tiny houses, marriage is bad, and crickets

you know what's weird about writing a blog post over the course of several days? you start out with one idea and it gets orphaned when you find a few others you like better. having said that...

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doot doot doot looking out my backdoor...

i live on about an acre of land, owned by adopted "in-laws", up in the hills above the town of morgan hill, california, about a mile away from chesbro reservoir. to call it home is a bit of a stretch: i sleep in my 20-ft travel trailer that's parked out back near the barn, and spend most of my time in the house of my friend/boyfriend/whatever, who rents a mother-in-law unit from my in-laws. some nights i sleep with him. most not. we both like it that way, to be honest. i'm finding that what i thought made me happy when i was younger and in my "producing a family" period is entirely different from what i know will make me happy now.

which, quite honestly, means i have to give up my pretensions of normalcy (and yes, i did once have them) and admit that i'm a pagan/gypsy/hippy/alternative lifestyle kinda gal. even my own daughter doesn't understand why i don't want to get married again, ever.

i kind of like the idea that my whatever and i could be together purely because we want, second by second, to be in the company of no one else. i like the thought that there's nothing at all in the world, no oath or legal bond or any other constraint, on our having to stay together. we just ARE together, in such a fundamental way that any attempt to legalize our togetherness would automatically result in it dissipating like a soap bubble.

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weird tangent. kinda wanted to rebuild my trailer for a while, you know? maybe design it as my own little space, make it all artsy and cute and self-sufficient. i imagined something like a real gypsy vardo...

note the stove. comments to follow.

here's another concept - the hippy vw bus repurposed into the hippy vw vardo. yes, sorry, i do really love how this little thing looks!

love the... well.. the EVERYTHING, actually. not quite sure how one drives down the freeway at 65+mph without destroying the rooftop garden, but artists, i suppose, cannot be bothered with minutiae.

ok, just found another site with more pictures of this great little house: "kushti bok"...

i've been going through a lot of homesteading blogs, and tiny house blogs, etc etc. at some future point i'll add a listing of the ones i like best. right now, i'd just like to share with you the following manufacturer of marine stoves, navigator stove works.

the "cod"...

the "halibut". this one is kinda like my wet dream - the fishy door has an actual OVEN behind it! it's $1000 more expensive than the cod, but hell, this is a dream anyway, right??

i'd seen many pictures of vardos with these little tiny stoves set into their sides, but never known where to find one before. wow. i think i'm in love. more on this later.

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i'd been coming here to morgan hill on the weekends to work on my writing for about three years before my ex and i separated, and in fact, that trip up here each weekend was one of the reasons i knew it was time for us to put an end to things.

looking around my whatever's house, in which i'm currently sitting and typing, i'm reminded that this isn't home either. not sure how i feel about that. we have about the same level of love for each other - what we recently decided was "let's take some time to find out where this is going" kinda love. we have a really deep friendship and we make each other happy. we each do things for the other that we wouldn't do for anyone else on the planet. it's actually been a healthy experience, to learn how to just BE with him and not expect all kinds of weird shit. i don't know where we're going and most days i don't care.

odd, that this is really an analogy for the state of my entire life.

i made a decision about a year and some back, to get rid of 90% of what i own, and i've moved in that direction, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, ever since. i can look back at the time since my actual divorce, and see the patterns of loss... no, that's harsh and rather self-pitying. i should say, the patterns of "stripping away".

having a hard time forgiving my ex for the things he took from me. a lot of those things involve some physical object, and the concepts represented by that physical thing. we lost our home because of him. i blame him for dragging his feet and not wanting to have sex EVER, so we couldn't have a second child. i lost fifteen years of my life to his passive aggressive BS.

basically, my marriage was a perfect example of trying to swim upstream. i hit every rock on the way and the current was hell.

went camping this weekend with my whatever. we went to pinnacles national monument outside hollister, friday night to sunday morning. i called it our "shakedown cruise".

for the first time, we saw california condors. gotta tell you, that was something amazing. i'm still kinda jazzed about it.

his tent works great but the double-high queen-size mattress sucked. hugely. he couldn't get his power inverter to work and i wound up borrowing somebody's battery-powered air compressor (note: NOT an air pump for blowing up huge-ass air beds but a BICYCLE style air compressor.) took almost an hour to inflate the airbed, and i had to use my lungs to augment the flow of air. yes, i blow. stop snickering.

i started out thinking his monstrous camp chef two-burner stove was way more firepower than we needed, since i'm a coleman camp stove kinda gal and have been for a long time, but it turned out to be a godsend when we discovered we couldn't make a campfire owing to the fire danger.

we turned the thing broadside to the table and turned the burners up.

after dinner, we walked around the campground and found someone who had the camp chef propane fire ring.

this stuff is all modular, btw. you just need extra hoses and splitters off your propane tank. now my whatever is salivating to add this lovely little device to his camping arsenal. me too, for that matter.

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on a slightly related note, i'm getting tired of slaving for minimum wage at all hours of the day and night. it's hard to get a night to spend with my whatever, and we can't do much on the weekends because i always have to work. decided to try kelly temps to see if i could find some bankers hours kinda work. i've had good luck with them in the past. i'll have to check out some other temp agencies too, i think.
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my in-laws have a barn, an actual barn that was built to hold horses, which got converted into living space up above, and storage space down below. i lived in the apartment up above until i couldn't pay the rent anymore, which is when i moved down into the trailer.

best picture i have of the barn, as seen looking through the garden that used to be a horse corral. the top section of the barn with the little windows is where the apartment is. it runs the length of the building.

the apartment was filled with my stuff. just moving in, i had boxes lined up in the living room that stayed there for months and months. the clutter was unimaginable. i could barely walk.

eventually i got those boxes cleaned up, but the bedroom was still full of crap. recently, i had to move all my stuff out of the apartment and down into the storage room. i got rid of another load of crap. see the pattern?

now the storage room is loaded with boxes. most are no longer just jammed with crap - they hold books, or personal stuff, or my daughter's toys she's not ready to get rid of yet, all labeled and neatly stacked. i have five big duffel bags full of clothes.

so now it's time to start sorting through these boxes to get rid of stuff. i think of this as the first winnowing.

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i was going to say something pithy about "the harder you work, the luckier you are", but i couldn't find a picture that worked at all. then i started to think about what hard work got me, and the honest answer is, i'm not sure anymore. getting rid of 90% of what i own, and every day i empty one more box. right now, first, it's books. i'm scared that i'll get done, look around an empty storage room, and all i'll have is... nothing.

rationally, i know that's stupid, but i guess i have a lot of old ghosts running around up in my head that need some serious exorcizing...


 get it? EXORCIZING?!? mwaa haa...



fine...

toodles, all.

mitakuye oyasin

more on the good red road. i'm reminded of the phrase mitakuye oyasin (mee-DAH-koo-yeh oh-YAH-sheen). this is a lakhota phrase that translates to "all my relations", and it refers to the unity and connectedness of all life.

started thinking about the good red road this morning, about what i needed to do to change, and about the interconnectedness of all creation. found a prayer, of which mitakuye oyasin is a part:

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the website i got this image from didn't credit the artist. if you're the artist, let me know and i'll give you credit for this image - it's beautiful...

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin....All my relations. I honor you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer....

To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.

To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.

To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you.
To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.

To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.
To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages, I thank you.

To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.

You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.

Thank you for this Life.

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 "there is no place in the transcendent consciousness for any of the baggage you may still be carrying. all the shoulds and shouldn'ts that may have dominated your consciousness are to be released and left at this crossroads."

today seems to be all about paths. everywhere i turn, i see the word "path", or i run across concepts of path. as i mentioned last night, i do see my path forward, but i realize i didn't get it all right last night. my path has two parts: the first isn't actually writing. the first is getting rid of 90% of what i own. i think i won't be a writer and i won't know any peace until i accomplish that goal.

at this moment i have so much physical, spiritual and emotional clutter i can barely stand up straight in my own body. i think it's time for me to get off the computer and go work on getting rid of some of the physical stuff, which will in turn get rid of some of the emotional clutter, and THAT in turn will help me get rid of the spiritual clutter.

and THEN i can come back and write.  ;}~

toodles for now...

late night shit...

not much to say tonight. got home from work at 11:15, it's now 12:41am, and i don't feel like i can sleep yet. i'm tired, i'm even sleepy, but i don't want to sleep yet.

irrational shit, or maybe not so irrational: my best friend ellen, hereafter referred to as LN, can see the future. in bits. not even the necessarily useful bits.

me, i see paths. i see the possibilities. i don't see what will happen. i see the road i need to take. to where? wow. i'm not sure i can even answer that. here's an example.

for years i asked the universe (god, creator, mama goddess, whatever you call your higher power) to make me a writer. well ok. i'm a writer. then i asked to be an author, as in a published writer. ok, been there, done that too.

 i also wanted to be the red baron when i grew up. i too desired a doghouse that could turn into a sopwith camel.

then i expressed to the universe the desire to finally make my living as a writer. "this," i said, "is the life i want!"

so now the universe, i think, has done me the courtesy of taking me at my word, and has set my feet on this path.

problem is, i'm fighting it. don't even know why. things have been really rough for me the last few years, and i have a very taoist belief that that only happens when one is going in the wrong direction. i know i've used this analogy before, but bear with me because it's a good one, one of my favorites, and it always applies: think of tao, or the way, the path, that is, as swimming in a river. when you're going the wrong way, you're swimming against the current. you hit every rock on the way. BAMBAMBAMlol. everything is harder, everything goes wrong, and no matter how many times you ask why, there's never an answer. because it's just wrong, i guess, is the answer.

so when you turn around and go the right way, suddenly everything is easy. you're swimming with the current now, and it carries you around all the rocks. everything goes right.

 add mojitos and gently swirl to mix...

so, now to my point about paths, and about seeing mine. i asked to make a living as a writer. as long as i'm fighting it, and doing everything BUT, my life is going to be impossibly hard, and it's going to get harder and harder with each day.

my only possible path forward is as a writer. there are no other paths open to me anymore, and that's my own damn fault.

wow, well, or i'm psychotic, you know, either way.

ok, all of which ruminating leads me to wonder if i'm just a bit closer to answering the big question: who am i?

maybe i'm just a writer? maybe the angst, existential or otherwise, is pointless. i know how to write, i've gotten compliments and positive encouragement from every professor i've ever written for, i know how to create query letters, i know how to solicit editors. maybe i'm there already and i just don't realize it?

and on that note, off to bed. for some reason, i'm thinking of the good red road, and of walking it as a dream path...

 the good red road is another way to say tao. clearly, paths are important to me right now.

toodles and g'night, all

didn't think to write today until about an hour before i've got to be leaving the house for work, which way isn't enough time.

cool thing to share: homestead survival blog... apricot vodka. i'm not a drinker, but this looks good even to me. provided you could find nice ripe perfect apricots, this would be a guaranteed rocker. not everything they post rocks, but they have a lot of nice ideas, and they showcase some other cool blogs, so definitely one of those places worth wandering through.

still working on who i am. had another great email from my brother-in-law, but haven't had a quiet moment to absorb it all yet. talked with my guy last night about lots and lots of stuff - he's kind of thinking the same thing as me, i.e. time to go through the hoarded wads of clothes he hasn't worn and even missed, and thin the herd.

i'm way too much of a perfectionist, and it sabotages a lot of what i do. i think of something i want to accomplish, but then i get all bogged down in "i need X amount of time, and oh, i should do THIS before i do THAT, and..." etc etc ad nauseum, ad infinitum. i wind up never doing the thing i wanted to do.

 my brain... imagine what happens when i sneeze

so today, cleaned out ONE plastic bag full of bathroom stuff. cleaned some stuff off the kitchen table. getting ready for work early.

mental clutter is every bit as horrible as physical clutter.

one more thought and then i'm gonna boogie: i know a lady who's just about to hit the nasty rapids of break-up with a guy she loves desperately and considers to be her soul mate. only problem, this guy does not feel the same way about her and has been telling her from the beginning. granted, like most guys he probably unwittingly did and said things that could have helped her feel a bit more attached than she should have, but guys don't get girlspeak, and ultimately, we're all responsible for not recognizing the signs of incompatibility, right?

i know it was my fault with that one guy i loved so desperately, who lived FIVE THOUSAND MILES AND SOME TEN-TWENTY TIME ZONES AWAY FROM ME. how i ever managed to delude myself into thinking we were soul mates is beyond me, but i was really vulnerable, and i believed the things he said.

problem is, we ladies like to create a rosy vision of our relationships, and we disregard all evidence we might be presented with that disagrees with this rosy vision, until the day our rosy vision slips so far out of whack with the reality of the way the guy is behaving towards us, that we crack like lizzie borden and start hunting around in the back of the pantry for that old axe...

yup.

nice stable single lady seeks SWM for permanent, screamingly dysfunctional relationship in which man will fulfill the role of matrimonial accessory, and constantly mirror the woman's worth to the world by a neverending array of actions, behaviors and gifts designed to point out how important the woman is to the man....

i'm tempted to try and talk to her, to help somehow, because i know intimately every second of the hell she's about to create for herself. been there. done that.

but i already know nothing i say is going to help. i could give you every reason WHY i know nothing i say is going to help, but there's no point. in the end, she never listened to him when he talked about what he did and didn't want, so she'll never listen to me.

maybe this is just something the universe requires everyone to face alone until you finally figure it out. "wow. he's not the right guy for me and i need to acknowledge that and let go of him before i get all weird and obsessive"?

dunno. i just know in my gut i can't help her.

got a headache. i've been sick for a few days. my back is killing me and now i have cramps. i'm SO tempted to call in sick to work and i already know i won't.

 obligatory lolcat of cute kitteh havin' teh sick...

whatever happened to the old, irresponsible me? i miss her. she was a lot more fun.

toodles, all... *sniffle sniffle*

wanted to start my day by writing. got a brilliant email from my brother-in-law this morning. just brilliant. hit a bunch of sores spots, made me think, asked some questions i can't answer. best kind of email.

big question: why is there a discrepancy between what i say i want, and what i'm creating (in my personal life)?

"What you truly want and are creating is what you have, not what you say you want. What you are creating is what you  have and where you are going. homelessness or nearly so? you create what your attention is on, fear or desire."

which led me to wonder, what am i creating?

i've played on an online sim (simulated world) for several years now. it's called second life. it's pretty fun, although when you're unhappy, it can become very addictive, and i think a lot of the people who go on probably ARE looking for a place to correct the problems in their life.

here's me on SL:

i added the beer and pizza recently. i don't actually drink beer in RL

note the tiger. that's an AI program. it's pretty simplistic, but a lot of fun, and of course i think of it as real. that's batu khan. next, note the gypsy caravan there on the right. that's been my "home" in SL almost from the beginning. by home i mean, wherever i'm hanging my hat, that vardo comes out. so does the campfire and batu and my buddha so i can meditate. the purple light thingie = windchimes.

and in real life, i live in a trailer. it's not anywhere near as nice as my vardo in SL. it's a 20-ft 1985 komfort bunkhouse.

this looks a lot like mine. i don't have the teeny window up at the top near the front, and mine's a lot older-looking and more beat up.

what i actually want is what i'm creating. what am i creating? having recently discovered Walden (the book, not the geographical location), i'm starting to gain some clarity about the things i want, but everything is still very fuzzy yet.

i absolutely positively don't want a cubicle. ever again. please, god, no, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. but working at walmart is not a permanent thing either, and there has to be some money coming in. even thoreau had to work his beanfield...

of course i want to write, but for god's sake, there's a reason i've never taken the plunge and just done it. it's not because i can't. it's not even because i'm not good. i've had professors tell me it's a shame i'm not wirint, that i'm wasting my talent and my time.

there are lots of things in this world i don't do well, but the one thing i DO have... is that i can write.

it's because i'm scared, somehow, or there's something there in me that wants me to keep trying and failing, that wants to devour any self-worth i may ever develop, to the point that i've spent my life trying to squeeze myself into a succession of boxes, NONE of which ever fit.



i've written posts before about my inner children - there are two: livia and pippi. livia is everything conniving and hateful about court intrigue and politics. think game of thrones meets roman empire. in fact, remember that there's a reason game of thrones and dallas and all these kinda shows are popular: cuz THEY'RE BASED ON REAL LIFE AND IN REAL LIFE, SOME PEOPLE ARE POISONOUS ASSHOLES...

so that's livia. my poisonous asshole. every single time i try to do something, livia is right there whispering poisonous words into my ears, trying to get me to believe all manner of awful things about myself.

pippi is just a scary, out-of-control child who does dangerous shit to decide whether or not the dangerous shit is worth doing. yes, she's revered and iconic as a symbol of rebellion, but to me, she's as much stupid rebellion as anything else. she's all animal id, without the basic overlay of commonsense you kinda need to survive.




this isn't a topic i can finish today. gotta go get cleaned up for work. i just wanted to start my internal conversation and see where it leads me...

edgar allan poe annoys me, whilst i wear a jester hat

came home from work around midnight. boss gave me the chance to work some overtime, and i took it. pulled up to hear holly, rottweiler of terror, barking her lungs out.

this is not an actual picture of holly, but it looks a lot like her. if this had been an actual rottweiler of terror, you would have received instructions on how to pacify. butt scratchies are your best bet.

sigh. like she hasn't been listening to my truck pull up in the driveway at odd hours for the last almost four years now. i jumped out and ran to where she could see me. once she sees it's me, she stops. my landlords were woken up, though. they turned on the outside lights and everything. honestly, that dog...

work's getting harder. i have a herniated disk and it's getting worse, and now i can't take advil or aleve anymore because i'm getting an ulcer, so i spend 8 hours on my feet gritting my teeth and hissing and hoping customers don't notice when i freeze and go pale. pain in the ass, quite literally, but there's nothing i can do right now.

read some edgar allan poe in the last week and some. utterly unimpressed. his "murders in the rue morgue" i can liken to someone trying to cash in on that crazy sherlock holmes trend - everyone's been reading about sherlock holmes lately, so maybe i'll write a murder mystery or two and i'll make it JUST LIKE sherlock holmes... oh, except i'll do away with all that tedious plot development, and my guy won't have any of those stupid idiosyncrasies that just get in the way of me expounding upon the science, oh, and people are too stupid to figure shit out for themselves, right? everybody likes after-the-fact exposition better anyway. right? am i right?

 sincerest apologies, mr allan poe, but i must slap you upside yo fool head. SCHMACK!! that's for being an annoying prick. sorry. it had to be done.

somewhere around the 40th page, while the author was laboring tediously on about some very nearly unrelated scientific principle, i cashed out. utterly dropped edgar and refused to pick him up again. angsty, victorian sentimental goth bullshit.

then i picked up "walden" by henry david thoreau, and holy crap, there they were, all these wild thoughts i'd been having about the pointless accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake, and the "we gotta have a bmw and a mercedes only we live in a 1974 single-wide mobile home", and all that other stuff, just out there in the open, in actual printed words, and WOW, i felt so light suddenly. validated, in point of fact.

i've lived a very long time knowing that my family loves me because i'm me, but honestly, that ericka, why won't she ever get her head straight and out of the clouds and settle into the real world and just take care of her business like the rest of the world does? honestly, she acts like she's 12...

 i have no words. i just really don't. honestly, i wonder how i've survived all these years.

ok, carla, if you're reading this, i know i make you crazy, but it's ok, i don't mind that you think i'm insane and immature. specially not now that i've got mr henry david thoreau to point the way. i'm not insane and immature... i'm a TRANSCENDENTALIST! it's got to be ok, if there's a word for it and everything...

still reading the book. still wrapping my head around it. more later. it's almost 2am, mike is going to be awake in two hours and i need to be asleep NOW. ex-freakin'-hausted...

toodles 'n shit.

abandoned houses

forgot how this feels. it's a release to write, even when no one reads it.

right now it's 11:19pm, wed, 6/6/2012. anniversary of d-day, for another 40 minutes.

i'm in the house. mike is asleep in the bedroom. every so often i hear him snore, and it makes my insides feel warm.

mike is hard to explain. i guess he's my boyfriend, but we have complicated issues with commitment. honestly, i don't feel like going into it more deeply. he's here, i'm here, he's snoring happily, and that's as complex as that needs to get at this moment.

tonight i still need to go upstairs into the barn and move some more of my stuff around. it's intimidating. i keep putting it off.

the apartment over the barn was going to be my home. i had visions of sitting up there with the woodstove going, doing my writing at my rolltop desk, maybe getting up every so often to make a snack or get some coffee. i imagined peace, i imagined the thoughts and dreams flowing... like every other home, it's gone now. i don't even want it back, because the price i'd have had to pay for it would have been unlivable. any peace i might have had would have fled.

as it is, going up there to do anything is hard. it hurts. i don't want it, but i can't quite give up the might-have-beens, standing there looking around. it's a lot like losing love, i guess. you know you can't go back to him, he lied, he was a shit, but the might-have-beens take a long time to fade, and you can't stop remembering how good it was, when it was good...

i guess i've been looking for home for a very long time. every time i think i've got it, it turns out to be fake, unreliable. i thought my ex was home, and where we were, was home. i thought that for fifteen years, up until the moment i realized i couldn't stand to lose one more thing to him. we owned a real house. we lost it. well, i did what i could, but he wouldn't get a job to save his life, or mine, for that matter. we lost the house because i couldn't do it on my own, and my own was all i had.

so the mobile home in north san jose that came next, that should have been home. i found that by complete luck and nerve, and i made it work with the money we had, and my ex still couldn't be bothered to get a job or contribute more than a few hundred a month that didn't barely cover food, let alone rent and utilities. 

that was my house, and there's my truck. the front had all my plants. i liked the neighbors, and my daughter had her best friend in the house behind us. the plan was, when i got it, that we'd save up and buy some land, and move the mobile home on the land, to live in while we built a house. that didn't work either. when i was finally used up and couldn't give any more and said so, we lost that house too.

so now i'm sitting at the corner of an old school desk, in the house of a man i care greatly for, but he's not my home either. i sleep in my travel trailer. all i have is my truck and my trailer, which i guess is more than some people have, but they aren't home any more than any of the other places i've been since i left my parents' house. if  home is uniquely mine, than i've never actually had one, not that lasted. not that i could hold on to.

i don't know who i am and i don't know where my home is. sometime i can handle those thoughts. other times, especially late at night when i'm tired, i can't ignore them. they turn into the ghost of a house, with empty windows and ivy crawling all over the falling down walls. they whisper around like skittery rat claws and wind sighing through broken places.

wow. it really is time to go face the shit i have to face up in the barn, and then go to bed and forget all this for a while.

'night, y'all...

short, not sweet

this is going to be short. i'm telling myself that because otherwise i'm going to get overwhelmed and i won't finish, and this whole thing about re-booting my blog won't happen. maybe then i won't go back and write at all. maybe THEN i'll wind up in a trailer park for the rest of my life, living out the white trash dream of lola, who was a showgirl...

and that's way too sad and weird to contemplate, so here's my attempt at writing a short and sweet blog.

ok, not sweet. nothing about my life has been particularly sweet lately.

my last post was jan 2010. i was still married then, but not for much longer. i was in the kitchen putzing around. i can't remember that exact day, but i do remember the feel. we lived in a mobile home, and the kitchen was kinda dark and kinda pokey, but it had a nice window and the table was comfy, and i could have my coffee and a piece of toast and sit at the kitchen table and blog.

what i wanted was "practical magic". what i got was "weasley household"... still, it was home.

which is not what's happening today, but i don't feel like going into all the details. short and sweet, my husband and i grew apart, as people do, and went our separate ways. i'm living in my travel trailer on a property in morgan hill, and trying to get rid of most of the crap i own. my life has winnowed down to this moment (you know, winnowing? that process where you toss the chaff in the air and the wind blows it away and you're left with just the wheat bits? no? ok, look at this...) and the sad bit is, it hasn't finished winnowing yet.

this is not going to be a funny post. please do not look for humor here. i'm aware that angst is boring, but i'm writing this possibly as much for me as for you. read or not. i like you and i want you here, but these are the words that need to be said, and you may not find yourself entertained.

here's the basic issue: i was functional. i had my problems, but they were hidden away. i struggled, and generally succeeded, in maintaining the look of someone a lot more mainstream than i ever actually was.

i'm weird. i don't fit anywhere. i talk too loud, i laugh too loud, my conversation is usually about stuff that doesn't make sense to most people, and i don't want to drive a new car and/or live in a new house. i'm 48, i'm an intensely sexual being, i have multiple piercings, i want tattoos, or at least more henna, and i think everything has a soul. i even talk to my truck like he's alive. well, he is, but that's another story.

comes complete with plastic peace sign and fake guitar. $22.99 

i'm reminded of hasan elahi, who was harrased after his name was accidentally added to the us watch list. his response? since they were so interested in where he was going and what he was doing, he took pictures of everything. yes. EVERYTHING. (well, not THAT, but he does take pictures of every bathroom he visits, every meal he eats, every airport...) his website is here. his ted speech is here. brilliant. just brilliant.

his thought: if you don't define yourself, others will do it for you. he called it "being forced to take my identity into my own hands".

so my problem was, and remains, that i don't really know who i am. trite, yes, i know, and a vastly over-scrutinized theme. take the words literally. i don't know who i am.

i have many different definitions i can apply, but none of them fit. like my religion, i don't have a name for who i am. i'm not even sure why i need to define myself.

another point i like about hasan's blitz of personal information - you can spend all day going through his website, and still only have a rudimentary knowledge of who he is and what his life is like.

wow. not short and sweet at all.

ok, i'm going to end this here for today, as i need to go eat something and get ready for work.

who am i? i'm not someone who fits within the parameters of "normal american woman". i get tension from family and friends as a result of this. i am in a constant state of tension now, as i attempt to reduce the components of my life down to a bare minimum, and to redefine myself in a way that allows me to live a simple, peaceful life. this desire is earning me resistance, sometimes very derogatory resistance, from family and friends, in a way i can't understand, and i need to understand it.

 ...buddha cat is much to be envied

'nuff said for now. toodles, y'all...