(sung to the tune of “O Holy Night”. My apologies to the hymn writer and all those who love “O Holy Night” and also, Jesus.)

(further, this isn’t actually my neighbor’s house….but trust me, it isn’t far off)

Oh, Holy Crap

the neighbor’s lights are blinding

the only lights Hubble can see on Earth

Long lay the elf

in the garage deflating

til pumps appeared

and then air filled his girth

the lighted reindeer

in their front yard glowing

as Santa rides a Harley

on the roof

Fall, on your knees!

your retinas are burning

Oh, for the love of God

where did they get all of this crap?

Oh why? Oh why?

Oh why, please tell me why

Fall on your knees

Spongebob is on the front lawn

Oh, Holy crap.

In my interview with Danielle over at Knotty Yarn, she asked me an interesting question involving a theme that she noticed in my writing. She called my blog a poem to my 17 year old self.  I’d never considered what I’ve written here in that capacity. But, as a body of work, I can see how it easily and seamlessly falls right into that description. I wrote myself a letter in that interview, which has been churning around in my mind as incomplete.

I view my life in two very distinct chapters. Before my rape and after. But lately, it feels as though a third, unfamiliar chapter is beginning to take shape. It is begging for my attention. Pulling, pushing, challenging.  It seems to be demanding that I graduate from this long-fought  period of pain and emerge into my birthright. Below is the commencement speech to the girl I am becoming.

Go, with passion. Ever forward progressing with the fire of things which bring you joy, go. In the morning, after your blackest dreams, leave them waiting and fight them again later, with your sleeping mind. They have no place in your waking life, go.

Go, with boldness. You are a shining creature of light. Hiding it serves you no purpose and denies those around you the opportunity to soak up your glow, go.  Write your words and sing your songs. Paint your world with your own perspective. Your brushstrokes are a living legacy to more than just your survival. They are a sequined walkway to your success, go.

Go, attack those things you think you cannot do with the same fearlessness you attack the things you know you can do. Your only failure is when you are too afraid to go.  Go.

Go, love with the fullness of your heart and count on it to be broken. But dance, in the glory of love for whatever time it lasts. When you find it in its permanence, prepare for it not to be easy. But rather to be worth it. So know that you will carry battle scars, but you are a warrior. Go.

Go with confidence. Your past is not your future and is merely a shadow in your present. It is left to you to forgive. Forgiveness is not for the one who is wrong. It is for the peace of the one who is right. Act with mercy, go.

There are absolutes. There are grays. There is a world of absolute balance and chaos. It is not for you to fix, or even understand. It is for you to navigate with grace, with humility. With kindness. You are all of these things and more that are yet to be named, go.

I went to pack up some things in our apartment today and was struck when I walked through the door. The long staircase leading up to the main level, felt cold. Every step I climbed in what was our home seemed mute.

Our smell has left. No scent of spicy candles or the expressly masculine notes of Clay’s cologne. Although we still have things left within those walls, our presence is notably absent. The laughter that we share so quickly with each other seems as though it has never touched that place. The calcium of its structure seems to be leeching away, still standing, but hollow as a dead saguaro.

When we walked into our house the first time, I felt a gravitational pull. The floors of this beautiful home pulled at my marrow, begging me. I could feel the absence of life here, amidst the green plants. Amidst the dust floating across the surface. This house begged for life as if  dying. Our decision to be here grafted the bone. We give this place life.

I drive down different streets, eyes taking in the signs of houses, bursting with energy. People and animals and memories wrapping themselves around the walls. These things are load bearing. I drive down these streets and feel a longing that is being fulfilled. From our house, to us. From us to our home. From me, years of sadness becoming driftwood as I press that gas pedal and proceed forward. To him. To this life we’ve created. To home.

`

Over at the beautiful Danielle’s.  c’mon. you know you do

Neil is hosting his Great Interview Experiment, being curios as I am, I thought it would be great to jump in. The following is my interview with Ozma. Read this when you have enough time to read her answers thoroughly. Ozma is many things, funny, smart, interesting and TOTALLY WORDY.

Enjoy

1) When you envisioned your blog, in the beginning, what purpose did you think it would serve?

My blogging has no deliberate purpose but in spite of that I plan to blather on and on about this question.

Blogging is often ridiculed as useless and narcissistic because people assume that the primary purpose would be self-display–the blogger is some ordinary person (i.e., not a ‘real’ writer)  who is vain enough to suppose that other people are interested in the mundane and ordinary details of their life. That should be no big deal–there’s a lot of writing that is of this type. Why is blogging illegitimized as writing? And conversation itself often has the purpose of discussing one’s life because many conversations are about people saying what they have been thinking and doing. Do those people have a problem with conversation? That would be absurd.

What is it about writing something that’s more narcissistic than discussing your life in ordinary conversation? I suppose it is that there is a monologue quality about blogging. It’s like writing a diary and then inviting other people to read your diary. So that assumes there is something inherently interesting about your own internal life. Is that vain? Perhaps it is sometimes. There is a narcissistic strain in blogging that one notices after awhile. But let’s face it–other people’s private lives are interesting to us, if they can be presented in an interesting way.  Alas, I don’t bother to present my internal life in an interesting way most of the time.

Long story short, I don’t have a good reason for blogging.  I always kept journals. (I destroyed them all one crazy day many years ago.) I think blogging for me is much more like journal-writing. And what’s ridiculous about that is that the public nature of blogging changes the content of what I write, and I sort of resent this. So why don’t I just keep a written, private journal? I don’t know. Maybe the internet has simply made it very hard to keep a journal, just like email has made it hard to write letters.

I guess I’d have to say, when it comes to personal purposes, that the blog serves the same purpose as a journal. I suppose those purposes are usually (a) a record for the future self to contemplate the past self’s states of mind and (b) self-understanding. And, very imperfectly, it does serve these purposes.

So 2) Do you feel like you’ve accomplished that goal? If no, or if you didn’t have a clear goal, how would you describe your blog to someone who couldn’t read?

I think I’ve accomplished whatever goals one could have in keeping a journal. But another goal is that I’ve also linked up with this very tiny community of people. Most of them are other women, and other mothers. This is a little bit by happenstance. I think my interest in other bloggers is probably what got me back to blogging after I ditched my first blog. It was harder to really get to know other bloggers in the way that I like doing this without a blog of my own. I liked having some kind of online persona to engage with people. I actually care more about writing comments than I do about blogging. I don’t care so much if anyone reads my blog, although I appreciate comments. I care much more that my comments on other people’s blog are good ones and that I am being a good conversationalist in that sense. But a blog helps make that interchange a bit more real.

To someone who couldn’t read, I would say that what makes my blog slightly different than other peoples’ is that I’m not very interested in everyday life. I’m much more interested in the problem about how to survive being me and I tend to generalize this into bigger human problems. But my blog is horribly solipsistic and about my inner mental life. What I usually write tries to be funny but I notice that only certain people get the black humor in the stories I tell. My blog is definitely not for everyone.

Conflicted, compassionate, disorganized, driven, dissatisfied.   I also like alliteration but that’s more than five.

I think my perfect life is impossible since it would involve not being me, at least not entirely. I am the thing that would make a perfect life impossible, as it seems unlikely that I am capable of living a life that is not full of inner turmoil, worry and dissatisfaction.

I would love to be one of those people that doesn’t worry about the fact we are all doomed. “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” don’t seem to worry about that. They don’t seem very happy, either. So I guess I’d either be me without the downside of freaking out about the human condition or I’d be a Real Housewife who was non-materialistic and helping people in the slums of India.

I really can’t talk about my worst day. I’ll tell you what I think the best days are like. The best days are ones where you become so caught up in what you are doing that you lose your sense of yourself and the sense of time passing. For me, they are usually when I am with the people I love. I guess the best and worst days have in common that something is all-consuming. On the worst days, it’s usually fear or something else that consumes you and the best days it is joy and love.

This is too big a question to answer here. Perhaps the most important thing blogging will do is create political venues for people. I think political blogging has the potential to be (for good and bad) the blogging with the greatest impact and importance. I do think some great writing could potentially be generated on blogs–even personal writing.

I blog for the hell of it.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/ I’ve been getting into Glenn Greenwald’s blog. As much as the left’s constant harping on Obama is starting to annoy (and concern) me, I learn so much from his blog. Ethically, he is correct most of the time but politically, I’m not sure he gets how representative politics works (e.g., it requires negotiation and compromise). Or maybe he doesn’t care about that.

http://www.schmutzie.com/ She’s simply an excellent writer with many amazing stories to tell. What I find amazing about her stories is that she does what I attempt to do–which is connect up the particular bits of life with the bigger more general problems of living–but she does it successfully. I always find myself thinking about her posts later. The internet is full of ephemera. I think it says something that I actually vividly remember Schmutzie’s posts a long time after I read them.

http://thebloggess.com/ I believe the bloggess is a genius in many different respects. She’s definitely a comic genius. She also reminds me of my best friend from college (who is also from Houston). I think many successful bloggers generate envy because it is easy to think that their little anecdotes about their lives are not more inherently interesting than your little anecdotes about your life. So why do they get all the attention. However, I don’t think anyone could think this about the bloggess because not a single one of us can do what she does.

http://www.fussy.org/ Like Schmutzie–like many bloggers!–Eden Kennedy is just one of those people who writes much better than I do and has mastered the form and content of blogging while always somehow conveying something meaningful and authentic. She’s a writer’s writer. So much so that her and Schmutzie have pretty much shown me why I can’t be writer–I’m all about the telling and never the showing.

I must admit that I find her very lovable, also. I can only love the blogs of those people I believe to be genuinely lovable. And she is extremely funny.

http://girlsareprettyforever.blogspot.com/ Girls Are Pretty. I guess I’m putting this because no one seems to read Girls Are Pretty that I know of and it’s completely brilliant. I’m not sure it qualifies as a blog. But I like the idea of a blog that is fairly divorced from reality and not personal. I imagine whoever writes this is basing it off of his life, in some totally tangential way.

http://iasshole.org/ I, Asshole is one of the first blogs I read. SJ has been blogging since forever, with some very unfortunate hiatuses. She’s one of a kind and does amazing things with words, including making up new ones.

I’m ashamed to say the songs would probably be full of pathos and the soundtrack would be a cliche. I once wrote a post about how I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem on a very high bridge on the way to Canada and realized that the Requiem was bridge-jumping-off-music. I can only think of cliched soundtracks but I would like some segment of my life to go perfectly with the first Velvet Underground record. Actually, between 18-21 my life probably did go well with this record. What I wish though was that my life was more like a Bollywood movie.

The other day my husband and I both started singing “Pinball Wizard” while on a walk with our daughter. But that would be incongruous as a soundtrack to my life. It’s a good soundtrack for “Tommy” though.

9) Chocolate or Vanilla? Depends. Cake, ice cream or pudding? Overall, probably vanilla. But this is only because I am absurdly picky about the quality of deserts.

10)  What do you find beautiful?  I’m not sure how to answer this. So many things in the world are beautiful. Of course, all the people I love are beautiful. I have moments where I am able to see almost every human being as beautiful in some way and I love those moments. When I can do that, I know I’m at my most sane.

This blogging thing has been a part of my life since 2006. I started at a little typepad blog, writing about knitting.

It came at a time when my whole world was changing. We’d left Flagstaff, we were working out the future of our relationship. We lived separately for a couple of weeks while he finished his last college class and I started my new job. Weekends were spent with my driving up to our sleepy little mountain town, packing up the boxes of our apartment in the pines and getting ready to start our adult lives in this hot city.

I felt very alone in this apartment without him, our IM conversations a pixelated panorama of frustration, of anger, of pain. As long as my feet touch earth in this life I will forever remember something that he said:

When I need you the most, you aren’t here.

Sobering, hurtful, shocking. True. Absolutely true. Of the many mistakes I have made in life, this one has weighed the heaviest on my heart, because it is the one thing I have been party to that has been completely my fault. I had no excuse.

I turned to my little pink blog, with the cartoon butterflies  and the rambling about socks and wrote. The heaviness of my heart could not have been more absent from that space. I bled craft and frivolous words. I bled happy. HAPPY! HAPPY! But, knowing that even a stranger happening by on those words…made me feel real. Somehow, there would be some tangible record of my existence.  While I was away from my love, I sent tentacles out into the darkness. I hoped some kind soul would twine their fingers through mine, until I felt strong enough to stand and repair all of the things I’d done wrong.

One day, I wrote what was on my heart. The entire tone of this space changed. It has never reverted to the pink, fluffy craft blog. It became a lifeline. It became a necessity and an obsession and most importantly, it became a community. What it has never become, is comfortable. I have never laid down all of my swords and just let myself be open.

Which is not to say that I haven’t shared quite a bit. Quite a bit of personal, quite a bit of shocking, quite a bit of tragic. But, that precious balance that we all strive for, is always a shackle. There are stories that sit like smoke in my fingers. I cup my hands around them, knowing how I long to drag them into my lungs and blow them back out in smoke rings. I long to watch you all walk through the incense-like intensity of them and inhale them. All second hand and yet completely personal. But, as with all things, they are not just my story to tell. So, I tuck them away into my pouch, all marsupial. They make noise when I walk, like loose change in an old man’s pockets. You can hear me coming all the way down the hall.

click clack ching ching click clack ching ching

It is not a stealthy way to be.

So many real life eyes spy my words here. Most invited, some not. Some of you have gone from being words on a screen, to arms that have hugged me. Eyes that have seen me speak in the same room. Hands that have held mine, tears that have been shared. The responsibility grows. The wide brush I used to paint grows ever finer, controlling the artistry of my strokes into tight lines. There is so much that harnesses me, that isn’t just mine to share.

I’ve been not neglectful of this place lately, but tentative. I admit my own hypocrisy as I encourage everyone else.

Write what you want, when you want, how you want. Fuck us if we can’t take it.

Knowing, as I am firm that I will stand by people I have said that to, steadfast as a wall of brick….that the same does not apply to me, here. I consider that maybe I have put too much stock in this. Maybe I have put too much weight on it. Maybe I take myself too seriously.

Maybe, I don’t need to be here anymore. Maybe I was fooling myself, thinking I could write.

Maybe I do need to be here.

But my fingers stroke these quiet keys, in hopes of something new. In hopes of something more. In hopes of something. None of this can remain as it is, because I feel like I am supernova. Perhaps, if I am a dying star (in the celestial sense), maybe something new can be born of the black hole I am sure to leave in my wake.

As I fail to sleep, for the depth of my nightmares, I watch him.

He has impossibly long eyelashes, that catch the beauty of sleep with  a devastating beauty. His closed eyes, slightly swollen from the intensity of his rest, undisturbed and perfect. He sleeps.

I try not to wake him when I jolt myself awake. Dreams thick with oddly yellow eyes and fat, blunt fingertips bruising my skin. My heart hammers in its clumsy rhythm against my ribs, fragile with the weight of my breasts that shake when I cry. I turn into his back, or his shoulder, or close to his sleeping face and listen to the white noise of the air conditioner.

But, as I watch moonlight catch his fair lashes, long and colored with night shades I am almost overwhelmed to scream. I want to disturb his sleep. I want to shake him awake with my coward hands, clutch him to me like a blanket and worry my fingers across the softness of his skin. I want to share with him the vivid colors of my dreams. I want to open my dry mouth and let the fear and the weariness and the weakness fall out and over his perfect profile. I want to give it all to him so that for one day I can walk, unencumbered. I want to hand it all over so that for one night I can sleep, as open winged as a fresh butterfly.

Then I realize, as I turn away from him, that I would never do these things. I would never wish upon him what my eyes have seen. What my body has felt. I would rather him here, safe in this bed with me. I roll to lay on my back and wait for my heart to calm, watching the ceiling fan turn infinitely overhead.

I feel that we are close enough, you and I, that I can admit that I have a problem.

*big breath*

My name is Christine and I am a Farkleholic. Farkle is a dice game, I play it on Facebook and it is HIDEOUSLY addictive. The first time I played against an actual, live human being they wished me luck in the chat window. I wished them the same and thought it very sportsmanlike conduct.

I’ve noticed, however, that not everyone adheres to sportsmanlike conduct. My interactions with many other farkleites, upon receipt of my hearty “good luck!” leave something to be desired. To wit:

good luck!

*crickets*

Perhaps Lisa does not speak English. After all, Facebook is an international community. So, using the unfavorable practice of racial profiling, I tried Spanish.

buena suerte!

*whatever noises crickets make in Spanish*

Ok, German?

viel glueck!

*nichts*

I ran through several other languages of which I have a loose grasp, being able to say such handy things as:

Where is the bathroom?

How much is this item?

Why does this cheese smell?

All the while not at all being able to understand the answers. Methinks it is time I should employ Rosetta Stone. I digress. None of my multilingual salutations received so much as a blink from my pal Lisa. Snooty bitch. I decided perhaps something more Medieval would be appropriate.

May the sinewy arms of Lady Luck wrap around you as an anaconda and infuse you with nothing but the cascading lush of good fortune!

“Wut?”

Success! Encouraged by my rousing of the sleeping intellectual, hidden deep in my friend Lisa, I proceeded.

A warrior’s heart, I see. A woman of few words and hearty action, forsooth shebeast! I shall trounce thee mightily and claim thy heart for my lover’s treasure!

“gl 2u2″

If it take me until the bed of my death to decipher thy devil tongue, I shall do so. I shall learn thy language of sulfur and spew it back at the as so many cockroaches! 

“it’s ur turn”

So it is, my most fair and worthy adversary, so it is. Prepare to meet thy death by the crackling fire of Beezlebub!

(I immediately rolled a completely shitty hand)

“ok”

Oh, but ye are a tight lipped sorceress. Must be descendant from witches!

Lisa left the game. Some would say it was because I was acting like a lunatic. But I know, oh I know, that it was truly because I was onto her and she couldn’t handle the pressure. That’s right.

Bet her ass will say good luck, next time.

He makes me laugh. This picture, especially, because he could not be less gangsta if he tried. Not even if he was Eminem.

He goes to the Botanical Garden with me, without complaint. He does so with my family, without complaint, and when they aren’t looking, he has me take pictures of him- humping a pole.

It’s a bit of a theme, really.

People travel from all over the world to see the Grand Canyon, the caption on his Facebook album of the Grand Canyon? “The Grand Canyon- yep, it’s definitely a big hole in the ground.”

He looks like he is going to kill me as I annoy him. But he doesn’t actually kill me. He just attempts death by eyeball. It is a quasi-effective method of making me less annoying. Unless I am especially annoying that day. Then I am an annoying force of nature. Yet, he doesn’t  kill me. He just makes this face.

He also lets me post pictures of him on the internet, with what appears to be a hairy barnacle stuck to his face.

I love him. He is brilliant on levels that I didn’t know actual people were capable. He is unflinchingly political. He is hilarious. Patient. Responsible. Cute as hell. He is five years younger than I am and infinitely more mature. He loves my mother. He yells “Goddamn Motherfucking Shit!” in his sleep. He makes me feel safe.

He is 29 today and I love him a little more, every day.

Happy Birthday, Clay Burke. I love you.

Forgiveness does not absolve us of personal responsibility. We may have been forgiven, but the lingering scar of the transgression remains. Because truth be told, forgiveness is for the soul of the wounded and not the soul of one transgressor. It is to let go of the blackness, the hate and the terror that can eat a heart alive. Forgiven, not forgotten.

So, after all these years, a 44 year old woman has forgiven the man who raped her when she was 13. She’s forgiven him, so should we, right?

No.

Partially because the victim was not a 44 year old woman, but a 13 year old girl. A 13 year old girl who was boozed up and drugged on quaaludes. A girl who may or may not have given consent, to a man 30 years her senior. Which, in case you have forgotten, means nothing when you are 13. At 13 you are unable to weigh the consequences of such a consent. At 13 you cannot legally sign a contract, how can you give consent to your own body?A 44 year old woman can forgive. But that 13 year old girl deserves some justice.

Even if she asked for it, as an adult, it was his responsibility to decline. Because 13 is a child. A 40 year old man, fucking a 13 year old girl is rape.

Unless, of course, you ask Whoopi Goldberg.

One of the many many reasons that Mr Polanski must be prosecuted (aside from his confession and subsequent evasion from authorities), is to change the thinking of  people like Whoopi Goldberg. Her dismissive, insulting, nonsensical bullshit is a prevailing, disgusting view of rape.

Or should I say, “rape-rape”?

You see, Whoopi, rape isn’t like Burger King. You don’t get to have it your way. You don’t get to change the toppings to make it a more palatable shit burger to swallow. Rape is a lonesome, horrid, insidious thing and it doesn’t matter if it’s date rape. Or a stranger rape. Or a rape from your partner. Or from your parent. Or your school teacher. Or from a famous man, 30 years your senior.

It doesn’t matter, if you are 13 or 5, or 72, 17 or 44. Rape is rape. So tell, me please, Whoopi..when I gave up, told him I loved him and lay half conscious, was that rape? Rape-rape? Super duper rape with a side of rapesauce? The rapetastic voyage? Does my forgiveness of his piteous soul make what he did to me ok? Does it excuse my nightmares? The altered life I live?

Or is it as disgusting as drugging  a 13 year old, having sex with her, admitting it and then running away to avoid a trial? If you’ll pardon me, Whoopi…I think you don’t know what the fuck-fuck you’re talking about. That’s ok, though, I forgive you.

But you damn well better believe, I won’t forget.