you'd better watch out, you'd better not _____


Where do i start? Virginia, i know, it's been a week. but i've even been missing posting a little.

this week i was on christmas quarintine, secluded and used for yule-tide chores around crabapple lane. I spent seven days tip toing around and trying to make sure that everything went right with momma-joan so that at the end of my visit, i could go back to baltimore having achieved a very merry christmas. well, folks, as always, it's easier said than done.

today was a spat, and by spat i mean an abusive quarrell that ended up in me flipping over the coffee table and screaming so loud that i saw red like a blanket over my eyes. crushed that i could be provoked to such a point of hideousness, i cried for hours. what did she say? well, it doesn't really matter. let's just say it was some of the meanest things i have ever heard. and to top it off she said "words are only words, jessie, you base your whole life around them, and they don't mean dick."

i know that i wouldn't be around an realtionship that was based on this sort of dysfunction and abusive banter if i had the choice, so why is it that i have to be okay with it simply because it is my mother? i think i am going to take a long time before i go home for another visit. it seems like its safer for me in baltimore right now.

i'm a happy girl, so i don't mind posting on occasion about how dreadful i have been feeling lately. my brothers were not exactly elated by the christmas present i gave them. limited to a gift under ten bucks, i spent some time and started a book club online for all of us to read Diary, chuck polinick's new book. (i don't care if i spelled it wrong.) i thought a little internet message board might bring us all closer. and honestly, i got really excited about it. really really excited....so when they opened it and made small smiles that fell like crumpled wrapping paper and didn't even try to fool anyone....i got all weepy. i had to go to the bathroom. the next exchange is funny though:

Mike said :
"Jessie, are you in there."
-"uh-huh"
"are you peeing?"
-"uh-huh" (note i am not very convincing.)
"you don't sound like you are peeing"
-"i'mmm okkay."
" can i come in and give you a hug, or are you really peeing?"

Dan said:
"what's wrong with the kid?"

Mike said:
"i don't know, she's acting like a girl."

I opened the door, smiled and said:
"i don't know why i'm such a pussy dudes."

and then all three of us hugged. my brothers are good dudes. they are going to post on that webpage now. i win. haha.


So, since i seem to be on what are the events that have made me start crying in the past week i think i should mention that i saw my highschool boyfriend. yep, i saw him, at the Barnes and Noble, with his fiancee. weird right? she is a lovely girl. realy pretty and tall. and i am not sure why i cried when i left exactly. it's just sort of a strange thing, to see your first love really gone.

i'll probably regret this post later, i should probably start a no-regret-blogging policy...but until then i might regret this post because it sounds so sad...or weird, or to be honest weak. and mostly i might regret it because i talk so poorly about my mother. but, fuck it, she's crazy and mean to me. this post is going to be honest about that. fuck regret. okay, it looks like i started the policy.

and finally, should i be concerned that i have been crying so much? do you think it is the hormones in the pill? i'm not usually a pussy.

welling tears and octopi

this weekend my friends and i took advantage of Baltimore dollar days. The museums were all a dollar or less to get in. Yesterday we went to the American Visionary Arts Museum. it's a museum for untrained artists. some people call this "outsider art." a lot of the work comes from people who were institutionalized or have mental handicaps. the exhibit was called "out of the mouths of babes." and it focused on art of both the young and the young at heart. some of the eccentric work of the elderly was inspiring because it made you think so much about maintaining the curiosity and awe of the world you have when you are a child even when faced with issues of disease and the question of death before you. it made me realize how much i hope to stay this taken aback by the whole world, all the time.

recently i wrote a little "who i would like to meet" list. and i narrowed it down to "someone who looks forward to the pangs of pain and aching beauty and is constantly surprised by, makes comment on, and could not live without the waves of hilarity and irony that break it all up like driftwood."

and essentially that's what the exhibit was about.

i did, however get a little weepy when we went upstairs. there was one collection of paintings done by a young man who was sexually abused by a camp counselor, found his father had committed suicide, his brother a few weeks later, and then finally himself. one painting in particular was of an oldwoman who was sorrowful, slumped in a chair with another image of a young girl overlapping her. this painting was done on bedsheets with fingers dipped in paint, instead of brushes. a child abuse specialist wroteabout how the painting was of the artist in his old age, saddened by how he lost his childhood. a lot of times, the artist depicted himself as a young girl. the child specialist said this had to do with virginity and fragility of a woman. there was something so eerie about this particular painting, because it was done on a bedsheet, the black background was sort of slipping away. it looked like this old woman was dissolving and dying.
i slipped into a hallway to catch my breath and gather my tears back in before they fell. virginia gave me a little supportive pat on the back. "kiddo" she said. knowing that it was all a little too much to take right then.

which reminds me.

yesterday i wrote two of my not-so-famous-or-popular "very very short poems." i've decided to do a selection of them especailly dedicated to the silent moments in friendship. recently, due to living with my best friend, i have realized how very frequently this happens. two friends who love eachother know eachother so well that they don't have to speak and sometimes in those moments share more than when they do.

here is one of those little poems.

understood

she never sighed or said
but between her chair and mine
the december, 8 o'clock, orange moon
hung heavy and low
too big to believe it was true.


anyway, back to these dollar days.

today the same troop of girls and i made a dash to the National Aquarium here in Baltimore. (it must be funny to read this and be from Baltimore and here me talk so formally about this place....sorry dudes.) the seahorses are leaving soon to go to italy so it was great to see them again. some of them are so tiny they are hard to see and some of them are much larger and colorful. they are amazing. especailly the leafy seadragons. they are twelve inches long and look like a clump of seaweed solemnly floating. seaweed with expression.



jeanne wanted to know if they had an octopus, so we asked this very friendly man near the sting rays. he said that they do have one but it is in some storage area or something. the first thing i pictured was some movie set attack-o-pus that was in a shed like in Ed Wood. I asked what they do in the storage tank. and the man explained that it could be for medical reasons, or restoration of the exhibit. he must of seen my face go "ooooh no, a sick octopus, oh dear!" and he said, "he might be back there just for a check up. " and that satisfied me as a much more adorable answer. ....that is so cute, an octopus check-up. jeanne and i talked about how cute it would be to see them hitting the octopus with a tiny hammer on all of his tentacles. i imagined him with a thermometer hanging out of his smiley face --- oh, see i think it would have been beneficial for me to have seen an actual octopus because apparently i can only think of them as cartoons. as a rule, i have the same trouble with hippos.

after the aquarium the girls and i got paper shark hats and had french fries covered in cheese whiz as we argued about which of the beatles we would date.

Dear Internet,

I have a confession for you. I am starting this blog for very shallow reasons. The first is to post pictures of myself. Simply: the internet is the shallow pool. i am a bowing flower. Secondly, i'm just archiving bits of words here that i think are pretty. i.e. "i am a bowing flower." And lastly, and probably most disturbingly, I am creating this blog, most of all, to get a link from my friend Virginia's page so that all of her friends will think i am cool. And what makes it even worse is that i am not even really a devoted fan of her website. Some people read it everyday. Some people read it several times a day. I'm not a very good friend.

Please forgive me.

Truly yours,
Jerk