Oh fuck. Wank, bugger, shitting, arsehead and hole!!

Monday, January 15, 2007 Oh fuck. Wank, bugger, shitting, arsehead and hole!! Current mood: contemplative My sweets... From Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut; If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal. One, of course, is ethyl alchol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets tko the wind a good deal of time from when he was sixteen until he was forty. When he was forty-one, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint. Other drunks have seen elephants. I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other. Okay, now let's have some fun. Let's talk about women. Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's b/c most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman go married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man. When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!" A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit. I met a man in Nigeria one thime, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older thatn it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was. Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby? I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family, make you an Ibo or a Navaho-or a Kennedy. The above passage is what really got my attention. It makes so much sense to me. When I was younger, we would visit the relatives, on occasion, but not too often. And it got to be less and less for whatever reason as I got older. I love my family, but I think it mostly bewildered me. Such a popularity contest it was, and I'm no good at those. There were other people that made up my family, that was just my mom's, but the others I joined later in life; my dad's, Jim's, so they weren't really the same thing. I never really felt that connection, that sense of mine. I feel it with my sisters more then anyone else in my family, (yes, all of you). But I am finding out this is not always the case. There are families that meet on a regular basis, that live like the Ibos. Nancy is one. J and Sparky are another. And they don't do it begrudgingly, they take care of, remain close to, and visit their families, because they WANT to. This astounds me. This passage also made me think, oh, that is what you all are. You are my Ibos. I have never felt more at home, more welcome, more myself then when I'm with you guys. You are my chosen family. I tell this theory to my boyfriend, the long version of course as I had been drinking, and he looks at me and says, "So your friends are your niggas. I get it." : ) Indeed. So I just wanted to let you all in on how grateful I am for you, how lost I would be in this world without you. Thank you. I have been watching some heart tugging girlie movies lately, I'm turning into one big mush pot it seems. Big surprize there I'm sure. Little Miss Sunshine, fantastic, oh so wonderful, Mandeep you were so right. Love Actually I just re-bought, after it was sold out from under me. The wedding scene, with the surprize choir and band I will watch 5 times for every 1 time I watch the movie. I cry. Then Simon Birch, an older movie, I had read the book, but never seen it. My goodness. To have killed the 1 person who ever showed an intrest, who cared what you were doing and you felt, I can't even imagine the pain. I cried more for that movie. But, for some reason, I remain hopeful. I have decided that giving or recieving (quite honestly, more on the recieving, but I'm all for attempting to pass it on) squoooosh (to be pronounced in a very high pitched voice) hugs release a "everything in this world will be all right" hormone within me. I can't convey the safety, contentment, and peace I feel during this time. They save me. So far, I have gotten a flat tire, that was easily fixed w/ Fix O Flat, and that is the extent of my bad luck in January. I realize that it is only half over, but usually it's happened by now. Is it saving it up for something spectacular? I'm getting more and more concerned. Until next time, I leave you with this... From Love Actually; (where my title came from as well.) "Invite him out for a drink and then after about 20 minutes casually drop into the conversation the fact that you'd like to marry him and have lots of sex and babies." "You know that?!!" "Yes." "Does Karl know that?!" "Yes. "Oh this is very bad." From Lilo and Stitch; "Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw!" "You are so finished when I get in there! I'm gonna stuff you in the blender, push puree, then bake you into a pie and feed it to the social worker! And when he says "Mmm, this is great, what's your secret?" I'm gonna say....Love, and nurturing...." The above used to be Nellie's favorite thing ever to have me say. I include it in honor of her 8th birthday today. I was her first overnight visit at 4 months old I'll have you know.