Caterwauling

“I am full
I’m choosing to be full
I’m on a boat, I’m in a lake, I’m with the water, I see the trees
I’m with the sun, I see the moon, I touch the sky
And I’m with you
I’m with you”
— Sheila Nicholls, “Elevator —

I was planning this big, long post about my inability to shut off my brain for five consecutive minutes when I hopped over to my writing soul sister’s site and saw her brand-spanking new post on her inability to relax on command.

And, as Amy would say, it scared the boojabbers out of me yet again how freaking alike we are.

And I’m still going to give you a long, rambling post, so grab a chai tea and the Prozac dispenser. 😉

I was kind of composing this entry in my head as I drove home tonight. I think I unsettled someone at the Dream Job who had made a little joke about how pleasant I always am and I’d said, in a moment of bluntness, that it’s probably better to not be able to see inside my head sometimes. He’d looked surprised and I laughed it off by joking that actually, there isn’t a whole lot of anything going on inside this old noggin. It was the safe answer. It was the one he needed to hear.

It was not the truth.

“So if you ask me
I’ll keep saying that I am fine
So just don’t ask
And if you see me I’ll keep
Flashing that winning smile
Cause that’s my mask.”
— Tara MacLean, “That’s Me” —

Now, I’m not saying I’m thinking bad things (it’s typically the contrary — like, why did I allow myself to SUFFER for so many years before this?). But anyway, no bad thoughts even today, despite the hormones threatening to start raging at any moment. But a girl’s got her days wherein she’s bitchier than others. It’s like we need our own personal editors because we have the potential to detonate over the least thing … or, say it with me guys — over nothing at all. And, I tend to take offense when people make cracks that our defiant and surly moods are somehow connected to our biologies, because it strikes randomly (and WAY MORE OFTEN THAN MONTHLY!!!).

I half-wonder if women, especially, don’t drive ourselves half-mad in our lives from all the pretending we do on the surface to be *fine* when we’ve got a thousand emotions swirling beneath the surface. It’s like an anger/arousal/empathy/sadness/fear/lost cocktail still in the damn blender and the “off” button isn’t working. Perhaps we would, in fact, be *fine* if we weren’t so concerned with how we would be perceived if we’d have an honest-to-goodness emotional eruption once in awhile. No wonder why I write — it’s like bleeding the poison out of our wounds sometimes — wounds we don’t even remember acquiring.

“Same place I’ve always been
Just lost on these roads again
Just as I got near the end
I keep falling in the holes you left in me.”
— Tara MacLean, “Jericho” —

I’ve had many people in my life tell me that I’m “nice” or “perky” or “enthusiastic.” I like that — it means that I light up around them. I like being someone on whom people can depend to brighten — or, at least, not RUIN — their days. My enthusiasm for them is genuine. My compliments are sincere. My enjoyment of talking with them is thorough.

I watch for the special spark in people. I don’t know how to describe it better than to talk about my gay high school boyfriend (*sigh*). In photos with him, my mom always said I positively lit up (no accounting for taste!). Anyway, I know that sparkle. I watch for it when others are around me. I know it when they bring out that sparkle in ME, too. Such magical combinations are so rare, but I’ve found it en masse. I have NO complaints!

Believe me, if I don’t want to be near someone, then they know it (I make sure of it). If someone’s aura is crowding or bruising mine, then mine will push theirs back a few feet and not let them get any closer. I tend to hang around with kindreds and keep them at my side. We old souls can spot each other from miles away, and it’s good to travel together again. 😉 And I will lasso your ass and haul you in, if that’s what I need to do to keep myself surrounded by good company!

But I always wonder when my head’s gonna turn like Linda Blair’s in “The Exorcist” and everyone else will be bathed in projectile green goo. I wonder if my “too good to be true” niceness is, in fact, that.

“Captured in a photograph
Inside her eyes
She’ll wrap you in her blanket
And then she’ll tell you some lies
And you will kneel before her
At her altar in the trees
Because they say no matter who you are
She’ll bring you to your knees.”
— Tara MacLean, “Let Her Feel the Rain” —

Like today, I had a really good day. Great drives, ran a lot of errands in the morning, accomplished what I could, talked with great people. But inside, I felt like hot lava were swirling within my center of gravity. I know my sign is the Twins (Gemini), and it’s like they were at war today. And I’m surrounded by kind souls all day long now — I’m not accustomed to not having at least SOMEONE toward whom I can direct my case of the crazies! 🙂

Going back to what Amy wrote, it is, in fact, writing that soothes the savage beast — I am never happier than when I’m in a coffeeshop with my joural or sitting here, parked at my G4 with the iTunes going at top volume, me singing off-key and the cats taking their evening shits and stinking up the place and then me burning my Nag Champa incense to kill off the scent of ass as well as to induce tranquility for all of us.

(I am healing. By the time this entry is done, I will have healed enough to watch the special “American Idol” presentation. 😉 But, I digress.)

On the whole, I find that all writers are raving insomniacs — we never go to bed at a reasonable hour because there’s so much to see and do, and then when we do try to get enough sleep to try to function the next day, we’re too absorbed in what we coulda/shoulda/woulda done if we’d had more time and what we can/will/should do tomorrow.

And for most of us? We spend our lives spinning our wheels. I have six million projects I have yet to finish — half of which I have yet to START. There’s a certain guilt that goes along with having the writing aptitude — being torn between wanting to record/observe life and getting out there to LIVE it.

“I want to give no reason
To touch your perfect face
I will die between your lips
And live in your embrace
Forever more.”
— Tara MacLean, “More” —

I think I can speak for all of us in that we’re dreaming of someone or somewhere we aren’t, or someone we’re not with (whether anymore or yet). We want some opportunity or person to notice or remember that we’re alive. We obsess over every detail about what we will say or do when that time comes. We miss things we never had. We miss things that we do have.

The reason I don’t really talk about my writing is beacause, if I tell you anything substantial, well, I don’t see any point in writing the story. Does that make sense? If I’ve told the story, then I don’t want to deal with it anymore — it’s been exposed to outside influence or reaction. If you delay a millisecond too long in telling me how fabulous it is, I will think it sucks and therefore it should never be written. Or, fuck, if I’ve already TOLD the story, why should I then go about WRITING it? Because I so abhor redundancy.

And the real reason I don’t talk about my writing? My lazy ass doesn’t do nearly enough of it. 😉

Mental health professionals tell us to envision what we want to happen with our lives, and scarily, I believe that … on some level. If I don’t paint the picture of my life that I might want to live in, well, I’d be running blind with no goal in sight. But, on the other hand, if I picture myself doing laundry or taking out the trash, I forget in real-life to DO those things because, in my head, I’ve kind of been-there-done-that. Creative types hate routines. We hate paying bills, not just because the creditors are siphoning money we don’t have but, rather, it’s boring. We have Gifts. We have Vision. We have Talent. We do not have Patience, damn it!

Anyway, this entry has been all over the place, but it has only followed my hormones wherever they wanted to lead. 🙂

“And if there is such a thing
As winter in the spring
Then I’ll make angels
And I’ll see you in the wings.”
— Tara MacLean, “In the Wings” —

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2005 at 7:10 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.