An evening well spent

After blood work, and a trip to midtown comics and basically getting out and moving around, my mood vastly improved. We went to Anthropologie, used our credit, and then phoned Alice to go and hang at their place for dinner. Thank goodness. In fact, thank goodness I had blood work otherwise I would have stayed home and felt terrible without anything to help lift me back up.

Plosk, Eric, Marie Alice and I ate pizza, talked, played taboo, watched Battlestar, and oh yeah- had a failed game of scrabble because no one wants to play with me:( Apparently my scrabble skills are too advanced and by my third turn neither Alice or Marie wanted to be beaten quite so badly. I had warned them how much I play, but it appears as if my warnings were not heard. Alas. I'll just have to keep playing with Rita. It was however a really fun evening where we all just relaxed and let the night flow. Very happy we went.

On another note - completely separate- since P and I have moved into 11o1, a strange development has occurred. WE GOT MARRIED! Um, no. But everyone thinks we have. I keep getting referred to as, "oh your wife," and people keep saying about P, "Oh, your husband." Our neighbor put it best as our doorman said something to me about my husband..."I didn't know you guys got married. I'm your neighbor and you don't even tell me." He was joking of course. We live in an older building and one might say that the older generation thinks that when two people involved buy a place to live together, that they would be or should be married. This argument would be valid, if other younger people didn't also make the same assumption. At the hardware store, the guy who helped us with our paint asked (directly after hitting on me right in front of P) for Gary's phone number for a return, 'but not to worry he wouldn't use it to bother his wife.' There I am again, a wife. Am I matronly all of the sudden? Am I wearing an invisible ring? I'm going with the theory that he and I look very happy and very comfortable and therefore people assume that we have crossed into marriage. Well, when I was younger I never even thought I would get married. Now that I'm 23, marriage is a reality but not one that is in my immediate future. I've taken a huge step and live and share a life, and a bank account with my boyfriend and partner. But to set the record straight, I'm no wife just yet.

Well, my stomach feels like it's grinding and turning slivers of metal and wood. My head feels like it may collapse. And my limbs don't want to move at all. I'm supposed to finish work, go to the gym, go to the hospital for bloodwork, go to the new MOMA and then possibly meet up with friends in the city. Something by far is wrong when all of these things sound completely impossible. The only 'have to do' is get my blood work done. I have to find out if my medicine is correct so cancer cells don't find their way back into my throat.

By itself, the hospital is enough to give me stomach pains, but in combination with other problems happening in your life, fun is not a part of the plan. Something broke. Something large broke last night. I couldn't even lift my hands. It's something that needs to be dealt with, only I have no idea how to even begin to think about it. Patterns are astounding. The ways in which human beings create their own doom over and over again. I behave badly at times. I feel it, and continue to do it anyway. This is the first time I've been with a person strong enough in themselves to point it out to me. The ways in which I fail. The ways in which you're not as good as you hope to be. And it's a humiliating feeling. Well, this is vague.

To end with something not so horrible, a wonderful conversation took place not too long ago. Places to live. Plosk and I are on the same page. We want to work in acadamia. We want to travel and experience different parts of the world. We are moving through life together, and the joint goals that go hand in hand only make the path more appealing. It's amazing when you don't have to do things alone. Even when massive road blocks find themselves in your way.

Categories

A person has various people in their lives for a wide variety of reasons. Parents, siblings, friends, lovers, teachers, co-workers. They all have specific titles because they fit into a different part of your life. Sometimes a single person will fit into more than one category. Co-workers can become friends. Teachers can as well. Friends can become lovers and lovers can become friends. The positions people have in our lives are normally specialized. I have friends I can call up to go to a museum, and other friends I can play catch with. But I know each person's place. Then others can surprise you by fitting into many categories. Best friends can transcend into relationships. And Friends can fizzle away into acquaintences. We all experience such transitions. And most people only know parts of each of us.

Example: my friend from school miss fong can be described as a printmaking and volleyball friend. I have also shared more personal things with her, but for the majority of college, she and I hung out through these common interests.

Is it possible to get to know a single person in all aspects of their lives? Can one person understand each portion of you? Is it wrong to keep parts of yourself strictly to yourself when you know another person wants to transition and visit a different part of your personality. This was part of a discussion last night. I was told "I feel like there is a part of you I don't really know." This was difficult for that person. The part of me that has remained just beyond reach is my writing self. Only few people know me and my writing as one person. It's really only students and teachers from my classes- some who have made the transition into friendship. I've never shared my writing with my oldest friends or people I hold relationships with. This has to change for a few reasons. 1: because I have to get over being so worried about how people will view my personality based on my writing. "You're twisted" has been a quote more than once. but releasing it into the open means not caring how others connect you to your art. 2. because allowing someone to accept you means allowing them the chance to know you completely. A very difficult thing to accomplish.

In any case, I live a compartmentalized life. I am aware of this. I have many different faces and each of them is a part of me. We are all like this. Some people just blend them better than I have. But part of recognizing ones short comings is a chance to change them. That sounds annoyingly optimistic but I'm ok with that. Annoyingly optimistic is better than doomed. And expansion and exploration of new methods of living are certainly positive.

'Tis Morning

I woke up this morning next to bico and watched him sleep. He was curled in a ball, no covers because of the heat looking completely relaxed and soft. I use the word soft because the bico I have gotten in know in the last 8 months (yes, it has been 8 months since that life changing evening back in November) is different. He surprises me at work with flowers. He makes sure I know how he feels. He lets himself look and be silly with no thought. This is not to say he didn't use to be open, but he is now in a different way. He remains my best friend, but is now my partner. Each decision we make effects the other and we are greatful for it. As he has said, this has been two years in the making. We were not built over night.

He is soft and childlike when he sleeps, so I spent a good long while rubbing his back and ridding his eye lids of stray lashes. Tomorrow is his birthday and yes, I do make fun of him and his impending decade change, but I'm very excited. He's grown so much in the time I've known him. We both have.

One thing I hadn't expected was how similar our taste would be. Decorating the apartment has been so enjoyable. We both respect the old and my antique obsession has meshed with his appreciation of the archaic. On Saturday we bought a beautiful oak bookcase where all my vintage poetry books can be housed. We saw it, both stopped and expressed our desire. In fact, 95 percent of items we see when we are out shopping, we share a love for. My old typewriter sits on the table, and his classical records decorate the room. On Friday, my friend Lori gave us an antique Chinese basket with a silk service for two inside. The apartment has begun to express our likes and feels more like home each day.

As for myself- I have started a new regiment. I write for an hour every night, (plans permitting). It's an hour to work on my novel, an hour to have some quiet time to myself, and an hour for plosk to work on his web stuff. I have broken my cycle of fear. And it's slow moving, but I am producing some really solid writing, which is all I can ever ask. I've also been revisiting favorite books and poets, and focusing on the construction of what I consider to be fine writing. Last night, while bico laid in bed with stomach pain, I read him the first chapter of "The Things They Carried" and sent Brian "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children." I'm focusing. I'm feeling momentum. I can't ask for more than that.

I dislike titles

I'm thrashing about. Not doing much of anything actually. I'm stone faced and feeling frustrated. Not sure why. I simply have the feeling of being tired combined with a lack of knowing what to do with my self at this moment. A lack of poetry perhaps. A lack of finding words that will help me explore exactly what my problem is. Macabre descriptions that were part of me, from me and now escape me completely. A lack of knowing how to format my thoughts. What makes you able to speak to the world in a way that hasn't been done. I don't have this. This is currently not with me.

I miss words like clotting, marrow, and flesh. Visceral words that allow one to feel the world through the organs of their body. Associate the world around us with the inner parts that we don't see. There is a metaphor for everything, and the body and how it breaks down can easily be attached to the grim world around us. In any case, I'm tired. I'm always tired lately. I'm indexing Victor Hugo in french. Mind you I don't speak french. Or "Songs to a Shepherd" which is just as uninspiring. Wealthy wives of beaurocrats or sons of fortunes penciling their thoughts into a collected anthology simply because they are financially fortunate. Wallace Stevens is a rare wealthy business man with a sense of language, and besides for a quirky Alfred Kreymborg, I am left with "To my mother upon her death in her 78 year." Or poems titled, "Spring," "Death," "June" and other dismal season oriented poems that go no farther than speaking of mortality using the cycles of nature in order to get their point across. New ideas. Experimentation with language. So static. So stodgy. Attempting to fit into a specific form. Poetry as a fixed medium. Adrienne Rich during her "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" period instead of "A Woman Dead in Her Forties." Bring out your insanity. Show the truth of what you think. Don't spend so much time thinking of clever metaphors. Please, instead write your thoughts, beliefs, truths. Metaphor will come. Beauty will come. It's the way we think, function. It's not to be processed or taught. Advice to myself perhaps.