proteanme

The king is dead; long live the king.

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

‘Nuff said.

Hot Blooded by Foreigner is running through my head right now, which reminds me that earlier in the day my mental juke box was stuck on an endless loop of I’ll Tumble For You by Culture Club and All The Single Ladies by Beyonce. I’m not proud. It’s not like they’re great songs. They just got suck in my head. Last week it was Madonna’s Gonna Dress You Up in My Love. I listened to a bunch of other stuff but none of it stuck. Except when I was locking up at work today. I was walking around the factory with Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is No Where playing in the my brain, The la la la part.

I’ve gotten in over my head, or I’m afraid that I have. But I think I’m willing to risk drowning. I got accepted into a IPRC’s writing certificate program. And they are not fucking around. There’s lots of writing and lots of reading. And it’s all due now. Ok not right this very minute. But you get the gist.

I’ve got to write some fiction. I’ve got to do it this week. And I haven’t really written fiction before. To be honest I’m scared I’ll write something craptacular. Not even in a spectacular way, but an ordinary way. I’m also scared I’ll become insufferably narcissistic. All I’ve talked about with RU the last two days is me, me, me.

Who does justice work for? It doesn’t work for you if you’re black and a dyke.

The weather was insanely beautiful Friday and Saturday. Everyone kept saying it was like summer, but I thought it felt like fall. A stunning fall. But still fall. It has to do with the timing of dusk an dawn and the shorter days. God I love the sun. I really do. Make me wonder if I should move to LA, or the Dalles.

I should not be up. Not now at 1am on Sunday night. I don’t even know why I’m doing this to myself except that I can, which seems very 14 of me. Especially because I’m staying up in spite of the things I know I gotta do tomorrow and I’m doing things like watching the Beyonce video from the MTV music awards.  I hate that Single Ladies song, but Jesus, Beyonce can dance. She can dance like a mother fucker. Last time I saw a woman dance like that — dance all powerful and hot at the same time was Rosie Perez in the opening credits for Do the Right Thing, which is one of my favorite movies. Rosie did the whole shadow boxing thing to Fight the Power. She killed.

My memory is so shot this year. I hope it’s just the grief. Because I feel nuts sometimes the way I can’t remember things. I forget names of bands and authors and restaurants and the titles of movies and books. I meet someone new, they say their name and I promptly forget it, which I’ve never done until now. I’ll be in the middle of a sentence and I’ll just space some random word. Like tonight I couldn’t remember the word titanium. I was asking a firend if his racing bike was carbon or titanium except I couldn’t think of titanium so I kept saying you know the other that begins with a “t”.

I have two friend’s who’s birthdays are today. Happy birthday Adele. And happy birthday Toby. I only remember it’s their birthdays because it’s also 9/11, which seems deeply unfair. But I am horrible with birthdays.  I can barely remember the dates of my immediate family members’. This year I was sure I had almost missed my niece’s birthday and I called her in a panic , at which point my sister told me it was the next day, promptly causing me to space it out again for another 24 hours, until the same time the next evening, repeating the same panicked call.. The birth dates of friends, even my oldest and closest , I’m sorry, forget about it.

But it was 9/11 I had set out to alk about.

I really love New York. There’s no place like it. And when I think of 9/11, I mostly think of New York, not that I have forgotten the Pentagon or the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, but the images from New York weigh heavy on my mind. I saw the WTC site this year, which was the first time for me. There’s still nothing there. I knew that, but to see the great big fenced off nothingness in person is different. My friend Amy’s dad, a native New Yorker, says we should have put something just as big up right away,  a massive gesture to say “screw you, you lousy terrorists.” But we didn’t. We didn’t because politics and greed have trumped everything else. Human fucking foibles.

At best, I can only  guess at the trauma and grief folks have endured because of 9/11. The reach of it is so long when you look at at Iraq and Afghanistan. Jesus. 8 years later. The suffering is just fucking immeasurable.

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming trip home for Ned and Kristi’s wedding. I haven’t been home in the fall since I moved here and I wonder if I’ll notice the leaves and the crisp air as much as I have the snow when I’ve come back in the winter or the humidity when I’ve been back in the summer.

I like the idea of making such a grand statement in the fall, or at least the fall in Indiana, when the chances are things will be colorful and friends and family won’t be sticking to their clothes which will in turn be sticking to their chairs. But more than that, I like the idea gathering together the things that are important to a person before the winter sets in. It’s a kind of romantic notion about storing up to face the winter together.

I like weddings. I especially like the one’s of folks for whom I have lots of affection. Clint and Kelly’s ceremony was so moving. As was Pat and Rachel’s. And Jim is a toastmaster extraordinaire — such a pleasure. I feel lucky to be included in Ned and Kristi’s big event. Please make me tear up. Seriously. I can be super sentimental.

It’s funny to be writing about a wedding but mostly talking about myself, which is one of the downfalls about blogging for me. Me, me, me, me. Need I say more more?

I miss Ned on the blog, but I’ll trade in his absence for knowing that there are these really wonderful things happening in his life. Here’s to you, buddy.

Poems from a book called Stupid Hope.