The Beast Awakens

Yesterday I got very run down. I slept as though some strange fever had taken me. I had vivid hallucinogenic dreams. It was a typical of the mental and physical "breakdown" that hits me from time to time. When I awoke this morning, all the voices in my head had vanished like specters in daylight. But I can feel them still creeping around in my psyche, waiting to catch me and scold me for weakness.

*cough*  I'm sorry.  Did I just say that out loud?

So, according to Max, the Crooked House Project is rebooting. For any of my readers (do I still have readers?) who don't remember what the project is, Her Crooked House was an idea for a summer project. Me and five others (some of whom I met and some of whom I've only met online) were going to pool our resources in order to buy a particular house way out in the middle of nowhere. We were going to repaint and remodel this house. We were also going to blog about our experiences living together in that house.

The problem was that we never bought the house.

However the circle of blogs we made to support the project still exist. Yesterday the self-appointed leader of the project, who writes a kind of hipster filmmaker-y blog, stirred the pot and challenged us all to engage creatively even though technically speaking a crooked house project without a crooked house is a bit, I don't know, metaphysical.  He wrote: Who's With Me.

I'm very curious to see if any of the others are on board.

Cocktail Snobs and Ivy League Strippers

When I went to [my friend's] mixer, I felt a strong sense of the uneasiness I have always felt around Ivy League upper class. I suddenly felt as though I didn't speak as well, wasn't sharp enough, refined enough, and that I was somehow an poser/fraud who sneaked in the side door.

I find myself gravitating towards the less beautiful and the less rich, those with less status, at such events - anybody else who might also have the sneaky suspicion that they don't belong and are only politely tolerated.

Part of me wants to say that I don't belong with a bunch of phony snobs, but another part of me wonders if perhaps I secretly want to be accepted by them. My own insecurity is followed by a backlash of sneering. Sour Grapes.

The person I spent the longest time talking to was a woman who went to Yale but spent a year as a stripper. I think she has experienced some of the same ambivalence about elitism that I have. I'm not sure I agree with the whole "stripping as feminist empowerment thing" but at least she was friendly and didn't look down on anyone.

Not even my friends read this blog anymore. What am I writing it for?

Living in My Head

Twice in the last two days I have found myself driving in a mental state of complete disorientation. I nearly drove into traffic down a one way street in Santa Monica after a meditation class. Then, I made a bad U-turn into on coming traffic and nearly biffed. What a space cadet. Gotta watch what I'm doing.

I have a hard time "waking up" and "becoming mindful" and not "living in my head." The world is often a disappointing boring, uncomfortable place. Conversely, the dreamworld that I spend so much of my time living in is often safe and exiting . . . at least momentarily. For me, giving up "attachments" means giving up attachments to mental phenomenon, sexual and romantic fantasies, and other projections that dominate my thoughts like a heroin addiction.

I'm 22 and a virgin. My aunt told me I needed to go to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous because she read that some girls can get addicted to 50 Shades-style romance fiction at the expense of forming real relationships. Thank for the tip, Auntie May.

I am disappointed with the people around me. I feel in constant danger of my life becoming overrun by ordinary, dull, petty concerns. I was weak and unfocused as a teen and a college student. I wasted the time I had. Now I feel like the buzzer has gone off and I'm working on borrowed time. Isn't it time I grew up? My god I'm depressed.

Is it any wonder I like to linger in the bathtub, lost in day dreams and hallucinations? You would too if you were me.

The Serpent Appears

I feel myself shedding my skin. What sticky-slimy serpent is now peeking out of the folds. Yet, I feel pieces of my old self clinging to me like giant wrinkled sheets of old skin, waiting to fall off. 

Automaton

This cold is ruining my concentration. It's hard to get anything concrete done. It makes me irritable, unfocused, and sleepy. I didn't get much writing done yesterday or the day before. It's frustrating that something as simple as a sore throat can trip me up this way.

Yesterday afternoon, while I was doing yoga, the doorbell rang. Standing at the door was about a nineteen year old black man. He took one look at my expression and said,"Hey, I'm not the bad guy, I'm the good guy." I blushed three shades of purple.

The truth was that I did flash on the face of the thug who robbed me at gunpoint a couple of months ago. I felt like I'd been caught in an ugly, irredeemable thought. As a result, I felt guilty, and as a result of that result, I flirted with him and bought two magazine subscriptions so the guy could build points for a scholarship. I desperately wanted him to like me and to see that I wasn't some horrible, racist white girl.

     
The fear is that I have become, not the unique individual I had hoped to become in my youth, but rather just another generic automaton  with characteristics determined by my race, class, gender, and the psychology of my parents. I observe myself having such programmed reactions and then overcompensating. It's so disappointing.  Even my own disappointment is a adolescent cliche. 

Erotica

Check out my return to writing erotica HERE.

Late Bloomer

  A bad cold, headaches, and mild depression have crept over me, washing away yesterday in restless sleep. I read about the great poets when they were my age and I feel like I am  years behind them. Meaning, they had all accomplished as much at 15 as I have at 23. I know I had about five wasted years since I started college.

  One of the hurdles that I have to get over this year, is my fear and disappointment about arriving at adulthood, not an artist, not a millionaire, not a decadent burnout, not an accomplished poet or painter, all these things I dabbled at "being" (tried to be or wished I was) without much success, rather I arrived as a directionless, unemployed, blogger. 

  I walked back onto campus yesterday. It's interesting that I think I took exactly the same walk five years ago. I remember watching myself, as I bounded onto campus, 18 and starting school all over again. It felt like a Renaissance, a second chance, a burst of unbounded energy. Then, yesterday, I was 23; school was finished, and I was just tying up some loose ends. I felt melancholy but wiser in some sappy sort of way.

  I got all the important things that I needed out of college, I guess. But no matter how hard I worked, I could only get about 50% out of myself. I worked like a madwoman trying to do everything at once. But two things I didn't do . . . I didn't prioritize well and I didn't take care of myself emotionally and  spiritually. By the last semester, I was burned out. I jogged through the finish line... way behind, and exhausted.

  A part of me desperately wishes I knew (at 18) what it has taken me so long to learn: The habits, routines, and little choices one makes in life. I always told myself that I was good at the big things and bad at the little. I pretended to be the savant, but the truth was that my concentration was scattered over disparate discontinuous points of focus. My "backbone" was weak. Art requires a combination of recklessness and precision. Most of the time, I was just lazy.

  If I look back at the journals I wrote five years ago, it is clear that there were many other problems I had to deal with before even getting to the point I'm at now. 

     My hope is that for whatever reason, my timetable is different. Maybe something inside me is still growing... an unrealized potential, gestating, waiting for an opportunity to be born.