really, I’m fine.

In case ya’ll are worried or something after my “cryptic” (E.Z.’s word) posting, here’s the thing: I had a job interview the other day that I didn’t feel too great about. My current job does not know that I’m seeking employ elsewhere (So keep your traps shut! You never know who you’re talking to.) The situation is analagous to (Ev, pay attention) the feeling I get when I break a plate: it is as if every plate (glass, bowl, casserole) I have ever broken is breaking at the same time. It brings sharply into focus all reasons why the plate was broken, all preventative measures that should’ve been taken, all the whys and hows of it, all the deep personal flaws that brought me to this point, all the money that I’ve spent replacing dishes and glasses. It pours lime juice into paper cuts. It’s about the interview, but it’s also about the fact that I’m even here. Read on: it’s my e-mail response to E.Z. about the thing.

###

Yeah. Eh. I think I might’ve bombed. I was late for one thing…I called and stuff, because I messed up my route and then got lost, and was able to anticipate the fact that I was going to be late and let them know well ahead of time, but STILL. That’s yo INTERVIEW, GURRRL. You bet’ take a CAB. (This is my inner life coach. She is African-American, for some reason.)

Then the interview itself seemed sorta lackluster…like they were antsy, or not really focusing…I couldn’t quite put my finger on it…maybe it was because it was the last interview of the day, maybe they were tired, maybe they are shy and hate doing interviews, OR maybe they were mad that I was late and/or they knew in the first two minutes of talking to me that I was the wrong person for the job, and so they just had to go through the motions. I TOTALLY feel like I vibe with their way of doing things, being there made me ache for this job even more…[new realization: I also want everyone to be in love with me. Everyone. I mean, not really a new realization, but new as it pertains to this situation...]

Not just for this job, but for a change. For the next step…there is a new step in my life that is about to be born, and I’m just so fucking antsy for it to get going already. Something! It could be going abroad, but that’s going to take so long to get going…maybe I should focus more energy on that–God knows that’s going to be a shitload of work–and infusing myself into the writing community in Chicago while I’m here. Then just apply for jobs when I can, and then if I don’t find something new, maybe it won’t feel like my life is spinning its wheels so much. Ay, Eric, yo no se. I just know I need to move on SOMETHING. Step out on a limb a li’l bit. Step out on faith.

pasando

I can be okay with music alone, with alcohol alone, with one emotion-tapping stimulus at a time. But put ‘em together, even in moderate amounts, and estoy perdida. I’m lost. Meltdown.

Went to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with B and E, and spent most of the not-even-particularly-great opening act crying, trying not to cry. In the middle of the crowd, the all-ages crowd. B and E took turns hugging me, hugging me like I was a falling-down building and they could hold me up with the sheer force of their love. B kept tugging out the hem of his black t-shirt and holding it out for me to wipe my face on, like a little hammock for sorrow. And B kept saying, Be here with me, be here now.

Karen O had her fingers dipped in something shiny and black, and her hair in a short kinda slick little Dorothy Hammill cut, and this Cheshire grin, and her arms swung and swayed out in these elegant slow little poses, but the best was every so often the elegance would just slip from her like a shawl and she’d bounce and dance and windmill her slim little arms over her head and she looked about ten years old for a minute or two, then stomp and wail like a factory machine stamping stainless steel parts. And then it was back to all vampy glam.

You’re leaving. You’re never gonna come back.
C’mon, I’m gonna come back.
(Sure, sometime, but maybe not to live. And maybe not. I won’t be able to talk to you or see you whenever I want, and maybe you won’t be at our Bible meeting every week anymore, and you won’t sit at the kitchen table while I cook dinner anymore, and maybe B won’t have someone to play Madden with anymore, just like that.)
(K, you won’t be there to tell me to have some tea, to go to sleep, to go put on some sparkly eyeshadow. Maybe no one will tell me what I should say the next time that mean person bothers me, maybe no one will help teach me to take care of myself.)
(We help each other feel more human, all of us.)
(I’m afraid.)

R?
R_grace?
Be here.
Be here, now.

What are sisters for

So I had a great trip home, punctuated by a horrible Christmas Eve. I had two arguments with my 19-year-old sister, who I drove to Detroit and then back to Kalamazoo. These days she generally seems so ice queen, why-don’t-you-just-drop-it-Rachel, although if you confront her with any accusation of being uncommunicative or “cold,” she has been known to fly into genuine fits of rage, even tears, however uncharacteristic.

(We grew up sharing a bedroom. I used to come home from middle school torments and cry to her in her bed, charging her to grow up and defend the defenseless, to never pick on anybody, and she would nod solemnly and agree, “Okay, Rachel.” I think I knew even then that she would be better equipped to get through school unpickedon, that she was a likely cantidate. I think I knew that she was going to be cooler than me, in middle school anyway.)

At one point during this last visit, I actually said to her, all bitter and shit, “And about the ride home? You’re welcome. You’re welcome.”

I really did. Ben was there. So was Ev. You can ask them.

She never says thank you to me. It’s awesome that she walks around feeling entitled to her own shit, but she doesn’t have much shit of her own to entitled to just yet; she’s walking around feeling entitled to favors from other people, it seems like. To drive her to and from Kalamazoo without a word of thanks just makes me start to feel like a sucker. Especially after I, albeit in a fucked-up way, told her that it bothered me.

The thing that really sucks about all this is that I adore her. I think she walks on water the rest of the time, and I’m amazed by her strength and resiliency, however untested it might be at this point in her life. I left the house for a while on Christmas Eve., cried an inordinate amount, and drove around aimlessly, talked to -I- for a while, who said, “I don’t know what to tell you, except to say that it won’t always be this way.” He’s right, and he also says that she probably isn’t as indifferent as she seems; she just doesn’t know how to say what she means. But now is the time when I feel like I have the most to offer her, now and when she was a younger teenager. But who am I kidding, really. Those were the hardest years of my life, and probably the easiest of hers. But then, how would I know?

What a night.

I’m ready to write about my weekend now.

On Friday night, early Saturday morning, really, ER and I ended up at Erl and SH’s charming little apartment, that for some reason makes me think of the word “bungalow” even though the whole place is about the size of my living room. We drank this amazing amazing chocolate, we talked about SH’s purse being snatched by the man in the cab in Guatemala, and how she hung on and was dragged for a block. She survived, obviously. She was scraped up pretty good, she screamed bloody murder as she was dragged, people turned out of their houses and they eventually let go. Erl was almost on fire with not understanding how a little slice of my heart admired S for, I dunno, winning, I guess (an admiration which was apparently shared by the native women she met during the remainder of her trip, who were apparently used to this sort of thing). In his mind, the brave thing to do would have been to let go of her bag, that it’s just stuff, that she could have been killed. And in my rational mind I completely agree. Keeping her bag was not worth the risk of being hurt or killed. But I can’t help it. And I couldn’t make him understand that for a woman, it’s not just about the bag. The idea of someone using intimidation or strength to steal something from me feels like a bodily violation, the lividness I feel comes from someplace deeper than the inconvenience of losing money. It’s the same place in me that’s tired of peeking around corners and wedging my keys between my fingers, but still persists in walking alone at night whenever I please. It’s the part of me that wants to claim something, to say, “This is mine.”

We compared this to the complete lack of resistance that we’ve shown in less dangerous situations of some kind of violence, or what we perceive as such. Like when a man licked S’s ear at the place she tended bar, or the GAY man thought it would be really funny to kneel down and kiss my vulva at a party. In both cases, we froze, and we HATED ourselves for it. She at least got the guy kicked out, but I didn’t even give the vulva-kisser a talking-to. I told them that I wish I would have hit him, but at the time it seemed impossible. In fact, it didn’t even cross my mind, and it would have had to been a conscious choice to start a fight (like, he would have been walking away, I would have turned him back around and clocked him, for instance). Then E said the best thing ever: that guys like he and Erl felt bad that me and S lived in a world where we felt guilty for not responding, that sometimes freezing is the best thing to do if it’s going to keep you safe. That, in a sense, it doesn’t have to rest on our shoulders to correct the behavior of assholes and psychos. Not that we shouldn’t resist, but that we shouldn’t kick ourselves and be wracked with guilt for failing to respond quickly enough to kick the guy’s ass or something.

By this point, it was about six in the morning, so we decided to walk down to the lake and catch the sunrise. There were clouds hovering, but the horizon was clear enough for the sun to begin as the sharpest bead of honey light. We imitated E, watching it rise like a bubble through the cracks of our fingers (in a manner that I’m sure struck us all as “nautical”), until the sun cleared the horizon. Erl and S turned in, and me and E had breakfast at Standee’s. He talked about how he can’t stop sleeping in four-hour shifts and reading deckhand job postings as Internet porn, and I told him that I want to find him a wife.

she is the devil

Remember the Cuban man from a past entry? The other night he walked me to the car and gave me a talking-to. He pointed at the salsa club and said, “You don’t believe me, but there is the devil in there.” He predicted the ruin of me and my marriage by salsa. “Salsa, it is an addiction, and you are already addicted.”

I laughed, and then thought about it in silence all the way home. This is a man who blames his divorce on dancing. It’s not that I believed what he predicted for me, but that out of respect I thought I should seriously consider what he’d said. So I did.

I stopped and got a couple of tacos, and came home to find my husband and ER playing video games. I sat down to eat and told them the story. They loved it. My husband shook his fist and exclaimed, “Damn you salsa! Damn you to HELL!” While I was laughing I tipped a cup of salsa all over the front of my skirt.

Without missing a beat, ER repeated the curse, this time directed toward my taco, “Damn you, salsa!”

I have such high hopes

for this meeting we’re having tonight. I see it as a refuge for people who love Jesus, or are at least interested in Jesus, but hate going to church, or are afraid to, or just can’t seem to wake up on time. So far, most of us fit that bill.

I also see this as a place to invite people that is less intimidating and more friendly than church, somewhere they don’t have to think about what they’re going to wear. Or bite their tongues. (Consider that your invitation, friends. I promise you we won’t baptise you in the bathtub or assume anything.)

I mean, I go to church. I shuffle in the door every month or so, although I always intend to make it more often. I’ve been out of town on weekends a lot (here come the excuses) and it’s just so BIG and ORGANIZED. It’s a great place, though. I actually really love it. The man who’s likely to be the new pastor is brilliant, absolutely a gift. His teaching cuts right to my heart. But there’s all this other stuff involved.

The other day, there was a Congregational Meeting to start deciding on a PROCESS to decide who the new head pastor would be, because the old head pastor is stepping down. I was standing outside with a group of AWESOME girls from this church, who are all painters and, oddly enough, about exactly my age, all of them. I said, “Aren’t you all going to the meeting?” They said, “Oh, no, we’re not members.” I laughed and said, “Me, neither! But I thought for sure you all were.” There’s a process for that too.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing ridiculous. You either go to a couple classes, or you attend the church for a while, and when you feel like being a member, you meet with a pastor. There’s some stuff you agree to; I can’t remember what it is.

This is boring me already.

—

The other night, I apologized to ER for calling him out about waffling about going to church the next day. I was actually mad at BJ, and it kinda spilled on ER a bit, so I called to apologize. He said, no need. He said he looks for that in a friend; someone who’s willing to call him out when needed.

—

My mom told me breathlessly on the phone, “Oh, I wish I could just be a fly on the wall at that meeting!” She thinks my friends are really cool, and she knows my difficulties with this kind of thing.

I see this meeting as a lot of things, when in reality, it’s nothing yet. It’s just an appointment. I-am-trying-not-to-get-my-hopes-up. Because I tried to do this in San Diego and it flopped. Like a big dead smelly fish. We had one meeting that was magical, where we prayed together and it was like music, and it was like Romans 8:26 happening in front of us (here are two different translations):

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”
-New Living translation

“…we do not know how to pray worthily as sons of God, but his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words. And God who knows the heart’s secrets understands, of course, the Spirit’s intention as he prays for those who love God.”
-JB Philips translation

But then it just fizzled. I don’t think that’s going to happen this time, I really don’t, based on the people involved, and the ways that I’ve grown since then, and the rightness of this moment.

I used to have a really traditional, transactional way of looking at reading the Bible with a group of people. I used to think that there had to be a teacher, a wise man, a scholar. And how could I ever be that? I couldn’t, but I tried, and so I reckon I undermined the group in some ways. Now, my profession is to get groups of difficult people to talk about what they’ve read and relate it to their lives, and to sidestep the traditional relationship between adult:group of teenagers. It applies. Surprise, surprise.