Oh, You Are So It!

I play tag nearly every day. It usually involves a lot of shrieking and tackling of small children. Sleepy Joe from The Life and Writings of Sleepy Joe invited me to play tag with her. This is the kind of tag where I can sit comfortably in my pajamas and drink coffee. Nice.

Go check out Sleepy Joe. She's an aspiring writer like so many of us. She's so warm and witty. Plus she's got the best screen name, ever. And she's British, so you know, sexy.

Because there are not enough random facts about yours truly cluttering up the consciousness of far too many people, I am to list eleven facts about myself. Then I am to answer Joe's eleven questions. Then I am to tag some more people to answer eleven questions of my own devising.

You can listen to this song while you read.

Eleven titillating facts about Tangled Lou:

1. I fall in love about 100 times a day.
2. I am not much of a fidgeter.
3. I collect pens and coffee mugs. The cheaper and tackier, the better.
4. I also collect those smooshed pennies from tourist destinations. One day I want to cover a wall in my office with them, a glittering tribute to blatant merchandising and tourism.
5. I try not to say "I can't" when what I really mean is "I won't" or "I don't want to".
6. I fart a lot.
7. I almost stroked my neighbor's glorious lambchop sideburns yesterday.
8. Whenever people have those huge gauge grommets in their ears, I am tempted to stick my finger through them.
9. A cruise does not sound like a vacation to me. It sounds like torture.
10. Sometimes I eat random things I find.
11. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the beauty of things I just cry and my monkeys say "Oh. Mom's crying again."

Eleven Answers to Sleepy Joe's Questions:

1. Who is your favorite literary hero? I don't do favorites, really. Here are some I like: Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes, Anne from Anne of Green Gables, Tom Joad from The Grapes of Wrath, Perkus Tooth from Chronic City, Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series. These are just a few I can think of right now.

2. Why? I like characters that aren't necessarily the hero. I like flawed characters, I like the ones who aren't front and center, but are next to the front and center. I like characters who are rich and dynamic, with strong character. I like characters who mess up and change over time, who work hard and keep living.

3. What is your favorite children's story? The Three Questions, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy.

4. Are you a closet reader? Are there some books that you won't admit to reading? It's kind of too dark and crowded in my closet. I prefer my bed or the couch. I find the best way to keep from having embarrassing secrets discovered is by telling them myself. I read every last word of the Twilight Series. Same with the Sookie Stackhouse books. I read all of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books. I used to sneak pulp romances in junior high for the sexy bits. I've read every Agatha Christie book ever written. I also read The Devil Wears Prada. I've read the entirety of the graphic novel Buffy ouevre. I am oddly resistant to best-sellers and then I break down and read them eventually to find out what all the hype was about. I'm more embarrassed about admitting that there are some books that I should have read, but haven't.

5. Do you have any regrets in life? I regret having spent so much time reading the Twilight series. I regret that I didn't get that "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" T-shirt I saw at a restaurant.

6. Name one ambition, not including getting your writing published. My Miss America answer to this question is that I want to make a difference with my life. I really do. I don't know exactly how, but I want my life to have meant something, mattered to people, and to have helped make at least a small part of the world a better place. This has always been my ambition for as long as I can remember. The "how" of it changes, but I like the idea of being open to the possibilities with this in mind so I can do what's needed where ever I am. I also would like to leave my kids with boatloads of money so that they don't have to worry about things, but that's more of a pipe dream.

7. Heels or flats for a night out? Doc Marten's boots. So I guess that would be flats. I have a lovely pair of Italian heels that are collecting dust in my closet that make me feel like a dominatrix, but in a good way. They are oddly comfortable for such high heels, but then I feel like an impostor when I wear them.

8. What are your comfort foods? Chips and queso and re-fried beans. That might explain number 6 in the previous list.

9. Normal clothes or comfy PJs? I like for my "normal clothes" to fit like comfy PJs, so really, it's the best of both worlds. My PJs kind of resemble workout clothes. So if I should, hypothetically speaking, walk my daughter to school in my PJs, people just think I am super diligent and I am going to work out after I drop her off, rather than being a lazy slob who will go home and eat cookies for breakfast with six cups of coffee. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

10. What is your favorite film? Again with the "favorites". My top 5 are probably... Moulin Rouge, Lost In Translation, Casablanca, The Birdcage, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

11. Coke or Pepsi? Neither. I'm not much of a soda drinker, but if you've been around the Periphery a while, you'll know what I mean when I say HOT YELLA KOOLAID!

Here's the part where I run around with my arms flailing like a chicken and try to catch someone without running into a lamppost. So get ready to run:

The M-Half of the M-n-J Show
Faith In Ambiguity
The (not always) Lazy-W
Word Nerd Speaks
Just A Mum?

Even if I didn't tag you, you are welcome to play along if you are so inclined...

On your marks, get set... 
Here are your 11 questions:

1. If there were 5 birds in your yard, which one would you eat? And why?
2. What's the best thing that happened to you when you were 7 years old?
3. If the mob was going to take one of your fingers to recover a debt, which finger would you give them? Why? (Or would you do that thing where you flip the table and grab the giant meat cleaver from Vito?)
4. If you were to throw a drink in someone's face, what drink would it be and why would you do it?
5. Someone gives you a gorgeous mink coat for a gift, would you wear it? Why or why not?
6. You are trapped in an elevator with the following people: Elton John, Kathy Griffin, Jimmy Carter and John Malkovich. What do you do? Would you take pictures with your cell phone?
7. Who did you want to be when you were 13? Are you that person? Why or why not?
8. If you found a finger in your burrito, would you set it aside and keep eating? Why or why not?
9. If your navel dispensed the condiment of your choice, what would it be? Why?
10. Are you a ferret person?
11. You are given an award for something you are very proud of. You get up to make your acceptance speech and they hand you a box of teeth. Does it throw you off? What do you do? Would you proudly display it on your mantel?

GO! Happy tagging, folks!

It

It.

That's all that's left. A gristly problem stewing in the back of my head suddenly boiled over and I sat down catch the steam. I caught it all and it burned my hands and made me happy. Whew. Got that down, now I can move on. Save. Time to go do some other non-writing things for a bit and happily so because I'd boiled down that particularly unpalatable piece of meat and made it tender, fall off the bone, delectable spicy BBQ.  And then, the horror.
Sitting down to review and pick up where I left off, I found It. Only It.

Shakespeare never used a laptop. He never sat down and scribbled out drafts in disappearing ink. Maybe he did. Maybe his pet parrot screamed once and startled him and knocked his ink everywhere and he had to say OK, that's it. You are banished. Banish-ed. You have to pronounce the ed separately when you are speaking of Shakespeare.

I don't think I'm like Shakespeare, no delusions that grand around here. I will say I don't particularly care for Shakespeare. I can't decide if that's an ignorant or pretentious thing to say. It's not that I don't understand him or his import. I'm just a little lukewarm about him. Meh. His sonnets are dreadful. I'm not sure that's his fault, though. Sonnets seem to be designed to be dreadful. All that clapping and rhyming. It's clamorous. I wrote a sonnet for a friend of mine and that was dreadful, too. He said it was a little depressing. I have managed to combine both ignorant and pretentious now, with a side of depression. Shakespeare's like Buddy Holly. I understand his pioneering ways, his influence on so many things to come. I recognize his importance and I respect it. But still, meh. Don't tell my husband I said that about Buddy Holly.

It.

You know when macaroni boils over on the stove and then you don't wipe it up right away and there's that gummy crusty mess that's left around the burner? That's what's left in my head from my flash of insight. So I'm picking the crusty bits up and licking them and they taste kind of like macaroni, but you know, it's just not the same. Not at all. It's gross and kind of desperate and strange, actually. Maybe you don't do that. Maybe you wipe off your stove when something boils over. I should probably wipe off the stove and make some lunch instead. Maybe a crust-less PB&J. Something safe, benign and comforting.
Like how I sit here and yammer about Shakespeare and macaroni and llamas.

You don't know about the llamas. That was another place I said something about the llamas. I have typed the word llama at least once every single day this week in vastly different contexts. How does that happen? A huge dromedary takes up residence in my brain and asserts itself whenever possible. Not even where it's possible. She shoehorns herself into the most impossible of places. I kissed a llama on the mouth once. More than once if you must know. It was at a kangaroo farm and, as you probably know, at a roadside kangaroo farm just about anything goes. So. It. I have a luscious dromedary in my brain batting its ridiculously glamorous eyelashes at me. Llama kisses are not as smelly or as lippy or as llama-y as you would imagine. I have kissed worse things on the mouth. Like that guy that had that one dangly baby tooth behind his permanent teeth. Is a llama a dromedary?

It.

Macaroni is supposed to be comfort food, too. I don't really like it, though. Meh. Like Shakespeare and Buddy Holly. I'm not listening to those men right now. I'm listening to raw and uncomfortable alt-country that reminds me of such a tender, broken time for me. Decidedly not Buddy Holly or macaroni. I poke these bruises and feel the warm spread of pain and I kind of like it. Everyone does that. I used to sit on the toilet and count the moles on my thighs and push on all of my bruises. Get out of there if you're done! My mom would holler, You'll get hemorrhoids if you sit in there that long! How does a four-year-old get hemorrhoids? I didn't even know what they were, but you know, just the sound of it. I just noticed an unacceptable typo which I will now fix, but boy, what on earth? They're waiting for you over there with their straight-jackets. I like to pronounce hemorrhoids like this: hemmer-hoids. Saying all the H's. I also say Pinot Gringo instead of Pinot Grigio. Sometimes I forget and say such things in front of strangers and they think me, at best, odd. At worst, ignorant. Sometimes I also say expecially on purpose. What I did not do on purpose, though, was order a black anus steak sandwich at Quizno's once. Even though my husband insists I did.

It.

A friend and I have long believed that some people have It and some people don't. By It, what do we mean? A certain joie de vivre? I can't pronounce French words without sounding like a llama. It is a certain creative spirit, approach to things, an effervescence. Do we all have It? I think so. I think some people forget or lose It. I think some people just don't really care and would rather be comfortable in their brains rather than having llamas and such in there. An oh, what's for dinner tonight? kind of approach to things. Rather than an if I make this for dinner tonight, what does that say about me as a mother or a wife or a person? What does it say about the future of the human race?!  kind of cud chewing. I sometimes pine for the former, but there's a faucet in my kitchen that if you don't shut it off just right will drip, drip, drip and make you completely insane, but the plumbing is old and explosive and I'm afraid if I get in there and monkey around with it, there will be no water at all. Do you know what I'm saying here? So some people see It wandering about their psychic houses and say no thank you, that's a three mile stretch of bad road looking for a heart attack in a handbasket or something like this and they keep on with their dinner plans that are simply dinner and not some manifesto and they are the peaceful ones. The lucky ones.

It.

I'm the one who spends the afternoon chasing down a slippery insight and all I have left is

It.
There is very little peace in that. But apparently there are llamas.

Horrifying children. Check out the poor little dude in the striped shirt.

Out, Damn Spot!

I had a lot of stuff to write tonight.


While I was heading into the library earlier today, I touched something wet on the underside of the door handle with my left ring and middle fingers. In spite of many hand washings, I can still feel it there. 


Now that's all I can think about.


I'm like Lady Macbeth.


Except now I might have Hepatitis.

Examining A Strange Moistness

There's one of those things that people say. Something about wearing someone else's shoes. I don't believe in repeating things idly, but I do think I believe that sentiment. I think one thing we should not, under any circumstances do, is wear someone else's hat. The shoes are kind of icky, but the metaphorical shoes of the metaphor will probably not have athlete's foot or a strange moistness to them. Probably it's about having some perspective. The hats though, the hats. It's one thing to try and see from another perspective. That's a good idea, nay, a necessary one for living peaceably among plants and animals and men. It's another thing entirely to attempt the interior of another's skull. That stuff's encased in bone and goo for a reason. Think with me here, if you could really and truly have front row seats to the action in a loved one's cranium would you take it? I don't think I would. It would blow my mind. Literally. I think there would just be some sort of high pitched humming and then zzzzzt! nothing. It kind of blows my mind to be inside my own cranium sometimes.

One time I told a friend of mine that I just wanted to crawl inside his head and take a nap. He said that it would be a dark and lonely place to sleep, crowded with baggage and possibly clowns. I changed my mind. No thanks.

So, I'm in the car today by myself just prattling on something like this:*

Why do all the deejays in Seattle think it's cute to do that shambling, self-conscious thing with the erm, uh, well, yeah and pauses too long to be on air? Is that a thing? Am I so old that that's a thing now and I missed it somewhere? Hey wait, did he just say Emmy Lou Harris and John Prine? What?! Oh nuts. It was a "just before that, you heard..." situation. This is why I don't listen to the radio. It's so fleeting. I'm always missing something crucial. I could have heard that Emmy Lou Harris & John Prine cover that I've never heard of but instead it's this twaddle. What's the Cracker song? How does that go? "What the world needs now is another folk singer, like I need a hole in my head." Earnest girls with big glasses and bangs. Heh heh. Hey, remember that time I heard the deejay say "with a deep nod to Black Sabbath, a retrospective of Thai death metal, circa 1978" and then I had to get out of the car? That left so many unanswered questions. Oh look, the personal fitness place closed down. Those are kind of like folk singers in this town. Never send a girl to do a man's work. I didn't even know there was such a thing as Thai death metal. What in the world does that sound like? How can there have been a Thai death metal history stretching at least back to 1978 and I'm just now.... what? Wait. What was that?! NEVER SEND A GIRL TO DO A MAN'S WORK?! What does that even mean? Why did I think that?! What does that have to do with anything? and so on.

This, of course, took place over the span of about 15 seconds. Imagine that for about 20 hours a day and then sometimes while you're sleeping except with pictures and sounds, too. But the thing is that you can't imagine that. Because I can't imagine it and it's coming from my brain. The whole notion of a brain thinking about itself can send me right around the bend on the right kind of day. What I have obsessed about for the rest of the day (other than how could I have forgotten that Christian Slater was in Prince of Thieves? Would I rather Robin Hood sidekick Christian Salter or Heathers Christian Slater or ooh no! Pump Up the Volume Christian Slater. (Larissa, if you're reading, get to Googlin'!) and also writing in the second person - can it be done in a way that is neither tedious nor confusing?) has been the fact that my very own brain injected a piece of complete misogynistic nonsense into a perfectly normal afternoon.

Now I have to consider the following: Is it a message from my subconscious? Have I had enough/not enough/way too much coffee to drink today? Is that a line from a movie? If so, why did I watch a movie like that? If it was a movie that I watched with such bad writing that I can't even remember, why did that just lodge itself and then pop up later like a bit of Christmas ham from a molar? Am I hearing voices? No, that was clearly my own voice, my own head voice anyway, so why would I say that to myself? What about John Prine led to that crazy bit of free association? And of course, the ever-important consideration: do I need a nap?

So back to the shoes. Used footwear aside, sometimes we think we know. We look with our eyes at the outside of that cranium and the skin and hair that encloses it and we judge. We do. We don't mean to sometimes, but we do it. She gave me a dirty look, he didn't say hi, she shut the door in my face, would it hurt to run a comb through that mess? and so on. We listen with our ears and our hearts and I believe the most of us try to honestly hear and understand. But we don't know. We think we know, but we don't. We can't crawl inside that goo and take a nap or be scared witless. But we can know what inhabits the strange interior seascape of our own mottled universes. We can know that we don't even understand all of that strange moistness that belongs to us, so why do we presume to judge the ickiness of another based on such dodgy evidence as a raised eyebrow or a smile that's too tight? Why, oh why? do my pajama pants smell like a junior high boys' locker room?! I just washed them.


*The following paragraph is as close an approximation as I can get to the babble of consciousness in my brain while I was driving. It may not make a whole lot of sense to anyone, but that's kind of the point.