38 Special, or the Rise Over Run

The alarm tolls, followed by the cell phone, because we need back up, every morning a momentous occasion, or potentially auspicious, we wake, we rise, we hit our mark, we aspire to be on time, frequently we fail at that, dreaming being what it is. But new, nonetheless, full of bright promise, even when the weather is in categorical opposition, we, meaning I, slough out of the sheets all gollum mutterings and half realized curses to storm clouds. It's our birthday ((precious, and I just dumped a half glass of wine down my front)), turns out we are not so young anymore, which doesn't make me feel any less young, just that much more fitfully rebellious against somebodies paradigm and someone else's thesis - here is where I will go and smoke a cigarette, as I struggle to articulate just whom I would like to throttle - who I am kidding, they are legion.

You shoot with a 38 special, you end a life, you measure with rise over run, or you are unnecessarily literary, or you maybe are digging a mine, or maybe it is the turn of the century or maybe it is a near decade past the turning of the last century (good god, already?) and you are too obliquely referential, or maybe it's the martinis and the unsolicited shot of tequila.

Rise over run, half risen, running blindly, or barreling, or barging, or even only half cognisant, trade your geographic familiars for dubious volcanoes and rivers without the girth of seas.

Unlike the poet said, the center holds, it always will, now and evermore. It's us. It's us with our rise over run. I...

It's my birthday and that's another story. I'd like a bath. I'd also like a boyfriend. And I think it is going to be a very good year.

Rebuts Herself

And then there are all of the intangibles. Things you don't account for when the accountant is wheedling, the things you should have said to someone else when you were leaving, all of those things you should have said when you were leaving the varied and diluted scenes of the crime, a dollar here, a massacre there, it all adds up in the end. It is only my quarter hind flank that is in tatters.

All of those pithy one-liners conjured out of anger out of some smiting rage delivered to an empty vehicle a half a mile too late, shut it down and keep it to yourself, it's just as well. Keep it down, keep it down, down. Otherwise one might step on the brakes too hard and go screeching into the intersection all furor and loneliness, heedless, headless.

But it's all really OK. Earlier this evening I met friends for roast swine flu and we probed some politics and ate really well. I have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring me, I am hoping for a lovely rose and a good man. That is if I am lucky enough to not be hobbled by the pandemic that wasn't. Strange days, strange days, indeed.

*in the last and final days of the aporkalypse we went gathering the wild greens in california that wasn't burnt, theold, old missions kind of scared me, but it was the best and most sacred place for rosemary, if you got there before the nutria did.

Dear Anonymous (see below),

No good reason for staying quiet, really. I have been quietly tending to my cauldron of bitches brew, fetid, acrid, my smoking, simmering pot of anger. The fumes have rendered me inarticulate.

I am fifteen days shy of turning 38, and I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore, I whisper as I bend over. No diss on President Hopey, he's got one helluva job to do, but at the nadir of eight (I nearly typed wars) years of fecklessnes, this time, fuckers, it's personal. As in it's personally wrecking my life. Ah, America. Seven thousand souls perish on sands so many of my fellow citizens couldn't name on a map and now you ghosts of administrations past have got your stony-toothed craws all up in my livliehood. I survived a round of layoffs, to be stripped of a benefit that made my poverty palatable, then they "restructured" our health care, next up pay cuts. Trust me when I say there is no fat to trim out of my budget. I don't work for the devil, but I feel I am being reamed by The Man. Business is what it is, spreadsheets and bottom lines, and if one more person tells me I am lucky to be working at all I will break out my cudgel and go a-braining. It's my fucking blog and I will whinge if I want to you. Because, yes, I get it. I am lucky. Even luckier to be on the parental dole, and benefits and blah, blah, blah. But it isn't where I shoud be (and where is that, exactly, friend, do delight with your inflated entitlement).

I dunno, where does anybody expect to be at 38? On the cusp of achievement? Certainly not needful of parental bailout, certainly not weighing out the cost/benefit analysis of an all ramen diet, and how will I afford my wine, and when was the last time I put on my fancy shoes and went to dinner. Billy was totally wrong, when he assured me after tennis under the sun in Marin, that I would move and shit would fall into place, house and dog and boyfriend. Now I am saddled with the a three hundred thousand (and change!) albatross that I alternately love and resent with a lawn that after months of dormancy wants to grow three fucking feet every week and a mortgage keeping me in noodles and lean meats and so no furry friends four footed or otherwise. Plus IT NEVER STOPS RAINING.

I went out on Saturday for a walk, ill timed, per usual, and I was halfway up Mt. Tabor when the sky opened up, as in, it was a fifteen minute Katrina, where I thought I might actually drown standing up. Drenched cat is not euphemistic enough.

On the phone, earlier, distraught with my father, I was trying to say how much I hate this, how very much I hate this. Twelve percent unemployment in Portland, likely to get worse, how powerless, how very powerless, and how infuriating to take the licks in stride all the while repeating to self how grateful I am to have a job, and yes, but really - FUCK that NOISE, if we absorb too much as sheeple then we are no better than the goddamned Commies, oh yes, I went there, particularly after I read in last Sunday's NYTimes that Wall Street bonuses were expected to be on par with 2007 levels and then my head exploded and I died a little. Have I ever told you, Anonymous, that I have issues with Authority Figures. Also if I read one more trend piece on how very sad the riches are I might be compelled to commit the dual sin of murder and covetousness, break my heart you sum total douchebags, go ahead and shop your closets and recycle your residence on St. Barthes, you are not quietly breaking my heart, you are fueling that bitches brew, you are fuel on the fire, and consider this my brethren, I am only one bourgeoise step below, granted I read all the shit that you are putting out there in WSJ and Portfolio (because I am a glutton for punishment or a gossip hound, so hard to tell in the new recessionisim) In another words, it's all good until your butler comes after you with a swine flu infected pitchfork.

God, part of me thinks that might be sort of glorious.

What about the rest, the true poor. The ones who don't calculate in ramen but calculate the fundamentals of shelter. What about the poor souls entrenched in cruel system, I read the article in the NYer a couple of issues back about debters prisons, frankly, I think that a prison might offer a simplistic relief to those caught in the hell that is never ending paperwork and negotiation for things that are so very, very complex as to leave our very brightest mathematicians and economists baffled by the feet upon feet of paperwork. What about them, America? What about give us your tired, give us your hungry? Do me a favor and give where you can.

And so, Anonymous, I must sign off, the Man beckons my morning, it's been too long, I know. I've missed you, I have missed this.

xoxo
E