And....cut.

I'm looking for a clean break. Tidy, well-defined, with no strings left hanging. If my life is going to make the cut (for a novel, that is, followed by a based-0n-the-book movie), I simply cannot have any less. Oh, the ending might be dramatic, tragic, a real tearjerker -- in fact, anything less may not do -- but above all it needs to be clean.

The novel of my life will not be one of these pomo-y the-only-meaning-is-that-there-is-no-meaning choose your own adventure (because who knows what really happened?) type of books. It's not going to be one of those books that leave you hanging, the air pregnant with potential meaning but with no damn birth. I want meaning, consistent symbolism, authenticity and accessibility. No pretension, no bullshit, just honest emotion.

You see, I have a secret belief that my life is eventually going to become a novel; or, rather, I like to turn events in my life into novel-worthy stories. It's a game I play with myself, writing the prose even as I live through a situation.

"They hugged, desperately, unsure where their paths were taking them or what the next morning would hold. Reluctantly, she stepped into the cab and he closed the door, his eyes not leaving her for a second. Even as the taxi pulled away, he watched her, and she him, never breaking eye contact until finally the shifting geography of the road interfered."

Sometimes I skip right ahead to the movie. Zoom in on her face, pensive, full of hidden truths. She looks at him. One tear slides slowly down her cheek. She looks away. Pan back to reveal the city skyline; cue soaring music. Etc., etc.

(Thanks, perhaps, to my uncanny ability to come up with a song lyric for each and every situation or in the place of just about any line of conversation, I also usually have the soundtrack to a scene pre-cued.)

I'm constantly aware of the subtle symbolism of a potential-novel situation, the hidden meanings of every glance and every word. (Regardless of whether such meanings exist...when in doubt, I'll make them up.) Unfortunately for my upcoming novel, of course, I have a tendency towards melodrama.

Hence, perhaps, my desire for clean endings. Melodrama and uncertainty don't work together; if there is uncertainty, you can always come up with a happy potential ending to drown out the sheer tragedy of the likely ending. The fluxes of emotion need a clear ending; they need a death, a last kiss, a final goodbye. They need closure.

I, too, need closure.

When I was 15, I broke up with my first boyfriend, the love of my life (at least at that point.) I did not, shall we say, take it well. I was a mess, for months on end.

Very specific in my mind is the time when I had finally decided-slash-realized that it was over, that he wasn't coming back, that we weren't getting back together. I had saved every physical memento I could of our relationship (yeah, I was, at one point, one of those girls). I had ticket stubs, I had notes passed in class, I had pictures and dried corsages and the bows on the presents he gave me for xmas. Oh, I kid you not.

Looking back, I cringe a bit at the melodrama of it all, the pure teen angsty-ness, but at the time it was all deeply meaningful. That night I finally decided it was over, I held myself a little ceremony. Sitting on my bed, I spread out every memento and keepsake. I picked each one up, thinking about all of its associated memories, crying over each date, each inside joke, first kisses and last, love lost and all the rest. (Zoom in on the dried corsage; flash back to prom night, Melissa beaming in her red silk dress, her boyfriend by her side.) One by one, I put them into a box. And then I sealed the box and put it away somewhere safe, to be viewed again only when I was safely through all the trauma and could view them again without breaking down. Needing closure and unable to get it, I created my own.

This time round, a little older but lord knows not much wiser, I'm resurrecting old tricks and finding ways to manufacture closure once more. I tried the dramatic ending, full of effusions of passion and lengthy proclamations (half geared towards a clean final ending; the other half hoping these effusions of passion might win him back.) With an eye towards the novel of my life, I laid myself out completely on the table, trying to prevent any future possibility of regret. ("If only I had told him....").

It didn't work. After awhile of laying on the table, unnoticed or at least unacknowledged, I realized all I was doing was getting chilly. Raw emotions don't weather well, and dramatic, climactic endings don't work in monologue form. Besides, let's be honest, I wasn't really looking for an ending that time.

This time around, I'm trying a new approach. The quiet ending, full of slow acceptance and gentle resignation. I don't have much to work with, but I'm manufacturing closure as best I can -- archiving old emails, deleting his number from my phone. (Clearly only a symbolic gesture; I very much doubt that I will never call him again, but we'll cross the bridge later.) Pulling away discretely, under the radar. Unnoticed again, but this time on purpose. It won't make for as good a scene in the novel...but at least it'll be clean this time.

This is my last love-lorn blog entry, as well (at least about this failed relationship.) Another form of closure: a bit of indulgence, a little wallowing, and then cutting myself off for good.

So in the interest of written documentation, a bit of indulgent melodrama, and notes for the novel, let me write this down, get it out of my head, and be done with it. I loved, foolishly but forewarned. I loved, despite all of his best efforts to make himself as unlovable as possible. I tried every conceivable way I could to make it work, not even knowing what "it" is, or was. I loved and loved hard, and it was not enough.

And now, in the words of Blake,
Enough! Or too much.

To Be Taken with a Handful of Salt

I remember when I lost my mind.
There was something so pleasant about that phase...
even your emotions had an echo
in so much space.

- Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"


There are times lately when I'm sure I am slowly going insane.

Insanity, which I am defining today, for the moment, as lacking a reference point. A fixed spot in time and space and emotions and understanding by which you can measure everything else. You know where "there" is only by knowing where "here" is. You know happiness only in relation to sadness, up in relationship to down, now in relationship to then. The right path is only right in comparison to all the wrong ones. Without a reference point, you are left floating in a dimensionless sea of "where am I, who am I, where am I going and what the fuck do I do from here?"

I'm thinking too much. Which is only too much, mind you, in comparison to not enough. Not that I would know what is enough, or too much, or not enough at all, because, you see, I've lost my reference point. I'm freefalling through a maze of principles and standards and ideas and desires, trying to hold onto just one thing I believe is immutably true. But everything I grab just turns to ashes in my fingers as I realize that, no, that truth is not universally true, either. That standard is not iron-clad, that principle, too, I am willing to throw away for that desire.

I'm having a difficult time making judgements, or evaluating the actions of others. I'm turning the offhand comments of friends into monumental statements about me, them, our friendship, and the meaning of life. I'm taking offense where I have a sneaking suspicion I should not and not taking offense (or, at least, not doing anything about it) at times I feel I probably should. I'm manufacturing dramas out of ether and then starting to believe them. But, lacking a reference point for what is meant casually, what is meant seriously, what is real, what is fake, what is acceptable and what is not, I wouldn't really know for sure. I just don't trust my instincts these days. I don't know what, if anything, I actually believe. And I certainly don't know what the fuck I do from here.

The closest I think I ever really came to insanity was a five day stretch I spent on a beach in Goa, India. I was reminded of this time the other day when I was going through old travelogue emails from that trip. (Though I didn't actually need to be reminded; the impact of those five days is always present and will stay with me forever.)

I spent five days in a shanty up on a cliff overlooking the rocky beach of Arambol. I'd come to Goa, the infamous party destination for backpackers the world over, in search of companionship. Some laid-back times with easy beach friends, parties, good times, long conversations, lots of fresh fruit, even more fresh ganja. I didn't find that in Arambol. (I did, later, in Palolem, but that's another story.) In fact, I really couldn't find anyone in Arambol that I work up the energy to talk to.

So I didn't talk. To anyone, except the waiters at my daily haunts, and then only to order. I retreated inward. I had no sense of time but the sun. I slept till I woke, I ate when I was hungry. I read, I swam, I lay in the sun, I walked the beach, I stared off into space. Actually, I think I spent most of the five days staring off into space in some way.

The first day was sad. I was lonely and felt like I was missing this great party somewhere that I just couldn't find. Resignation came the second day, when I started to realize this was not the social spot I was seeking...and yet the place was so beautiful I couldn't leave just yet.

The third day was when it started to get a little scary. It was the morning of this day I decided to actively not seek people out, to embrace this vow of silence for a few days and see where it took me. And oh did it take me -- to places I didn't know my mind could go, to ideas I'd never before entertained, to conclusions that surprised me and to revelations both painful and joyous. I dug deep and, sorry to sound incredibly cheesy here, but I learned a whole lot about myself.

It was on the fourth day that I was pretty sure I was close to insanity. That was the day I lost my reference point, just a bit. My mind was everywhere and nowhere. For an hour, I would have absolutely no focus; for the next, I would focus intently on one tiny, tiny point - a phrase in a book, a rock in the sea. I'm sure it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I've truly never had an experience like this.

And then on the fifth day came calm. Perhaps it was because I knew I was moving on the next day, and that I would go back to speaking with people again, but I began to revel in my silence, to embrace it. I loved my brief hermit lifestyle. I shunned others. I wanted to be alone. And my mind, sent off on far flung travels, came back to me, refreshed, with a new sense of clarity.

This current freefall (or is it freeflying? or freefloating? Not knowing up from down, I can't be too sure) isn't really the same as that time in Goa, except for the feeling of lacking a reference point. The feeling of approaching insanity is the same, though the causes and effects and all the rest are different.

Last time, when I finally grabbed onto a point of reference again, everything else in my life for a moment became crystal clear...and indeed, I look upon that five day stretch in Goa as some of the most important and meaningful days in my life. It was absolutely worth that brush with insanity, however terrifying it was.

So I hold out hope that this current mess, too, will prove useful. I hold out hope that these long days and longer nights will be worth it. I hold out hope that my reference point is out there, and that when I get there it will be a better place than wherever I was before.

...and hey, maybe I'll get a book out of it. Weren't all the best novels written by authors gone entirely nutty?

Borat Strikes Again?

I'm sure this has got to somehow be a joke, or another form of the underground marketing campaign for the Borat movie, or something. This can't truly be serious.

Someone from Almaty City in Kazakhstan visited my blog last night. That's right, Kazakhstan...a country I am not totally sure I had ever even heard of before the Borat explosion.

How did they get to my site?

By googling the phrase "I like my breasts."

I'm not even sure which I find more amusing -- the fact that someone in Kazakhstan is reinforcing this cultural stereotype of Kazakh men being both sexually crazed and repressed that Borat has singlehandedly created...or that my blog features prominently when one searches for the phrase "I like my breasts."

Homesickness

A favorite pair of jeans. A beloved old sweatshirt. A key sliding perfectly into a lock. Like a glove. You never forget how to ride a bike. I’m trying to find a way to describe the physical feeling of being near a close friend or old lover after a long time apart, but I’m only coming up with tired old metaphors. Is there anything like standing next to a former lover? This strange mix of intimacy and newness, of unconsciously falling into familiar old patterns of memorized physical motions all the while knowing that you haven’t felt this way in awhile. Yeah, it’s like putting on a favorite pair of jeans, or wearing an old sweatshirt, but it’s so much more.

I have a strong physical memory of the first time I wore a pair of jeans after going a long time without. I was in Bangkok, and I’d spent five months wearing nothing but flowy, shapeless, pajama style lightweight cotton pants and skirts. Fisherman pants and salwar kameeze, the wardrobe staples of backpackers in Thailand and India. Before I flew to Japan, I decided to treat myself to a pair of nice jeans, a way of transitioning back to Western-style clothing.

I remember sliding the jeans on for the first time. They were stretchy and fitted, clinging to my legs in a way I had not felt for months. Slightly stiff (compared to flowy cotton) around my body, structured. Suddenly I remembered what it felt like to feel fabric against the inside of my thighs. I remembered what it was like to zip up a pair of jeans and close them with a button. I noticed a change in the way I walked, in the way I sat down. A pair of jeans made everything a little different.

And yet it was so familiar. I live in jeans, when I can. I loved the feeling… but I was also acutely aware of its strangeness, of the way it differed from other pairs of pants.

This is the closest metaphor I can think of to describe the feeling of standing next to an old flame. It’s like wearing a pair of favorite jeans after not wearing jeans at all for months.

I had this feeling recently, standing next to someone I’d once been so intimate with. I knew, distinctly, this feeling: standing at a certain specific distance from someone, our bodies in particular positions, our heads at a particular angle to facilitate a particular degree, length, and intensity of eye contact, with (not to get all hokey here, but whatever) energy flowing between us in a very particular way. I knew that spatial relationship well. That physicality was incredible familiar.

But also new. Like remembering what it felt like to walk in jeans again, I was very, very aware of our physicality. With distance, I could examine it, I could see how it differed from my physical interactions with others. (And I don’t mean this sexually; I’m really referring to the way you interact with someone physically in, say, a bar – the way you stand next to each other, the frequency or ways in which you touch each other, or don’t touch each other, the way you angle your head or move forward or back)

No wonder it’s so easy to fall back into relationships with old loves, no matter how doomed or tragic they may be. Taking the degrees of emotional comfort and intimacy out of it for a moment…the feeling of physical comfort alone can explain it. It’s so easy to be seduced by a “fit” that works and that you are used to.

It takes time to figure out your physical relationship to someone. I think about it all the time with new friends. How close do you stand? How often do you touch each other? Everyone has a different level of physicality, and it takes time to figure that out. When do you become “hugging” friends? (I remember a time I realized a relationship with someone had gone from being collegial and work-related to more of a real friendship when we started hugging goodbye.) I have some friends I kiss on the cheek to greet hello, and other friends with whom I would never do that. (And there is a certain level of strangeness when you mix these things up! This weekend I saw a friend I had not seen in months. Instinctively, I gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. He responded oddly, a bit surprised; it was at that moment I realized we were not “kiss on the cheek” friends. Am I overanalyzing? Maybe. But I think we all use physical clues like these to signal the degree of intimacy in a relationship. Shift the dynamic and there are all sorts of implications. Think of the way you feel when someone you don’t know well is standing in your comfort zone.)

Physical relationships, in other words, take time to build and time to decipher. And so of course, when we find an old physical relationship that we remember, that feels so easy, that once felt so good (oh, and still does), a dynamic that once felt so right, of course we want to slip back into it.

When you’re standing outside a door, shivering cold, a set of keys in your hand, trying one after another after another, trying to make them fit, knowing they are all just a bit off, how can you not feel a sense of great relief when, finally, you slide the right key into the lock, turn, and feel the lock flip? Of course you want to open the door, get out of the cold, cold air, and say to yourself, “I’m home, again. I’m home.”

Vote, Goddamnit.

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my home town
on election day
- Ani Difranco, "Hello Birmingham"

It's Election Eve, and I'm going to get a good night's sleep.

I'm feeling decidedly mixed about that. A little thankful, perhaps, to not be making that final push on a mixture of caffeine and pure adrenaline, strung out from nights upon sleepless nights, to not be nervously anticipating the results of any particular election, to not have a head filled with precinct numbers and turnout predictions. I truly don't think I could have done it again, so soon after my last race. I'm feeling a little thankful for the sanity I have intact right now...and a little thankful I have occasion to remember how precious that sanity truly is.

But also a little helpless, a little useless. I've worked a full election day for, by my count, at least the past seven election days (counting primaries and special elections and the like.) I've been running the GOTV operation for, or at least heavily involved in the planning of, at least five of those. Election night and election day have a special magic for me, a tinge of nostalgia filled with some of the absolute biggest highs I've ever known. And now, this time round, I sit at home at 10:30, blogging -- of all things, blogging! Tomorrow, I'll get up early to vote, then sit at work for nine hours, irritated by my lack of vacation days. Oh, I'll run and do a little last minute phonebanking from 6-8, but that feels like a token, a trifle, compared to the e-days I know and love.

And at 8:15pm or so, when we start to get results, it'll be interesting. I'm excited about Deval Patrick and am looking forward to that win. I've got a few State Rep races I care about - did some work for them, have some friends working on them, etc. And of course the national race for the House and Senate will be both fascinating and, hopefully, cause for celebration. But truth be told, my overall level of investment in any of these races is low. I doubt I will wake up either elated or depressed Wed morning. (Or, as has been the tradition for many past elections, hung over beyond belief...since I've got that pesky non-elections job to go to Wed morning, as well.)

So I feel a bit like the kid who got a fever on Halloween -- sitting at home, all dressed up in costume, knowing my friends are all out there having fun and getting lots of candy. I feel a little like an actor in an audience, watching someone onstage play a role I once played. I feel a little like the high school wallflower during the last slow dance of the night, wishing that one boy (or any boy) would ask me to dance but knowing full well I'll be sitting this one out.

So I'm sitting this one out. But I've got my costume on, kids, and I know the lines by heart...so just you watch, next time. Just you wait.

Oh yeah, and go vote.

Connecting and Disconnecting

The progressive political scene in Boston is a relatively limited one, and the pool of interesting, available political jobs rather small. While Boston is certainly a political city with a generally thriving progressive community, it's not, say, DC, where practically everyone you meet is involved in politics in some ways and the job boards are filled with jobs I would be both qualified for and interested in doing. (because, you know, I look sometimes, whenever I am feeling discouraged about my career here in Boston.)

Thus, it is practically inevitable that the people you meet in your job search will not disappear from your life once they have rejected you (or you, them, though I haven't yet had occasion to do that one.) Even more inevitable that you will meet or perhaps even work with the person who got the job you wanted. Sometimes it feels like a small, small town.

And you need to be gracious, of course...especially if you anticipate looking for work in the future. You never know who knows who (or, rather, you know that everyone knows everyone), and you never know which of these people might be in the position to decide whether or not to hire you in the future.

This seems to be happening a lot to me lately. Friends of mine will end up raving about the people who were hired over me. (On the one hand, it's good to know that at least the person who beat me out is qualified. On the other hand....). Today at a breakfast fundraiser, I not only ran into someone who declined to hire me, but into another person who I am pretty sure got the job I mostly recently tried hard to get. Seriously, out of a room of maybe 20 people, I met two people who were emblematic of my recent failures on the job front. Lovely.

Funny thing is, I've been generally happy in my job lately. The promotion and increased responsibility helps (more money would help too, but I guess we'll take these bridges one at a time), as does spending the vast majority of my time on a client I actually care about. It's still for-profit work, but I feel as though the public relations work I am doing is on behalf of the forces of good, and that public education portion of my job is (or will) make people's lives better. That's a big step up, in my mind. I'm learning a lot, I'm doing interesting work, and I think I'm doing it pretty well. So really, on a day to day basis, I'm not too unsatisfied.

Yet when I go to these political events and fundraisers and the like, I can't help getting incredibly jealous. That's the world I want into, and while I feel like I've been able to crack the surface here and there and make my foray, in small ways, I'm still an outsider looking in. The minute I mention I work in public relations, most people's eyes glaze over. I am no longer interesting to them. Oh, I try to mention my political work or connections to the scene or what have you, but it always feels so fake, so network-y. I am not, yet, one of them, and they know it.

Or maybe they don't. It's also possible I make the whole thing up in my head out of self-consciousness. Maybe I'm projecting my insecurities about my work situation (and there are many) onto the people I meet.

I've recently vowed to stop saying "Oh, I work in public relations" apologetically, as if there is something wrong with it. Problem is, deep down, I think there is. As I was telling my friend G. the other day, I have a conception of what I, at 24, should be doing with my life, and where I should be...and this isn't it. This doesn't fit into my master plan of where I want to be and how I'm going to take over the world. (You know, so to speak.) I might enjoy my job, I might feel as though I am learning good things and doing good things, but the disconnect between where I am and where I think I ought to be is huge.

And, thus, I remain continually disappointed. In myself, in my ability to get the job I want (or, rather, inability), and in my contributions to the larger political movement.

Question being of course, is it a case of inflated expectations or poor performance? Do I simply expect more than is reasonable, or am I just not living up to reasonable expectations?