Category: Words

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won’t be there no more
–Steely Dan/Any Major Dude

And now you find the wishes you were granted
Things you thought were in your hands
Have slipped away, how much can you withstand?
–Everything But The Girl/Disenchanted

Do I search for you when I know you can’t be found?
–Cowboy Junkies/Crescent Moon

In the mid-90’s it occurred to me that there might be people to talk to on this thingie called the Internet. I was married, but spending a lot of time on my own, working a compressed schedule, and I needed something new to occupy my brain and a lot of days off. I thought a computer might be fun so I convinced my then husband that I needed something to do since he worked so much, and brought home a very expensive Packard Bell monstrosity with a screaming fast 14.4 modem. I then proceeded to spend every waking moment playing with it, taking computer-related classes and generally immersing myself in the technology. I supposed it paid off financially, since I did end up going into IT a few years later. It was entirely accidental.

The other attraction was that I found Italians in there.
I *really* like Italians. Male and female. I don’t care. Italians are a lot of fun.
Most of my early computing was done with the assistance of the very charming Italian community on MSN. They were up until all hours of the night in Italy, and I was home in the daytime with no supervision. They taught me about email and how to replace a hard drive or upgrade RAM. My Italian improved dramatically. It was a match made somewhere in the vicinity of Heaven.

Well, not if you asked my then-husband what HE thought about it. He wasn’t ever around, because he worked all the time so it’s not like anyone would have asked him. Over the next few years, I got used to him being at work so much. Once I was used to it, I found that I really enjoyed having my time all to myself again. Then I found I resented it when he was around at all. He resented that I was more interested in playing with a toy than spending time with him in the few hours a week he was around. He kind of wished the computer would just go away.

Be careful what you wish for.

The computer did go away. It went into the apartment I moved into when I decided I didn’t want to be married any more. Your emotional mileage may vary, of course, but when I first moved out when I decided to get a divorce, the main thing I felt was relief. Like waves. A year later, there was an emotional backlash. A bad one. People on the Internet were there for both. One of my Italian friends, who I met in the Real World both here and in Italy, talked to me almost every morning for years while I was on my way to work in the morning, and he was on his way home. He was a life line.

There was a definite upside to having people to talk to any time I needed them. Especially since the people I was talking to were in a different time zone. They were up and awake when I was up in the middle of the night not sleeping. It’s much easier for me to communicate in writing than it is verbally, so that was also helpful. It was even easier to write in Italian than it was to talk to real people verbally in English. There was always someone around to cajole me out of a mood. Someone to spend an hour sending me an Italian pop song.

On the other hand, though, it was also a way for me to avoid seeing anyone out in the Default World. A way to completely avoid thinking about what a wreck my life was. And it was most definitely a wreck. I was doing fairly well at work, but personally I was single and more or less suicidal. I’ve talked about that in other posts. I did get some really fun tattoos and piercings during that time. I guess that’s a good reminder not to do THAT again.

I never did stop playing with computers entirely. I started working in IT in 1999, and still do IT work today. I don’t spend as much time on a computer recreationally as I did in the 90’s though. I don’t even own a working desktop computer or laptop any more. I’m down to a phone and and iPad. When I need a “real” computer, I borrow a laptop from my husband.

I still spend a lot of time in front of a screen. Writing. Facebooking. Looking up movie quotes. I think I have a better grasp of the hazards now, not that I’m always good at regulating my behavior. I’ll always be a bit of an extremist in most everything I do.
I can’t eat one potato chip. I can’t have one drink. I can’t write one blog post a week. I can’t put a book down after just one chapter. I get a little out of control with things.

That will probably never change.

What has changed though is that I am far more willing to spend time with people in person than I have been in the past. Like I said the other day, I’ll never be the most social person in the world, but these days I am able to spend time with people and enjoy it. As long as I can lock myself in the house for a few days and recover afterwards.

The writing helps.

I think.

Or maybe I’m just using the blog in the same way I used chat rooms in the 90’s.
Well.
Hmm.

Shit.

That’s not really where I saw this ending up.

You know, in theory I’m in charge of what I write. That doesn’t really seem to be how it works out though. In the end, I think the words are the boss of me.

I set out in a certain direction, and generally end up somewhere a little bit unexpected.

A little more puzzled than I was when I started.

When you’re half a woman
and you’re half awake
With a face full of tears
and a chemical shake
Given half a chance,
that I can take
–Elvis Costello/You’ll Never be A Man

You think that you’re living, you don’t really know
Big tears mean nothing
You can count them as they fall
–Elvis Costello/Big Tears

You need to care about other people more than yourself at least some of the time…but you always need to care about yourself. A lot of us are very late learning that, if we ever do. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time not really engaging in life or with people at least partly because I didn’t like myself enough to think I should. For a long time, I avoided being around people as much as I could. Partly from shyness. Partly from snobbery–I didn’t particularly enjoy being around people who weren’t as smart as I am. Partly because I assumed that I was so awful on some level that no one would want to be around me anyway. I thought I was boring and weird. When I was around people, I did whatever I could to either hide or act as much like someone else as I possibly could so no one would figure out…what? What was I so worried that everyone would figure out? Why was I always so scared? What was that worry even based on?

I really have no idea.

As a child, I was well-adjusted to the point of obnoxiousness. I was massively self-assured. I knew I was smart, and I was proud of it. I was a natural leader around other children (ie I was really, really bossy) but was never particularly excited about being around people in general and children my own age in particular. Being sent outside to play was always a bit of a punishment, and of course back then all children were expected to play outside all day. I’d have much rather spent all my time locked in my room drawing or reading. Inside my own head. I was always happier alone or with only a few people. I was always very shy, but once I got used to people I liked being around them in small groups. Ultimately, though, I wasn’t avoiding other people because I didn’t think I was good enough to be around them. I just didn’t enjoy it very much.

That hasn’t really changed. I still get antsy if I don’t spend time alone on a regular basis, and I will never be the life of any party. Put me in a small group, and I’ll be fine. Funny, even. People will like me. In a crowd, I will hide in the coat check room until the earliest possible time I can escape. I’d be the worst possible wife for a politician.

At a certain point, though, something changed me from a shy, but self-confident child into someone who is a mass of insecurities who assumes the worst about everyone including herself. At what point did my dislike of company change from being something relatively healthy into something resulting from self-loathing?

Puberty. Heart break. Bullies. I don’t know. I don’t remember any dramatic incidents. An important break up when I was a teenager didn’t help, but I was already pretty insecure about people before that. It was a gradual change over several years. I can remember the 5th grade as a turning point–suddenly I hated going to recess even more than I had previously. I would hide just inside the school doors and hope a teacher wouldn’t catch me and push me out the door with the other children outside having fun. I would pray to break my leg so I could stay indoors by myself.

Maybe I am too weird to be around people…

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur ?
–Verlaine

Ebben? Ne andrò lontana,
Come va l’eco della pia campana,
Là, fra la neve bianca;
Là, fra le nubi d’ôr;
Laddóve la speranza, la speranza
È rimpianto, è rimpianto, è dolor!
–Catalani/Ebben, ne andrò lontana

Poetry makes me feel like the weird bad guy in the film Diva who didn’t like anything. Beethoven, even. That analogy is completely meaningless to approxately 99.98% of the world’s population, but it’s really accurate if you just know what the fuck I’m talking about.

So.

Go and watch Diva and come back here. I’ll wait. Maybe I could find a clip, but really you should watch the film. It’s very French New Wave. Not New Wave like Godard’s Breathless, but like New Wave music. It’s the simple story of a boy who secretly records a diva who does not make recordings, and a big misunderstanding involving white slavery and the recording.

Just watch it. It’s good. Here are a few teasers:

the original trailer
Jules and Alma in his loft/garage
The Zen of the art of buttering bread

The movie Diva has everything. A Catalani aria. A petit postier. Richard Boehringer in a bathtub. Kick ass lofts. Mobilettes. Bad guys. Hookers. A Vietnamese shoplifting teenager who skates. A wave machine. Everything.

Poetry?

Oh. Right. I couldn’t find a clip of the “j’aime pas” guy.

J’aime pas la poesie.

That’s what reminded me of Diva in the first place.

Don’t think that I haven’t figured out that song lyrics are poetry set to music. I need the music, too.