Parrot Squawkings

This is the first time I've been on livejournal in, like, forever. I've missed it. I've missed the unlimited format, the what-I'm-listening-to feature, the userpic choices (although I'm bummed I lost all the ones that went with my paid account), the more personal nature - here I journal for myself, as opposed to the advertisement/marketing hype-feel of Twitter and facebook. I look forward to writing more, but right now I'm at work.

I've been wasting time and energy on facebook a lot lately. Stupid, because I have a lot of feelings, experiences, attitude shifts I would like to memorialize so I can continue to process later, but facebook doesn't allow more than a sound bite status update. And at the moment I am too computered out.

Reminder to self:
1. past as past vs. past as present. Why can't I let go of anything or anyone?? Why do I always need to hedge my bets on the people in my life?
2. consumerism and security. Am I really dependent on my stuff? When I run out of my nice make-up, lotions and perfume, am I going to be like the princess in Shrek turning into a horrifying beast? Do I really get more compliments on my nice clothes? (The dollar sale at Jet Rag did in fact yield a number of quality items....) Do I have to have nice things to look good? Does it really matter if I don't get the data extracted off the now-dead hard drive? Or am I just scared of not being able to buy stuff?
3. What the fuck is wrong with me that I can't look for a job?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I'm scared, depressed, and frustrated. And I'm in escape mode, about to go into severe escape mode. So not good.

This election restored my faith in the system. That any guy with the most money can win. You don't have to know someone also. Seems kinda crappy that the Bushes wouldn't steal the election for McCain also, but hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, hunh?

I am so excited to have a young, forward-thinking, innovative President, someone we can be proud to send around the world on our behalf. I don't know what the Change he's been touting will look like, but I can't wait to see what he's going to do. Walking out of an amazing play about Buckminster Fuller last night, we emerged into a small celebration in the streets. People blaring horns, yelling, cheering, firecrackers exploding; my girlfriend felt like New Year's Eve. I felt like New World Order Eve.

Obama's stated positions are more left than I care for, but I figure he'll govern from the center, as the pundits keep saying. The alternative was completely unacceptable. Although I don't think it'll come down to it, I'd rather have socialized day care centers where they give out free health care than a Republican picking Stevens's replacement. God bless him, and I hope he lives as long as he wants, but the man is 88, and he was starting to worry me. And the economic crisis is just icing on the Bush Shit Cake. (In terms of that, if I didn't despise Bush for every other reason there is, I might feel sorry for him. He inherited an economy already struggling to maintain its appearance of buoyancy, and it didn't completely collapse for eight years. He didn't create the problem. But he wasn't required to make things worse, which he did at every available decision-making opportunity.)

Please, Barack. Show us the way out. Don't let us down.

I can't remember the last time I went through my friends page without all the damnportlander stuff clogging the pipeline. I have no idea what's going on with anyone. I saw a "bye-bye" entry from trish, and frantically checked, only to find out she's going camping (relieved chuckle and a silent hope you're having fun and not freezing your ass off), but then the next entry suggests she's out of a job. Someone has a new baby. Someone else is turning 21. Lots is happening while I'm caught up in my own drama. Most of it is fun distraction from the real problems in my life (LACK OF JOB!!), but still. I hate being that person who ignores her friends when things are good. So I'm going to make more of an effort. Really.

But I want to go get a pumpkin today. Or maybe not, since I'm already dressed and I've got fishnets on. (Nb: Fishnets are not tights. They do not count as cold-weather leg-warmers. Moreover, thinking about looking for a sweater to put over a tankdress does nothing for one's body temperature. A couple of the many adjustments I need to make to the new climate. Tough to admit that I'm more of an LA kid than I realized.) We'll see. I guess I wouldn't be the most inappropriately-dressed doofus in the patch. Or maybe I could put up the Halloween decorations I already have before going to buy something new. Wow, there's a concept.

So, yeah, luv ya, mean it, gotta run....................

David Foster Wallace killed himself. WTF?!?!?!?!?

A Time article stated that any writer would kill for his talent. Hunh. Apparently one did.

What a loss!!! I want to drop everything I'm reading and go back to Infinite Jest or The Broom of the System, which I didn't finish because I was so irritated by (read, jealous of) his writing style. It was so easy, so hip. At the time, I wanted to brand it slick and self-consciously hip. But it was 20 years ago, and the guy was 24. He was still finding his voice.

Tragic artists frighten me deeply. I automatically want to explore, understand their pain. Whether and how it intersects with their genius. Whether it could have been separated and excised. Whether the tragedy was inevitable. The articles say that he had been clinically depressed for twenty years and had tried to go off his medication last year with horrible results when the depression returned. He was one of the first and biggest Rock Stars of the young literary world (ok, Jay McInery and Bret Easton Ellis may have invented the character type, but Wallace gave it substance), but the disease was bigger. It seems like he had parents and a wife who love him, a stellar career based on undeniable talent, he must have had plenty of money - from the outside it looks like he had it all. But depression can't necessarily be fought with a good life. Anyone who has experienced it knows that depression can reduce the most beautiful life ever to a heap of crushing millstones and useless trivia. Dealing with that while still juggling the pressures of a successful life would be staggeringly overwhelming. Whether or not this particular outcome was inevitable, it seems like his pain was. And that's what he couldn't take anymore.

And, of course, underlying the voyeuristic interest is the desire to learn something about my own condition. Is my pain a sign of, or linked to, some sort of talent that may surface? As I get stronger and feel happier, am I moving away from creativity? It doesn't feel like it to me. I've heard that many tortured artists create in spite of, not because of, their pain.

At the moment, I am supposed to be getting ready for my trip to LA, so I need to leave the morbid reflection.

Did I mention that I passed the Oregon bar?!?!?!?! Maybe I was too busy out celebrating all weekend.

And no time to ponder it much right now, I'm going to be late for my dance lesson. I spent too much time hanging out in the New Orleans Candle Shop with the most amazing proprietors on the way back from the DMV. Where, shall I say it, I passed my driver's test on the first try! I was a bit worried, actually, when two people in front of me failed.

But my mom and my brother both, independently, had similar reactions when I told them I was worried about the Oregon bar.
Mom: "Sweetheart, you've been worried since kindergarten!"
Li'l Bro: "Of course you were, that's what you do. But no one else was."

As I laugh about being worried about failing a driver's test (after all, who - other than 16-yr-olds and the two morons in front of me - doesn't pass an American driver's test??), I realize maybe they're right.

Ten Nifty Things I've Done/Learned in Portland

1. Madrone trees. Coolest. Tree. Ever. (At least in Portland)
2. I have 660 new songs to listen to. (well, not all new to me, but not too many are duplicates, and some of those I'm happy to get) And making the cd for someone else has inspired me to go through my music and drag stuff out of the back of the virtual closet. Today has been, "wow, I haven't listened to this in ages....oh, wait, no This is better, why don't I listen to this more often..." over and over and over. The music came to me because I reached out to someone, tried to be of service, and it turns out we have similar taste.
3. Mississippi Pizza. The only thing better is if I could claim that I've been to the spelling bee they have on Tuesday nights.
4. I saw the Preservation Hall Jazz Band play. Loved them. Danced in the rain.
5. LA Kid and I visited Dignity Village, a permanent but potentially mobile encampment for the otherwise homeless. Fascinating insight into how other people live.
6. Fire-spinning. Way more than I did in LA. (Got to get working on some new moves, though. Every time I bust the poi out, the lameness of my lack of exciting new material bugs me.) Loaned my fave glow poi to a woman who really wants to learn and seems to be a natural. I LOVE the excitement of passing the skill to someone who just lights up (figuratively) when she gets it.
7. A guy who likes Tom Waits, Thomas Mann, and tango wants to go out with me. We went to the coast and stood at the ocean together. I am definitely not bored by people who are not broken.
8. Poetry reading at Powell's.
9. Two months in a row I've had a public transport pass and used it regularly.
10. I finally signed up for the Art & Soul Retreat. Won't happen till October, but I'm stoked that it's on the agenda.

A lot of emotional baggage stirred up in the last couple of days. Don't know how to describe it without sounding petty, juvenile, and/or maudlin.

The friend from LA really grilled me on what I am doing with my life, why I am making such bad choices. No one seems to believe that I do not intend to seek out or get involved with any more drug addicts, idiots, guys who wear baseball hats, or people who don't know how to hold a fork in a manner that does not suggest cave dwelling. Makes me contemplate what they are seeing in me that I don't. I understand now InSoc Boy's requirement that anyone he hangs out with have read Moby Dick and be able to prove it. LA Kid and I talked literature; Waltzing Mathilda reads; Memphis Queen gave me the expert resolution on LA Kid and I's dilemma as to categorizing Tennessee Williams as Southern Gothic (we perceive that people tend to do that, but we saw it as a mistake), and she got an irritated kick out of my beloved John Irving's admiration for Charles Dickens. I would love to have these conversations more frequently. Not that mocking the hot wheels collector over his very serious concerns regarding the inferiority of matchbox cars isn't entertaining, but man cannot live on mental doritos alone. Perhaps I should set my standards a bit higher than proper use of cutlery.

While my sister and her partner are hard at work, I am goofing off in a semi-dark room (with a beautiful day outside) making what passes these days for a mixtape for someone I hardly know, reciprocating for someone who gave me a flashdrive full of music. I've never made a mixtape for anyone except my sister and a childhood female friend, so it's sort of weird. I feel a bit possessive about the music I feel really passionate about, like I don't know if this guy will appreciate what touches my soul, so I don't want to give it to him. At the same time, I am not burning the Tom Waits CD I told Waltzing Mathilda I would make for him (but he's not coming back from New Mexico until Monday, so I have breathing room on that.)

I have done almost nothing about looking for a new job. Scanned some ads on craigslist, that's it. W. Mathilda knows I am out of work now. His reaction was disconcerting. I am afraid to tell my mom.

I got let go.

Probably for the best. A boon or sign from god, really. The day before, I said I'd rather kill myself than continue long term in this job. Part of me is surprised I didn't get killed in a car accident. But this is a different way to solve the problem.

Still digesting what this means for me going forward.

Immediately, it means I have time to discover Portland with my sister's ex-boyfriend, the one I adore, who is in town for the next week.

I am powerless over the internet and my life has become unmanageable. The first step is admitting I have a problem.

"I love the consistency of your flesh."

The funniest part was the speaker's lack of recognition that that was a bizarre, Hannibal Lector thing to say.

I started my new tango lessons last night. That's how it came about.

So I'm going nuts with entries today. Sorry, but it has to be done. I am becoming aware of important things. Exciting and interesting to me, anyway.

NEIL GAIMAN HAS A BLOG. And I have not been reading it. That is being rectified. I see a lazy Saturday reading past entries at Ladybug in my future.

More exciting in a small, only-important-to-me kind of way (but apparently important to him also, since he put it on his blog), he is reading a book by a cherished author slowly, one chapter per month. Because he doesn't want to finish it too quickly and then have nothing new to read by that author. Hah! I feel vindicated in my steadfast failure to finish London Fields, for a similar reason. Martin Amis writes new books with reasonable frequency, but London Fields is too amazing not to savour. Granted, it's taken me about three years and counting, but I've started over from the beginning twice.

John Irving is saving a Charles Dickens novel to read on his deathbed, but that seems like a related, but not quite the same, concept.

Fuck!!! I missed the Eddie Izzard show. I hate me.

The Oregon bar exam starts the day after tomorrow. I should be more freaked out, but I'm not. I will be when I'm sitting in that huge hotel ballroom faced with a million questions about whether Bozo may convey Blackacre to his brother Marcel for his lifetime and then to Lambchop, unless Marcel becomes a mime, in which event Blackacre goes to any redhaired children born to Bozo's wife.

The answer, I believe, is sort of. The executory interest vested in the redhaired children is invalid as violative of the Rule against Perpetuities, under the "unborn widow" doctrine. I have not heard the words fee simple determinable, unborn widow, or Blackacre (or purchase money security interest or goods delivered FOB) since the first bar exam. This is such a time warp.

I have something of an attitude problem, in that if I haven't even heard the words in 15 years, they have no relevance to my ability to practice law competently, and I should not have to learn this crap again. Also, I noticed some grammar errors on the exams from last year. I think there should be some automatic points awarded for a) writing grammatical sentences; and b) correcting the pompous asses who write these stupid questions.

My favourite, though, is the mnemonic I still remember from law school: HOOT. A battery actionable in tort is a Harmful or Offensive Touching. And an assault is placing a person in reasonable apprehension of an immediate HOOT. So, all you kids out there, when your sibling is in the back seat of the car poking you, and then poking the air around you going I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, call the Pedant & Nitpicker Law Group LLP. We'll sue that bastard for all the legos she's got!

The Church of England (in the American version of which I was brought up, which makes this extra-annoying) is appointing "superbishops" to reign over "rebel clergy" who won't accept the about-to-be-appointed female bishops. (They already have "flying bishops" to come around and whip the bitches into shape if the parish is unhappy, but the "superbishop" will have a direct batphone so the chauvinists can go over the woman's head more quickly and with less obvious political fallout.) And the quotation marks are real. I am not exaggerating or paraphrasing for purposes of mockery. They did it all themselves.

Check out the picture. It's the Justice League of religion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032526/Church-England-plans-male-superbishops-rebel-clergy-refuse-led-women.html

Amazing where people won't stop when money is at stake. God forbid (ha! if only, eh?) the affluent yet conservative dioceses ditch the Church and take their money with them.

I won my very first contested hearing following my 'prolonged absence' (actually the first time I've appeared in court at all since summer 2006). A really good feeling going into this new job in Oregon. I needed a confidence boost to go forward into a completely new legal system, different rules, different procedures, etc.

Am I the only one who notices that I seem to do pretty well despite abject anxiety and fear? My ex said once that I have the most bizarre combination of arrogance and low self-esteem. Maybe the low self-confidence is just a manufactured reason to brag. I'm reading the most incredible book (so incredible it requires its own entry), The Man on the Ceiling, which mentions that once something one is afraid of materializes, it is no longer fear; it morphs into something else: horror, despair, grief, relief. I seem to go through an unending cycle of fear-despair-relief -- not really a cycle even, more of a tangled string art project, where your trajectory doesn't trace a circle, but rather loops back and forth around various grounding posts.

But, for the moment, whatever. I saved a guy's house from immediate foreclosure!! And I did it in my pajamas.

What kind of lunatic am I?!?!? I bought a house in Portland, got a job there (got a JOB! in this economy, someone is excited about me working for him, and I'm stalling), got a library card, joined the community association...but seem to be too scared to go up there and try on the new life. My sister had a house-warming party, with another potluck scheduled for the end of the month, and I wasn't there. Her friends think I'm weird and are afraid the parties will stop when I arrive. I'm afraid they'll stop coming once I'm there. I want to provide a place for the Pablo-style celebrations of life and experience. Well, even if no one else shows up, my sis and her boyfriend will be built-in safety monitors for the fire-spinning. At least I won't have to work at the 'weirdo' reputation.

And I went to the beach today. Trying to do some stuff I won't be able to up north.

Sometimes I get annoyed when my favourite bands don't put out new material fast enough. Maybe because Danger Mouse does so many different things, maybe because it seemed like a "one-off" project, maybe because it was such an excellent album and I didn't get bored with it, I was content with St. Elsewhere. At no time did I feel like DM & Cee-Lo owed me anything else, much less the old-fashioned album every year schedule.

And then......THERE IS WAS. A report of a new Gnarls Barkley album!! And, as I sit here listening to it for the first time, oooohhhh..... Mmm, mmm, mmmunhh, la-la-lah...la, la, la, la, la, laahhhh. I feel like a kid with a dreamed-about Christmas present that he didn't really think he was going to get.

Plus, I'm living in a hotel not too far from the beach, and it's a beautiful, though hot Southern California day. The crowded room opening onto a balcony/walkway running along the entire side of the building reminds me of the marine barracks. If only I had gotten this reply done last night and I were headed out to the beach with a cooler and some best buds, life couldn't get much better.