|
|
15:12 - Saturday, Jul. 12, 2003 I actually slept until 10:30 which is rare. I am usually up by 8:00 or so at the latest. My man is out of town so it takes longer to get to sleep. It's always like that when he's gone. Now I have my music jukebox on shuffle and am listening to "Mercedes Boy" by Pebbles, truly a classic. I can't imagine there was ever a way to dance to this song that was not totally cheesy and very 1980s. It just has so many plucky synthesizer rifts and vocals as oddly layered as Pebbles hair. It's amazing this gave her enough experience to later manage the band TLC (as opposed to the cable network mentioned earlier). See it all ties together. You just have to be patient with me. I've been reading quite a bit lately. The favorites: Midwives and Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bhojalian. Hillary Clinton's autobiography Living History, and, of course Harry Potter V, The Order of the Phoenix. Now I am thoroughly enjoying Why Girls Are Weird by online diarist and web writer Pamela Ribon. I think when I go on reading binges like this it wakes me up. Gives me more energy and makes me think more about what I want. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I have felt so unhealthy. Unhealthy but happy at the same time. I am enjoying love, life, and work. I have weird perfectionist tendencies that run up against my ADD type issues so that gets perplexing, but for the most part, things are pretty good. (Music has changed to the Bend it Like Beckham soundtrack after an Indigo Girls "Jonas and Ezekiel"). But my body feels foreign to me. Large, ungainly, dragging, pooching out where it hasn't. I've never been small and really could care less about that, just something feels not comfy, my clothes are pinching. So it is time for a shift. Am I going to go on some freakdiet, hell no. But my ass needs to move around a bit more. Sometimes I feel like I need to be caught up on everything, have all my ducks not just in rows, but in columns before I will make a move to change something or finish something else. This gets in the way sometimes, but I am wired that way. I get a lot done in spite of myself and my self doubt. Music is now Yaz, "Anyone." Alison Moyet has such a deep and sexy richness to her voice. The poppy Phillip Glassy keyboard dance behind her only makes her voice that much more grounding and almost giving. If you are not a Yaz or Alison Moyet person, I suggest changing that immediately. So tonight is the Violent Femmes concert. This might be a good time to get myself well-exercised and pumped up to dance. [Music changes to: "Hell Yeah" by Ani Difranco.] Speaking of the Violent Femmes, my mother sent me a video tape that was essentially a mix tape of my life so far. Right around my Violent Femmes phase, there is footage of me dodging her 200 pound camcorder as she films our family trip to Puerto Vallarta. We are staying at some beautiful resort which was a plus (we usually camped on vacation) and there I am with some seriously tripped out spiky wild Robert Smith of The Cure hair and I swear I am wearing black from wrist to ankle. In the scenes where I will let the camera near I am such a fussy queen. I swear it is amazing no one knew I was gay. Thank god I grew out of that snarky nastiness. I don't remember being that "over" everything, but it totally reminds me of so many of the HRC boys one encounters (HRC is the gay rights organization that some refer to as the Human Rights Champagne fund for what some say is their lack of race/class analysis and willingness to endorse Republican n'ere-do-well's like Alfonse D'amato, etc.) Also on this tape are some video moments with my father's family, including his parents who have since passed away. I can't really explain how it was to see them again. My grandfather was so sick with Parkinson's for much of his life, that he was about the same as I had remembered him for many years. But my sweet Southern grandmother, who became sick and died in such short succession that I barely new anything was happening, was her genteel, pancake-making and nicest-person-in-the-room self. She really was just the nicest and most gentle, loving person in the world. The video was of their 50th wedding anniversary and they are surrounded by people they had known forever and ever. So many of them did not recognize one another. [The Breeders "Canonball" just transitioned to "Strange Fire" again by the Indigo Girls] I just can't imagine a time where I will enter a room and no one there has seen me in 40 years. Perhaps the most interesting, there is footage of the man my grandmother would eventually marry years after my grandfather passed away. I had been there, but did not know him yet. Oh, and the fact that many men of that age and names like Connie and Shirley. That seems like such an unintentional genderfuck. I wonder about the little boys named Taylor and Aiden and Chase and Forrest and Twig, etc. Those are names that could very easily become popular girls names. Gotta start working on deconstructing those gender roles and assumptions folks, we owe it to our children! All that said. There is a time of change coming. George W. Bush's approval ratings are down, so there is hope in the land. The economy is so tanked that the nonprofit I work for is making some tough choices. They are asking me to be their full-time development (fundraising) director, but cannot pay me to do so (about $9,000 more than I was making). I have to really think about what I want to do. Even just having a symbolic bump would have been nice, but it looks like that is not likely. We really need to look at the economy (which sucks) and come up with a more successful fundraising and marketing model. We need more successful leadership to pull that off and I am just not certain those folks are going to show up in time. That said. Where the hell else am I going to work? This is hardly an economy for job changers and I am getting to do a lot where I am: planning events, writing grants, revamping their donor structure, advising them on database changes, writing direct mail pieces, etc. I should look at part of my job as an internship but I really should be beyond that by now. In the coming weeks, I suppose all of this will untangle and look more like strings and less like a ball of twine. I look forward to that.
|