"why should we not go where all maps fail?"

Things:

I bought an awesome skirt last weekend that I have absolutely no reason to own, and no place to wear. This, however, will probably not prevent me from wearing it to tomorrow's babyshower, unless I chicken out at the last moment. I caved and admitted that a large chain actually does create the clothes best suited to me, and while remaining bewildered by the fact that they only sell at-waist jeans online, purchased said jeans and a handful of tanktops online, and hope to be entirely done with shopping for not-work clothing. Work clothing remains an issue, since the last time I purchase a great deal of summer work-clothes was a couple years ago and so they've all worn out at the same time.

Lilo and Host come over for dinner tonight, and we'll be feeding them bread and onion-feta risotto. They'll be bringing the salad, and I'm hoping last-minute inspiration will strike on the dessert front. The ludicrously named country captain stew was yummy, but the tofu preparation made for a very, very strange consistency so it was a little bit like yummy food interspersed with chunk of edible eraser. (the other ingredients were onions, garlic, potatoes, pepper, granny smith apples, currants, ginger and garam masala). We've got out-of-town guests coming for both the first and the second weekends in May, and I have absolutely no idea what I'll be preparing them and the idea both intrigues and terrifies. (said guest would be B come for Northampton Pride, and then Junkyard flies up, and B drives out to see us both) (I do wish there was some non-obnoxious way to signify B as the quote "School of thought: Oscar Wilde, what a big fag") There's a moosewood author doing a signing at the local WFs next week, and while I've never heard of her, that doesn't stop me from wanting to go.

Of late, I'm almost tempted to go back to therapy, just to see if a therapist can give me a better understand of how other people deal with things. But I'm also contemplating just trying to read more books to find out how people deal with the more minor losses of friends. I don't think I see a lot of narrative about it, in livejournal or in other books, possibly because no one wants to write about it, possibly because most people experience loss differently than I do. And again, it feels like half my personality is backlash against my mother, the woman who lets everything that upsets her go, and so I'm left in my early thirties clinging to every slight, every sling and arrow.

I've been good lately, and sometimes, that startles me a lot. Not that I've been good in some sense of morally well-behaved, but that I've been happy. There are moments of discontent and discomfort (of course) but they're minor, or dental-related and they all feel like they fall well within the bounds of normal and to-be-expected. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it feels a little bit like my thirties are heralding a period of being not a danger to myself (not just in the strict physical sense, but also in the less obvious danger to my own emotional health sense). and sometimes it irks me a little bit that I'll never know if I could have done it myself, or if this getting-better required the presence of the sort of support Light offers me, and if I go down that path, I start to gloss things in terms of weaknesses, but I really do believe that not fucking this relationship up when it stopped being bad and started being good is probably one of the stronger things I've done or will do.

And I still struggle a little bit with a "what's next?" feeling, but I'm pretty sure in the end the idea of a life full of this, really neat details with the overarching plotline of being in love, seems like a pretty cool way to live. I wonder how much spending so much of my life with the narrative goal of pursuing an education has tricked me into thinking that anything that doesn't follow either that goal or another, explicit goal, is cheating, marking time, not worthwhile. This is made more tricky, of course, by Light's and my explicit intentions of not reproducing, because that removes the other handy narrative/object/goal. And I could try and substitute a career path for a child or another degree, but I find that of equally little interest.

I wrote a poem once that I can't find anymore, about wanting and not knowing how to want, and I don't remember the words, but every stanza ended something like this.

"A sense of peace, a hand on my hair
And thunderstorms every Thursday."

except it might have been a different day of the week. I've got the hand on my hair, and I've learned to do without the thunderstorms, so either it's the sense of peace, or recapturing however the stanzas began.

I've got the new Kris Delmhorst CD and I'm almost as much in love with the Whitman-based song as I am with the Robert Browning-based song. (the cummings-based and millay-based and byron-based songs are all close seconds, of course)

"why should we not go where all maps fail?"

Things:

I bought an awesome skirt last weekend that I have absolutely no reason to own, and no place to wear. This, however, will probably not prevent me from wearing it to tomorrow's babyshower, unless I chicken out at the last moment. I caved and admitted that a large chain actually does create the clothes best suited to me, and while remaining bewildered by the fact that they only sell at-waist jeans online, purchased said jeans and a handful of tanktops online, and hope to be entirely done with shopping for not-work clothing. Work clothing remains an issue, since the last time I purchase a great deal of summer work-clothes was a couple years ago and so they've all worn out at the same time.

Lilo and Host come over for dinner tonight, and we'll be feeding them bread and onion-feta risotto. They'll be bringing the salad, and I'm hoping last-minute inspiration will strike on the dessert front. The ludicrously named country captain stew was yummy, but the tofu preparation made for a very, very strange consistency so it was a little bit like yummy food interspersed with chunk of edible eraser. (the other ingredients were onions, garlic, potatoes, pepper, granny smith apples, currants, ginger and garam masala). We've got out-of-town guests coming for both the first and the second weekends in May, and I have absolutely no idea what I'll be preparing them and the idea both intrigues and terrifies. (said guest would be B come for Northampton Pride, and then Junkyard flies up, and B drives out to see us both) (I do wish there was some non-obnoxious way to signify B as the quote "School of thought: Oscar Wilde, what a big fag") There's a moosewood author doing a signing at the local WFs next week, and while I've never heard of her, that doesn't stop me from wanting to go.

Of late, I'm almost tempted to go back to therapy, just to see if a therapist can give me a better understand of how other people deal with things. But I'm also contemplating just trying to read more books to find out how people deal with the more minor losses of friends. I don't think I see a lot of narrative about it, in livejournal or in other books, possibly because no one wants to write about it, possibly because most people experience loss differently than I do. And again, it feels like half my personality is backlash against my mother, the woman who lets everything that upsets her go, and so I'm left in my early thirties clinging to every slight, every sling and arrow.

I've been good lately, and sometimes, that startles me a lot. Not that I've been good in some sense of morally well-behaved, but that I've been happy. There are moments of discontent and discomfort (of course) but they're minor, or dental-related and they all feel like they fall well within the bounds of normal and to-be-expected. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it feels a little bit like my thirties are heralding a period of being not a danger to myself (not just in the strict physical sense, but also in the less obvious danger to my own emotional health sense). and sometimes it irks me a little bit that I'll never know if I could have done it myself, or if this getting-better required the presence of the sort of support Light offers me, and if I go down that path, I start to gloss things in terms of weaknesses, but I really do believe that not fucking this relationship up when it stopped being bad and started being good is probably one of the stronger things I've done or will do.

And I still struggle a little bit with a "what's next?" feeling, but I'm pretty sure in the end the idea of a life full of this, really neat details with the overarching plotline of being in love, seems like a pretty cool way to live. I wonder how much spending so much of my life with the narrative goal of pursuing an education has tricked me into thinking that anything that doesn't follow either that goal or another, explicit goal, is cheating, marking time, not worthwhile. This is made more tricky, of course, by Light's and my explicit intentions of not reproducing, because that removes the other handy narrative/object/goal. And I could try and substitute a career path for a child or another degree, but I find that of equally little interest.

I wrote a poem once that I can't find anymore, about wanting and not knowing how to want, and I don't remember the words, but every stanza ended something like this.

"A sense of peace, a hand on my hair
And thunderstorms every Thursday."

except it might have been a different day of the week. I've got the hand on my hair, and I've learned to do without the thunderstorms, so either it's the sense of peace, or recapturing however the stanzas began.

I've got the new Kris Delmhorst CD and I'm almost as much in love with the Whitman-based song as I am with the Robert Browning-based song. (the cummings-based and millay-based and byron-based songs are all close seconds, of course)