Partie D'Août Deux

Alright, August. This is it. We've come to the end. You've wrung me out. You've somehow managed to slip into Blogger and fuck with my font. Even my Georgia, August. Even my Georgia? My own familiar black typeface now looks foreign. And suddenly there's a tab here I've never seen, labeled "Monetize". What won't you monetize, oh sodden month? This lowly changeling blog too?

Most of you know I rarely post real-life photos. This isn't that blog. I usually feel a thousand words are worth a thousand words flat out, no arguments. But once in awhile a picture metaphor is just too damn honest and it is necessary in this blog. The above is from a corner of my office. Not "mine" per se, but the one I work in and among and inside, and around. I go to this corner often to retrieve paper for the copier and last week I finally stopped in front of that motivational poster on the floor, which has been there since January. This is a wall. This corner. This office. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or epoxy or nothing at all. But I am trapped inside it. I feel trapped inside it.

August is my credit limits slashed, company 401k closed, car in the driveway unwilling to start, doctor dropped by insurance, dental plan gone, $11oo in cell phone bills and a stack of mail unopened. This is a wall. These bills, this loss of security. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or epoxy or nothing at all. But I am trapped inside it. I feel trapped inside it.

I think I've come to understand something. I've been boxed in because I've got to learn how to become more resourceful. If all my outs have been well, stubbed out, then I'm gonna have to use my imagination. If I can't fly away because there's no more plastic, can't drive away because there's no more rubber, can't bail myself out using the mythic retirement fund and escape into temporary unemployment, then I'll have to figure some other way to get out of this job and get within the same country as the life I want. Basically, there are no more excuses and there's no easy way. It is glass or steel or a magnetic field or a piece of cellophane or nothing at all. What happens if I poke my finger through it?

Most of you also know I'm not into having my freedom encroached upon. I'm the girl who had it tattooed in Latin, festooned by laurels and anchors where the Kundalini don't shine (what's that saying about a good way to lose your freedom? Have it tattooed in Latin?) as my permanent middle finger to expectation, obligation, boundary. If only declarations were the same as decisions.

I start school tomorrow. I'm taking Beginning Fiction and I'm totally terrified. I'm trying to remember what the hell I was thinking in May when I signed up for it. I have no idea how to write stories. But as I type that last line I'm thinking perhaps this is part of the new emergency exit plan. Maybe I'm going to have to write myself a new story with a mad, unexpected ending. One that involves a fabulous escape plan.

August

Morning's Inner Monologue
Rush hour,
heat index.
High-class cattle in column dresses.
Moo.

UV
My decolletage is freckled, I fear, permanently.
Micro calico remnants of two Adriatic weeks.
The final map charted by rising heat
from Diocletian's Wall
onto my chest in water bubbles.

It reminds me of the line
from that Ball play,
"freckles ruin shoulders", or
something like it.
Shit, I'm ruined.

Alright, enuffa that shite.
It appears that the soupy summer slosh has begun melting my heart, soul and most certainly cerebellum into a murky pool about to be splashed onto the side of a taxi. They don't make Pacino movies about August bank robberies for nothin'. I'm spending far too much time alone in this office while the rest of my "team" is off in one Hampton or another, or telecommuting or...whatever. I've taken to listening to endless streams of NPR for company, their steady tones floating off on the air conditioner's hum into the dark recesses of our computer closet. "Well, I began my career with a fellowship to do some work in Burundi..." Hisssssss.

It's so odd being stuck in Manhattan in August. Well, let me go back. I mean it's odd that an entire city empties for a month in the first place. But given that reality (the reality that nobody works in New York in the summer), it's strange to be someone who is, commuting into Midtown with the few sweaty blue shirt suckers who have to be present for their TD Waterhouse teambuilding exercises. Slosssshhhh.

I'm running out of ways to creatively clothe myself for the 75% humidity. When I'm alone on Thursdays and Fridays I wear flip flops and tank tops that don't conceal my wide, black bra straps. Today I'm wearing an acid washed gray hat with nautical metal stars on it. I added hoop earrings, hoping it might give my look an urban edge. It did that, alright. Now I look like I'm working at an Amoco station. I can tell when I've hit a homerun because our doormen actually make eye contact. But when I come into the office in on Fridays looking like I'm headed for a public beach near the Florida panhandle, they refuse to acknowledge me, even though I've been walking through those doors for over eight years. Ssssouuup.

Perhaps it's worse now that we have a new tenant in the office. She's a classic New York cosmetic professional: poised, sophisticated, and beautifully packaged. She wears a suit of sleek black armor every day that perfectly displays two enviably chiseled guns. And she's one of those heel types. One that can pull it off. She's got loads of spiky, spiny skins and leathers. Some are sharp points, some rounded, but all tall as hell. She's like a chic boutique tower, warming her leftover pasta in our dingy old microwave, chatting me up about this and that. It always feels as though I'm standing in my underwear when we're talking. Something about her makes me feel naked. Lately, it's been just the two of us in the office. She runs her business on the other side, but she's close enough that I can overhear her conducting conference calls. She's diplomatic and assertive. Sometimes I'll turn off the air conditioner and just sit and listen to her talk on the phone as the room warms up. When I came in this morning she said she loved my hat.

Heeeeeaaaatttt.

Coming Out of the Dark

My husband has been subletting on the sunnier coast for just nearing six weeks now. I haven't written much about it because, frankly, I haven't known how the hell to talk about it. When he visited LA in March to explore his career options, our lives took a sharp turn toward what is commonly referred to by our actor friends as The Inevitable: the sometimes-hard-to-swallow reality that the big pool of work lies out west while the cultural and intellectual baby pool we really wanna congregate in floats smack dab on this lean and leggy east coast isle. That sharp turn was both unexpected and exciting, but we knew things were never gonna be the same and that eventually, some kind of really hard decision was gonna have to be made about place or career or both.

Shortly after the March trip, we decided to pool every financial and emotional resource we had to send him back there as an all-out immersion experiment...just to see what would happen if he...lived there, for a time, as an actor, undivided. You can read his blow-by-blow at CouldYouPleaseJustNot. Below is my east coast version of that all-out immersion experiment.

It's no secret that I've taken a pretty bumpy ride to Psycho Town this summer, visiting my relatives on the dark side often and with gusto, downing vodka sodas, even digging deep to dust off the old agoraphobia. I picked a fight with our creepy neighborhood cross-dresser after he tossed an empty cup into a flowering bush, audibly sobbed my way through a documentary about modern China's stranglehold on peasant farmers, spent an afternoon detailing the back panels of my bathroom door with a bleach wipe, spent all day in the dark watching Michael Jackson's funeral, and peeled, and peeled, and peeled hardboiled eggs. When my sister came for a visit she complained that I'd become too controlling about the way the bathroom hand towels were folded. I laughed at her reflection in the mirror as I picked away at a microscopic eyebrow hair with a pair of tweezers. Those goddamn things, they'll make you crazy.

After that battle royal with all my filth and fury reached its zenith, I sat stunned in the muted mustard hues of my psychopharmacologist's office, where she inquired in her usual cool, anonymously eastern European way, "what ees zees depression of which you write on zees intake questionnaire?" We made a subtle medical adjustment to my chemical makeup. But I know there's no kind of gel-coated cocktail for what truly ails me. Uncertainty.

I walked down Park Avenue after the appointment thinking that it isn't at all being alone that's been hardest about my husband being gone. In fact, it rather suits me in some ways. It creates a wide open internal space in which those pithy little obsessive demons can emerge and thrive inside me. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. They rear, they terrify and then I can purge them. But what's caused all this utter insanity is not that he's gone. It's that that there seems so much attached to his being gone: possibility, upendedness, alpha, omega, beginnings, and endings. It's so weighted, his absence. But rather than grounding me in anything I could hang onto and derive some meaning from, it instead sent me surging straight up into the stratosphere without a capsule. I've been Major Tom, looking down at the life I had, watching it get smaller and smaller, seeing nothing ahead but a big, black, starless sky.

Perhaps I've broken through the ozone or something. Or at least begun to. I'm feeling ready to harness all this intensity, all these feelings of directionlessness and kid fears and use them to, I dunno, make some discoveries. I don't wanna pick fights with the creepy cross-dresser anymore. I don't wanna peel eggs on my porch in the rain or be obsessively tidy. I don't even care about getting blonder (okay, that might be a stretch). I have no idea what we're going to do about LA. I have no idea where we're supposed to be or what the right decision is about anything. I think we did the right thing by forcing change where we could, by surging forward in spite of having no bona fide evidence we should, but I don't really know that we did. What I want most to do is just say that. I. Do. Not. Know. I don't know, I don't know, I don' t know. I'm thinking the more I hear it, the less like a life sentence it feels. The more like...a second skin. Something I can breathe in.

So, there it is. Some tiny little shred of it. As it is today but will not, in any way, ever shall be.

Amen.

"Are We Doing Klute?"

This is one of my favorite things Stephen Colbert ever asked a guest on The Colbert Report. Jane Fonda was on and Colbert was attempting to steady his steely glare as she slithered all over him, trying to get him to drop his persona for a moment during their interview. He asked her, biting his lip, "are we doing Klute?"

I've been asking myself the same question ever since I visted Shaun, my new hair stylist, who I've finally decided is the man I'm going to cheat on my Russian blade-wielder with. I went to him for a second opinion on the "I'm not making you blonde!" opinion I've endlessly received from my longtime confidence cutter. I'm trying once again to force change from the outside in, hoping that by moving on from this silly power struggle which continually finds me unable to assert myself in the face of a woman holding a pair of thinning shears, I will not only be able to leave behind a head full of dated stripes, but will also reach in and wrap my hands around my mojo and pull it the hell out into the open again.

Shaun wants to give me a "loose, wavy, coulda-been-a-boy's-cut-in-the-Seventies-but-looks-like-a-less-structured-Fonda-Klute-cut" in a cool beige hue. I've been turning that one around in my mind's eye for a couple of days now. It could be the kind of thing where I'll look back on this post once I'm wearing a "loose, wavy" Joan Jett on my own ass-graced, curvy body and think, 'it sounded like such a good idea at the time', or it'll be just like the cut that was part of the evolution that created this blog in the first place: my "slick-severe-coulda-been-a-bowl-but-was-more-Bladerunner-dipped-in-chocolate-bob" that began a revolution of the soul. That's the one I'm wearing in the Facebook profile photo I recently had to remove after admitting to myself that I simply don't look like that anymore.

Nor do I feel like that.

I'm reading over these missives wondering how this became a melodramatic hair blog. When I first started writing OneKate posts, I was eating transformation for breakfast and making meatloaf outta the leftovers. I wanted to talk about reinvention, growth and potential. To be fair, I'm predisposed to the subject matter. I'm a Scorpio. I thrive on all that phoenix and flames shit. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, folks. I love it. And at the time, I was running (hard, 5 days a week), rattling all kinds of bits and pieces loose, discovering edges and ledges on my body and in my mind I never knew existed. But that has slowed, yes, and now I'm softer in spirit and silhouette.

So too, has my momentum in other places. I've been replaced in my mediocre QVC job by a young woman who my boss refuses to stop referring to as "that pretty little girl". From mediocre to invisible. That's not exactly the transition I was working for. I'm so apathetic about my job, I can't even be bothered to surf the internet in my newly acquired spare time. Most days I keep busy by reading through our takeout menu folder. 'They have muenster! I'm keeping this one on file.'

I feel like I've become a person incapable of real, meaningful change. If I can't change the fact that there's a little girl hawking cheap cosmetics on TV in my place, my persistent feeling of directionlessness, our inability to pay for car repairs, this panicky cat at my feet, slow computer, these blasted permanent vertical frown lines, or the behavior of each and every person on earth except me, then I'll just change my goddamn hair. I continue to lighten my shade up top, hoping it'll eventually lead to a lightbulb. In essence, what I'm saying is, my scalp has become the only place I feel capable of making the kind of change I can actually see (there goes that melodrama again). But it's sorta true. Life feels like it's stalling. Has stalled.

So, I guess the answer is, YES, WE'RE DOING KLUTE.

Until we can do something else.

Life Is, In Fact, a Movie

Things I Thought Only Happened In Movies, But Actually Happened This Week:

1.) Someone asked me to "sex up" a line about venture capitalists and private equity firms and see if I could make another about bank lending requirements sound more "embellished, provocative."

2.) I watched too many Dateline: Investigation and 48 Hours: Hard Evidence shows in a row, then went to bed and was terrified of a thunderstorm.

3.) I stumbled on a massive, stunning, original abstract oil painting at a Brooklyn "Break-Up Sale". The woman sold it to me for $20 because she just "couldn't be around it anymore" and needed to "move on". I am an accidental collector.

4.) I ran into a man I had a massive crush on in school as I was sporting the following ensemble: an ill-fitting green tank top featuring a between-the-tits coffee blot, an odd, sweat-matted Morrissey-inspired pompadour and a pair of denim capris refusing to hold their roll, which meant they came to an abrupt end roughly 5 inches above my ankles. On top of that, my dog wouldn't stop hassling his Papillon mix.

5.) I drove through Manhattan in a daze early Saturday morning. I was on my way to Brooklyn to move a friend to a new apartment. The windows were open, Billy Joel was singing about something blue collar, I turned onto Broadway. Out my passenger window I saw the tour groups pounding pavement, seizing sights and suddenly, I came to. When I looked past the dashboard, I was in Times Square. In my car. Alone. Me and the Jumbotron. I Was Legend.

If They Say Why, Why, Tell 'Em That It's Human Nature

I really wanna write about Michael Jackson. Less in tribute, though I'm burning a candle in my mind's eye as I type this, remembering four solid heartsick adolescent years devoted to love of him above all others. No, I'm thinking more about time. I wanna talk about time.

It's curious the way the sudden, shocking death of a cultural icon both stops time in a breathless moment and seems to stretch it out before us as if it were a film reel or timeline of our own lives. Every memorial image we see flashed across a flat screen or find ourselves rubbing from newsprint-stained fingertips might as well be one from our own narrative.

When I heard the news yesterday I pulled the needle off the record. Time stopped. I sensed instantly, as millions did, that it was the end of an era for me. If the day I told a doctor about my own family plans, the last night I held my grandmother's hand, the first time I set foot in a developing nation, or the last time I did something just for the money wasn't the exact moment I knew my childhood was over forever, Michael Jackson's death was. Pale yellow cardigan-clad Michael and his come-hither stare on the front of my Meade notebook, teary screams from the general admission seats at the Thriller concert and hours spent decifering the meaning of the Liberian Girl lyrics are no longer part of a living, breathing person. They are stopped dead in time.

But in the same breath, I am fascinated by the way time moves, by the passing of it. It's astounding that life moves fast enough that it can be encapsulated into a consumable hour-long visi-byte. That we can watch a person grow, morph, change and that all along, we are doing the same. It all went so quickly. I was ten when I first saw him. In parachute pants (me). I'm 33 now. As I watched the progression of Michael Jackson's life in images last night (all night), I was watching my own in my mind, with a similar sort of fascination. I'm not an icon. But I have spanned time.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home?

Oh, great big, knowing Blogosphere, I'm rubbing the sides of your truth-granting orb in search of insight. I've consulted family and friends, the profoundly indifferent school financial aid office, the bottom of my Prosecco glass. I'm at your feet now, Supreme e-Leader. Is there a path? Am I on it? Does the one I am on lead to a trash receptacle, deserted beach or twelve foot electrified fence? Are you busy with a crochet project? Should I come back later when you've finished your Sudoku?

Here's a brief update. Financial aid for next year came through. Well, when I say "came through" I sort of mean more that it exists out there on a piece of paper sorted into a bunch of columns said to "assist me in financing my education". I've spent the two weeks since I received the letter trying to figure out why they call it "financial aid" if it doesn't aid you financially. In any case, mine is not a story of true sob. I am not the first child in my family to attend college, offspring of first generation Americans or making minimum wage. I am merely a person trying to get a piece of paper, fulfill my potential, find some direction, change my life midstream. It's expensive, all that becoming something. And sadly, next semester, I can't afford to do it as I had originally laid out for myself on that steel-coated, infallible, never-say-die road map of mine. They gave me HALF. Half of what I got last year. Numerous phone calls to my 401k plan administrator to inquire about disbursement, countless humbling analyses of my credit card statements and several shameful attempts to derive an ounce of humanity from anyone working in financial aid later, it comes down to this: go part time in the fall, rack up some personal debt and stretch my supposed two-year plan out over four long years (until I'm nearly old enough to qualify for the social security degree program), or go full time in the fall as planned, rack up LARGE amounts of personal debt and finish the degree in two years. Though, that plan may have me taking online classes from inside a sanetarium, where I'll be serving time for trying to stab floating red credit card balances out from behind my eyes with a mechanical pencil.

Or that's how it all seems at the moment. When I write it out, it doesn't sound as catastrophic as it feels. But see, I had this plan. I was going to finish the degree that it took me so damned long to decide to pursue and then I was going to be off trying to...well, use it...somehow. I don't know why it always feels appropriate to quote When Harry Met Sally on this blog but in honor of Harry, I have to point out, when you decide what you'd like to spend the rest of your life doing, you'd like the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible. He was so right. But that's a shameful paraphrase. I would like the rest of my life to begin as soon as possible though truthfully, maybe this is happening because I'm still not exactly clear just what it is I'm supposed to be doing with said life. Oh, when will I learn that existence cannot be wrapped up by gifted writers of dialogue? Maybe there is some method here. Maybe I'm not meant to plow through the halls of academia so quickly that I finish with my little paper proof-of-purchase no more fleshed out (mentally) than I am now. Or maybe I just want so much to believe that I've made a choice that will translate into change that I have to see it that way.

In any case, I'm trying to imagine that this little blip appears on my electrfied life grid the way a slowing N train to Astoria would: momentarily stalled and perhaps off schedule but not yet retired to the big subway graveyard in Coney Island. It's hard to see these traffic jams as part of the larger infrastructure, as having any meaning to the greater flow of things. I think this is a lesson in priorities. I think so, anyway. I've vowed not to decide on which course of action to take for at least another week. I feel like there's something I'm supposed to get from the debt-to-emotional/professional/psychological investment ratio thing. Of course, it could also just be a good old fashioned lesson in patience, in which case I'll be really fucking pissed. I learned that one standing in line for gelato three weeks ago.