In Twilight Regalia

There’s this bloglist I went to which noted most popular blogs. I picked out one because they said it was the blog of a surprisingly older user — a senior lady who was famous for a series of “hillarious” videos called “I CAN’T OPEN IT”. I watched a few of them. In the end I thought she was a bit daft, and certainly overly dependent upon her son (who was the videographer), but one or two of them were painful and amusing simultaneously.

In each video she is visited by her son (not pictured), and has set aside several products or objects for him to open for her on his visit, because SHE CAN’T GET THEM OPEN herself. Medicine bottles with childproof caps, unusual lotion or shampoo dispensers, variously ingeniously designed products all are a bewilderment to her, except for a few she could figure out but couldn’t physically pry open. The most pathetic one was a dispenser of clinging plastic wrap which — really — should not have been any puzzle. I wondered what was going on in her mind. In the one sense, of course, her hands may have been weak with arthritis or some such thing — those items were legit. But the saran wrap thing???? And the shampoo bottle? I just don’t know. A little monkeying around should have done it.

Where did women get that giving-up-too-quickly thing?

Fathers or mothers?
It was evident to me that this woman just shut down after a couple of attempts. And she genuinely seemed surprised when her son presented the solutions. Had her mother given up too easily? Had her father impatiently pulled everything out of her hands, and said Here, I’ll do it?

Even as I balked and marvelled that she couldn’t put two and two together, I could recognize something of my own mother and all the struggles I’d watched that were similar. But at least my mother’s reaction was always thorough frustration, spoken after many valiant attempts, followed by: “::sigh:: ….. Some MAN invented this….”

And my father? He was the one that relegated me to “Go fetch my Phillips… Know which one that is?” status. I was most often in the “Here, hold this.” category if I got close to a project that wasn’t girly.

Now, after all this time and a theatreworld and art school away, I am comfortable with power tools. My grinder and earphones were well worn. I love what a welder can do. I was friends with my soddering iron. I loved chiselling. I adore a scroll saw. I thought machining my own headless screws was the coolest thing. I want to invent a really tiny sandblaster. I want to rent a flame thrower to remodel my kitchen so I can feel like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. But little tiny quiet things that say NO, in pixels on a screen, in an error box, make me CRAZY. I mean, you can’t manhandle OR womanhandle it. You can’t fudge it, force it, jam it, sand it, mickey-mouse it, wing it. They’re just fucking little nazi boxes that say NO. NO CAN DO. Game over.

CRAP!

Tonight the internet is down and no knowledgeable person is here. I have tried to figure out our router’s peculiarities, no luck. I have tried to use someone else’s network. Password?? Dang.

Suddenly I am a Victorian on a chair. Eeeek! Error 3201!! Whatever shall I do? Oh, Woe, Alas. I am lost! And woe to this uncomfortable corset as well!

I thought I’d text someone to ask quickly–

But first I’d have to fix my phone, which was recently reset to factory defaults because the Network Dude was certain this might help solve my dropped calls problem. With reset, my message iTap language was all awry. I tried every menu and every list in every menu that seemed to pertain. Backward, forward, select, nope, backward, new menu, select, nope, backward. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP BEEP can we just talk about the insanity of drill-down menus here? Hm? CAN WE?
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP AHA!!! tap tap tap tap tap tap tap (At least I’d figured out how to get rid of the damn beeps.)

But no idea how to get the iTap back to normal. Instead of typing tap tap for the letter B, it gives me aab or other choices like aaac or aack or whatever. I can’t determine by looking at this from an uneducated standpoint what the hell this four letter bunch of groupings of letters could be used for. What the heck is this stuff? I can change to numerals. I can change to symbols. And back to the aaab aacc aaad stuff. I don’t get it.

I give up and press my preprogrammed phonenumber for my best friend. He’s THERE!! I’m saved! But — well, no, it’s a PC/internet situation, which said friend knows nothing about, since said friend is a Mac addict. Said friend finally hands me to another friend (THANK YOU SO MUCH TANG!) and everything was suddenly clear.

How easy one explanation makes things.

The difference was, I found someone who didn’t try to do it for me, or direct me to a book I didn’t have, or an internet I couldn’t get to, but who could actually explain it. He explained WHY my internet was down most likely, in a way that stuck.

Suddenly the “Ok, now do this. Now try this” helpdesk bullshit stuff was not necessary. He gave me the full explanation I needed to figure out the rest. He presumed I had a brain. It’s not that the others didn’t think I had a brain– it’s just that his response was the right one because he knew what I really wanted. Most wanted to solve the problem, yes, but he was the only one who acknowledged that I wanted to know HOW and WHY. Responding to that was meeting the real need.

I hung up the phone and went armed and dangerous through all steps required.

AHCCHHHAAA! I em GINIOUS!

I blocked an attempted assailing of my husband’s computer (which was really a program trying to reboot itself automatically but the ad-blocker software was preventing it) restarted my internet, looked up the manual for my phone online, and had figured out the iTap problem pretty much…. I was almost there…

I had almost climbed my mountain. It was MINE to say I had accomplished it, of course with information and input, but I had sought those, I had done it MYSELF. I was feeling so complete, and then,
Ok, well, my husband came home about that time and I had almost found it…. found the last menu on the phone for that…. and as usual, he just….. took it out of my hand, and did it.

DAMN. GIMME THAT PHONE!!!
I’ll never become the “I can’t open it” woman. I won’t.
____________________

“I would like to introduce myself to you, but first I wish to greet you by saying: I hope that you’re having a most wonderful day and that you are enjoying all of the many splendid things that maybe found in your daily life.”

I read those words by the most odd circumstances. Those are the words of an incarcerated man who posted his experiences on the internet. Putting them in his context does make one think. As I sit here content to surround myself with myself in my apartment and not go out in the sunshine, that does give me pause.

I hadn’t heard of him or the website he posted it on before a different convict mailed someone (I wasn’t the intended recipient) a letter pleading his case to anyone who would listen and I read it. Certain that I can do next to nothing about their plight, but curious as to what makes a man end up in jail exactly, I peeked in and read through a number of personals ads of convicts, all of them hoping someone will read their few paragraphs and send them mail. So many of them were categorical, so many in the same predicament, for the same reasons. There almost seemed to me a type of mind that is destined to fall into prison, after reading them all.

HUH?: There were the large plain witted ones, most with simple, simple needs, and simpler desires. Early-age misdirection and lack of guidance seemed to fit the picture on many of those. What nice next door neighbors might they have turned out to be had they had what they needed way back when?

I AM IT: Some were proud, into themselves, ubermaterialist, so macho, showing even in their ads they still wanted the fast and reckless and highroller lifestyle. They seemed so obviously a catch of their own webs. They were often young.

NOT ME: Some lay blame, over and over and over at every point, claiming victim forever. They tell story upon story, but the more you listen, the most bizarre sounding fabrications appear. They may never have been truthful. I feel most sorry for them, because they are wasting time not taking responsibility for their own, often warranted and serious, inner fears that make them dishonest. Their own lies have locked them in, and they will not look at them.

KINGPIN: Some considered themselves business men: they were interesting. Smart men, but with a lack of ethics that led them wherever the money smelled greenest. Some of them will never be given the chance to get out again. In light of the white collar crooks who walk free, file bankruptcy and start over, where millions were stolen, their situations still seem oddly inappropriate. But they are by their wits, most dangerous, so we say, as a society.

AMEN!: Many were repentant ex-sinners on the Jesus wagon. I do wonder how long they would feel so strong with that, once out of captivity. How will they deal with temptation after it’s been removed from their life for so long?

AGGRESSOR: Then there were the ones who either planned it, or just lost it — but they went AFTER someone. Aggravated assault — I can’t tell you how many many were in for that. Who gave them the idea that when you get to a certain point, you can just attack with a weapon? TV? Football? Video games? Their brothers? Their gangs might well be much of it. If you grow up in a place where you’ve nothing to lose, how much closer are you to thinking this is a logical step? If you grow up in dog-eat-dog land with no man who shows you what manhood and restraint have to do with each other, how do you just referee yourself?

LOST: The saddest are those who were too young and too weak and succumbed to pressure or drugs and have the most to lose. They sound in print like a stray dog looks as it skitters sideways across a street, looking anxiously unclear about where home is, or whether they will ever find it again. If they are let out, they are the ones that are in the highest wind, and are the driest leaves.

HOPEFULS: Some had everything, full lives, with wife and children and homes, or even next to nothing, but now they know it; they know what they lost. They have a grounded intention that makes you sure they’ll be leaving their cell and never returning. I truly hope that the one who wrote the words up top is one of them.

THOREAU WAS RIGHT:
I sometimes think there is no me that relates to this social world more than the one that writes, which I do at home, sequestered, alone, and feeling supremely alone inside, and very much unable to do more to get myself out. Even as a kid I had to push myself to even put money in the hand of a cashier. It was …. uncomfortable. It has always been.

When I haul myself out, it’s work, it’s ACT-ing, it’s difficult, it’s stress and anxiety and being ready for god knows what because the world feels like it’s falling in on me, and getting out of bed is an effort, every damn day. I am not me there. I am in someone else’s idea of clothes, I am in someone else’s idea of appropriate thoughts, I am in someone else’s opinion of myself as a lesser person than them, I am someone just as entrapped, warped, and molded. It’s not a physical game, but it’s there. It’s really there.

Why not change it if I view it this way? I am a criminal of greed and need perhaps, because it is, it really IS only the money. How close I am to those guys. It’s just a different berth.

When I was singing I went to perform at a lock-up facility for juveniles, a long time ago. At that time, I thanked my lucky stars that I was not in that place ( I was not far from their age then), because it would be BEING WITH THEM that would be my punishment. They were not bad people, but they were very emotionally out of control. I could not have withstood out of control people, because for me, the in-control people were hard enough to endure. And I knew that even then.

After I read these prison ads, and felt so fully their testosterone view of life, I was feeling half-guilty — my own freedom so unvalued at times. But to them I could say: you have your minds. You have no one in your head now but you. You do have what I don’t: eight more hours a day where you can think clearly for yourself, rather than at someone’s constant beck and call. So I feel like we’re even in a sense. In that one sense.

But I am thankful for these words up there, and I will take his advice. I plan to change this day a bit. And perhaps, more later.

I was in a cheery stupid braincandy-only mood the other day at the video store. It was going to be a beastly hot weekend and we knew it, so we were prepared to hole up in our apartment with lots of A/C, Coke Zero, and take-out bulgogi. Wandering through the stacks I discovered that that schmaltzy looking recent Latifah film Last Holiday was done by Wayne Wang, so I just had to see it. It looked like such a pat formulaic thing, what on earth was Wayne doing this one for?, I wondered. And I like Latifah anyway. She gives me hope for the world somehow. I liked her path upward through the ranks.

It was a pretty standard Hollywood film, but had some nice two-dimensionality to the characters, even the villains, that wouldn’t have been there without Wang’s direction, I suspect.

Afterward, I couldn’t help but wonder what would I REALLY do if I knew I had only a few months or weeks to live?

Besides completely freak out, of course, which would definitely be very me.

I had recently had a discussion with a counselorperson who emphasized to me the importance of my reconnecting with the things that feed and inspire me — he said I really don’t realize how much I miss that connection to what used to inspire and and sustain, and I ought to get back to it. So I was thinking of this only having a few weeks to live in that kind of light. In a pretty much realistic, yet non-morbid light. More a what-would-be-important-to-me kind of light. What would I want to do?

Write wonderful letters to everyone. I’d write them letters about all the little items I’d be giving away. Tell them all the stories behind all the objects I own that someone else would now have, so they would carry the memories of those wonderful experiences with the objects, the same way I do.

Give my money away? I don’t have that much, but of course I’d have to do that. I’d be sorry that I couldn’t have made more to give more to those who needed it. Sorry I only was able to take care of me.

Go to China? sail down the Yangtze to Guilin? See all the cathedrals in France and sculpture in Italy and palaces in Germany and castles in Scotland? I’ve always wanted to do that, but …. there wouldn’t be time. Would I want to do that at THAT point? When time was precious?

You know if I stopped right here, right now in life, I’d be so upset with God or fate or whatever. Because it would mean all my efforts at good had fallen through. I realize now I would want more time to make a difference to others. The good I’ve intended has gone much awry over the years. I would wish to have had a better chance at making others happy. To have had them better understand my intentions as well. I’ve been a bumbler with words, and stupidly unaware in some instances. I wish I’d been more awake to what others really needed.

I think I might feel a crushing need to pursue something that would remain beyond my life to make up for those things, as banal as that might seem.

I suppose I’d like to sing with a great band in front of a lot of people who would never have had a chance to see a great band otherwise –so at least the event memory might stay. I mean, if I were to sing for folks here in the Western World, they’d be all….. YAWN. I’m a good singer — I’m nothing the Western World has not seen, at this point. But in some remote part of the World, maybe I’d be a star, who knows.

Maybe I could tape myself? I suppose. That was my first intention in life, being a singing star. Still wish that had happened. Of the regrets I have, I suppose that is the one I feel most helpless about, because I was really certain I could do well at it. I was completely confident about it and those around me validated it. I suppose I’d like to prove in some little way that I could still show the world I can really sing. Why? I don’t know. Because I was so inspired TO sing, I suppose. Because when I heard music, all the gravity of the world fell still inside me. When I sang it, I felt like I could leave this planet, as if I could draw a thread of breath out of my being so needle-sharp and so cotton-strong that it could sew up all the loose ends in the world and make something all worn go right again. I have felt like that since I was three years old and first heard music. I knew it was my best tool.

Write a lot? I would definitely be doing that.

Paint? I can’t paint for shit. But that might propel me to try because in times of stress I draw. Strangely I can’t think of anything I’d want to manufacture or sculpt, as I used to. I have the memory of all those substances in my hands already.

Videotape myself dancing? because there’s no memory of that, because I loved that and was good at it. Who would want that???

It’s me wanting to be permanent. Why??? Why would I bother? Why would I still think I was put here on this planet (supposedly) for someone ELSE? Why wouldn’t I want to go grab things for just me?

I guess because I’ve done a lot of that already. I don’t find satisfaction in it anymore. I haven’t travelled the whole world, but I’ve been across a few ponds. I’ve seen how different life can be for those with nothing, and for those with everything. I’ve seen a lot of the best of what the earth holds, in nature, in art, in kindness. I have truly appreciated and been grateful for everything I’ve ever gotten, none of it has been lost on me.

I only find validation in making art that is beautiful, sound that is inspiring, writing that evokes feeling in someone. It’s for them. As far as my own life went, I did (or at least made great attempts at) pretty much what I planned on. Except for kids, but — that can’t be worried over. I had a great love, I had great disasters, I had some small fame, I had notoriety, freedom, a large amount of good health, sex, some beauty, some trials, some wonderful moments of achievement. A life.

In the end I would just wish I could fly in ALLL MY FRIENDS to see me. Because you know, I don’t think many would come otherwise. They just couldn’t afford it. They’re all still struggling artists, most of them. I’d love to have one last giant reunion for all my friends, all expenses paid. I would put them… hm… where…. I think it would have to be in San Francisco. That’s home. I think I would like to be surrounded by friends, and a lot of dogs, and pet rats, and song and dim sum, and just sail across the Bay a few times more and troop around the city together for a week in packs. That would be plenty. That would be great.

Really, I’ve had a pretty amazing life. Not bad.