I moved away and you didn't write. I wrote and you didn't write back.
You wrote a letter criticizing me for being stupid, and you were right
but I couldn't think how to apologize. You thought "contemplating your
navel" meant picking your nose, literally. I grew
up faster than you. One day I realized I hated the way you walked. You
got obsessed with movie actors. You started dating my boyfriend. You
went on a diet and I watched you peeling lettuce leaves off in strips
and saw we were fundamentally different. You told stories about me and
embellished them to make them more interesting, which is also known as
lying. You told me I was ruining my life but didn't seem to have any
suggestions about how to stop. You gave my friend an STD and denied it
to him and confessed it to me. You grew up faster than I did. You didn't
invite me to your party. You told me it wasn't possible to love me. 
You said it was too far for you to come and visit me, and I should visit
you instead. I chose the person who didn't ask me to choose. You said I
should forget you. You hung up on me. I wasn't your ideal. You had
children with a man you professed to hate. I had a six hour layover in
your airport and you had a date and didn't show. You said once I was
gone you probably wouldn't even miss me. You rubbed my forearm and
called me baby names. Once I wasn't there and you didn't even notice. I couldn't let it go, so I let you go instead.

I had a Heart Episode at the dentist's yesterday. I really want it to
Mean Something, or to at least have had a life-passed-before-my-eyes
etc, but mainly what I'm taking away is that I am pissed at myself for
compounding it by panicking. Also grateful that I got to call Friar and
be all WHOA about it and he didn't even tell me I totally didn't have a
heart attack until we were both safely home. My resting heart
temperature is like 60 now; that's amazing and good right. I mean I'm
not worried about my heart. I am a drama queen and I am bringing the
drama, here it is: drama. I didn't tell Squire about how the main thing
that scared me was thinking that I wouldn't see him again, and how
determination to get over that fear was important in terms of focused
getting home action. My drama has changed since the days when I thought
that 27 was a good time to die, so there's that.

I think not liking the oversell of bacon is the new bacon.

I think that it is awesome how ugly Edward James Olmos is. Yes I am
late to the Battlestar Gallactica show, but at least I'm here now. It
is nothing new to observe that in pretty much any given film the women
are going to be prettier and younger, but I still had to rack my
brains to think of any woman who is even close to Olmos's league. The
only woman I can think of that comes close is Linda Hunt, and I think
she can act circles around Olmos, and he is really good. So maybe I could
now make a blanket statement about how all ugly people who go into
acting are probably really amazing, and how great would it be to have a
movie with all ugly people. Except I thought Michelle Pfeiffer did a
great job in Frankie and Johnny so I just blew my own idea out of the
water.

I think it is funny how parents raise the kids they can stand to have
and then think that all that personality is just on the kids. Certainly
I think people are born with a certain amount of stuff in place, but if
your kid can't fall asleep without noise-canceling headphones, I think
that's on you. I'm talking only about other parents: Squire is totes
his own person.

I think that it is interesting how I process maybe one thought every
year. This year so far the thought seems to be "You're kidding, right?"
which is when people express a level of stupid so incomprehensible to
me that I think the only possible explanation is that they're joking.
So far there seems to be no way to verify it with most people that I
don't know, or even people I know without being really insulting, so
this is a mostly internal process.

The amount of my thinking that is occupied by the past is not to be underestimated.

Logic and emotion are fighting again. Logic says I don't understand and
Logic does some explaining of why understanding is important while
Emotion's feet tap impatiently. Impatience is also an emotion that
Emotion has. Emotion wants to be trusted. Emotion says I shouldn't have
to explain why I feel this; it should be enough for you that I say I feel it.
Logic doesn't know what to say about that, because Logic feels the ice
cracking all around. Feels it like through vibrations, not with
feelings. Emotion says can you please just please try. Logic says I am
trying and Emotion says not hard enough you're not. Logic talks about
common sense and being sensible and Emotion talks about sensitivity.
Emotion wants to know why Logic's point of view gets to go first all
the time. Logic counts off facts using graphs and figures and fingers.
Emotion starts to cry. Logic says why are you being so emotional. Logic
passes over the tissues and puts out a hand all can't we be friends and Emotion says between sobs never mind, never never mind.

You're just saying what it looks like to you, you're just riffing,
making jokes, trading barbed wire tongue gossip. This one is an idiot
trapped in a loveless marriage for fear of dying alone; that one is
hopeless with the idea that love can make over the face of the beloved
into something more useful than a mask; the other believes that belief
is enough to transform the world. This one thinks that what it says is
interesting while clearly everyone is wiping away their yawns; that one
isn't even clever enough to understand the function of a thesaurus,
much less a dictionary; the other hasn't learned the function of words
to start with. You could rail against the world all night if left
unchecked.

What's behind this of course is the illusion that while we're
looking at this, that, and the other, people might fail to notice what
was in fact clear way more than a paragraph ago: that you
are less than what you mock; that what you are is nothing more than
vinegar and salt, spooned onto others for entertainment value. You do
not nourish. The poorer flavors you describe rise above sea level to
majestic impression despite your sour evaluation, and you are left to
float alone, as salt does. And vinegar and salt are insufficiently
satisfying, which you mention as though it had nothing to do with you
and your damaged taste.

I love editing, but it seems increasingly true to me that the things
that make me really good at my job can make actual life with myself kinda hard for me sometimes. And I presume for other
people, too, though I don't know. My friends seem to like me okay.
Perhaps I choose friends who like hanging out with a person who can
turn coal into diamonds; what do I know.

I mean: my mother sends me this adorable postcard from Turkey and
tells me that turquoise comes from there, and I can't be all "That's
nice!" or anything; no, I have to be totally ahem-ahem about it,
because turquoise does not either come from Turkey and I see no reason
to perpetuate mythology, particularly now that the internet is always open. I should
point out that she's somewhat complicit in this ahem-ity, as (at least
as I recall it) we were allowed to get up from the dinner table only
for emergencies, and that "emergencies" extended to "consulting a reference
work in the course of settling an argument". It may not have been that
strict, but I remember running for the World Book more than once.

I come home from a night on the town and then send the people I
just saw links to back up the facts I presented over the course of what
was a perfectly lovely evening. See?! I'm yelling across the midnight internet. I was right!*
I will first drink and then fact-check you under the table, is all I'm saying. On the plus
side, nobody sends me "funny" email forwards anymore. Or political
stuff either. If only for that reason, I don't think I'm going to
change; I'm just observing that what is "giving up a cheap instant laugh for the prolonged thrill of learning and
discovery" for me may come off as "a lot of furious knicker-twisting for
no good reason" to people who think that it is fun to build a straw man
and set it on fire.

I also send links to funny (thoroughly vetted) stuff, so you don't
need to be scared to be my friend or anything. And I make good
martinis, not least because I'm on a constant quest for the perfect
one. Come over and help.

*ETA: If I was wrong? I will send you the links to show that I learned that you were right.

So, where were we? Oh, yes, my tragic sleeplessness. Well that seems to
be over now YAY. It is funny how when I'm in a happy moment I am
usually able to name it and enjoy it even though I am aware of its
transitory soap bubble status, but when I'm unhappy it takes me a long
time to figure out where it comes from, and in the meantime it's always
what if it lasts forever this time? And then of course the
moment it's over I'm like, oh yeah well of course. Of course I couldn't
sleep; I was in a burning building.

Fortunately I have outstanding self-preservation and thus continue
to go through the motions of removing myself from said burning building
even when it all seems so hopeless, because some clever part of me knows
that if I run, I will eventually be standing outside with all what's
really important, what I have that I love, and we will have sooty faces
maybe but we won't be dead or anything.

And you know, I don't mean possessions, but the people I love who really make it possible… no, that make it necessary to
run. Because I am surrounded by expanding circles of awesomeness, and
from the people I interact with daily to the people I only talk to a
couple times a year, I am so extraordinarily lucky that I can only bear
to think about it very rarely or my heart would explode. I live with an
amazing pair of guys, I have friends that I see regularly, friends I
see annually, and friends I've never met, and yet I know that each of
these people has my back. There are couches around the world that I
could distressed damsel-esquely collapse on, and those people who would
hand me tissue and tell me jokes, and I know this is true not least
because it is unquestionable that I would do the same for them.
Gertrude Stein asked, "How do you like what you have?" and I have to
say I like it really, really well. I have friends who will help me sift
through my shit and laugh about it. I have people who know how to
distract me from my own stabby moments by discussing stab binding. I
have a sister I can call at 3 in the morning who will remind me that
you cannot go wrong re-reading your favorite childhood books. And there
I was, curled on the couch an hour later sniffling because Taran
couldn't make pottery the way he wanted, and he had to move on… I
felt nevertheless finally as right as… no, more right than rain.

I just mean to say: I know I am really lucky. I know I am so
unbelievably blessed to have the life I have, to have so many people
making that life rich and wonderful. I know that the moments of bliss,
like the moments of despair, are just shifts in the wind, and that a
good gust of laughter can blow away even the acrid smell of smoke from
a building I didn't have to stay in, and the rest of the neighborhood
is intact, because it's filled with good people. I'm counting you.

Every time I got to a staircase on Saturday I couldn't see the stairs.
All I could see is the floor I was on and the floor below that I was
going to and the giant falling place in between, swirling with danger.
I could see myself falling and falling and then at least broken bones, words like crumpled and shattered.
I made a system where I would explain to somebody nearby about the
vertigo, an odd dizzy trepidation, which I have gotten before. Some of
them just put my hand into theirs before I even finished explaining,
and they would take me down the stairs while I stared at their
shoulders or some other vague horizon and chanted don't look! down! in
the rhythm of the descent. Squire took me downstairs, and my first boss
when I moved here, and a doctor I knew for a while. Strangers, too. So many kind
people, so much sweetness. It's embarrassing to have to keep telling
people that there are some things you can't do. I can't go down stairs.
The amount that it is embarrassing to tell is the same amount that it
is liberating to say out loud, and I had to learn every time, and there
were so many stairs.

Finally I was sitting at the top of the flight, above the stairs I
couldn't bring into focus, waiting for somebody friendly to come along
and hold my hand. Squire's most amazing babysitter, who is now a most
amazing woman, came and sat down next to me as I finished my cigarette.
I started to tell her how I couldn't see the stairs, how I needed help.
And she said, you know, the stairs in this building all recede when
they're not being used: you have to push a button to make the stairs
come out. You probably just hadn't noticed because you'd been afraid to
look. And she pushed it, and I looked down for the first time, really
looked, and watched the stairs unfold below me. And then we walked down
the stairs, and I laughed, brave and giddy.

Dear brain, I wish you would let me sleep past 4 a.m., but I thank you
for waking me up laughing. And for giving me the best metaphors, all
the time.

So you decided a long time ago against hoping, in the course of beating the tides of your love against the unforgiving shores, to pull in more than a grain of affection here or there, and then wailing at the disparity. It's a little embarrassing, even if you try to keep in mind that the tide eventually wins, because while one part of your brain is all, "Look at the Grand Canyon!" the rational part knows your one life to live is not a geologic age. Your life is a magic act, and you can conjure, and you can conceal; you can pretend it's not about manipulation at all. But it is. 

I mean, you'd worked the trick out two decades ago. The fact that you cried at your wedding about the woman nobody could love marrying the man who could love nobody was certainly a little about the ironic truth and the beauty in the balance of the sentence, but more about the incredible amount of alcohol you consumed.

When you put on a show for years, your own success should not surprise you. The More Loving One was always your stage name. In your act, it is always you who picks up pretty stones to please someone, carries them until your pants are as weighted as Woolf's; you who spends dreamtime on other people; you who gives over time to anybody with a happiness otherwise reserved only for sleep. You were never going to be in debt again, and you won't be.

So. You don't get to feel sorry for yourself, or confused. You don't get to be surprised when your prestidigitation ends with your hands always open and always empty. 

Five things I am good at:
editing
explaining how I feel
arguing
playing games
organizing

Five things I suck at:
sports
taking things at face value
forgiveness
keeping routines
naming my weaknesses

Three things I am surprisingly good at:
making up new lyrics to songs on the spot
dealing with bureaucracy
haircuts

Three things I surprisingly suck at:
keeping my desk clean
making phone calls
figuring tips