It's a small world, after all...
Shoot me. I would do it myself, but I just can't bring myself to put me out of my own misery.
I hate crowds. Always have, always will. I like people, not always, but mostly, I do, just not throngs of them. So where do I find myself? Yes, I am ashamed to say, the mecca of capitalist slime... Dworld. Right, I said, shoot, me. It's just that when you are a five-year-old girl there is nothing more exciting than fantasy, and my five-year-old girl was promised by my parents a trip when she was five. So here I am, suffering through the oppresive heat, abiding her every wish. Ok. So she is having a great time. And while gaudy costumes and flashing lights aren't exactly my thing, well, there is something to be said for the pleasure of making the most beloved person in your life happy. Even if she takes anticipatory whining to new levels.
Of course the ulterior motive, and the reason I don't allow myself to feel like such a terrible hypocrite (never mind that the amount of money spent in one day could supply an entire African village with protease inhibitors for a month, but...), is that I am also visiting with my 80-year-old grandmother who lives here in Orlando, and my Aunt Sandy and Uncle Bob, too. I know I shirk family responsibilities, or rather, I am a terrible correspondent because I never have time (though you'd never know it based on my writing... different audiences provide different forms of inspiration, I suppose.) but, there it is. I'd like to crawl under a rock.
However, amid the freakish extremes of capitalism in all its wretched deformity, (and they now fingerprint you so that you can't transfer your ticket to someone else, but I wonder if there isn't some secret data collection being made, for a fat little profit - you know, "here we will give you the names and fingerprints of everyone that comes into the park every day, and in turn..." well, perhaps I am too imaginative, or mistrusting of the powers that be, but we are in Florida for fuck's sake), I was at least pleased by the fact that if only superficially there is an overriding theme of conservation, ecology and multicultural tolerance. Bah. Take it for what it's worth, I am always trying to find the silver lining, despite my innate negativity. It is this sick joke that has been played on me, eternal ambivalence, intercalated with hopefulness and despair in intermittent and rapidly increasing cycles. I think that there may be a drug for this... but nothing I've ever taken has worked.
Take for example my attempt at taking anti-depressants last year... they basically killed my libido and ambition as well as my "pain" so what do I do? In the middle of the largest upheaval in my personal history I drop them, cold turkey. Hey, I've never claimed to be anything but a fuck up who likes to sing songs and tell stories. Then there was the time, how many years ago now? At least 7, yes 7, I was living in Mexico at the time, I tried taking St. John's Wort. But after several months, with no noticeable change in me, or rather, all kinds of other crazy things going on which affected my mood, oh, just little things, like falling "in love" or, oops, getting pregnant while I was trying to finish the school year that had been extended by the worker's strike at La Ibero. If it weren't for that strike... I met M. while living with his best friend, and while we were officially "living together" it was much more about convenience (he was at the national dance school two blocks away) than love (I am convinced that if I had been a teenage boy we could have worked. ha ha.). He was cute, I'll give him that, but M. blew me away with his guitar playing (guitar goggles are my downfall) and the way that neither of us could stand the cello player who kept going way flat when no one else in the whole concert hall seemed to notice the horror... anyway, this has nothing to do with where I was going with this post. It was about the complete and utter aleatory existence which we live. If there hadn't been a strike (leaving me at home and solitarily writing stories in the middle of the afternoon), if M. hadn't been asked by J.J. to pick up a score for Handel's Messiah for me, and if the UNAM hadn't subsequently gone on a student driven strike for the following several months, my life would be absolutely different. I might be living in the South of France, with a man named Pierre, or a woman, Monique perhaps? I know, I know, the same could be said about each and every moment of each and every day. But yet, some events seem to hold more significant sway over the outcomes of our lives.
Ah well. There are several "if only" I had... or hadn't... moments for which I am grateful or that I wish I could redo, but this is real life and as a very smart person once pointed out to me, there are no bonus lives after accruing 100,000 points. So we are stuck with ourselves, our good and bad choices, our successes and failures. Maybe, just maybe, one day I will learn to quit while I am ahead, but I think that maybe I am thick as a brick, and never will learn this lesson.
So I have decided to begin drinking red wine, instead. J. you will laugh because I insisted vehemently for several days that I don't drink and then you watched me pass through the whole gamut from light beer to wine to hard liquor in those same several days. But here's the thing. Ever since I moved to CA, and there is no reason for this because I haven't acquired any new wine-tasting skills (yes, yes, I have a sharp olfactory sense and a good palate, but absolutely no training) but just because I think since we arrived with Eric and Lucía last August, we just started drinking socially more, or maybe we just have more wine-drinking friends. Another mystery yet unsolved. I remember our first meal in Santa Barbara. It was Indian food at a restaurant for whom I will make no effort at publicity because their service is not only lacking, but downright offensive... in any case, Lucía mentioned that you had to find your grape and stick with it. Hers was Pinot Noir. Mine is unequivocally Shiraz. It took me a while to discover this, trial and error mostly, although I had an inkling before when Jenny's last visit to NH she introduced me (another felicitous "if only" moment?) but without fail the only reds I always lust after are Shiraz and Syrahs. There it is. So, I wonder if I drink a glass of red wine a day, will I be a happier person? Will I save this dying planet (of course not) but will I care just a little bit less about my ultimate non-impact. Maybe. It's worth a try isn't it?
Dad did buy me a very large bottle, but tomorrow I escape to St. Augustine, and K. and I have larger fish to fry...
Strange that we have to both fly across the country to see eachother when we finally live on the same coast in the same state. But then, it is a small world, after all.
I hate crowds. Always have, always will. I like people, not always, but mostly, I do, just not throngs of them. So where do I find myself? Yes, I am ashamed to say, the mecca of capitalist slime... Dworld. Right, I said, shoot, me. It's just that when you are a five-year-old girl there is nothing more exciting than fantasy, and my five-year-old girl was promised by my parents a trip when she was five. So here I am, suffering through the oppresive heat, abiding her every wish. Ok. So she is having a great time. And while gaudy costumes and flashing lights aren't exactly my thing, well, there is something to be said for the pleasure of making the most beloved person in your life happy. Even if she takes anticipatory whining to new levels.
Of course the ulterior motive, and the reason I don't allow myself to feel like such a terrible hypocrite (never mind that the amount of money spent in one day could supply an entire African village with protease inhibitors for a month, but...), is that I am also visiting with my 80-year-old grandmother who lives here in Orlando, and my Aunt Sandy and Uncle Bob, too. I know I shirk family responsibilities, or rather, I am a terrible correspondent because I never have time (though you'd never know it based on my writing... different audiences provide different forms of inspiration, I suppose.) but, there it is. I'd like to crawl under a rock.
However, amid the freakish extremes of capitalism in all its wretched deformity, (and they now fingerprint you so that you can't transfer your ticket to someone else, but I wonder if there isn't some secret data collection being made, for a fat little profit - you know, "here we will give you the names and fingerprints of everyone that comes into the park every day, and in turn..." well, perhaps I am too imaginative, or mistrusting of the powers that be, but we are in Florida for fuck's sake), I was at least pleased by the fact that if only superficially there is an overriding theme of conservation, ecology and multicultural tolerance. Bah. Take it for what it's worth, I am always trying to find the silver lining, despite my innate negativity. It is this sick joke that has been played on me, eternal ambivalence, intercalated with hopefulness and despair in intermittent and rapidly increasing cycles. I think that there may be a drug for this... but nothing I've ever taken has worked.
Take for example my attempt at taking anti-depressants last year... they basically killed my libido and ambition as well as my "pain" so what do I do? In the middle of the largest upheaval in my personal history I drop them, cold turkey. Hey, I've never claimed to be anything but a fuck up who likes to sing songs and tell stories. Then there was the time, how many years ago now? At least 7, yes 7, I was living in Mexico at the time, I tried taking St. John's Wort. But after several months, with no noticeable change in me, or rather, all kinds of other crazy things going on which affected my mood, oh, just little things, like falling "in love" or, oops, getting pregnant while I was trying to finish the school year that had been extended by the worker's strike at La Ibero. If it weren't for that strike... I met M. while living with his best friend, and while we were officially "living together" it was much more about convenience (he was at the national dance school two blocks away) than love (I am convinced that if I had been a teenage boy we could have worked. ha ha.). He was cute, I'll give him that, but M. blew me away with his guitar playing (guitar goggles are my downfall) and the way that neither of us could stand the cello player who kept going way flat when no one else in the whole concert hall seemed to notice the horror... anyway, this has nothing to do with where I was going with this post. It was about the complete and utter aleatory existence which we live. If there hadn't been a strike (leaving me at home and solitarily writing stories in the middle of the afternoon), if M. hadn't been asked by J.J. to pick up a score for Handel's Messiah for me, and if the UNAM hadn't subsequently gone on a student driven strike for the following several months, my life would be absolutely different. I might be living in the South of France, with a man named Pierre, or a woman, Monique perhaps? I know, I know, the same could be said about each and every moment of each and every day. But yet, some events seem to hold more significant sway over the outcomes of our lives.
Ah well. There are several "if only" I had... or hadn't... moments for which I am grateful or that I wish I could redo, but this is real life and as a very smart person once pointed out to me, there are no bonus lives after accruing 100,000 points. So we are stuck with ourselves, our good and bad choices, our successes and failures. Maybe, just maybe, one day I will learn to quit while I am ahead, but I think that maybe I am thick as a brick, and never will learn this lesson.
So I have decided to begin drinking red wine, instead. J. you will laugh because I insisted vehemently for several days that I don't drink and then you watched me pass through the whole gamut from light beer to wine to hard liquor in those same several days. But here's the thing. Ever since I moved to CA, and there is no reason for this because I haven't acquired any new wine-tasting skills (yes, yes, I have a sharp olfactory sense and a good palate, but absolutely no training) but just because I think since we arrived with Eric and Lucía last August, we just started drinking socially more, or maybe we just have more wine-drinking friends. Another mystery yet unsolved. I remember our first meal in Santa Barbara. It was Indian food at a restaurant for whom I will make no effort at publicity because their service is not only lacking, but downright offensive... in any case, Lucía mentioned that you had to find your grape and stick with it. Hers was Pinot Noir. Mine is unequivocally Shiraz. It took me a while to discover this, trial and error mostly, although I had an inkling before when Jenny's last visit to NH she introduced me (another felicitous "if only" moment?) but without fail the only reds I always lust after are Shiraz and Syrahs. There it is. So, I wonder if I drink a glass of red wine a day, will I be a happier person? Will I save this dying planet (of course not) but will I care just a little bit less about my ultimate non-impact. Maybe. It's worth a try isn't it?
Dad did buy me a very large bottle, but tomorrow I escape to St. Augustine, and K. and I have larger fish to fry...
Strange that we have to both fly across the country to see eachother when we finally live on the same coast in the same state. But then, it is a small world, after all.
posted by ilana at 10:14 p.m.
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