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j3ss65
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Name: jess
Birthday: 6/5/1900
Interests: You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.
Occupation: Legal
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
7/26/2004
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| Stepping into our apartment after work, I decided that every decorative item (vases, picture frames, statues, candles, paintings) within my peripheral was ugly and it all just HAD to go. My taste is not modern, but somehow I let Leedah convince me that there was some redeeming value in almost-bare walls and monochrome color schemes. To me, all that is just a euphemism for cold. bare. suicidal. psych ward. I don't understand why virtually every piece of modern furniture is in the shape of an amoeba or a bar of gold and why, every time you walk into a modern set-up, you feel like you're in a scene from Star-Trek Deep Space Nine.
Granted, our place is not that extreme (if you've ever actually been to our place you'd probably describe it as quite quaint), BUT too much of the same thing makes me queezy. And i've had too much of the same decor for way too long. It was time for a change.
So.
I started rearranging all the little wing-dings in our apartment. I bought new frames to replace old frames, taped up a few scandalous postcards where I thought Leedah would least likely notice, contemplated finger-painting food coloring all over our comforter cover (and walls), had a discussion with myself as to whether or not it would be a great idea to throw out all of his threatening looking music equipment (one of which, when i get up to pee in the middle of the night, looks like a hostage victim with its arms chopped off. can you imagine the trauma??).
Two hours and an incredible mess later, I stood back to admire what my blood and sweat had accomplished. To my complete dismay, I had singlehandedly transformed our once crisp-white apartment walls into what looked like a freakish Downtown Berkeley bulletin board. I don't even want to get into what i did with the horizontal surface areas of the apartment. all i can say is that i felt like I was walking into a fraternity - the morning after a wild, drunken pledge party. You can imagine what that's like. bottles strewn everywhere. bottles bottles bottles. i heart bottles.....cannot....stop....collecting....bottles.....help.....
well. i spend the rest of the night cleaning up my beautiful disaster. rearranging everything back to the way it was. replacing new frames with old frames. taking down all my dramatic postcards that are painted with little vodo-creatures and women with distorted breasts. having another discussion with myself as to whether or not it would be a great idea to throw out all of Leedah's threatening looking music equipment, and so-on.
I always manage to act on one passionate urge, do whatever it takes to make it a reality and regret the mess i have to clean up afterward.
story of my life. i guess that makes me a control freak. something to think about.
Some honorable lessons i leave you with:
Ladies - try to avoid remodeling your apartment when you're about to have your period.
Everyone - it's a good idea to figure out where you want to nail a picture before you create a giant Hole in the wall. otherwise, you will end up with a spastic connect-the-dots mural on your already tiny apartment wall. AND, be forced to pay your entire deposit when you move out.
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In spring, the cherry blossoms outside
our window are a deep, reddish black – thick bouquets of mahogany. Hundreds of branches solemnly wave from side
to side, like stirred crowds at a Sarah Mclachlan concert, each one so jam-packed
with leaves that sky can barely peer through. When the winds are strong, those willowy
branches are given the strength to reach for something they have been longing
to attain for ages. Freedom, possibly, from being wedged in one place so long. They
lean and stoop as the current of air pushes them. Every so often the winds die
down and the branches rest. Suddenly it starts again – the reaching, the longing,
the wild thrashing of the leaves. The sun, if it’s out, beams down speckles of brilliant
red rubies scattered throughout the foliage. These striking hues, paired with swaying
branches and flailing leaves, always make the tree appear like it had burst into
flames.
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| I haven't used Xanga for much too long. It took me about 8 minutes to figure out how to write a new entry, searching to and fro. I thought maybe they were mad at me for being away so many months, so they confiscated the cute little box you click on to get to a new page. Finally I found it - "New Weblog Entry". What relief.
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| Misbehaving
I have this dream of being an awesome person. The eloquent-speaking type with good hair and a balanced sense of humor. I would be a novelist. Or possibly a song-writer who paints on the side. And my neighbors would love me so much that they would beg me to take their parking space. "Take it! Take it, little Chinese butterfly! Your Camry is my Camry," they would urge. My medium-sized dog would be able do long/short bark sequences to communicate his toiletry needs. And when I come home from work, I would fumble around the kitchen doing God knows what; then five minutes later, a five-course Indian-themed meal. With lit candles and such. I would have a awesome life.
But right now it doesn't really matter because all that dreadful wishing brought me to a dark place. Unreal and unimportant. Fake. What has not come may or may not ever come. And really, those things don't have the power to make life good. They all have the potential of turning life into a lusterous facade. Reality is, when I open my mouth, nothing comes out quite right. There is still bitterness seated way down in my gut that has the ability to nauseate me. I have dreams that make my heart race like a train. Yet I still treat myself to comfort food, retail therapy, or some other distraction just to avoid the hard work of getting somewhere. These days, I sense nobody hears me. The world is just snipping away at my sense of hope, one little slap at a time. At work they dismiss me as the quiet one. With friends, the weird one. Coming home, the emotional one. I find myself trying to break out of these stereotypes with as much strength and fervor as I have left at the end of the day.
This week I was at Fry's doing some sort of inventory for work when a faint noise filled the air. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Baby ducks, possibly. I went back to my paperwork without a second thought. Squeak, squeak, squeak. I scribbled my signature on the sheet my boss gave me to indicate it was finished. Squeak, squeak. Finally, I looked up and there was large man walking toward me. He had a small kid latching onto his left hand, happily scurrying up and down the aisles - wearing a pair of squeaking red sandals.
The rest of the morning, everywhere I went the sandals followed me. Those red shoes announced a steady: "I am here" to the world of Fry's. I listened for them as I made my rounds. The more I looked up, the more I found my face forming a twisted smile. I wondered, how could a kid - this kid, making such an annoying noise stay so unaware of how loud and obnoxious he sounded? I looked at him and then at the man. Then I looked down at my papers. Suddenly, I wanted to be that kid. Or maybe I just wanted his shoes. Who knows what I was thinking. I guess was thinking, that kid is lucky. I wanted a giant man to take me around a scary place so I could realize how unscary it really is. There was just something so desirable about holding someone's hand, then possessing the confidence to just be.
When I came home, I decided it was much too exhausting to act ugly and ungrateful and put imaginary labels on myself (for being too submissive, too rash, too bitter, too uninformed, unopinionated...etc.). It would be greast if someone could convince me by saying, "OK, listen kid. Enough pity on yourself. Can't you see how loved, beautiful and lucky you are? You have no idea." But I had a feeling that no one was going to say that to me. The world doesn't tend to rise up and fight my battles so often. It was my call. Did I want to endure life as a victim of my own judgements and failed dreams or should I plow forward as a victor over wordly lies? I could drag my slouchy butt cheeks out of bed each day or I could recite the word of God until it becomes steel in my backbones and carved in my mind. There is no such thing as instant change. But God willing, I can become increasingly patient and loving toward myself - especially when my heart wanders and my mind misbehaves.
The other day David, the beautiful psalmist, said to me: Why are you so downcast? Why so disturbed? Put your hope in God! Then it became clear to me. An awesome person I will never be. A wanting, loving, broken person - yes, with much grace. But awesome, no. That type of word is reserved for something much bigger. God is awesome- I am not. Perhaps that is why David placed his hope there. If anyone knew what it was like to be mislabeled, it was this kid. Incompetent, prideful, rash, indecent. Don't forget murderer and adulterer. They tried to shake him. But, put your hope in God, he cried. His mistakes, his being labeled did not become rocks that pinned him down. He sang of this repeatedly. I'll bet he sang until his throat went raw. I can only weep and say yes...yes, that is what I will do, if only for a day at a time for the rest of my life.
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| In Bed
I took a day off work today because I woke up with remnants of my migraine from last night. What a guilty feeling it is to not be slaving away in a masochistic environment. My boss's aura follows me home. Her voice is tucked in every corner of this apartment. Her yelling, criticizing, blaming, and her all-black wardrobe, I kid you not. Then her bipolar switch-over to a pure, and lovingly sweet voice when her matching black pit-bull comes limping into her lap. (That's one good thing; she brings her doggy into the office).
I feel pressure even when I'm supposed to be resting. This job has really got me thinking about moving away from Fremont just so I can tell her, hey boss, the commute is real far and I don't think I will be coming back next week. Or as Leedah puts it, "I ain't gonna be yo' damn monkey no more!" But we just put up new curtains in the apartment, so I want to see how they look for a while.
For now, I am trying to periodically force myself into moments of cathartic-release-crying-unto-the-Lord every few days. Hopefully this will delay the night my husband comes home to find me in the bathtub rubbing pages of Crime and Punishment all over my face while I slowly peer up at him with yellow wolf-eyes. And not to mention, sketching the beginnings of a deliberate baby-stabbing. But knowing him (and him knowing me), that probably won't shock him. He will just smile and say, "Oh baby, you must be hungry. Let's go get those McDonald snack wraps you love."
Well, snack wraps certainly do make life brighter. And so does crying. It seems that when I am barely hanging on, the best thing to do is glorify God. Not that it's easy. Ever. I can't think about why me, or why this, or why that. I have to keep my mind on what is, and what will be: His love, His kingdom, or basically just the fact that I am His. I have to read Isaiah and remember that rivers, fires, and angry bosses will not sweep me away. It's really a training ground for my mind.
But it's necessary. Because in the end, hanging on to something good is not enough. Having friends, or a sexy husband doesn't solve this, although it helps. It really has to be Him. Everything else breaks from the pressure.
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