the weekend of (no) debachery
Austin: B's final weekend of freedom before taking the plunge into marital bliss.
Before taking a dip in the Comal.
oklahoma
With the recent break up of a good friend, it's a pseudo girls weekend. Headed out on a wild trip to...Oklahoma City. WooHoo! Sometimes I forget my own connection to the place. We will see if I am inspired at all for a photo essay of this road trip.
It looks like rain today.
my birthday
This weekend hayseed threw me a surprise party complete with celebrity guests, friends who traveled great distances and long lost friends. The evening was fun and easy. Not really, I was pretty manic most of the evening. I had maybe three beers but felt drunk from the moment I walked into the house.
It's cliche' but as each year passes I do feel older. Especially since turning thirty. This one makes thirty-five and the first one where I actually feel close to forty.
They found a place to make my birthday cake in the shape of a guitar. EI loved all my gifts. Hayseed even called my mom which is only interesting because mom didn't have any idea who she was at the time.
I don't seem to know how to keep my mother or others closest to me updated on my relationships. There seems to be this disconnect with me and my ability to share the details of my close relationships. I can think of plenty of excuses but no good reasons.
From my first serious boyfriend in high school until this very moment, I have not been able to explain these relationships without feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Llike my relationships are somehow fake - not real. Then there is the idea that inevitably things end so why go through all the explaination when my mom probably will never even meet the person and I'll have to make some explaination for a thing that there is never a good explaination. The last two times I did share with my mom, the relationships ended so quickly that I was embarrassed to tell her they were over.
So, my mom couldn't make the party but she sent a very personalized gift. The gift was really several items but included a photo album with pictures up until I moved to live gramps. She included a letter telling the story of the night I was born and some other childhood stories. She then asked me to fill in the photo album with pictures from those years after I moved up to the present and to include a letter of my own describing my life story. It will be an interesting project and process of reflection. We will see if I am better at explaining in print than I seem to be in our once every three month five minute phone conversations.
The emabarrassing moment at the party was showing S.G. around the house. Tragic comedy. She must have felt strange by the amount stuff related to her through my house. The picture on my desktop (which I've never even had a desktop picture until last week when I put a picture of her from the breakdown pictures), another picture I took at a show is on my wall of photos (at least there were others like Terri Hendrix, Michael O. and Shelley King up there too) and then the huge drawing I did of her hands a few years ago is up in the office. Oh and I almost forgot, I was wearing the t-shit promoting her new cd. (It was a surprise party. If I'd known I am sure I would have dressed differently). A n d , when I walked into the house, her new cd was playing in the cd player. Talk about a stalker. It was ridiculously embarrassing.
I would think that everyone in the room thought that s.g. being there made me happiest and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't pretty cool that my favorite musician came as my friend but it is also true that there were a great many things that made me happiest. Each person there filled up the place in my heart that belonged only to them. And my heart was overflowing from every single place. So, it would be unfair for me to say what one thing was the most special. There were so many - All that Shawn did to help. The effort that Debra and Tammi made to help out too. That Mandy came all the way from IL to help me celebrate. That Monica and Deona showed up. Everything that hayseed did to plan a special night. A night to remind me that there are in fact very special people who love and care for me. Sometimes I can forget these simple things. This was a special thing that made me feel extra loved. It will be a memory that I can draw from in the future when I forget again. And I will.
Now to figure out what to say to my mom...
Home is not really a place at all
I posted only one other time this month so I guess this is somewhat required lest I be lost and forgotten. It's been easy enough to be lost in the crazy amount of work lately or lost in the changes around the house. I've just been to distracted to write anything.
Last weekend, I took a short road trip and went out to Wimberly to hang out. It was great to get away from the house, to spend time out in an open space and to sit by the river. I was thinking then and there about how much I miss being in a place where I am surrounded by trees and water and not streets and neighbors. I am sometimes conflicted about where I live but living for free versus living where I feel the most at peace is by its very nature complicated. I keep close the thought that the choice only gets me closer to the things I really want. One day.
I had to take a trip this week up to Oklahoma. Did some work but also took a little detour back home. Two road trips in less than a week. This time I took hayseed with me so I could show off some of the places from my past that I love. The weather was not so cooperative but I like being there anyway. The rolling terrain, scrub oaks, roaming buffalo and hidden lakes are home. Some parts of home never change, some parts change so much you wonder if your memory is failing you.
Drove by the house. I don't think you can ever get used to the idea of other people walking the hall to your bedroon and sleeping in your room and making food in your kitchen. It's the same people that bought the house. I drove by the first week after they moved in. That was so many years ago. It's the same blue van that parked under the carport. Though now it's full of rust and that same carport sags dangerously. Pisses me off how they've let it get into such disrepair. The deck and addition finished just before grandma Dixie died are now tipping and falling away board by board. The pear and peach tree are now so large it's hard to image the times when I was 10 and able to pull off a fresh fruit every day. It's the same way with how change and memories can fool your perspective. Things once thought so large or so far in distance are just not.
Home is not really a place at all... just a memory.
an exercise in pouting
I languished in my soft chair and ottoman all day watching Dawson's Creek season three on DVD and occasionally reading this P Highsmith book I've been neglecting. This was my Sunday.
Un-showered and pouting all evening because my friends didn’t invite me on their excursion to the day at the state fair. I wouldn’t have gone because that’s the kind of mood I am in but I was let down all the same. Now I find myself in this all too familiar place wondering why I feel let down. And, simultaneously asking the question as to why I consistently have this stupid emotion.
I’ve never held my lovers to such high expectations. It’s only my friends who must live up to my "higher than the empire state building expectations". Each and every one measured to some insane degree of trust exercises and who will inevitably fail by comparison. I am most perplexed by the double standard and how I am unable to assess them with the same measure that I do my lovers.
I guess I just expect the lovers to fail me anyway. I am never surprised and rarely even caught off guard by the ending of a relationship.
As for my friends, they fall. I pick them back up and dust them off and place them back on the lift, only to knock them right back off at the slightest tremor. I am so crushed by their slights and their lack of considerations. I just can't see how they are really minor. In some impossible way, my friends are my last hope for family and unconditional love. How incredibly unrealistic that is? Nothing unconditional in that.. is there? None of my relationships are easy and I only have myself to blame. Let me just say that it sucks, I suck and once again I am tired of trying at all.
self imposed exile
I would be hard pressed to explain to anyone this desire to be alone. It's nothing personal. Nothing that has to do with anyone but me. Nothing to do with nothing. I just want to be alone. Really alone. I want to sit in my home in front of the movie screen, work in my yard, and walk in circles until my feet hurt.