I can't help admire how easily she can sum up her life as a
Baker's dozen, so compact, neatly wrapped in ribbon as if a birthday gif, just whose I can't say when I was born in May
and she wasn't ,my life is so sprawled out, it won't fit easily into any donut
box even leaving out the extra donut ,the wounds that never get healed, like a
trick knee that goes out at odd moments, if not painful then a painful reminder
of a pain I felt so acutely before, though the latest of these is still too
fresh, a scab instead of a scar, and the constant reminder that the wound is
self-inflicted again
Each time I come to the office, I feel the way I did as a
kid at the Height of the Cold War, when we all expected the bomb to drop and
huddled uselessly under our own desks in the fain hope we might survive, just as
I huddle in my Harry Potter alcove now, in that space that is between floors,
not below, not above, like limbo as I wait for God (or her or somebody else) to
decide my fate.
It is no longer up to me to decide and what awaits me is not
the result of what I do or say, since I no longer do or say thing that might light
the fuse. It is up to her, if not a mood, then an inclination, waking up to the
chatter of an irate hamster from which she concludes I am to blame, as if a
Russian Oligarch with her finger on the button, so nervous she might push it by
accident and blow up my world, and maybe hers, and no matter how I hide my
head, I know it is not possible to survive it.
I look at the video of her with the band years out of date and I think I might have fallen for her even then become a groupie offering her anything for just One look or even a pat on the head black top orange skirt in one film other outfits and others she always the same the center of my attention of fixation I might have had long before I fixated on her for real before I even knew who she was not a rockstar yet a bright spot on the stage thick with old men playing old songs none of which mean anything to me without her on stage with them maybe it's hindsight me thinking this and attraction that might not have been any attraction at all I later felt attracted to her and maybe in the depths of night listening to her other songs I still imagine myself as her groupie and maybe I always will
What she barely alluded to yesterday she apparently
broadcast today blatantly in an essay about The spoils of victory
Only in this essay she barely talks about Ed just in the
last few sentences
The essay may answer some longstanding questions about when
she was connected with the Virgin mayor and possibly her role in our office as
well as makes clear her bitterness over having been dumped from power
The confrontation on the weekend must have involved the
Virgin mayor or someone inside the power grid to cause her to let down the veil
so far and reveal so much about the real conflict that is only marginally
associated with her disorder
I learned yesterday that the Virgin Mayors closest and most
important Ally is Sylvio which lends credence to the rumors that she may have
confronted the Virgin Mary over a raise Sylvio received when she did not--
although other rumors claim it was some other woman in the office
she may have
permanently severed herself from power with no way to return
Again all this is speculation based on various disgruntled
people in the Virgin Mary's Town none of which may be true
Her essay about to the Victor go the spoils give definition
to some of this the implication that she had engaged in some conflict and had
lost
she does not say with whombut suggest the other person is someone connected and that after being a
good soldier in the Virgin Mayors army, she has been cast out
All this suggests
another proverb sour grapes and goes on to suggest what was won wasn't worth it
in the first place
She said she's always questioned this proverb. the idea is
that he who wins is rewarded
She does not say what the conflict was about or to whom she
is speaking. She might even be reflecting on herself.
She does admit there is acertain ambiguity when it comes to reward, perhaps built intentionally
into the phrase
Is he victorious because he has won the battle but what lies
around him are most certainly spoils as I would imagine them to be
Her research shows the offender first said this after an
election at 1832 the Victor has won the election the spoils are what have been
left behind
This may suggest she joined the Virgin Mayors team after his
successful upset over the previous mayor in May 2011 but she may have been
connected to someone such as RR prior to her coming to work for us, maybe as
early as her return from.
More than once I have pondered if her coming to work for us
was part of some scheme to control our publication (most likely by RR, but
maybe others). Most likely, she joined the group later, arriving too late to be
considered one of the inner core.
The essay suggests that she feels jipped somehow and she
creates distance with some of the phrases she uses.
She goes on to wonder why this sort of thing is something
anyone would be willing to fight and pay out the nose to win.
she suggests that the spoils aren't worth any having any way
even as is now on the outside looking in
It is difficult to say to whom she is addressing the essay RR
or the Virgin Mary or some other person I know that nothing about, or even
herself, but she is clearly trying to make lemonade out of these sour grapes
and comes up with something resembling spoiled mil.
Her loss in January of position still hovers over her like
the angel of death, something she can't quite dispel despite her months seeking
a cure because ultimately she is being cured for the wrong addiction
She referred to the victory as indeed messy
it's never like they
tell you in fairy tales unless they are grim. you either sacrifice the
integrity that made you fight in the first place or once you win you realize
that what you want is nothing like what you imagined it to be this is life, she
wrote.
No essay of course can be free of her revisionism of history
and so she continues on with a version of her past how she fought for education
and hasn't really gotten her very far; she fought for countless jobs and won
finding them hardest to sustain than the fight itself and then after fighting
in them she found the reward itself had spoiled her in a way
At this point she tries to tie in her disorder but it
doesn't really work but suggests that the struggle has also left her spoiled.
she knew this must sound terribly depressing it can feel
that way at times and if you let this truth define you and depress you it can
end up dragging you back, she says.
Everything is spoiled anyway, she says, and she might as
well take back control and do it herself
but no life springs from spoils she claims just as it had
from the chaos of the original biochemical ooze
she believes it is less the victory than the fight itself
doing with the spoils she's been dealt with her human nature with the nature of
the universe from spoils to splendor
if the right
collection of events coincide and there is infinite hope in that there is also
far less pressure if you realize that you're very nature is not perfect and so
in order to be get any sort of success you have to realize it will not be
perfect
it doesn't have to be;
it cannot be; victory is not perfect;
there is much sadness in all this, a suggestion that she has
or is on her way back to the place where she was and less a revision but her seeking some new path to power
I keep thinking of the movie I saw as a kid: “If it’s Tuesday,
this must be Rome.”
But in my case, this must be Hometown, and I’m not completely
comfortable when it is.
I don’t think I’ll ever recover from it, dreading my place
on the floor between the first and second floor, my Harry Potter cupboard
people pass on their way up or down, where she passes and sometimes pauses,
like a tease or a challenge, daring me to speech out when I’m condemned to a
vow of silence, a ledge on a personal mountain I dare not climb down from.
If it is Tuesday, I must be here, and I’m certain she’s no
more pleased by it than I am – or maybe she is, a queen on her thrown, while I
play the role of jester.
I feel the way I used to feel on Monday mornings returning
to school without my homework done, waiting for the nuns to scold me, only she’s
no nun, and I wouldn’t want her to be.
A poet's post yesterday deals with her belief and continues to depict her struggle over her eating disorder true believer or not she is expending a lot of ink on a struggle that may or not be side effect of a real disorder is if it is you have to wonder what for therapist and is thinking then the one she saw prior to going for treatment earlier this year since someone is the long chain of professional head shrinking realizes the extent of damage one or all of whom likely things to cure the symptoms first and then the deeper issues if these can be cured at all
Although these essays are written to impress someone therapist or family members with her dedication to a cure not so Stark is her early 2011 writing and essay suggests some unresolved conflict beyond the boundaries of Ed and offer some excuses to why she's still behaves the way she does
She said that once you manage your eating disorder symptoms the personality traits and life circumstances that pushed you to use it is a coping mechanism remains she wrote and yesterday's post including at least initially the obsessive thoughts behind it creating this sort of who am I monster of war a brain that will relentlessly eat at you while you eat
She ate out Tuesday night with a dear friend at one of her favorite vegan places in New York City she ate enough to feel uncomfortable since vegetables are bulk and here than other protein and this observation was followed by a strong rhetorical facts that she no doubt learned at the treatment center
This didn't work so she reframed and thought about the beautiful healthy meal she just ate and the friend she had been who she'd not seen in ages and how exhausted she was and still did what you needed to do
This works somewhat but then she said as she said before she can't banish 20 plus years of obsessive thought patterns wired stubbornly and delicately into her brain
But she said she could choose to focus on healthier ones clearly reflecting the advice she'd been given by her therapist and regurgitated the way she had regurgitated classroom lessons while at the school showing off to her teacher just how well she had learned
On one hand she seems to be telling someone what she thinks they want to hear on the other hand she seems to make an excuse for some misbehavior that she is connecting to her et this we get later in this essay
She said it was the weekend she restricted a bit in response to a set of very stressful circumstances and the next day her body demanded she make up for it this may be the actual point of this particular essay painting some conflict she had over the weekend as the product Ed or worse she violated her Ed therapy because of the conflict saying without overtly saying see what you made her do to herself and intellectual guilt Trip dumped on someone she spent the weekend with and which she continues on with as she sat with her nutritionist's office yesterday to reflect her weekend needing of activities she told her what she had done
She's then got told that it's what happens when you skip a dinner she then asked the woman if she had gained weight
The woman said no part of her didn't believe her but that's part that has a certain blessed and more like cure people in her inner circle a billion times whether or not she's fat and and no matter what they say she doesn't believe them that's the part of the who physically heavy when people say she's good enough she's doing well but she's talented she's safe she's okay she's loved and she doubts them always
She concludes that she ate correctly and did her body right the head and found her of the program spoke in a group session the same day and said they can be totally free of the historically and abortionate thoughts
But she said most of them did not feel safe enough to believe her and most of them were desperately desperately wanted to she wrote
She's been told her whole life that there is no full recovery some women in her group even got this from reputable therapist center
This does not fighting mind make she concluded
But the woman at this session basically said it was mind over matter and what sounds to me like telling the women there to drink the Kool-Aid and then the thought patterns that lead to their behavior can be rerouted
But reforging electrical connections in one's head makes takes practice lots of it a new habit must be formed but there is a light on the other side she wrote saying she and others want to believe because even though they have their Ed in check the voices are louder and is torture moments of relief or brief and there are sense of constant struggle making the effortless appealing
She said the traits that welcome them in like perfectionism obsessive compulsive tendencies remain but she cannot lease them on more healthy things like self care social connections career she wrote she wants to believe
Those changes depend on the moment how strong she feels how tired she is how badly her body image issues are fairing
Sometimes when she can't believe in something herself she has to borrow from another's belief until she can but it is your own essentially fake it till you make it
But then this has been her credo all along faking her accomplishments when she can't possibly be what she aches to be at least yet
Nothing every last forever, entropy eroding the roots of
what we believe will survive, sworn statements that we think will endure when even
what we build with steel won’t survive rust eating at the foundations we put down in
the assumption of strength, nothing is as strong as we assume or as dependable
as we hope for, especially love, which like plastic begins to crack as soon as
we create it, the near-invisible fractureswe do not notice until they begin to break, by which time it is too late
to save it.
Nothing survives this world and we must accept this or drive
ourselves crazy assuming we can, when we can’t save anything especially love.
After no threat of snow for a month, Mother Nature picks
this weekend to bring us a White Christmas.
I’m scheduled to drive to Scranton to see my kid, along a
route that is notoriously dangerous in snow.
Unfortunately, I get very nostalgic this time of year, even during
the most painful times (such as Christmas 2012 after that whole debacle with
the poet.
I’m no less nostalgic this year, only I’m not completely
sure for what. Most of what made up Christmas is long gone for me, though yesterday
– after my weekly visit to our new office in Hometown – I strolled through the
town, passed the taverns the poet and I drank in a few times, and perhaps other
bars where she drank with other men going back to when she first lived there in
2003.
The shadows of our lives hover over this whole landscape, long
after they have faded into memories.
I look at her new videos, seeing her great joy (this week
she won a ribbon, if not the blue ribbon she had seen our former temporary boss
as, then something substantial, a real accomplishment, and in an area of her
life she loves.
I look at the Christmas displays, less here than in the ever-hopeful
Peninsula City, but formidable enough to bring out the Christmas spirit in me,
if only long enough for me to access the train.
Our poet was right back then. We need to live in the moment.
The past and future do not exist except in our imaginations, and not always
accurately recalled even.
