In Twilight Regalia

And I naturally fled.

I shan’t have ended up doing, actually DOING, much of anything with my life, I don’t think. But I have been able to point my finger and tell the story of what I see fairly interestingly I think. I don’t have the reporter’s attack, nor the poet’s patience, but I still can waltz language around a little. (Strangely my husband spontaneously bursts into humming resonantly “Singin’ in the Rain” while typing over his new laptop. How we do collide inexplicably, this Korean guy and I. )

I have no idea what to do with my life now. But I’ve talked about that. Where are the children? … Oops, I forgot to have them… right….

I have dying rats and desperately sick fish and I can’t connect with anyone for the life of me. I have nothing in common, so much so that I spew out stuff I shouldn’t when people actually ask me to say anything.

For example, the other night at a meeting for restructuring my nutrition habits (a.k.a. a weightloss class), I thought I’d be a bit light and tell them about myself, as we all were required to around the circle, in a light-hearted way, why I was there and what I wanted to lose the weight for, yada yada. And I found my reasons were:

1) Clothes for fat people are made like crap out of polyester and bad stitchery, if you can find them at all;
2) I have a 10 years younger Korean husband, and I don’t look like I match him;
3) I really don’t like resembling my Aunt Eleanor all THAT much;
4) People really fucking HATE you inexplicably when you’re fat; and
5) I don’t want to freak out my Korean relatives when we go to visit them.

Then the others spoke after a strange quiet (I thought they’d laugh but of course they all just thought I was odd to be so uncomfortably frank). They said their reasons were:

1) They have grandchildren to keep up with;
2) They have been diagnosed with a medical condition for which their medication trashes their metabolism;
3) They had back surgery and were in bed for months unable to exercise;
4) They have been 200+ pounds in high school and now they’re double that;
5) They have been told to lose weight before they can have their other-problem-related surgery;
6) Everyone in their family dies of weight problems and heart attacks and they don’t want to.

God did I feel like a schmuck.

I was incredibly sad about it the next day, how insensitive I’d been. I just kept living in my head, and I guess that’s the whole problem is that I am entirely in my head almost all the time, without too much interruption, even from my husband. Even the activities I try to entertain myself with. I just don’t have enough engagement in this world. I don’t like it much, truth be told. And when I do, I long to find someone who understands the WHY of it that I just encountered, but … they never ever get it.

The other day my boss said, so WHO’S PLAYING TONIGHT???? with a big grin on his face, knowing I’d be stumped. He knows I have no clue what’s going on in sports, I hate it. I keep up with nothing of it. It counts for nothing in my world unless it has aesthetic value or courage on an individual scale, such as my Olympic obsession. I would have loved to quote Noam Chomsky at him, but I fear for my purse.

I guess after all this time in my life, even now that I am not doing much that could be termed ART at all, I have become pretty much like what one of my favorite sculpture teachers described himself to be: “An artist — because I’m pretty much useless at anything else.”

I have somehow decided myself and yet not fulfilled myself, and am in the process of being physically erased, daily, all the while.

I have to get busy. I have to look up from what I’m doing. I have to go play with some elements of chaos, even if it means babysitting; SOMETHING. I have no growth. I need it desperately, if for no reason other than preventing my own entry out of creativity and into psychopathic abandon.

I’ll therefore state what I’ve been saying for the last three years:

I NEED A DAMN DOG.
I WANT A DOG.

And then maybe some more people.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.