Friday, November 7, 2008
Metalworking I
I'd like to describe Jesse for you--his excellent forehead and distinguished face--and the meaning he has brought to my life. I could tell you the stories that make up the very marrow of our marriage: the ways he's helped me know myself, his devoted love of soul music, or the way that emotional subtlety and outrageous humor reside together so comfortably in him. I could tell you that our love both draws me out and steadies me on the beam. Or I could simply recount the time Jesse, not long after first meeting my mother, suddenly broke the reserve between them by dancing ahead of us across a busy street in Manhattan and singing, "I've got the rhythm of the city in me!" But then I'd be trying to convince you of something that is mine alone to know. There is no way to explain why someone walks into a room and awakens your most primal dreams.
In high school, I took a jewelry and metalworking class. I learned to use a blow torch and used most of the semester making copper bracelets and arm bands. The copper would come to me in square sheets that gleamed beautiful metallic shades and the edges were always precise and sharp, until I sawed circles and rounds into them, cutting amateurish designs fervently and haphazardly.
If we had extra cash, we could request to order sterling or even gold-plated silver for our projects, but the copper was cheap and abundant, provided for each student at no extra cost. I held each sheet I received by the machine-punched edges with reverence, because a single fingerprint ruined the sheen so easily— copper of course, patinas. Our Statue of Liberty is a fine example of this chemistry lesson. It is a substance in constant fluctuation, and I could only keep it pure and gleaming for so long. Fingerprints, the greasy sworls, would cloud and darken the brilliant amber metal quickly until it became dull brown in a matter of days.
The chemical process of a copper patina is a form of oxidization, by which the surface of the metal reacts with air and causes corrosion. The moment my short fingers touched it, it decayed, even as I cut it into thin armbands, rings, and pendants, attempting to fashion objects of beauty in a clumsy manner.
Senselessly, I saved every scrap of the copper sheets I had. I melted them with the blowtorch when I was alone in the workshop and the blobby shapes they cooled into became tokens I kept in my desk drawer for years. The bright vibrant and reflective stuff fascinates me, still. A house down the street from my parents has a copper awning over a large portrait window. When the house was built the copper shone brilliantly and was blinding when the sun set against it. Now, maybe 15 years or so later, the awning is green and dull, with large streaky white stains that run down the caulked edges of the window and occasionally across the glass. A gorgeous metal, a fast and faulty decay, and then a green and white mess—how quickly beauty fades.
I’m two months into a new relationship. I met a man on the internet. An internet dating site at that. This, I’ve come to learn, appears to be the utter pariah of ways to meet a partner amongst my friends and family. Not only do people consistently like to look shocked and then confused, asking how I could trust the internet and what if he would have been John Wayne Gacy… but apparently they also like to cuckold the whole notion of meeting someone anywhere other than a set number of places—school, work, a bar, the grocery store, etc (bars, good God, bars of all places seem to be more acceptable). My 82-year-old grandmother is particularly confused—in her opinion the whole operation is akin to a fortune teller conjuring up a blind date for me, replete with crystal ball and smoke screen. Maybe it does seem a little suspicious, that we should have started talking purely based on a whim decision on both of parts to initiate a stream of e-mails knowing nothing other than what we wrote in a form-based profile, but nonetheless… it seems to have worked.
It’s strange and wonderful, and totally, inevitably frightening. I am scared witless. The first time we met in person I had electric currents running all over my body like so many eels, alive and twisting in my blood.
The first time we slept together was violent and cataclismic. My whole body shook violently; I was hyperventilating. I clamped down on him with such force I thought I sure must have been hurting him, and indeed he gasped breathlessly, but he didn’t stop.
And then something unbelievable happened. Pictures sharp as photographs or oil paintings, photorealistic details, colors that were hot and bright, flipped in my mind like a rolodex possessed. The wood in the fire, tattooed with our initials in some goofy and childish proclamation of my love. His eyes, laughing at me as I stumbled awkwardly onto the pier. His hands, flexing and clenching, tendons rolling like fog over mountains. His arms reaching around me in the middle of the night and pulling me towards him, hard. His cheeks, his hair. Then the fire, then him, then the fire again, flames hot and leaping into the October night.
I could hardly bear to look at him, my heart became so full of fragments of images, and when we came against each other in a heavy dual whimper, I could have burst with the effort to not say it. I love him, I love him, I love him, and he is the shining sun, and he is the damp earth, and he is the end of all straight lines, the beginning of all perfect circles, his heart and hands are the only things I desire, and later I put my head against his chest and felt his ribcage vibrate as he laughed, and I could have crawled into that empty space and lived forever.
I want every morning to start like that morning I woke up next to him. I want every night to end like the night we slept together, exhausted from the furious way we join and separate, magnets polarized and then not, as simple as light switching on and off and on and off and on and on and on.
I want him desperately, in ways I’ve never wanted anyone before. I want him, not anyone else, not a single thing other than what he is. I suppose part of the heaviness comes from that singular fact—it is him, not what he represents. Not the love that he could give, not the security that having him around offers me. It’s him.
The whole world is sharp and bright, and the thing I am most scared of is degredation. I'm scared that like all things, something will cause this to fade. The intensity, the newness, the reality of him and me and the deep, cavernous feelings that rise up like magma at inopportune moments that cause me to forget to breathe...
In any case, he is still so new and brilliant, bright gorgeous copper flashing in the sun, that I am blind, all the time.
In high school, I took a jewelry and metalworking class. I learned to use a blow torch and used most of the semester making copper bracelets and arm bands. The copper would come to me in square sheets that gleamed beautiful metallic shades and the edges were always precise and sharp, until I sawed circles and rounds into them, cutting amateurish designs fervently and haphazardly.
If we had extra cash, we could request to order sterling or even gold-plated silver for our projects, but the copper was cheap and abundant, provided for each student at no extra cost. I held each sheet I received by the machine-punched edges with reverence, because a single fingerprint ruined the sheen so easily— copper of course, patinas. Our Statue of Liberty is a fine example of this chemistry lesson. It is a substance in constant fluctuation, and I could only keep it pure and gleaming for so long. Fingerprints, the greasy sworls, would cloud and darken the brilliant amber metal quickly until it became dull brown in a matter of days.
The chemical process of a copper patina is a form of oxidization, by which the surface of the metal reacts with air and causes corrosion. The moment my short fingers touched it, it decayed, even as I cut it into thin armbands, rings, and pendants, attempting to fashion objects of beauty in a clumsy manner.
Senselessly, I saved every scrap of the copper sheets I had. I melted them with the blowtorch when I was alone in the workshop and the blobby shapes they cooled into became tokens I kept in my desk drawer for years. The bright vibrant and reflective stuff fascinates me, still. A house down the street from my parents has a copper awning over a large portrait window. When the house was built the copper shone brilliantly and was blinding when the sun set against it. Now, maybe 15 years or so later, the awning is green and dull, with large streaky white stains that run down the caulked edges of the window and occasionally across the glass. A gorgeous metal, a fast and faulty decay, and then a green and white mess—how quickly beauty fades.
I’m two months into a new relationship. I met a man on the internet. An internet dating site at that. This, I’ve come to learn, appears to be the utter pariah of ways to meet a partner amongst my friends and family. Not only do people consistently like to look shocked and then confused, asking how I could trust the internet and what if he would have been John Wayne Gacy… but apparently they also like to cuckold the whole notion of meeting someone anywhere other than a set number of places—school, work, a bar, the grocery store, etc (bars, good God, bars of all places seem to be more acceptable). My 82-year-old grandmother is particularly confused—in her opinion the whole operation is akin to a fortune teller conjuring up a blind date for me, replete with crystal ball and smoke screen. Maybe it does seem a little suspicious, that we should have started talking purely based on a whim decision on both of parts to initiate a stream of e-mails knowing nothing other than what we wrote in a form-based profile, but nonetheless… it seems to have worked.
It’s strange and wonderful, and totally, inevitably frightening. I am scared witless. The first time we met in person I had electric currents running all over my body like so many eels, alive and twisting in my blood.
The first time we slept together was violent and cataclismic. My whole body shook violently; I was hyperventilating. I clamped down on him with such force I thought I sure must have been hurting him, and indeed he gasped breathlessly, but he didn’t stop.
And then something unbelievable happened. Pictures sharp as photographs or oil paintings, photorealistic details, colors that were hot and bright, flipped in my mind like a rolodex possessed. The wood in the fire, tattooed with our initials in some goofy and childish proclamation of my love. His eyes, laughing at me as I stumbled awkwardly onto the pier. His hands, flexing and clenching, tendons rolling like fog over mountains. His arms reaching around me in the middle of the night and pulling me towards him, hard. His cheeks, his hair. Then the fire, then him, then the fire again, flames hot and leaping into the October night.
I could hardly bear to look at him, my heart became so full of fragments of images, and when we came against each other in a heavy dual whimper, I could have burst with the effort to not say it. I love him, I love him, I love him, and he is the shining sun, and he is the damp earth, and he is the end of all straight lines, the beginning of all perfect circles, his heart and hands are the only things I desire, and later I put my head against his chest and felt his ribcage vibrate as he laughed, and I could have crawled into that empty space and lived forever.
I want every morning to start like that morning I woke up next to him. I want every night to end like the night we slept together, exhausted from the furious way we join and separate, magnets polarized and then not, as simple as light switching on and off and on and off and on and on and on.
I want him desperately, in ways I’ve never wanted anyone before. I want him, not anyone else, not a single thing other than what he is. I suppose part of the heaviness comes from that singular fact—it is him, not what he represents. Not the love that he could give, not the security that having him around offers me. It’s him.
The whole world is sharp and bright, and the thing I am most scared of is degredation. I'm scared that like all things, something will cause this to fade. The intensity, the newness, the reality of him and me and the deep, cavernous feelings that rise up like magma at inopportune moments that cause me to forget to breathe...
In any case, he is still so new and brilliant, bright gorgeous copper flashing in the sun, that I am blind, all the time.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Later On, We'll Conspire
Well, tomorr0w's Thanksgiving... and you know what that means... tons of radio stations playing nothing but Christmas music for the next month. Actually, for some inane reason this has already begun in Chicago, because now there are two "warring" radio stations each trying to outplay the other with happier and more joyous Christmas music, so, naturally, the holiday spirit had to start the day after Halloween, probably in hopes that one of the stations would make someone out there irritated enough that they would kill the entire staff of said radio station just so that they wouldn't have to hear sleigh bells on Veterans Day.
Keep in mind it was 70 degrees here a few weeks ago... hardly the time one wants to be listening to Winter Wonderland.
However, apparently global warming is taking a vacation tomorrow and the greater Midwestern area will get spanked royally by a very-Christmasy snowstorm, completely defeating the purpose of my rant and putting everyone in a holiday mood.
And of course--
Snow makes people idiotic. Happy and giddy, sure... but snow + the average person driving? It's as though everyone got slapped in the face by a idiotic stick.
Sigh. So much angst. Here's my turkey. Merry ChrisThanksgivingmas
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
MY NIGHT SKY WOULD BE THIS BORING
As you might have guessed, I still have not heard from any of the companies I applied at. This has killed my imagination. I have become a zombie with no creativity. I even went to the MCA today... and was in love for about 30 minutes, and still...
the second I walked back in here, I became a shell.
Dramatic!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Yes, My Body is Really Kind of Deformed.
The accuracy of this picture should not be disputed. I do have a disproportionately large stomach that seems to just barrel into my legs which are extraordinarily thin.
Like a bouncy ball with toothpicks coming out of it.
Well, I haven't gotten a call about a single job I applied for yet. Really disappointing. Makes me just want to scream bloody murder. Or just wander around with a dispassionate look about me like some sort of abandoned bird.
I have the day after Thanksgiving off, so thats some kind of solace. My brothers will be home from school, which will also be a nice change of pace.
Maybe if I didn't have the equivalent of a female beer belly I would be more likely to get a job.
Oy.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Mobility: Easier.
For the first time in my life, I own a car. How ridiculous is that? Pretty ridiculous, if you know me. I have been, since I was 16 years of age, the friend who always needed a ride, who couldn't go anywhere without some poor slob of a friend driving ten miles in the wrong direction to pick my ass up... WELL NO MORE! I can drive myself! When I go to the gym with my girlfriend for our yet-to-be-attended spinning/yoga/ormaybeaerobics classes, I will drive my own sorry out-of-shape body!
Take that, world!
(Yeah, its a navy blue Nissan Sentra. Yes, I know this is like a 30-year-old salesman car. Shove it.)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
I was in the paper business
Richard made my day today.
Rich is this incredibly nice and funny older man who works in our office part time because he's "bored" with his retirement. He is just the nicest guy-- the kind of guy you want for a grandfather, or imagine the friendly old man at the park to be. Not in a creepy way. Just an honest-to-God sweet old man who makes funny jokes at weird times.
Anywho so on days like today where I have a lot of boring, idiotic stuff to do, Rich and I have "talks" and we talk about the inefficiency of the company we work for, the weather, the general state of affairs with respect to traffic, baseball, or construction in Chicago... we're the two lowest of the low here, so we commiserate. Me and the 76 year old guy who had a stroke.
The point of all of this is, today we were talking about working and this job and how I want a job in an industry I would feel more comfortable in... and I asked Rich... what did you do before you retired?
And Rich, ladies and gentlemen... was in the paper business. He was the (no lies) REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION MANAGER FOR AVERY DENNISON.
Rich is my damn hero right now.
Two color rainbows.
When I drink a whole lot of caffeine (i.e. Red Bull... or any other large energy drink) I get terrible stomach aches but the jittery, too-awake-for-my-own-good feeling is really wonderful.
On another note, screw the CTA. I took the train this morning (Metra) and arrived at Union Station at 8:05. I then proceeded to wait for the 151 Sheridan bus for 35 minutes. When we finally left at 8:43, I was 13 minutes late to work. Then, we decided to drive behind a garbage truck all the way down State Street.
I was 50 minutes late to work today. WTF is that. I'm sick of being late because I have a two hour commute. I hate that. I really REALLY hope that I get called about that other job soon. Need to get out of here...
Well, today is Wednesday, the middle child of the weekdays, and we are incredibly short-staffed today and the phone is ringing off the hook but I wanted to update with a new MS Paint, and with some novel bitching.
Hand sanitizer just exploded out of the container onto my shirt.
Super. This day has just been great.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Cirrus Patterns
I did... all right... on the GRE. Not as well as I would have liked to. But well enough, I suppose.
I've been thinking a LOT about traveling lately... now that I officially have nothing to stick around for (ie relationships or school) the time has come to take the first opportunity and leave. I am definitely going abroad in the spring. I will probably go to London (expensive) and Edinburgh (full of crazy Scottish people) and I would like to visit a dear friend of mine in Belgium (language barriers)... and then who knows. Hopefully I can get about three weeks off of work to do this... I'll just save up my sick and vacation time as long as possible.
Unless I get this new job I applied for at C&B corporate. That would be the greatest thing in the world. I would die to get out of health care right now. Die of happiness.
Also my list of schools to apply to has changed significantly and now only includes 2 schools in Chicago. If I stay, I will be pleased, and if I leave, I will be scared... but I want to go back to school so badly. I just want someone to give me the chance. I'll take it.
Even if its Kentucky.
You know... I don't miss undergrad drawing classes... nude models... repetitive hand-cramping gesture drawings... and that guy... with the pockmarked face and gold chain who had some sort of STD or disease that would cause his genitals to drip.
Oh, Jerry.
Hopefully he saw a doctor about that.
I've been thinking a LOT about traveling lately... now that I officially have nothing to stick around for (ie relationships or school) the time has come to take the first opportunity and leave. I am definitely going abroad in the spring. I will probably go to London (expensive) and Edinburgh (full of crazy Scottish people) and I would like to visit a dear friend of mine in Belgium (language barriers)... and then who knows. Hopefully I can get about three weeks off of work to do this... I'll just save up my sick and vacation time as long as possible.
Unless I get this new job I applied for at C&B corporate. That would be the greatest thing in the world. I would die to get out of health care right now. Die of happiness.
Also my list of schools to apply to has changed significantly and now only includes 2 schools in Chicago. If I stay, I will be pleased, and if I leave, I will be scared... but I want to go back to school so badly. I just want someone to give me the chance. I'll take it.
Even if its Kentucky.
You know... I don't miss undergrad drawing classes... nude models... repetitive hand-cramping gesture drawings... and that guy... with the pockmarked face and gold chain who had some sort of STD or disease that would cause his genitals to drip.
Oh, Jerry.
Hopefully he saw a doctor about that.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Halloweenie
I'm sad to say this will be the second year in a row that I do not celebrate Halloween. Last year I had no good excuse; I sat on my bed in my tiny dorm room and moped to myself about being lonely or something equally ridiculous stemming from the rapid dissipation of all my so-called social life.
I think I ate pizza and watched Discovery channel. And then slept through class.
This year I will be heading to a concert with a guy I might have had a semi-awkward experience with in the past and it leads me to wonder...
WTF IS MY PROBLEM?
Why can't I meet people who aren't screwed up or weird? Why is my entire social circle composed of ex-boyfriends and people whom with I shared an awkward and possible scarring past? Where are all these other people in the world with cool jobs and nice cars who want to go see metal shows with me? (I know, they don't exist.)
All sorts of things are bothering me lately. I just feel so STUCK and UNHAPPY and etc.
I wish I could dress up for Halloween, though.
I want to be a sailor. A zombie sailor.
I think I ate pizza and watched Discovery channel. And then slept through class.
This year I will be heading to a concert with a guy I might have had a semi-awkward experience with in the past and it leads me to wonder...
WTF IS MY PROBLEM?
Why can't I meet people who aren't screwed up or weird? Why is my entire social circle composed of ex-boyfriends and people whom with I shared an awkward and possible scarring past? Where are all these other people in the world with cool jobs and nice cars who want to go see metal shows with me? (I know, they don't exist.)
All sorts of things are bothering me lately. I just feel so STUCK and UNHAPPY and etc.
I wish I could dress up for Halloween, though.
I want to be a sailor. A zombie sailor.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Field of Stinking Onions
So Chicago is lovely most times of year, but today it sucks. It's windy (to no one's amazement), cold, and miserable, and I am stuck in an office building uglier than sin... wearing slippers.
Tomorrow I go to work, for the seventh day in a row. For the most part this makes me feel like I'm trapped in hell, the same day repeating over and over and over again. Groundhog Day-esque, except without Bill Murray, funniness, or groundhogs.
I went to the gym the other day, good God was that a joke. Partially because I suck at physical activity, partially because there were three Asian kids doing a breakdancing routine in the weight room and The Creepiest Polish Kid Ever trying to do what I assume was also breakdancing... I was confused as to whether he was a part of their routine or if he was just watching, imitating... stalking... waiting for his chance to prove himself and be a part of their crew...
This of course brings me to my next point which is... breakdancing makes people look stupid if they can't do it properly. Really stupid. Now that I think about it... breakdancing makes everyone look stupid.
Although I suppose sometimes one must break it to make it.
I really want a new job.
Tomorrow I go to work, for the seventh day in a row. For the most part this makes me feel like I'm trapped in hell, the same day repeating over and over and over again. Groundhog Day-esque, except without Bill Murray, funniness, or groundhogs.
I went to the gym the other day, good God was that a joke. Partially because I suck at physical activity, partially because there were three Asian kids doing a breakdancing routine in the weight room and The Creepiest Polish Kid Ever trying to do what I assume was also breakdancing... I was confused as to whether he was a part of their routine or if he was just watching, imitating... stalking... waiting for his chance to prove himself and be a part of their crew...
This of course brings me to my next point which is... breakdancing makes people look stupid if they can't do it properly. Really stupid. Now that I think about it... breakdancing makes everyone look stupid.
Although I suppose sometimes one must break it to make it.
I really want a new job.
Friday, October 5, 2007
A Rich Mess
This just in: Britney Spears is an ugly mess, much like a lot of people from Louisiana.
But seriously folks, celebrities are people, and lets face it, people are stupid, and this woman is not in line to be winning a Nobel... I don't think she'd even get very far on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. Probably shed get confused just about the concept of the show. And it's funny. Sad, I guess, but more funny.
Don't feel bad for her. She's still got more money than a Swiss bank.
In other news, I really am loving this new military-inspired fashion trend as of late , if only for the reason that it makes me feel like I'm living out some twisted fantasy of being the female Paul Revere... not that I have that fantasy... and not that if given the chance I would wear capes and knickers and tricorn hats. No. That's not true.
In other news, the Chicago Cubs still
I should work.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Heroes of Mine.
This man is my personal hero:
That's doing it in unprecedented, unapologetic style. I am drunk, I am ridiculous, and I don't give a flying fuck.
In all seriousness, though...
I just paid $140 to take a test.
I just PAID someone to torture me...
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A man accused of drunken driving tried to outrun the police but his vehicle wasn't up to the task.
Michael Ginevan of Bunker Hill was driving a riding lawnmower on Runnymeade Road about a mile from his home when a Berkeley County sheriff's deputy attempted to pull him over. Ginevan, 39, allegedly sped away and Deputy J.H. Jenkins stopped his cruiser and gave chase on foot, according to magistrate court records.
Jenkins caught up to the lawnmower after a short chase but Ginevan allegedly wouldn't stop so the deputy pulled him off the machine. Ginevan refused to take a field sobriety test and was arrested. Jenkins then found a case of beer strapped to the lawnmower's front, court records show.
That's doing it in unprecedented, unapologetic style. I am drunk, I am ridiculous, and I don't give a flying fuck.
In all seriousness, though...
I just paid $140 to take a test.
I just PAID someone to torture me...
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Poor Scotland.
From Wikipedia:
Just for reference: The Scottish Parliament Website-- In Scots, of course.
Just for reference: The Scottish Parliament Website-- In Scots, of course.
Notwithstanding the UK government’s and the Scottish Executive’s obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English.
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