 - 11:35am
gloom and doom
the weather has me depressed. oliver left early for san diego for the weekend, and i woke up alone and had no recollection of him leaving. i feel lost and confused and lonely now, in my abstracted flat ugly neighborhood that seems so far from everything. also to add to it i'm beating up on myself for not being able to figure out what to do with my morning without oliver around - am i becoming one of those women?
the fantasy world inside my head has become pretty complex. it seems i spend most of my time thinking about what i will do later, and how nice it will be, or hating myself for a whole litany of things i haven't done or can't do. and laying in bed in various stages of despair surrounding that. i know i should live in the moment or whatever, but recently i was feeling the most present i had in so long and i still had a creeping feeling of things being really not ok, and of my life not being worth much.
i have been doing lots of stuff outside of that back and forth, but it's what i think of now. i finished up school, for the most part, and i have been seeing an amazing healer/chiropractor and that is helping me a lot. as much as i have dissed the concept of 'healing' in my life, sometimes you do need help.
speaking of, heidi is helping me out of the house to the ferry building where the good saturday things happen, where i can have coffee!! which i'm sure will be good. first i want to make a smoothie with this pineapple we have.
May 28, 2005 - 10:36pm
your dorky friend
i left the house, had some coffee. a little too much maybe? carnaval was going on down on harrison street. it pissed me off because i woke up to the sounds of the parade. it made me have dreams that there were star search auditions going on in my backyard.
i got harassed by drunk people on the street three times during the walk to coffee and the bus. once would be normal, i guess. i don't always get harassed by men on the street, not every day, but i'd say at least once a week i do, in my neighborhood. i never know what the hell to do about it. i can't talk back to them, because of the slim chance that the person is a really bad person who will actually hurt me or assault me. though in new york i would occasionally give the finger to people who cat-called from cars. sometimes the way guys leer at me is to give me a compliment ("hi, beautiful"), then act all offended like i'm a bitch when i ignore them ("what, you can't smile? you can't say hi?"). there is no good way to respond, no matter how feisty and strong of a woman you are, the only response is meek silence. it makes me so angry to be forced into that position.
other things from today:
i went to my voice lesson. it made me happy. we sang knockin on heaven's door. i laughed a lot. i learned some things - it helps my confidence to be there. then i shopped for a long time and made purchases. then i felt guilty about that for a while, then i got over it.
now i'm hanging around looking at the internet and listening to music. i tried to play harmonica along with dylan for a while which was really hilarious.
i'm feeling a lot better than i was when i last posted. once i was out of the house it was ok. i'm worried about being so unhappy all the time, but maybe i should just stop worrying about it and doing other stuff instead.
May 29, 2005 - 1:52pm
choose the color of the sky
i've got to get a five page (not very long) paper done before tuesday, i haven't really started. i just keep moping and feeling lonely and sad. things seem to hurt a lot. i don't feel as much of a need for action about it as i did before, or a need to force things to change. but i just hurt, every little thing seems to hurt and make me sad and worried.
one big change is that i'm just going through it now, like a head cold or a rash, instead of reacting with anger and trying to look outside of myself for someone to help me out by praising me or reassuring me. somehow, i think related to seeing eric the chiropractor, i have come to understand that i just have to pull myself out or weather it, letting it just sort of move through me, instead of lashing out with struggle and blame and desperate attempts for someone to help. i used to feel that way about emotions more often, when i did more drugs. i've developed a more detached approach, which is good, i guess.
someone sent me an email about planets transiting my chiron in the fourth house. i've been thinking about it. people always say chiron is about healing, but this person said he thought chiron was just about pain, and sometimes about pain with no obvious positive outcome. wounds. that resonated a lot. though heidi told me that i'm buying all these green clothes because i am trying to heal and purify. she didn't say that directly but close.
i spend a lot of time being fearful, being trapped in my head, and comparing myself to my perceptions of other people. and then blaming oliver or someone else for it.
i don't even know what to do anymore. i don't feel desperate or like doing anything sudden or different, i just feel sad and alone and kind of bored by myself, and also totally confused about how i got here, and not sure how or when it will be any different.
i'm going to list some nice things, just to make it clear that i'm not totally lost:
- had a good conversation with chris last night
- i love the chiropractor
- i have become better at dealing with the pain in my body related to hormones, and it seems to be getting better as well
- school is almost over
- new york will be good
- i have all the time i need to do everything i need to do
- i dream about kittens
- the bedroom smells like tuberrose
- i have new pink shoes
- i love singing, and don't seem to suck at it
- the famous san francisco brown twins go to my singing studio
- i saw frank chu today
- it's sunny
- heidi is my really good friend
- ritual coffee house is safe and nice
- my hair looks great
- yoko gave me excellent cuddles and love last night and today
- i got paid early
everything is perfect just how it is
May 31, 2005 - 9:17pm
suddenly
things are looking up! school is over, i am going to new york for a week tomorrow, i'm bleeding, and two other really positive things that i don't wanna say here. yay! new york city!!!
