Thursday, June 30, 2011

Old friends, older skin

I think I was 19, maybe 20 when facebook appeared in the college sphere, so I've moved, changed jobs, schools, friend circles many times since those early days of the fb. So, like many people my age, I have fb friends I don't recognize when I see their pictures. I'm not one of those fb purgers who periodically surges with mad power and evicts 'friends' from my facebook,* so I have a lot of these unrecognizables.

BUT: I can't help but wonder, am I unique in the amount of old friends-turned-female body builders I've accumulated and forgotten over the evolution of facebook? It's not that I don't remember these people. I do. I know we lived in the same building, or took a class together**, or something. But when I see their pictures, they are so tanned and chiseled that I have NO IDEA who they are. I see their name and think, "how odd to have a picture of a black woman as your profile pic. I don't think I understand the ironic joke going on here....oh wait." .

Oh wait. That is you who I used to know. You are obviously not an fb purger either. Our commonalities may end there. Do you still know people like me? Do they mock you? They must if they are like me. How do you get along with them? Do I still know people like you? Do they secretly hate me? Do I mind?

I think I'm excited for you.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I am.

Not enough to fb you though. I'll just write about you behind your back. Friends I have now who are closeted body builders...hmm. Deal?

*or Face Page, as my mom calls it
**PE, I think, which strikes me as especially...something.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The very real importance of fiction

After reading all of the published fiction of David James Duncan, I moved onto his nonfiction. And I was surprised to discover I hated him a little when I read he struggled between his desire to create fiction and the more immediate drive to write nonfiction. Duncan's nonfiction is often in response to a pressing environmental crisis threatening rivers in the northwest. What a dick, right? But I did resent the implication that fiction is less important or impacting than nonfiction. I wanted to shake this celebrated writer, thump him upside the head and tell him the only thing nonfiction has (in his case) on fiction is that it's faster. And (in his case) it shows.

So! Imagine my horror when I read Duncan's latest piece of nonfiction, The Heart of the Monster, about ExxonMobil megaloads trucking through the northwest to the Alberta Tar Sands. Of course, the writing is solid, but who cares. Talentless hacks can pen moving pieces when they're about the impending and tragic end of the world as we know it. I completely fell apart. I put off fiction pieces I was supposed to be writing to email my senators, representative, governor, and even a senator in my home state. I missed deadlines to beg everyone I knew to go protest the megaloads with me. Hardly anyone showed up.

I ride my bike everywhere always and only wear used clothes and only buy food from my region and it has very very very little effect on the world. Next the Senate voted to cut a ton of Planned Parenthood's federal funding. I wrote to my government people again. Then NPR. I wrote again. I had this horrible feeling I'd never had before and I couldn't figure out what it was. It took me about a week before I realized it was depression. Don't tell my bipolar mother who has hoped my entire life I would feel this way, but that's exactly what it was. I called my dad.

At first I thought I was calling him because I wanted him to write government people about the megaloads. I tried, shrilly, to explain how big they are (seven times the legal limit previously allowed on the road!) He told me to stop reading the newspaper. I tried to convince him to subscribe to the paperless version of the paper. He said the world has looked like it was going to end forever. I told him this time it really was. All the fish and bees are going to die and we will be fucked. Tragedy is easier to see in the short term, he told me. When he was young he was refused service because he had long hair (much shorter than his hair now) and looked like a Native American. He regularly saw signs in businesses reading: "No Mexicans, No niggers, No dogs." This is in Idaho. There are dogs, but they can't read.

So I guess he had a point. I cried and he told me stop checking the the news for a couple days and to do something decadent. I decided to bake cookies and moodily thought about how when the world is going down all around me, I could at least probably bake some cookies because there's no way we're going to lose power. That's right, I said it. Cormac McCarthy, The Road doesn't work for me because we would all die of dehydration LONG before we'd stop getting digital TV and Facebook to every corner of the world.

Baking cookies reminded me of the line from Stranger Than Fiction when Maggie Gyllenhaal's character says if she's going to make the world a better place, she'll do it with cookies. So I embraced my decadence and watched it. I deleted all the form email responses I'd received from my government people and did something that would not make the world a better place.

And, have you seen that movie? It's lovely. It's clever and funny and sweet and sad. And it's about the importance of a good story. Oh, I cried. I love movies. And novels. I love crying at movies and novels. I've read almost all of David James Duncan's nonfiction, but I get them all confused. I can't tell you the titles of his essays or which companies or rivers each was about. But his fiction I remember in so many different ways. Quotes from the stories pop into my head at random times. I draw on them when dealing with difficult situations--all of the brothers from Brothers K and Gus from The River Why, for example all struggle with interacting with society to make change and holing up and staying to themselves. I feel things for rivers and nature in my gut that I can intellectualize, not through Duncan's essays, but through his fiction. I got depressed when I got entangled in the nonfiction. And what I think usually keeps me out of depression is very large helpings of fiction. I feel just as deeply and am probably more productive when I have fiction in my life. I still hope everyone reads The Heart of the Monster because I think it's important. But as much as I fear for rivers, I get very afraid when people shove aside fiction for more immediate things.

Friday, July 16, 2010

I'll be ok. O.K. Okay.

While writing to my best and telling her I was excruciatingly heartbroken, my sobs suddenly paused for me to figure out the spelling of "excruciatingly."

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sleeping Around

The first sleep over I can remember was at my friend Ashley's house. I loved her house because they had a small trampoline* and instead of putting toys away in their rooms they could just leave them on the stairs. We were friends for many reasons I'm sure, but most notably because we had good taste: she had a My Little Pony (TM) sleeping bag and I, Pound Puppies (TM).

When I was in late elementary or middle school, I got a black sleeping bag with plaid flannel lining. Very practical. Through high school and college I would get away with borrowing sleeping bags--usually black or blue slumber jack (TM) little numbers for trips and camping, but that requires so much planning. I want to go camping at a moment's notice!

So, at age 25, I've invested in my own, grown up sleeping bag for camping and sleep overs. I looked at all the specifics before making my choice. It's designed for a small woman, is temperature rated to 15 degrees and weighs practically nothing for hiking in and out with. And, most importantly, while sleeping bags for grown ups don't come in the Pound Puppy (TM) variety, they do come in pink. Hot pink.


*like one you use in aerobics class

Thursday, April 22, 2010

News I get today

My favorite ex is riding a motorcycle around India and being paid to write about and photograph his favorite thing in the world--Polo.

My older sister's best friend, my fake sister who coaches me through heartbreak since my sister has never experienced it, is getting married to an amazing guy who understands her.

Sigh. What am I doing?

It's good to have friends doing amazing things when you're down because you can remember times when they were down and now look at them.

It can make you feel like a fuck-up too.


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Embarrassment Deserves Company

One of the most thoughtful and classy people I know recently got drunk and embarrassed herself at a bar. The next day she shamefully explained to me how she got kicked out for purposely messing with the speakers for the show that night. She didn't even know why she'd done it. Someone else told her, "You don't even want to know what else you did last night."
But I do! I think these stories need to be shared. Who the hell knows why we do these things, but when* we do it sure is comforting to hear about other people doing similarly stupid things. I told my friend about another friend of mine who puked on herself while sitting at the bar while home for the holidays. Oh bring me some figgy puking?
And how I recently got kicked out of a bar for bringing my own beer. What am I? An alcoholic Great Depression survivor?
I felt a little guilty about telling the puking story. Was it mine to tell? I admitted to my friend I'd shared her story, but then just told her my other friend's story. What is wrong with me?!
I talked to my Christmas puker friend just today and she reported another good friend of ours had gotten drunk at a wedding recently and was feeling embarrassed about it. She said she told her my friend's story about getting kicked out for commandeering the sound control. Maybe neither of these stories were mine to tell, and maybe it's wrong to perpetuate embarrassing stories. But each time these stories got told, they made someone feel better for making a fool of themselves. So maybe we didn't humiliate ourselves in vain. Or at least, we're in respectable company. When my yuletide yaker** friend told my wasted wedding friend about my sloshed show-stopping friend, the wedding-goer insisted that another story of another friend get passed back through the line. This friend got so drunk and impatient that she slipped behind the bar and pretended to be a bartender there. She probably could have done a good job too, but was busted when she stole a swig of some unsuspecting patron's beer. The guy was apparently pissed*** and made a scene. But who hasn't, at one time or another, made a scene in a bar? What goes around, comes around. And I think that's comforting to know.

*WHEN, not if
**Forgive me! Forgive me you all!
***And not just British 'pissed'

Sunday, April 11, 2010



This is a poster from my favorite artist duo. I think it sums up my life quite nicely right now.