July 08, 2005

9:16 p.m.

Catalogue of a Friday

It was a pretty good day, in spite of it having to start at 6:15. My car servicing appointment took only two of the predicted three hours, so I didn't even have a chance to get bored with the book I brought. Then I went to Kohl's and tried to spend some money on new running shoes, but none of the ones in my size were just right. And running shoes have to be just right.

Instead I bought a new bath mat and toilette ensemble (the fluffy toilet lid cover and the little mat that keeps your tootsies warm while you go), all on sale. This is now my idea of the big splurge. On top of the $300 for today's car appointment, I got my first town tax bill for the Scion. I was shocked. Granted it's new, but it's a lower end car and this town is supposed to be cheaper than the surrounding area. $450! They expected me to just come up with $450! And Tuesday I get a crown on the tooth that's been bothering me for months. God bless Dar, who has offered to pay for it. God bless him, Goddess bless him, Gaia bless him, all the saints preserve and the angels minister unto him. He was at Jocelyn's grave yesterday, pulling weeds and seeing whether the five trees he planted last year are doing okay. One looks a little sick, but the others are managing. Not many of the bulbs came up. I wonder if squirrels ate them. I haven't seen the grave yet.

By the way, the red lady sculpture I have of hers has finally been repaired. A hand had broken off when in J's possession, and part of the wrist was missing. After much searching, Dar found someone who could rebuild it. He brought it back a couple of weeks ago and I swear, I swear she is smiling, where before there was only a pout.

I really should take a picture of her but I don't feel like it just now.

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Steve and I talked yesterday; the upheaval of our relationship has spurred him into doing a whole soul overhaul. He's talking to friends and therapists (and a shaman next week as well) and trying to figure out just why he does certain things, why his needs are so out of balance and why he forsakes every other part of his life when he's dating someone, like he doesn't exist outside of the relationship. He's finally addressing the depression issue. ("I can't believe I was in such denial about it," he said to me.) We're sort of limiting contact, but emailing still, and continuing the conversation. I think he's doing an admirable job of handling things, even though he's very depressed and has done a lot of crying in the last few days. But I hear him identifying things that are really hard to figure out, harder still to face head-on. Good for him. I see healing coming.

Getting to the healing part is so damned hard.

But it's gratifying once you know you're on the road.

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It's rained much of today. I hear the news and it's overwhelming. Should I send healing energy to all of London? Will it be strong enough to make a difference? What about this month's hurricaine casualties? How can anyone do enough?

Sunday we play the benefit for the Ghana Health Mission, which will save probably several hundred more lives this year. That's something.

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It was hard to get to sleep last night. I tried to go to bed a tad earlier than usual (still pretty late) since I had to get up early, but some juvenile neighbor still thinks it's the 4th of July so every night between eleven and midnight we have a sporadic firecracker show. I looked out the window once but couldn't see anyone, so I don't even know whom to address. Maybe they've shot their wad by now. Or maybe they'll decide to wank tonight instead.

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Anyway I can sleep in tomorrow, though I do have a five-hour drive to Pennsylvania. We're driving back after the gig but I doubt I'll make it all the way home. So I'll stay at the band's house, and go to the Ghana gig from there. We're having a silent auction, and I've done all the tent cards and signup forms for it. I hope people come out, I hope they bid, I hope it's a really charged and exciting concert.

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I'm reading the most wonderful book, "All I Did Was Ask" by Terry Gross. It's a collection of some of her favorite interviews on Fresh Air. One person she interviewed was Ann Bannon, a woman who wrote popular lesbo novels in the late 50s and early 60s. She began writing this lesbo pulp fiction just after she got married. Her marriage was long and she raised two kids, but her heart was in this other place. She says,

"I think I must have known from the age of six, when I fell in love with the Statue of Liberty, that I wasn't going to be like ordinary kids. It gives you a clue. I've had a lifelong conviction that you live between your ears, that that's where all the fun stuff is... I think that may be the key to a lot of creative work that people do, that somehow there's a life up there that's so private it's hard to articulate, or hard to share. In that case you find another way to express it. Sometimes it comes out as a long narrative in your head. I would retreat to my own internal storytelling when life got a little overwhelming, which it frequently did."

She says later, talking about fans who would write to her and thank her for letting them know they're not alone, that it can be healthy to open up a little bit; it can be "a warm, generous, wonderful way to spend your life." When Terry asks her if she was able to believe that about herself, Ann replies,

"You know, it's funny, Terry, I think what I did to myself in that long-term marriage, and long-term career, was to learn to live so well in my own fantasy that I never truly got out of it. That's not to say I haven't reached out and tried. I have. It just never has taken. I have friends who laughingly call me "the Ice Queen." I am not the Ice Queen. I'm just someone who may have, in a sense, hurt herself, or limited herself, by being so tremendously good at creating a life internally. I do it wonderfully, if I may say so myself. It's satisfying to me. I live by myself, I have loads of wonderful friends, straight and gay. I love them all; I depend on them all. But I don't have a gift for partnership in the real world, or I just haven't found the partner. I don't know."

Kind of makes me want to expand my library.