Personal Perestróĭka

The story of my birth, not shockingly, is on my mind this morning. I wonder often about how much of our personalities we are born with. I was born early, very early, and as it’s always been repeated to me by every woman in my family, this means I was eager to be born and as a consequence of this I am always anxious for the next thing, always ready to move along even before the time is right. (My sister was born a month late and is as pokey about getting ready as the day is long, so who knows. Of course my mom also calls us “The Anarchist” and “The Imperialist” but that’s a story for another day.)

So I was 3 weeks premature. The story goes like this: my parents went to pizza with some friends and then caught a late show of A Clockwork Orange. In the middle of the night after that my mother thought she had terrible heartburn which got bad enough she decided they should go to the hospital. At the hospital the nurses declared my mother to be in labor, very advanced labor. As it was a small town and the early 70s they refused to admit my father into the delivery room. So my parents despite the nurse’s insistence that I was coming at any second, my parents got back into the car and drove 20 minutes or so to next town where they would let my father into the delivery room. I was born less than an hour later, some tellings have minutes after they got to the second hospital. Total labor time for me was just over 3 hours.

I came out quietly, only let a single yell, enough to start me breathing. No screaming, no noisy gasping for breath, just a surprised vocalization when air came in.

I was tiny, like just over 4 pounds, in the days before incubators and good preemie care. The doctor wouldn’t let my mother take me home until I weighed 5 pounds.

Does any of this affect who I am now? Was it predetermined that I would never scream even when I had the chance, even when I should? Am I still rushing headlong into things only to be held up, my own urgency leaving me waiting until the time is right, until I’m big enough, strong enough, ready?

Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth. – Franz Kafka

Last night perclexed and her sister came over a took most of my houseplants away. It was really sad. My babies!! But I definitely feel good about the home I sent them too. She recently gave up all her plants when she moved out here, so it feels sort of full circle-ish.

Then I spent a whole bunch of time rearranging boxes between the car and the house–bringing empty boxes in and taking full boxes out. I took stuff to my mom’s and will take a bunch more over Friday. You know what feels weird? Putting stuff BACK into your room at your parent’s house. As I was driving home I was thinking how I’m going to be staying there for a few days before I leave and how strange it will be to sleep there surrounded only by the things I’m leaving behind. It made me feel all melancholy.

I leave in almost exactly a month. GAH! Will I ever get everything done? I’m so fucking excited, y’all. (I need icons for this account, happy ones, rage-y ones. I don’t know.)

My mother tells me I am the girl other people’s mothers warn them about. She seems particularly proud of this.

My apartment is over-flowing with boxes and it’s so small there just isn’t any good place to put them. This weekend I started boxing up all the stuff that’s going into storage. But that just leaves me with stacks of empty boxes and stacks of full ones (which will hopefully go off this week to sit for weeks and months–storing things is weird, but man, I can not bear to part some things even if I don’t need them).

Going through the books was painful. I can not give up 90% of my books, but you know, there’s no real need to drag them across the country with me. I mean really, when am I going be sitting down to read Livy, or Plutarch’s Lives, or the dozen obscure Eastern European novel I have? What about all the books on myths and fairytales from different part sof the world? Or the ridiculously large collection of vampire folklore and mythology books (whatever, it’s like 9 books, but seriously, who needs that many)? So I’m not taking them but I am keeping them.

I tried to look at everything and pick what I couldn’t live without, which turned out to be a pretty obscure collection of things: Gibson, Murakami, Ellison, Rollins, a few dozen reference books. Plus all the books I’ve bought or been given in the last year that I haven’t yet read. So the bottom line was most treasured/needed/likely to re-read books, plus a couple boxes of books that I haven’t read. Oh my god, WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY BOOKS? And how will I live only taking so few? Will I get desperate and ask my mom to ship me the boxes I’m leaving behind? How do I tell my books that I’m not breaking up with them? That this is just a little separation and I’ll be back for them? I’m actually leaving more books than I’m taking. This hurts. Perhaps even more than giving all the houseplants away, though that remains to be seen.

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My spaz over the new Hank III album continues unabated. Okay, fine, it’s not so much about the album as just Shelton himself, but I am here to talk about the album. Indeed the spaz is so bad that I actually spent a good amount of time telling my mother all about Shelton Hank Williams this weekend. Like he was my new boyfriend or something. And I don’t even have the decency to be embarassed about this.

The album is awesome, though maybe not his best. It’s good, it’s all good, it’s just not spectacular or innovative, right? It sounds less like his grandfather than the previous country albums, though some of that could be because every song on this album is about getting drunk or getting high, or losing your girl because you were drunk or high, or finding a girl to get drunk and high with. Which certainly doesn’t make me love it any less. I’m still listening to it over and over, just in the long run, Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’ will probaly get a little more play from me (at least as country music, This Ain’t Country will get the most play in the end). Release of the album was drawn out over a several years and I wonder if it didn’t suffer slightly, becoming more of a collection of songs (good songs) rather than unified album as cohesive artistic project, you know?

The second disc is something else all together. It is in fact spectacular and maybe innovative (at least for country music). It’s sort of covers of, no wait, it’s like a mix of, er it’s, well, it’s kind of soundscapes of, I dunno, crap college kids would make when left stoned with recording equipment. Train sounds and weird vocals patched in with songs and some other trippy crap. And you know, it’s good, even though I am not at all making it sound that way with my description. It’s sort of like lying in the tall grass of the high plains, somewhere at sunset, while God and Satan fight for your soul and you’re listening to everything around you, with music from the local honky tonk blurring into all the ambient sounds or something. (Also if the non-singing voiceover over the running water before the Jesus stuff starts is Hank III’s actual voice, oh fuck me I’m done, I might as well just start stalking him. And I swear, I don’t even ever date guys who smoke pot–uh, cause they are boring not cause I give a fuck what they do).

Most reviewers seem to be calling the second disc the most interesting part of the album, writing the rest off as either country versions of hip-hip songs (WTF? Because hip-hop is the only acceptable place to sing about drugs?) or deriding it as either too old-timey or not genuine enough in it’s country-ness (again WTF?). But then I’m never able to read reviews of stuff I really like. I end up incredibly pissed off, feeling like the reviewers totally didn’t get it. Anyway, this Hank III album is not different: Reviewers, bite me. Shelton? Call me, I get it, baby, let’s get married in Vegas. I promise when I leave your fucked-up ass I won’t ask for more than a few songs about me.

(mp3.com has the entire thing up (streaming not download) for free, if you want to give it a listen.)

In high school people often used to come up to me and say in (what I perceived to be) a whining, wheedling way, “Are you mad at me?” At the time it just further pissed me off. Generally, no, I wasn’t mad at them exactly, but asking that question always pushed me over the top to enraged.

I don’t have anger issues. Really, I don’t think anyone who knows me would say that I do. Back then, in high school, I used to wonder what made people always say that to me. At some point I decided it was just my face. I have a pretty goofy smile, I think maybe the kind that makes other people smile, but my neutral expression? It’s kind of pissy. I don’t mean I’m usually pissy so I look that way, I mean when I’m thinking or feeling nothing, the angles of my face look a little dissaproving or something. So yes, for years I attributed people’s reactions to me as a result of this.

In retrospect, that may or may not have been true. Now I know myself better. I’ve also always thought I had a really good poker face. I’ve often been told this by people. And maybe in some cases this is true, but really the problem in my interaction with some people is that I just can not hide my disdain as much as I’d like. I can’t abide most kinds of stupidity and maybe I’ve never really learned to properly conceal my reaction to it.

I genuinely like most people. I believe I really can find something good about almost everyone, but you know you aren’t going to like everyone. It’s just not possible. And as much as I try to keep up appearances, my dislike, rare as it is, always seems to seep through.

What prompted this bit of introspective asshattery? A coworker, a grown woman, came to me and said in that whining, wheedling way, “Are you mad at me? Have I done something?” Yes, yes, you have, I didn’t say, you’ve generally been a complete fucking moron in my presence and I can’t stand that. Sorry I can’t fake it for you, like you appear to fake to everyone all the time, to the point of appearing generally false and untrustworthy (which is a bad combination with your inherent stupidity).

Yeah, maybe I didn’t have a point at all. I swear I was writing this to make myself feel better and now I’m crankier than when I started.

Gems from my evening–

My mother telling me that because of her allergies her eyes have been so red that when she puts on make-up she looks like a demon from a Noh play, as her face is pale and her eyes remain rimmed in bright red. She punctuates this by attempting Noh dance, as if that’s what would make me get what she meant.

My Dad looking out the window and saying “Oh, I thought the slugs were eating the plants but it’s that damned rabbit!” (My parents have a wild rabbit that lives in their yard.) Setting me off on a hilarious thought train of my dad doing battle with this rabbit a la Mr. MacGregor. Probably funny only to me, as my dad has long been doing battle with the lawn and has recently dug up most of the grass and replaced it with flower beds full of plants now being eaten by the rabbit. Poor Dad.

My mother listing off the ways she’s weaning herself off dependence on me so she won’t be bereft when I move away. Her main accomplishment is booking a vacation and making all the arrangements for herself (I usually do this for her, it’s, uh, not that hard). Also she claims my sister is now better than me about knowing what band is singing a song on the radio than I am, so she doesn’t need me for this anymore either.

My mother’s hilarity telling about how she was buying ice cream at a convenience store and she asked the clerk for chocolate syrup and when she came back with it the clerk (an Asian, non-native English speaker) said, “Oh, are you going to put the chocolate syrup on the ice cream? What a good idea!!” My mom was thoroughly amused at the idea that this might be a new concept to someone.

My sister just got back from Paris today (a school trip) and was regaling me with tales of her wacky French teacher, who apparently stood on an escalator in crowded department store and said loudly, “Does anyone need to pee pee or poo poo?” and then turned around to discover that none of the people around her were the kids from her group, they were all random strangers.

Being in the dinning room with my sister who then goes into the other room, so I go into the kitchen and my mom turns to me and says, “Well no wonder I couldn’t find my wallet. It was in the freezer with the ice cream.” She had her very cold wallet in one hand and thing of Haagen Daz in the other. At which point I start laughing so hard I almost rupture something and my sister is calling from the other room, “What did she say?” I go and try and tell my sister, but I’m laughing too hard. I finally get it out and set my sister off. We both come back into the kitchen clutching our stomachs and dying of laughter and mom’s like, “Oh ha ha, you think I’m so funny.” Well, yeah, crazy insane, memory problem lady, you are. We remind her of the time she bought Xmas presents, put her wallet in the bag with them and then hid the presents in the closet and spent FIVE DAYS looking for her wallet. Then the sister and I discuss how when mom is really old we’ll have to check her bags for her every time she comes back from errands. Comedy gold.

So there’s a rumour going around that I’m moving to Nashville. I’ve really got to get on my publicity people to keep that shit under wraps. I swear there’s been a leak in my organization since the beginning and someone is so getting fired over this. Oh what? I can’t fire myself? Fuck.

Have I lost my mind? Probably. But you know what I hate? The idea that I might become someone indistinguishable from the masses of corporate employees who eek out tiny bits of happiness on weekend in their gardens and little hobbies. There’s nothing wrong with that life, it’s just more concerned with safety and security and less concerned with living and seeing and doing. People need security, it’s true, but for me the price for middle class security is too high. So I’m off into the great fucking unknown to do ridiculously impractical things, hopefully for money. And you you know, temp and be desperately poor and all that good stuff. Given a choice between putting on a starched, button-up shirt and heels and slogging my way through stacks of data, doing work 1000 degrees removed from what people need to actually survive, for the next 30 years or putting on a tank top and boots and watching a country band play a small club and worrying about where my next meal is coming from, I’ll choose the latter, thanks.

Got questions? I don’t have answers. Not really. Am I going to be closer in to the land of fake cowboys with hats and guitars? Do I think redneck zen really exists? Why would anyone move to the American south anyway? Yeah, what? I don’t know. But continuous rain, endless emo bands, and pretentious holier-than-thou hipsters in every direction isn’t so great, you know. And how did this become some pretentious exposition on my motivations? Ugh, save me from myself.

Headlong dive, straight into the unknown. If you aren’t a bit jealous then I envy you your life a little. I’m as excited as a person could fucking ever be, except the inbetween, the current limbo, of planning details and like getting moved which is hideous and painful and akin to a too slow rip of to too stuck band-aid. I got projects, plans, things to set in motion. I’mna change the whole fucking world, damn it, even if I only become so self-centered that life change looks like world change from a limited internal view. But you know, I might change the world too, wait and see. Stay tuned, if it isn’t full out soap opera drama, it might be a good as one of those little Chick tract religious pamphlets teaching you a lesson on what not to do. No matter what it’ll be interesting, right?