Posts Tagged by Family
Überlist 2009
| January 19, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
The truth is that I haven’t written in a while because it’s taken some time for me to process the events of the holiday season.
Our trip to Oklahoma was as depressing as ever. Especially in winter. CLH had just come home two days before we left again, and on this particular trip I discovered that the only thing I really enjoy about Oklahoma are the sunsets and the banks. Every single sunset, even on a freezing overcast day, is the most beautiful sunset you’ll ever see. I’m convinced it has to do with all the wind and the red dust in the air. And all the cool mid-century modern buildings in Oklahoma? Well, almost all the ones still standing are churches, something I’d never noticed before. (more…)
I am not having sex with the guy you broke up with
| February 11, 2008 | Filled under Blog |
It was a long, strange weekend. The fact I have only been sleeping about five hours a night does not help. This weekend had the potential to be either extremely awesome or extremely disastrous and it ended up somewhere in between, so that it is now 11:31 p.m. Monday night and I still do not feel as though I’ve mentally recovered.
The good part was Saturday, driving the four hours to north Dallas to see my little sister for the first time since I’ve been back in Western civilization. During my time away she has apparently morphed into a true-blue adult (instead of a kid 8 years younger than me) to whom I can now easily relate and who shares my extremely cultivated taste in movies. She just got back from a trip to New York which makes me insanely jealous, since I’ve never been there. I also, for the first time, had a full-blown, awesome conversation with her hot-ass Hispanic Adonis and I must now find some way of convincing them to drive to Houston on their motorcycle over Spring Break, or maybe this summer, when we all can hang out on a Matagorda County beach.
The trip to Dallas was to celebrate some familial birthdays, including my father’s, which is actually on Valentine’s Day. Plans Sunday, however, meant that I had to drive back to Houston on the same day and I didn’t end up getting home until 2 a.m.
The bad part happened exactly an hour later, when I was rudely awakened from my much-needed slumber by a phone call. Somebody with mental issues and an extreme lack of maturity is attempting to pull me into her own self-perpetuated drama and I’m not having it. In addition to having my sleep disturbed I was also forced to spend the better part of the next day trying to figure out exactly how I came to be dragged into this whole stupid mess and what I can do about it. The upside, if there is one, is that I now have a new Most Hated Person in Houston, a role that was previously occupied by a former paramour. (Look at me, throwing that word around so generously. An old huckleberry friend just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?)
Only one person is allowed to interrupt my R.E.M. and for only one reason at that, and he’s currently 100 miles offshore.
Thankfully, Sunday I was able to exercise away my confusion and aggression and I no longer want to lurk in a certain someone’s regular bar and write nasty things about them on the bathroom wall. Several rounds of fermented libation purchased by my favorite patron made everything better. Also, watching Amy Winehouse perform on the Grammys, because I love that hot mess more than anyone else in popular music today.
Logjammin
| April 7, 2006 | Filled under Blog |
Speaking of trophy wives and nihilists, I’ve spent the past two days in Oslo shopping like it’s the end of the world. Today alone I went to three different H&Ms, that bastion of Scandinavian clothing design. Three stores in one day might sound like a lot of walking but let me assure you it was not that far. If Urban Outfitters and Starbucks mated and gave birth to a Swedish baby, it would be H&M — they have cheap and awesome modern retro 80s-style clothes, and there’s literally one on every corner.
Ladies, just for you, here’s the spring fashion report from Norway — nautical, nautical, nautical. I’ve been saying for the past three years that thanks to the war we’d start seeing a surge in military-inspired clothing — things like jackets with epaulets, uniform-style dresses in drab green and khaki and a return of camo-print everything, and I guess I was pretty close because every single store here is selling sailor-inspired clothing.
Yesterday after CLH got back to the hotel I dragged him to the National Gallery to gawk at art. The gallery was hosting an exhibition by artist Tacita Dean that featured films of found objects, such as a decaying yacht hull and this infamous Bubble House. Dean has taken found art to the next level — one display that totally blew my mind was her interpretation of the story of the Girl Stowaway, in which Dean combined found photos of the girl, the ship she stowed away on in stages of later disrepair, film planning scenes, a David Bowie record and even an old and a recent newspaper article about the girl and the exhibit. Fascinating stuff.
I saw some pretty great art at the National Gallery, even stuff I typically don’t get into, like a painting titled “Communion is Prison” or something else I don’t remember. Nonetheless, it was so incredibly realistic that I got up close, putting my face within two or three inches of the canvas and marveling aloud for five minutes to CLH about the realism of the prisoner’s fingernails and the shadows on his shoes. It was so realistic it looked like a photograph and I couldn’t wrap my tiny little brain around that caliber of artistic talent.
I saw several heart-crushing works by the most famous Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch. There is nothing quite the same as seeing a famous painting in real life. So much is communicated to you when you stand there in front of it and see the vitality of the colors and the size, big or small, which adds much to my personal interpretation of a piece of art. Take, for example, “Puberty”, which in real life made me feel extremely uncomfortable. At first it looks like the dark shadow on the wall belongs to the girl, but the more I stood there and looked at it, the more I felt a sense of foreboding, just like the girl, and I began to realize that the shadow is something less innocent, something to be afraid of, and it just really freakin’ creeped me out.
And then there was “The Scream,” the reason for our trip to the National Gallery in the first place. Seeing the whole image, with the blood-red background and the two nondescript figures on the bridge — this painting scares the holy hell out of me, mostly because it hits so close to home. This Wikipedia article on “The Scream” has all the information you’d ever want to know about what is now my second-favorite painting (second only to Magritte’s “The Empire of Light” which you can see in real life at the Menil Museum in Houston), including the fact that the red sky the painting depicts is actually the explosion of Krakatoa. There’s also a photo of one of the versions of the painting being stolen.
I have had some pretty major struggles with anxiety in my life, and although I’m doing pretty well now I am at a point where I really miss my family, but it’s not that easy to call them up and tell them that. I haven’t spoken to my Mom since November, and while most of the time I feel like I’m doing the right thing — creating space in our relationship to help her mend and to mend myself — occasionally I’ll have these dreams where something really horrible happens to her and I never get to see her again and then I wake up and spend the rest of the day in a dark cloud of depression and worry and sadness. I often wonder if I’m a horrible person because I can’t just get over the mistakes she’s made and move on for the sake of my family and my sick grandparents. While on this trip I finished reading “The Red Tent” which is all about motherhood and the life-sustaining relationships women have with one another and it’s made me unusually sad because I have never had that sort of relationship with any woman, much less my own mother.
All these thoughts have been building up inside me on this trip for what seems like no reason really and so yesterday as I was standing in front of “The Scream” and thinking about how the painting represents the buildup and final explosive release of mountainous anxiety, I just stood there and thought to myself, Tell me about it, dude. I know.
Doctor, do you mind if I lay down for this?
| February 23, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
One week into being engaged and my family is already reminding me why I used to say I would never get married.
It’s not that I don’t believe in the sanctity of marriage, it’s just that in my family, divorce is like a pastime, nothing is permanent and no responsibility is too great to eventually shirk.
I spent most of last night crying myself to sleep. I can’t figure out why I’m so emotional lately — if it’s because C is supposed to leave for Korea in a week or if it’s because I don’t know how in the world anyone could be so unconditionally giving or if its because I have my own issues to get over.
Left and right, members of my family that I have barely spoken to in the last two years have already started inviting themselves to a wedding I haven’t even planned yet. I owe it to them, they say, and they deserve to be there after everything they’ve done for me. Who cares that it’s my wedding, and unlike most everyone else in my family, IT’S THE ONLY ONE I PLAN ON HAVING.
Over the past week, I’ve continued, in passing, to refer to C as my boyfriend. Someone pointed out yesterday that I can’t call him that anymore.
So when my fiancé and I started to get really serious, about a year ago, I just couldn’t fathom that someone would be so loving and giving without expecting something from me in return. It makes me feel vulnerable to open up to him because I’m so used to having the ball drop, to having things go bad or to having other people take advantage of my own emotions and just leave me out in the cold.
Part of my coping mechanism is to always be in control. It’s like the old saying — if you want something done right, do it yourself. In trying to separate myself from my family, I was forced to become real independent real fast. Now, suddenly feeling so dependent on someone else has really taken me for a ride.
This summer, after we get married and we move to Korea, I’ll quit my job and just live on his money. I’m already living in his house for free and eating his food for free and using his utilities for free. And so is my dog. Considering that I saw man after man after man do this to my mother, and that I vowed to never let myself become dependent on anyone, this development is a serious kink in the plans I made when I was a 19-year-old feminist.
It’s been, so far, one of the hardest things for me to deal with, but also one of the biggest blessings of my life.
Sometimes, people do really just love you and don’t expect anything in return. Relationships can be nurturing and healthy, and that you don’t have to give up any part of yourself in order to deserve that.
After years of taking care of other people, and falling into that spiral where they start to SUCK YOU DRY, and then struggling to look after just myself, its wonderful and relieving to have someone who suddenly wants to take care of me.
A disclaimer
| January 28, 2005 | Filled under Blog |
For the last few summers that I was in high school, my mom spent a lot of money to send me to Europe with a company that sponsored educational school-related trips. I went to Greece, Italy, England, France, and all the places in between. I have always kept a journal in which I write extensively, and travel was no exception. Many of these stories made their way into my little cut-and-paste Kinko’s zine.
On one trip, I wound up in France with two idiot girls. I called them Tweedledum and Tweedledumber. Their idea of a vacation in a foreign country was to spend everyday in a three-star hotel watching bad American cable television and eating at European McDonald’s.
I chronicled these events in my little zine, and one day, my mother, knowing she was strictly forbidden to read anything I’d written, snuck into my bedroom to investigate.
I was relaxing in a bubble bath when she burst in to the bathroom, angry and emotional.
“I just want you to know I read your writing, and I’m very disappointed in you,” she said harshly, barely able to contain the cracking in her voice. “I paid a lot of money to send you on that trip, and for you to be so ungrateful…”
I sighed heavily.
“This is exactly why I don’t allow you to read anything I write,” I said. Clearly she didn’t understand the idea of creative license. Yeah, those girls were annoying, but I tended to overemphasize the negative and underemphasize the good times I had.
She was still mad.
“Yeah, but you pass this thing out to complete strangers who read about your personal life all the time,” she said defensively.
“Yes, but that’s exactly the point,” I tried to explain. “These people don’t know me, they have no personal connection to me. And more importantly, they won’t judge me. And besides, it’s fiction. You can’t take everything I write seriously.”
I’ve often thought about this. I’ve been reading a lot of David Sedaris lately, and I recently read a book by a Houston writer name Marsha Recknagel. Both these people write with intense brutality about their family and friends, using peoples’ real names, and I often wonder how they escape hostility, much less legal action.
I’m a journalist now, which requires a certain degree of delicacy. There is no creative license in journalism, which leaves me conflicted. I want to strive for absolute truth, but my personal philosophy is that there is no such thing. I believe there is no such thing as the whole truth, just several versions of it. My goal is to provide as many versions of the truth as possible, and let readers decide.
In my own writing, on the other hand, I strive for effect. Yes, most of what I write is based on true, personal events, but I hesitate to call them autobiographical. Real life is boring, folks — it’s the spin that makes it interesting. For effect, I may emphasize certain things, both negative and positive. This is not to say that these events actually occurred as I depict them. Plus, memory is always slanted. Memory is never pure, and sometimes we can only remember the bad things, and sometimes we can only remember the best things.
In my personal writing, I try my best to capture my own reactions and my own thoughts. Sometimes I’m harsh; sometimes I’m judgmental and over-reactive. Sometimes I’m hypersensitive. But what matters to me is the initial gut reaction. And sometimes, with all of us, our initial gut reaction is not as accurate as our rational reaction, which comes much, much later.
I try to write as openly and honestly as possible. But I also tend to over-emphasize the details. So in some ways, this is my apology for being too personal. In other ways, this is my apology for being too dramatic. I guess either way I lose.
