proteanme

The first time I saw Raquel Welch was on a televised USO show in December, 1967. By that point she’d been made a star by Fantastic Voyage, and after some roles in British films, she was a legitimate sex symbol. A soldier was picked out of the crowd and invited up on stage to meet her. From all buzz and cat calls and guys jostling for position, a lone GI emerged and made his up on to the stage, looking a bit sheepish, but still eager cause he was gonna get a kiss from her. Granted, it was only a kiss on the cheek. But it was fucking Raquel Welch.

And I wanted to be him. Badly – with all my 5 year old being I wanted to be him. I sat in the bath that night, closed my eyes, scrunched up my face, and pressed my hands together and wished as hard as I could – let me be that guy for that one second when Raquel Welch leaned in close and put her lips on his skin.

A few friends I want to express special gratitude to right now: Amy, Ned, Martha and Faith.

Ok. I get it. There’s no trick, no magic bullet, no paradise…but there is this one person who takes the edge off, who turns the volume down when I’ve cranked it too high, who’s face when I look at across the table from me makes the world seem a little less cruel.

I read that on a bumper sticker once. I wish I could take that advice to heart right now. It’s as though my mind is searching around for some new torturous thought or image to do battle with. Good lord, do I have to be such as expert at beating myself up?! It is amazing feat. I am able to conjure up the most exquisitely painful scene, the hook ever so sly and subtle, but once I take the bait. . .

I understand how people turn to Jesus, not that I’m going there, in hopes of alleviating their suffering, heal their addictions, restore their humanity damaged by stealing or cheating, redeem them from their cruelty. I understand it because the belief that there is something outside myself that’s gonna save me from me, man, that’s a very, very enticing idea.

I’m scared and sad and feeling terribly lonely, in other words heart broken. And I can’t find one damn distraction that works to get a break from it all. I tried to go to a movie last night, but just couldn’t escape into it, so i left about 1/2 way through, and came home and made some angry art, hoping it would alleviate that big fucking knot of anger. And there was a little looseness but not a lot. And then I stayed up way too fucking late, because I didn’t want to have to battle my thoughts as I tried to fall asleep. Instead I got to wake up to battle them them a little this morning.

I don’t want to go down this fucking stupid heartbreak path. Again. I’m just so fucking sick of it. C’mon! If there is no there there, what’s the point of this awareness and practice. Fuck process. This shit is not like a movie or a song where the right something comes along and makes things better. There is no right thing, even if there are a lot of wrong things. There’s just fucking practice.

I’m angry and sad right now and don’t want to talk about it in any detail, because if I did it would just be long version of fuck it. So instead I’m offering up some quotes.

• From: Kissing the Lipless by the Shins
• Berate, remember
  Your ailing heart and your criminal eyes
  You say you’re still in love
  If it’s true, what can be done?
  It’s hard to leave all these moments behind

• From: Silence by P.J. Harvey
• I’d risen this morning
  Determined to break
  The spell of my longing
  And not to think

• Last up from: Shatter by Liz Phair
  I don’t know if I could drive a car
  Fast enough to get to where you are
  or wild enough not to miss the boat completely
  Honey, I’m thinking maybe
  You know just maybe

Sometimes I am amazed that I inhabited this world at the same time as Martin Luther King, even if only for a scant 6 years. And I’m saddened the image of him commonly celebrated on MLK day is so sanitized. He’s been de-radicalized for public consumption, wrapped up in the “I have a dream” sound bite. It’s as though we want to forget what led him to speaking about having that dream – that to be an African-American in the U.S. during that time and long before was nightmarish.

Thinking of King this week I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail and I cried a bit: When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society . . .

I encourage you to read or re-read it for yourself. Note this is PDF.

Today is a brief list of things I want to accomplish this year, not so much goals, as areas of practice:

• Travel.
• Get fit.
• Bring more attention to what and how I eat.
• Listen more to music.
• See art.
• Make art
• Watch less TV.
• Nurture friendships.

Today’s list consists of some of 2007’s food hilights.

• Homemade ice cream, using a custard base and the hand crank ice cream maker I scored at an estate sale.
• A perfect steak, medium rare, at Le Pegion.
• Cooking fresh fava beans Roman style.
• Making the perfect Provencal salad with help from Gourmet.
• Manilla mango season.
• Pork belly pate at Navarre.
• Lots of home made spicey corn fritters.
• Making a killer salsa verde for the first time.
• Tacos at Por Que No.
• Using fresh tomatoes to make panzanella (bread salad), and bolognese, carbonara and amitricianna sauces.
• First time I went to Ken’s Pizza.

Some things I do when I’m at home and I’m avoiding getting work done.

• Get out the compressed air and and clean the crumbs out of my keyboard.
• Get up and go into the kitchen, open the cupboards, close the cupboards, open the fridge, close the fridge, then go back and sit down. Repeat in 20 minutes or 10, depending on how deeply I’m trying to avoid the task at hand.
• Search the web for some red Adidas Beckenbauer sneakers.
• Trim my finger nails.
• Read all the Tanque blogs.
• Read a bunch of other blogs I check on a semi regular basis.
• Dust my desk.
• Browse the personals and look at the raunchy photos craigslisters post in casual encounters.
• Trim the cat’s nails.
• Organize my play lists.
• Search the web for old friends who’s last names I can’t remember.
• Walk to the little store around the corner and look at the snack food, which I used to eat a lot more of, Oreos and HoHos being perennial favorites, but since December I’ve been trying to bring a lot more attention to what I’m eating so now I do more looking and less eating.