and I'll write books on the backs of envelopes and credit card statements
about your face that day
and everything you said about graduating
and how it lit your eyes up, like a child at a ticker-tape parade
and how I wanted to be inside your everything for forever right then
and how I chased that instant for the rest of my life
and never quite got free.
see this? this is your trip. this is me actively not writing you notes, or hiding epic mixes in your messenger bag, or tucking sparkly little nothings into the pockets of your pants. this is me actively not buying you flowers, and actively not missing you. this is me not planning for your return. this is me knowing I'd mean every minute of every song I'd lay out end-to-end for you -- so instead, this is me with my headphones, on my back, on your carpet, volume up. sad for all the ways she might come back. sad for all the ways you haven't left me yet.
this is me asking every time I take your arm, because I need you to tell me you want me to. and this is me caging my heart like a crackpot art project when you say you're falling in love with me, because you aren't all the way here and we both know it. this is me actively not taking your face in my hands when you sit on my lap and ask about how it would be if we graduated. this is me texting a boy the first morning I left your apartment because I thought that there might be something here worth seeing clearly. this is me actively not crying on your bathroom floor because I think you might be someone I could try on for a while.
this is how no one ever looked at me like you \ before you did.
this is me pulling the threads out of the seams of your reservations and throwing them in a pile on the kitchen table to look at. this is not a series of your old reel-to-reels, of polaroids of your past and all the ex-girl collections. this is me. all neckties and wrists and faces and chairs; all movies and train windows and epic chord changes. this is where I make quite sure it hurts, on purpose, so that it all stays real. this is how I've changed \ by not changing at all.
and this, here... sigh. this is you. all big-eyed, gorgeous you. this is your impeccable taste in music, this is your wit and your character and your bravery and your bliss. this is your skin made up of pages upon pages out of notebooks, sorting your life out in black ink at the haymarket. this is all chandeliers, and wintertime, and the sight of you. this is all your busted-up pieces making you whole. this is me writing again.
this is me bearing my once-bloody, gaff-taped heart. wrapped in guitar strings, laden with scars, framed by a fixed lens. this is you making sense to me, and me making sense to you. and so then all of this, all this right now -- this is my truth. and until I tell you,and show you, and sing for you, this is me holding my cards to my chest. but this is still my truth.
editor's note: this is messy. and haphazard. and I might delete it and put something better up tomorrow or something. but at least it's a start.
--
so I kept getting fully and totally bombarded with spam comments to this entry called "I have to write." and so I kept rereading the entry thinking that it was some force of fate or some crap pushing me to see some finite detail and \ or reflect on this portion of my writing \ time in my life \ what have you. and then kristin is all, you know, maybe you have to write, or whatever.
duh. I mean, seriously.
so I haven't been writing. I've been thinking about writing a lot. but not actually writing. it's been a month and a half for both blogs. I can't blame it on the sun. I can't blame it on much. but summer was full and abundant and I didn't want to blog. and then the weather shifted and the busy didn't go away. and now the job that's making me nuts is about to change and fall tour started and then there was a lean-in and whoops! guess it's time to come out of the closet and then every available spare track I was even capable of thinking about having got taken up by six hundred degrees of that.
I suppose I should talk about that a bit. akin to the days when I'd do a full play-by-play of every single show I went to, pages upon pages that today are mere drive-bys. it's a bit anti-climatic, kind of more like a meat thermometer going off. ding! time to take care of this. no drama, no epic discussions with family members. no stickers to buy or forms to fill out or declarations to make. just the simple fact that I've been denying my reality, which has been that I'm attracted to women, and have been for over a decade now, and I've actively done nothing about it. so the day came when it was time to do something about it. actually, to be accurate -- the day came when one of my new-besties was brave enough to lean in. we've been friends since the springtime. I've admired her since we met. kristin was sick one night and a fake-date ensued. and right before everything, she asked me not to laugh.
believe me, there was no laughing. in the good way, I mean.
so cut to like, five weeks out now. there's a Thing. of course, there's a Relationships, since we are all People Relating To Each Other and therefore are all in Relationships With Each Other. but I think... well, it's dating. for sure. it just makes so much sense. she makes so much sense. all of those things I wanted and wrote about and lied to myself to create all those times -- they're actually all present now, and not of my own doing. out of just -- adulthood, and respect, and all of those grown-up things, I'll pull the brake up on the detail front -- but suffice it to say, there's dating and there's Let's See What Happens and it's great. and she's great. the 'we' that's developing, if you can call it that, is great. I'm out. it's awkward. but whatever. it's just time. and when it's time, just like any other facet of growing up or starting something or quitting something -- it's just time. so now it's time. and so that's really all I can say about that right now.
speaking of, I have little to none as far as that goes -- time, I mean. apparently now (as of a half-hour ago) I'm moving my desk on monday. yikes. so here's all these projects I'm not done with coupled with now moving and organizing things and I will likely spend the next 48 hours here getting Ready To Go. monday. days from now. where I was all ready to move on, where I stopped accepting unacceptable behavior and made some tough decisions, and everything fell into place. let go of relationships that aren't working and everything falls into place. now I just have to let go of this raging, incomprehensible level of ADD I've got cracking at work, and let all that fall into place.
and I should probably like, do my dishes or something. my shit's gross. I'm just saying. remember, when I said how kristin said "yeah, I might have a sink full of dishes, but I read a book" or however she put it? on some levels, I'm for sure getting shit done... and it's at the expense of things like dishes. and my floors. and my laundry. but I'm happy, and whole, and full, and prefunking christmas like nobody's business. there will be much cooking and love over at becky & andi's place. and there's parties to throw and shows to get to and beakings to beak and I'm in. I'm yes. I'm all of it, a little bit of everything. exclusive of last night, wherein I somehow managed to miss both jordan catalano In. The. Flesh. and a show that john roderick was doing for a fundraiser. idiot.
good thing I live in the greatest city on earth. there'll be more where all that came from.
till then, no naps, just snacks, and smelly catfood cans in piles on the countertops... ugh.
victoria
I'm not dead yet. I swear.
I don't want to talk about it. but I am going to take a crack at it.
you know. I'm just saying, or whatever.
I know. It's not Wishville, but it's close. Were I more adept in graphic design, I'd beef this whole thing up to say "Welcome to Capitol Hill" with lots of big gay landmarks and stuff. QFC, table 219, a few tattoo shops... maybe that is season six level stuff. Where our heroine is back in the classroom, entrenched in term papers and thirsty for knowledge, has advanced her photographic prowess, and possibly has a real bedroom.
All that just made me realize that I have undoubtedly passed go, collected my $200.00 (and put it into a spreadsheet) and entered season five. Hi. I'm right here. You can eat now.
I just let out a big, contended sigh. Life's alright. (Suicide attempts a few hundred feet from my building notwithstanding.) I finally made a budget, for reals. Yesterday I was face to face with the prospect of attending three (!!!) Wrens shows in Hoboken during the first week of December, as they "retire" their early catalog and get ready to push forth into the newalbumosphere. And so I could go to the shows -- all of them -- on guest list, and stay with my cousin, and the airfare is only like $200.00 round-trip on the redeye both ways to Newark. Piece of cake, right? Right. I mean, I can find the money in my next paycheck.
Then I did my allocations off of next week's paycheck: bills due, recurring expenses, a start on the emergency fund -- and after it was all parsed out I had $421.00 left over. And I looked at it there, staring at me, and thought about it for a minute. Even if that happened every paycheck, the absolute best possible scenario, let's even round it up to $500.00 for the sake of math -- in the course of a year, that's twelve thousand dollars. That's like, a huge chunk of my debt! Like, close to all of it! And I sat there, and remembered hearing Kristin turn down going to shows, saying that she had other priorities even right now (even though said show would indeed be fully life-altering), and -- I just always wondered how she could put it down so easily. Now I know. I have seen endless, epic Wrens sets. I've been pulled on stage during a two-night stand in Chicago to play piano. I've fully lost my shit, covered in sweat, and experienced entire gear shifts in the mechanics of my existence. It would be great to see them again, but it would be even better to be out of debt and able to go see whomever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Across the top of my budget spreadsheet it says, If you pay off your bills now, you will be able to pay for whatever you want. And it's true. And then it became easy to sacrifice, and to bite into not taking the trip (taking a trip, not taking a trip...). It also became easier suddenly to see a set of goals and an end point. With $400.00 left over on the next few paychecks, my car will be paid off. Done. Then that $300.00 a month will wipe out the next smallest credit card (especially with the extra $400.00 per check) and so on and so forth.
This all came about because (a) I got tired of being broke, (b) the cash thing is working for Kristin, so I tried it; and (c) the preliminary drive-by of a budget in my notebook one morning at the cafe had me sitting there, aghast, going, there is no fucking way I have $800.00 left over every month after bills, expenses, and even allotting for some miscellaneous stuff -- what in the fuck am I doing with my money?
And so it is. The workbook makes calculations and everything. With everything mapped out, five extra hours of overtime is like hitting the lottery.
Lottery. Sheeshus. I meant to write about being in like with my newfound dude-like emotional capabilities and how much fun it is lately to be having all the sex, but I guess I needed to write about that instead. But really -- it's so much fun to be having all the sex. I'll sit here for just a moment: yesterday, or the day before, I'm at Annie's and she goes, "How's Gary?" And I go, "How the fuck would I know, dude?" And then we both practically pissed ourselves laughing. Season five Victoria is a far cry from every other Victoria that's ever been. It's the little things like that that show me the difference between when I think I've got something figured out, and when I really actually believe something and it just figures out itself.
Oh, and the planets have shifted or whatever, PS. I suddenly got very unstuck, and actually found myself in the bathroom yesterday going, this shit isn't going to break me. Fuck that. over a particularly difficult set of tasks my boss had asked me to do. And I feel like that in a bunch of other subsections of my life too -- perpetually blissy, working hard, dealing with some hard shit but going through it all wrapped in this impermeable golden cellophane that keeps all the yuck out.
Sigh again. It's good to be back, you know, after the writer's strike and all.
xo
Viva.
So stuff is still great, for the most part. Well, life is great, it's just that my head turns inside out sometimes. So stuff is great and my head is mostly okay.
A dude just jumped off the bridge a little while ago -- I'm assuming it was a dude, anyway. The person, the jumper, I suppose -- hit the water instead of the concrete. There was much flurry and CPR and then nothing. We don't know if the person lived or not. We just know that they jumped.
People in my office were surprisingly off-the-cuff about the whole thing -- comments ranged from "I hope the rent is cheap here" to nervous laughter... the other side was a concern for media overload, and did we need to leave to escape the onslaught of attention -- and then there was one, "yeah, I've never seen it happen on a nice day like this though." A nice day like this. A nice day like this where the sun's out and I'm struggling with the intricacies of interpersonal relations at my office, and assessing the threads of my job performance as they relate to... well, whatever -- and in those moments, even the ones where I stopped doing that and went to the kitchen to heat lunch and maybe brush my hair or send a funny email -- someone else had lost hope. All of it. So much so that they jumped from the Aurora bridge, sky blue sky, more sunshine than you could shake a stick at, with the hint of fall starting to sneak underneath like the promise of a scarf as you stand in the sun in your t-shirt.
"Hopeless." "Jump." Two little, short words. Strung together to form a tragedy, or an attempted tragedy, I suppose an assumed tragedy in any case.
I'm drawn back to that book, The Undertaking -- there's lines in it, something and something about poets and funerals. I went from golden cellophane to torn tissue paper, easily poked at, soft skin underneath. The melancholy in place of a reeling, raging weekend. Blank stares winning out over the words starting to form in my head, words I've been writing for days, trying to figure out how to give these snapshots of Texas, and trying to pour the rest of myself into my notebooks. Black ink. Not hopeless. No jump.
I wrote it in pen on my message pad when one of the guys called. "jumper" in lowercase, with a box around it. Like it meant something, like writing it did something. My to-do list is just a pile of words, the impending avalanche of laundry and agenda preparation for the morning suddenly seem like so much... less. So much smaller. I'm not trying to melodramatic or anything, and I'm going to do my job and wash the mud off my skirt and all that -- I guess I just don't understand how no one else is left reeling, even if it's only just a little bit of reeling. I want to walk over to the spot where the police were and just stand there, and take it in. To see if -- I don't know what. Maybe just to give that moment some homage and respect, I mean -- here I am in my open-collaboration cube farm, we all are -- and someone hit the end of their rope today. Literally. Someone who might have a family, or even just a cat, or a girlfriend or a dinner date tonight that will wonder why they got stood up.
It feels like I'm the only person who even paid it much attention. It just doesn't make much sense to go back to pushing paper right now, but seeing as I'm rented for these hours every weekday at a respectable rate, I sort of have to.
JUST SAYING.
Blog it out. It's always the answer, to ____ it out. Blog it out, hug it out, fuck it out. Whatever it takes.
So obvs I'm not in Chicago anymore, but back behind the desk in Fremont. Where I was working on a grant with my boss until about 3:00 this morning, until I left, napped, showered, grabbed a quad, and returned, to find him in the same clothes, in the same spot. Bleary-eyed and delirious.
The grant's not done, but it should be sometime tonight when he gets off the plane. I've done as much as I can on it, and now it's time to catch up on everything I haven't done for the last few days because of it. Work-wise, I mean, but first - well, first I'm going to blog it out.
--
you could say that ray lamontagne is the reason I moved to seattle. I mean, of course, everything circles back to kristin, and her love of seattle, and peering sideways at the screen in google maps trying to see what the streets of capitol hill looked like all those years ago (because, really, it's been years now. not a lot, but still. enough.) and kristin being the one who turned me on to all things west-y and KEXP-y, obviously, she gets the credit. but if she's the given in the proof, the base, if you will - then the moment on the radio with ray was an "a-ha!" in the formula that she layed out for me to decipher.
maybe I'm just waxing poetic because of the last few weeks, or because I got an email yesterday talking about the "first time ever" set of solo shows that ray is doing after a tour with some big orchestra. of course, he's not coming through seattle, but I'm tempted to talk my way into covering one of the california shows. I'd do if it I wasn't so shit-broke from my big chicago/austin excursions. then again, the wrens and frames will never disappoint, but I don't know if much can top things ray lamontagne-wise than being four feet away from him on the stage at the paradise in 2004, or meeting him after the show at the avalon with the girl he fell for that didn't fall for him -- all slighter than I thought he'd be, all bearded before the big beard explosion of 2008, all quiet and soft-spoken and unaccustomed-seeming to what was going on around him. it would be bliss, and I wouldn't knock it if I could manage it somehow - but I literally have about twelve dollars to get me through until next saturday, not counting needing to get cat food like, yesterday.
I just checked. eleven dollars, forty-one cents, a roll of quarters for laundry, and a few nights of perfection under my belt to make up for it. I'd do it all over again and pay double, were it the only option.
so yeah... ray. that day in my office, KEXP printout posters masking-taped to the brick wall that I can still feel the texture of under my fingertips. my little computer speakers, kristin through the internets, broken away from a marriage that never was, bleeding all over the keyboard. hearing the meadowlands for the first time in the parking lot outside, rain on the windshield, grey day, lyrics under my skin and into my veins. a chance to make up for the things I missed and turned down and turned away from. and then defeat, and then learning, and then another chance now, the way my life is now, better than it's ever been. a do-over for the do-over, perfect, not wanting.
my table is wobbly and there's the eleven dollar thing, and there tends to be baby spiders in the corners when I move things no matter how much I clean, but it's my place. it'll get better. there's four mismatched gallons of paint in my backseat, waiting to be released; a coffeepot I need to clean, a kitchen floor that needs covering, a bathroom that needs remodeling. crayola-blue that I don't know where to put, the ceiling maybe, or the back of a door. it's a half-assembled hippie love den that's happened from the kindness of strangers, with the exception of a piece here and there and a few of the things I managed not to leave behind. I've gotten my hair down to a science, there's a big to-do list (looming, but no longer does it ruin my day-to-day), I'm immune to caffeine, and I'll have my first visitors at the end of the month circa jon and desirea coming to sleep on my evolved flip-and-fuck of a couch.
people stopping by my desk. "did you hear sean didn't go home last night?" me: "dude. I barely went home last night." I wish the story were more exciting, but it's not. it's kind of a pain, really.
all these little moments where I'm bursting at the seams, doing stuff like walking to my car or getting ready to go out. and I'm not talking about the epic stuff, like getting to meet chris walla and glen hansard - those things are obviously flooring, I'm just glad I can manage to not barf when shit like that happens - I'm talking about driving on the highway, or being in the bulk section of qfc, or catching myself in the mirror and realizing how much I actually look like myself. my outsides and insides are fast approaching tweequilibrium. and it's awesome. then add in the moments backstage and bars in austin and getting to shake hands with rockstars - and it's a wonder I don't explode.
I don't ever remember being this busy this consistently. with like, stuff.
everyone is beautiful and sun-kissed and we got blasted by the sun and the heat for days and days and days, and now it's back to a cool grey chill, high of 75 today, I'm in long sleeves but without tights under my dress. in august. there's shows upon shows upon shows, the barbeque and the mural and the tattoo expo this weekend and the doe bay fest and maybe, just maybe, a trip to back to austin to hit some ACL in rOctober.
what was I talking about? right. ray. an email from his mailing list, vaulting me back to gritty stages and brick walls and shitty speakers and the bare-ing of souls. circled back to the point where I thought I had all this stuff to say, and it's really not much at all, and it's all shit that I've said before. perhaps I should post some photos and get back to work.
lovelies. you're lovely. every last one of you.
hearts,
victoria
