Darling Reader, I must apologize for my laziness in getting this blog to you. Yesterday was, after all, Christmas, and even this Jew had to take a day off, because as my boyfriend’s father said, “you have to believe in God or Christmas,” and I figured, logically, that since I am far more comfortable with the latter than I am with the former, I would take my small vacation and hope for your leniency the next morning.
That being said, I would like to first mention that my sister sent me an email about a week ago with a link to an MSNBC article titled, Is America Ready? Hillary's hair and hemline won't be issues; her tough national-security approach and famous husband will. This, of course, was an article focusing on the issue at hand: is America ready for Hillary and/or Obama?
My immediate reaction was outrage, actually. The reason being that while they’re both very good candidates for Presidency, and that I would vote Obama into virtually any office that he ran for, I’m having a hard time imagining that America is, for once, totally agreeing with me. Because that never happens. So here’s what I think:
I don’t think Obama will win. Come to think of it, Hillary won’t win, either. If she gets the nomination it’s party suicide, again, for the Democrats. I daresay this country might be more ready for a multi-racial (everyone loves Tiger Woods) VP (because he won’t get the big one, I don’t think, though I’ve been wrong before) than a woman running for President on a viable ticket. And I don’t think John Edwards will be willing to take second place again, and I don’t blame him. He had what it took then, and he’s got it now, plus four more years of experience, campaigning against poverty, and teenagers and post-adolescent women in love with his John Ritter good looks. And unfortunately, you’re always going to have those people who think that a black man (even a half black man) is incapable of running our country – which may or may not be the same group of people who think that a woman is incapable of running our country as well.
Hillary’s biggest selling point is also her biggest downfall: she is married to Bill Clinton. Let’s face it, she’s got real baggage because of this. Everyone except Newt Gingrich and Ken Starr loves Bill Clinton, but not everyone loves his wife. This has always been the case. She was always a powerful woman by whom many, many men were intimidated (very likely the same group that think that a woman or a black man are incapable of running the country…) That being said, she’s one of two things at this point: a) she’s a total bitch harpie flaming lezzie dyke (or something to that effect), or b) she’s that poor, poor woman who got walked all over by her womanizing husband. This of course means that maybe 70% of the country feels one of two things for her: a) contempt, or b) pity. And neither of those emotions will get you elected to the White House, my friend. New York elects her because they’re New York, and there’s a huge difference between being a Senator for a state and being the President of the United States. Obviously the same can be said for Obama. And yes, Hillary has more experience, and yes, Barack has more grassroots appeal, but let’s face it. Neither of them will be sitting in the Daddy Chair come January 2009.
There are easily more swing voters in this country than we seem to count when thinking about a Hillary Presidency – there are enough Republicans and Democrats that don’t want to see her in such a position, that she would be easily be defeated – especially if the Republican Party gets their crap together in 2008 and runs someone reasonable like Rudy Giuliani (boy, wouldn’t that be an interesting choice for New Yorkers) or Mitt Romney. And while there might be enough super-liberal Democrats to vote in those all-important primaries to get her the nomination, when it starts to really matter on a nationwide level, she hasn’t got a chance. She’s got less of a chance, in fact, than John Kerry ever did, who totally blew his load (and any chance of Presidency, ever, might I add) in 2004 and is lucky that Massachusetts still might not throw him out on his ear when the time comes. In fact, I’m fairly convinced that my sister is the only surviving Kerry supporter in the known universe.
And, speaking of John Kerry, he can get stuffed. No one else matters in this race. The media is making a HUGE deal out of Hillary & Barack, but because they’re minorities and that’s fantastic. But I honest-to-god think that John Edwards has a fighting chance, more than a fighting chance, he’s what Bill Clinton was, and what Al Gore should have been (a good looking grassroots southern boy... only Edwards is CHARMING, and that's huge in politics).
And if I said it once in 2004, I said it a million times: names are everything. You're allowed a funny name as long as your running mate has a good solid I’ve-loved-America-since-1605 name (Nixon/Agnew), but most often we’re looking at two good American names (Kennedy/Johnson; Clinton/Gore; Reagan/Bush; Bush/Cheney). It makes the people feel comfortable. It allows people who don't think about politics to not have to think about politics. It's why Lieberman would never be president – his wife’s name is Hadassah, and let’s face it, that’s just too Jewish. It's why Stephanopoulos is a great commentator but will never be president; it's why Dukakis lost in 1988 – you gotta have a name that people can pronounce. You have to have a name that can become a household name. Everyone from your half-deaf grandmother to your college-educated sister to your six-year-old nephew has got to be able to say it, and remember it.
Anyway, I digress. The point is, this country is progressive, but for better or for worse, this country is NOT progressive enough to elect a black man or a woman – and certainly not on the same ticket, in case any nutcase out there is thinking that. If either one of them has a fighting chance, it’s alongside some nice, WASPy, elderly and experienced politician.
Hillary and Obama? No, certainly not. It’s too radical; it’s too much for us right now.
God, I hate politics.
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
word vomit, and nothing but the best for you
I haven't written anything in a while, and I guess I kinda feel obligated. I'm working on a Hillary/Obama/Edwards rant for Ian's presidential whatever blogthing, and I'm probably going to post it up here.
But not now.
For now, I have a question, and it has to do with the philosophy and psychology of blogging itself. Did what I say to Ian (that is, "one blogs because one has something interesting and important to say") really hold any weight? What's the point? Because god knows that none of us are going to post journal entries and leave them totally public. But there comes a time in the week, the month, where you have a revelation, and it's so good you want to quote yourself, it's so good you hear your friends telling you they've already heard this story, they've already read it in your away message for the last 4 days straight, that yeah they agree, but really...
So? Do you have to have something to say?
That's what I thought. I always thought that writing was an inherently narcisstic practice - one must be so insanely pompous to think that what he or she writes is good enough to be written down, to be read, to be treasured by generations to come, blah blah blah... which is what I never really understood about myself, to be honest. I love writing, but god help me if I've ever thought that I was worthy of "through the generations." I just like to write.
I like the way the cursor moves across the page. I like the way that cheap ball point pen feels between my fingers, the struggle 6 months later to read the scribble, the wrinkled eyebrows and quirky half-smiles that come in response to whatever philosophical or personal crap I've holed away in a 5 year old spiral notebook that's covered in computer printouts and sticky notes and bad handwriting. But that writing, the writing that I really love... that writing is what no one reads. That writing is why I've considered memoir in a more serious way than I ever considered fiction. I don't have to strain myself wondering how to make a certain character more believable in his thoughts, words, actions, feelings. The struggle of memoir is to find a word, a phrase, a sentence, a creative and clear way to string them together - an accurate description of your mind.
No. An accurate description of my mind. And that's all that matters here. I like seeing what I feel on paper, I like the burn when I do something bad and the warmth when I do something good. I like seeing words like "love" and "touched" and all those dirty little quotes you can't believe you remember because life is such a blur anyway, all those words that you can't say to anyone but yourself. There's nothing better than this conversation with yourself, when you sit down and you say, this is what it is, it is what it is, there is no point in trying to change anything, so let's just write the bugger out and see where it goes from there. And you paperclip photos on there, like it's your journal, like it's something personal that no one is ever going to read, you paperclip these photos and memories and tears to the pages like it's your own brain... pretend there's no agent, no editor, no audience, pretend your mother will never read it, your exboyfriends, your best friend... there's no one there but you and you've got to make you happy, because if you don't do that, where will you be? You can lie to everyone but yourself and that's the point of it. I have so many secrets, there are days I want to climb onto my roof and scream, I want to send emails to everyone I've ever met, I want to call my grandmother, I want to shock and please and amuse and bewilder everyone around me, because if you can't do that, where will you be? There are days when I want to reveal my past to those around me just because I want to see the looks on their faces. I want someone to know.
But, at the same time of course, you shake your head and clear these thoughts, and think to yourself, dear god, what if everyone did find out? Would you ever be able to show your face in public? How many friends would you lose? How many tears would your mother cry?
The real question is this: would you be able to forgive yourself for sharing every loss of innocence, every personal moment, every stolen glance and touch and kiss, every slip of anger, every word, every thought, every single word? And maybe you would lose friends, or make your mother cry, but none of that matters in the face of the total excavation of your brain and innermost thoughts and memories and pain and laughter and everything. You can't give it up; that's the point of the brain. Maybe there are things we don't remember, but maybe they're just things that have been stowed away for later, things that as we are dying we can look back on, the good, the bad, and we can say to ourselves:
Yes. I lived.
But not now.
For now, I have a question, and it has to do with the philosophy and psychology of blogging itself. Did what I say to Ian (that is, "one blogs because one has something interesting and important to say") really hold any weight? What's the point? Because god knows that none of us are going to post journal entries and leave them totally public. But there comes a time in the week, the month, where you have a revelation, and it's so good you want to quote yourself, it's so good you hear your friends telling you they've already heard this story, they've already read it in your away message for the last 4 days straight, that yeah they agree, but really...
So? Do you have to have something to say?
That's what I thought. I always thought that writing was an inherently narcisstic practice - one must be so insanely pompous to think that what he or she writes is good enough to be written down, to be read, to be treasured by generations to come, blah blah blah... which is what I never really understood about myself, to be honest. I love writing, but god help me if I've ever thought that I was worthy of "through the generations." I just like to write.
I like the way the cursor moves across the page. I like the way that cheap ball point pen feels between my fingers, the struggle 6 months later to read the scribble, the wrinkled eyebrows and quirky half-smiles that come in response to whatever philosophical or personal crap I've holed away in a 5 year old spiral notebook that's covered in computer printouts and sticky notes and bad handwriting. But that writing, the writing that I really love... that writing is what no one reads. That writing is why I've considered memoir in a more serious way than I ever considered fiction. I don't have to strain myself wondering how to make a certain character more believable in his thoughts, words, actions, feelings. The struggle of memoir is to find a word, a phrase, a sentence, a creative and clear way to string them together - an accurate description of your mind.
No. An accurate description of my mind. And that's all that matters here. I like seeing what I feel on paper, I like the burn when I do something bad and the warmth when I do something good. I like seeing words like "love" and "touched" and all those dirty little quotes you can't believe you remember because life is such a blur anyway, all those words that you can't say to anyone but yourself. There's nothing better than this conversation with yourself, when you sit down and you say, this is what it is, it is what it is, there is no point in trying to change anything, so let's just write the bugger out and see where it goes from there. And you paperclip photos on there, like it's your journal, like it's something personal that no one is ever going to read, you paperclip these photos and memories and tears to the pages like it's your own brain... pretend there's no agent, no editor, no audience, pretend your mother will never read it, your exboyfriends, your best friend... there's no one there but you and you've got to make you happy, because if you don't do that, where will you be? You can lie to everyone but yourself and that's the point of it. I have so many secrets, there are days I want to climb onto my roof and scream, I want to send emails to everyone I've ever met, I want to call my grandmother, I want to shock and please and amuse and bewilder everyone around me, because if you can't do that, where will you be? There are days when I want to reveal my past to those around me just because I want to see the looks on their faces. I want someone to know.
But, at the same time of course, you shake your head and clear these thoughts, and think to yourself, dear god, what if everyone did find out? Would you ever be able to show your face in public? How many friends would you lose? How many tears would your mother cry?
The real question is this: would you be able to forgive yourself for sharing every loss of innocence, every personal moment, every stolen glance and touch and kiss, every slip of anger, every word, every thought, every single word? And maybe you would lose friends, or make your mother cry, but none of that matters in the face of the total excavation of your brain and innermost thoughts and memories and pain and laughter and everything. You can't give it up; that's the point of the brain. Maybe there are things we don't remember, but maybe they're just things that have been stowed away for later, things that as we are dying we can look back on, the good, the bad, and we can say to ourselves:
Yes. I lived.
Monday, December 4, 2006
"will tell interesting stories for beer"
The scene:
Norwich, CT; various flashbacks throughout Connecticut.
The players:
Laurie Pasteryak - former quasi-museum-coworker and friend. She now attends Tufts University in Boston and is getting her museum studies certificate. She comes around from time to time and is always great fun.
Matt Marques - archaeologist at the museum. He lives on my road, a few buildings down. He has cable and I have internet. It works out.
Will, Mandy, Trish, Zack, etc. - various other archaeologists at the museum. All very cool shits.
Guin - does not work at the museum. Works, in fact, at the casino. I got to know her through a mutual friend/working next door to her for 6 weeks.
That being said:
Laurie was in town this weekend. No one apparently had any idea - but no matter, she wouldn't have come to Zack's anyway (well, not before midnight) because she was at Mohegan Sun watching The Who. Yes. Amazing. She called me last night around 8pm while I was on the phone with my sister... when I got off I listened to her message, laughingly berating me for not inviting her on Friday night - I called her back and told her that she ought to let people know she's around instead of assuming that we're all psychic. And I said, "so what are you doing?" She said nothing, and I said, ok, come down and we'll hang out. We'll call Matt and we'll hang out, whatever, have a drink.
Which is the point here. I'm by no means a drunk, but I drink more now than I did my junior and senior years of college combined. I've finally found a happy medium between drinking Smirnoff black-label from the liter-sized bottle and not drinking anything at all. Maybe I did have a problem back when I was 16, 17 years old. Maybe I didn't. But I didn't drink the last two years of college because of a combination of one or two bad experiences I wasn't sure I knew how to avoid in the future and my two closest male friends not wanting anything to do with alcohol for them or anyone else. And that's cool. I mean, I drank still, I took tequila-shots-for-no-class-tomorrow during March of my junior year, praying that the snow would persuade the powers that be to at least delay classes... instead I had to get up the next morning around 8am after having drunk tequila the night before. And never mind that I was sober again before I even went to bed, you still wake up in a strange and dehydrated haze like you shouldn't be up this early...
And I drank a whole bottle of pinot grigio before classes started for fall 2005. It was the beginning of my senior year, and I rang it in with a real humdinger of a hangover (18 hours). So it's not like I was dry for 2 years.
But still. Last Tuesday we went to Harp & Dragon for Matt's 23rd birthday... he & I outstayed Will, who usually outstays everyone. We got there around 5 and Matt & I didn't leave until 1030. But we weren't drunk. Maybe 4 drinks in 5 1/2 hours. We just sat around and chewed the fat. And Friday a bunch of us went to Zack's and drank. And everyone but 2 (~10 people) was sober by the time they left for home again (granted, around 4 am). And Saturday night I went with Guin to Harp & Dragon, just for dinner - but I had an Irish coffee.
And Sunday night Matt, Laurie, & I went back to H&D. We sat for a few hours, ate wings and chowder, and had a couple drinks. It was a lot of fun.
But why, all of a sudden, do I drink so easily, so socially? Maybe because it IS social. Maybe I like the mixers. Maybe I actually like beer. Maybe I just like the Harp & Dragon.
Fine. Maybe I like the buzz. Maybe I like that I can walk down the street with some good friends and have a couple whiskey sours or Cape Cods or just beer, and we can all giggle our asses off on the way home, our breaths hoary in the December air, and we can all go home and go to bed and wake up the next morning on time, feeling fine, get in the shower, drink some coffee, and go to work...
I want to ignore this. I want to say, "this is perfectly normal behavior" because some part of me, somewhere, knows that it is. But I think with my past I can't look past it. But then, maybe I will someday.
Maybe. Just maybe.
Norwich, CT; various flashbacks throughout Connecticut.
The players:
Laurie Pasteryak - former quasi-museum-coworker and friend. She now attends Tufts University in Boston and is getting her museum studies certificate. She comes around from time to time and is always great fun.
Matt Marques - archaeologist at the museum. He lives on my road, a few buildings down. He has cable and I have internet. It works out.
Will, Mandy, Trish, Zack, etc. - various other archaeologists at the museum. All very cool shits.
Guin - does not work at the museum. Works, in fact, at the casino. I got to know her through a mutual friend/working next door to her for 6 weeks.
That being said:
Laurie was in town this weekend. No one apparently had any idea - but no matter, she wouldn't have come to Zack's anyway (well, not before midnight) because she was at Mohegan Sun watching The Who. Yes. Amazing. She called me last night around 8pm while I was on the phone with my sister... when I got off I listened to her message, laughingly berating me for not inviting her on Friday night - I called her back and told her that she ought to let people know she's around instead of assuming that we're all psychic. And I said, "so what are you doing?" She said nothing, and I said, ok, come down and we'll hang out. We'll call Matt and we'll hang out, whatever, have a drink.
Which is the point here. I'm by no means a drunk, but I drink more now than I did my junior and senior years of college combined. I've finally found a happy medium between drinking Smirnoff black-label from the liter-sized bottle and not drinking anything at all. Maybe I did have a problem back when I was 16, 17 years old. Maybe I didn't. But I didn't drink the last two years of college because of a combination of one or two bad experiences I wasn't sure I knew how to avoid in the future and my two closest male friends not wanting anything to do with alcohol for them or anyone else. And that's cool. I mean, I drank still, I took tequila-shots-for-no-class-tomorrow during March of my junior year, praying that the snow would persuade the powers that be to at least delay classes... instead I had to get up the next morning around 8am after having drunk tequila the night before. And never mind that I was sober again before I even went to bed, you still wake up in a strange and dehydrated haze like you shouldn't be up this early...
And I drank a whole bottle of pinot grigio before classes started for fall 2005. It was the beginning of my senior year, and I rang it in with a real humdinger of a hangover (18 hours). So it's not like I was dry for 2 years.
But still. Last Tuesday we went to Harp & Dragon for Matt's 23rd birthday... he & I outstayed Will, who usually outstays everyone. We got there around 5 and Matt & I didn't leave until 1030. But we weren't drunk. Maybe 4 drinks in 5 1/2 hours. We just sat around and chewed the fat. And Friday a bunch of us went to Zack's and drank. And everyone but 2 (~10 people) was sober by the time they left for home again (granted, around 4 am). And Saturday night I went with Guin to Harp & Dragon, just for dinner - but I had an Irish coffee.
And Sunday night Matt, Laurie, & I went back to H&D. We sat for a few hours, ate wings and chowder, and had a couple drinks. It was a lot of fun.
But why, all of a sudden, do I drink so easily, so socially? Maybe because it IS social. Maybe I like the mixers. Maybe I actually like beer. Maybe I just like the Harp & Dragon.
Fine. Maybe I like the buzz. Maybe I like that I can walk down the street with some good friends and have a couple whiskey sours or Cape Cods or just beer, and we can all giggle our asses off on the way home, our breaths hoary in the December air, and we can all go home and go to bed and wake up the next morning on time, feeling fine, get in the shower, drink some coffee, and go to work...
I want to ignore this. I want to say, "this is perfectly normal behavior" because some part of me, somewhere, knows that it is. But I think with my past I can't look past it. But then, maybe I will someday.
Maybe. Just maybe.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
with beer pong occasionally come epiphanies.
I went to a party with some of the guys from the field crews at the museum. It wasn't a big deal, just a get-together, beer, some pong, and good times all around. And 8 hours later, we're mostly sober again, standing around, actually talking about archaeology, and I'm thinking to myself, holy shit. I haven't been to a party in simply ages - not a real one. I was never a real party girl, though in my early college days I drank hard, I never really did it in big groups - as I told Zack, "you're going to have to refresh me on the rules, because I think the last time I played beer pong I was 17." But last night was nice, man - the kind of night you wish you had every night. It was laidback and everyone was cool and everything was the way it should be. And today, I went hiking with my friend Bonnie.
And I could finally put words to what I had been thinking, feeling, knowing during this time with the guys, these guys who were still dirty from the field, these guys playing beer pong and half-watching The Big Lebowski, these guys that hung around and checked out the maps on the wall and talked about the Eastern Bloc and drank beer, these guys who stood in the kitchen and laughed and laughed about Uncas while the upstairs neighbor girl stared at us with a great blank expression on her face...
These guys made me realize you gotta work hard, love hard, play hard, you gotta get a job that makes you want to up in the morning and you gotta get a lover that makes you want to go to bed at night. You gotta dress to get dirty, and bring a jack-knife if you have one. Life isn't about how much stuff you have but how much you smile, because no one ever really laughs enough. Live for the nights of beer and laughter - live for the mornings you wake up hoarse from too much of both. You gotta love life because it's pretty much all you've got.
And I could finally put words to what I had been thinking, feeling, knowing during this time with the guys, these guys who were still dirty from the field, these guys playing beer pong and half-watching The Big Lebowski, these guys that hung around and checked out the maps on the wall and talked about the Eastern Bloc and drank beer, these guys who stood in the kitchen and laughed and laughed about Uncas while the upstairs neighbor girl stared at us with a great blank expression on her face...
These guys made me realize you gotta work hard, love hard, play hard, you gotta get a job that makes you want to up in the morning and you gotta get a lover that makes you want to go to bed at night. You gotta dress to get dirty, and bring a jack-knife if you have one. Life isn't about how much stuff you have but how much you smile, because no one ever really laughs enough. Live for the nights of beer and laughter - live for the mornings you wake up hoarse from too much of both. You gotta love life because it's pretty much all you've got.
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