The · future · looks · bright · ahead

You were a good person to know. And I am glad we were friends. I cannot describe how saddened and shocked I was to hear about you dying. People have started to say this word "passing", as though somehow all of this has been one big day at school and then you get to graduate. I don't get this. So I don't say it.

Working every day with someone for 5+ years, you take the good with the bad. You were always smart and very tolerant of a hot-headed girl right out of college, and though we knocked heads occasionally it never lingered. Course there was that day I got so mad at you I nearly drove my car into yours as I left the parking lot. Glad I didn't do that. You probably never knew that crossed my mind. It was a long time ago, I was 23, and I went up to the mall to buy a dress for my first official date with David right after that. The good thing about working with a bunch of guys, I've found, is that conflicts come up and get addressed and then go away pretty fast. Not a lot of grudge holding. We've been friends for a long long time. I loved your stories and was always so impressed by how clean you kept your paintbrushes over the years, as if they'd never been used. You probably didn't know that either. I loved that you got the guys together and you all walked out after another one of John's tirades. Wish I'd been there to see that!

There was a lot more you didn't know. You didn't know that every time I went to Rhode Island I wanted to bring you back some soupy, I'd done that a few times but really, I started at some point to associate you with going home. This year, just last month, I was supposed to go up, and I didn't. But when I was planning it I thought, oh I will get Danny some soupy and go down to the shop to see him. I didn't go up. And I didn't go to see you, even though I'd been thinking of you a lot for several weeks. I thought of you yesterday when I noticed the date. It has been 10 years since I quit the shop, and you've been there for 15 I thought. Then I thought it looked like I would get up this fall, and that meant going to the cider mill, and I'd bring you back some cider like I did all those years ago. And this time your housemate wouldn't drink half of it. I would like to think you knew that I was thinking about you, because I would do stuff like that. I hope you did, because I was.

I am sorry I didn't know you had cancer. It can't have been all that long since the last time I've seen you, maybe a year? I guess that is about how often I've gone down there, once or twice a year. I wish I'd known your mood had shifted with being sick. I wish I'd told you all these things.

A fire. What an awful way to go. I can't breathe for a moment when I think of how panic stricken you must have been. Were you looking for the cat? We'll never know. You didn't deserve such an end.

I'll always remember your stories about your mom, and that sick tree, and life and all the other things you chose to impart over the years, and the times we spent working together. Like when you joked that watering your garden was like giving the plants welfare. And sweeping the shop with you listening to the Dead the day Jerry Garcia died. The first project we ever did together ripping all that damn masonite into 2" strips (and then beveling BOTH edges) to make tambor for the Baseball2Nite set because John was too cheap to buy it made. And then no one getting to see the set ever because that was the year the baseball strike happened!

Storm clouds have been rolling this way for at least an hour. I have to go bring the houseplants inside before the rain comes.

so i know i have posted many times on here about my relationship frustrations. the other day, after being told to "fuck off" for being upset about something aaron did, i ended it. i almost backslid the day after, but maintained my strength.

i have started to see a pattern of abusiveness emerging. for a long time there were things that i thought we could work on, and behaviors that i thought he would work on if he agreed he had them, but i can't really ignore it anymore. i certainly have things that i consistently work on, having recognized them a long time ago. i expected that we could improve the areas that weren't functioning around our communication. and i was wrong. right now he's being very nice and helpful and sweet and asking what he can do around the house, and i've begun to phase out the things i have always done in the relationship for him/us around the house.

the day he threw the dog toy at me i spent the day in the kind of teary haze that out-of-the-blue incidents like this would cause when i was a kid.

and this last "fuck off" was it. done and done. please find someone else to throw things at and tell to fuck off. i will not have this in my home. i swore to myself every time some shitty thing happened to me when i was a kid, every mommie dearest moment my mother had, that i would never ever have these kinds of things happen when i was out of the house.

i don't think he will be moving out immediately, which might mean a financial disaster for me considering how little work there has been this year. but i have contingency plans i can implement.

and i won't just be fine. i will be unbelievably awesomely fantastic.

thanks to all who have said such supportive things to me over previous posts about this issue. it has meant very much to me and been very helpful. :)

astounding! it is june 15th, and it is 73 degrees outside! It is as though I've moved to Maine or something.

In other news, my intern year has begun. After passing my comps and finals I finally started clinic last month. It is really great to be out of the theory of the classroom and being more hands-on. I don't have a first patient quite yet, and didn't realize how much wrangling of conversations and information would be involved in getting any of the many people who have said they want to come see me for acupuncture actually in the door.

Learning to wrangle paperwork has been... not fun. I suppose if it were my system it would be fun, but someone else's system always seems arbitrary to me.

We planted some vegetables in the garden last week, plus some flower seeds. None of the seeds I put in pots came up, which may mean I'm never buying seeds online from Park Seed again. We are hoping to cut down the giant pine trees that block our porch's view of the neighborhood, but I'm super sad about killing them. They are very nice trees, they just don't belong where they are. And I want rose bushes. But still, it seems a shame to just kill perfectly nice trees.

Other than that, life is boring. It is reading week so no school this week, hallelujah. Oh, did the in & out for Clapton/Winwood, and didn't get to hear any of the show because they sent us all to catering (an entirely seperate room) instead of just one end of the arena for the last half hour of the show. Bitches.

so, i have a couple of old aol accounts that i don't use for much but receipts for online things, so my regular email doesn't get junked up.

recently, something i found ridiculously amusing happened. i went to sign on and noticed that i had something like 75 emails, which is really unusual for this one account. turns out something had gone drastically wrong with the Pan Am Symphony's server, and instead of "unsubscribe" emails going to the symphony, they got sucked into some vortex where they spun back around and came to everyone on their listserv, as though each person were the symphony. first the replies were just "unsubscribe", then people got annoyed. then people got PISSED OFF. it was fucking hilarious. the most amusing thing was that droves of folks kept telling everyone not to hit "reply all", even though it seemed pretty obvious that it was a malfunction of just emailing to unsubscribe.

it was quite possibly the funniest chain of online weirdness i've ever seen. i probably got about 100 emails over the course of nearly a week. the very last one was an apology from the symphony itself offering 2 for 1 tickets to their next show in May.

funniest of all: "Why You email Me??? I am Professional and nothing to do with Symphony!!!!"

Crazy.

i managed to get out of the house for an hour or two today, for a drive around town and a trip to the umbrella factory, where i fed some honking geese while the emus kept to themselves in the far sunny corner of their yard. the geese honked at me, and in my best penguin/dick cheney imitation i honked back, and we went back and forth several times. bought a huge scarf i'm going to turn into a skirt and a smaller scarf as well, at small axe. love that place.

my aunt has been taken to the hospital on the advice of the visiting nurse, who when she came here would not admit my aunt to their service. both my mother and i could barely move her, i don't know what my mother was thinking. of course while the nurse and i are trying to convince my mother of the fact that there is too much care needed to have her here, well, things didn't go so well. twice this weekend it has been remarked to me that my mother "is a saint", and all i can think is, she shows you what she wants you to see.

you can be fooled, i think, by someone being frail and fragile like my aunt is now, but she is the same mean-spirited bully she's always been. and that is why she wants to stay with my mother, so she can bully her into letting her do whatever, and who cares about what it means for anyone else. it's the same meanstreak my mother has. i picked it up and have spent my life getting rid of it, and it's utter poison to be around.

i cannot wait to get the hell out of here tomorrow. i should never have come.

*

at some point today while the shit was hitting the fan here i suddenly became obsessed with new pretty girly icons and uploaded like 30 of them. they are pretty & soothing to look at.

Man, what a sight. 89-year-old Pete Seeger, and Bruce Springsteen, standing on a stage I built, at the Lincoln Memorial, singing the first song I ever learned (when I was about 4 or 5), Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land". I hear HBO is going around YouTube scrubbing all clips of the show because they have exclusive rights to it for 6 months or something, screw them.





And the lyrics in case anyone would like to see them. They even sang the "controversial" verse about the welfare lines...


As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

(except they sang "I stood there whistling!/This land is made for you and me!")

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.



Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

i've never been one to forego at least attempting some new year's resolutions. i think it's a great point in time to assess things and re-focus attention on things that one wants to develop in the near future. i could do it anytime, but hey nearly everyone else is so what the hell...

This year I'd like to:

write more about some of the things we're being taught at school, specifically philosophically. boy howdy will those posts be friends-locked, who knows who is lurking around here. and i totally want to hear what folks think about it all. because my school can be a little cultish and weird at times.

-make sure the dogs get more exercise.
i ought to throw the ball for them at least a couple times a week.

-make sure *i* get more exercise.
helpfully, motivation for that is coming soon in the form of a vacation with aaron's entire immediate family to
mexico in march (omg free vacation?! yes it is true.)

-deal with god. find god. something about god.
this one, well, i have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of an anthropomorphic being who pulls strings and answers some peoples' prayers yes and others no and so on. i tend to think of the universe as a giant moonbounce of positivity, but i hear about god a *lot* and really want to put an end to my immediate reaction being "tsk, that's not what god is" - because i don't want to look at my future patients' faith(s) that way. it's easy for me to look at jesus as a bodhisattva, but "god" is a whole other story.

-build myself a little shed woodshop in the backyard [self-explanatory]

-turn the spare room into a usable space

-be more organized

-meditate daily

-really practice peace as every step

-make enough handbags to get a table at eastern market. summon enough bravery to hawk said bags at said market.

I suppose there might be more, but it's definitely all i have the energy for right now!