The Stage

Wishing is for regrets. But, frankly, if I had one personal life-wish, it would be that I could go back to 2007 and get it out of my system. Because, as we're told over and over again, hindsight and all that noise, right? Not that everything was bad this year. It wasn't despite the job thing, the two car accident thing, the break up, the money woes, lost never to be found friends, and strangely, the second break up. Been able to keep my family afloat somewhat since the new job worked out (which hopefully will turn into something more substantial come the new year). Ironically (or not), I'm at my healthiest since 2007. I can afford to, you know, live. And my family - god love them, but they drive me crazy! - is still all intact and my nephew seems to melt my tiny snowflake of a heart every time.

But also with hindsight, I've arrived to a few things about myself that I never really considered, and it's one of the things about Corey, irritating though he can be, I really liked. In 2007, all this would've been much more useful to me (or not, who the fuck really knows?). Thing is, as recently as last week, Golden and I were talking, and I heard myself say words about Terry that I think Corey's friends or his mom probably said to him about me. Over the last couple of years, this happened a lot. And, I'll own up to it: my lack of security, my lack of openness, not just with him but my family, my lack of intimacy, my distance, my insecurity, my wavering commitment. Yes, these are all things that are true and caustic. But all of this isn't anything new. It's old news. And as I told my best friend, it's a wonder why Corey even decided I was a fair gable early this year. Again. It's a wonder why he stuck around as long as he did. Because when it was good, it was pretty much what I suppose people in a cliche sort of way call magic.

Then I get to thinking, why did I even bother. With any of it. All of it. What was it about this boy that made me do stupidly out of character things. Looking back (as I ever do), I guess I really liked being able to laugh and reflect and connect and relate to a person. He's been only the second person I've been with who was my age (everyone else has been younger, and thus, useless), and I thought he got me whatever that's supposed to mean. He was insightful and bright and fun. But, thinking about it, what was I thinking? He was also so very much unlike me, I'm not certain that it would've worked. I have talking this way because it sounds like bullshit like fate and destiny. But so removed from it - and I wondered out loud many times, to be sure - it just looks like a mess. It looks like we both went into it with great intentions and were hoping for the best. Of course, it didn't come, for either of us.

When we were at the train station to go off to San Diego, there was a little bit of an incident. We didn't know where to go to wait for our train so we went in line to ask at the info desk. When it was our turn, he asked the girl where we were supposed to be, she said to him we should just form a line there, and they'll lead us there, he asked if she could just tell him where the train would arrive, she said she didn't know until it arrived, he said she wasn't being helpful, she reiterated again to just make a line, he copped a nasty attitude said she just didn't want to tell him and he nearly stormed away. I saw the black couple a few spaces behind us just look at him in the same manner people look at someone writing a check at the supermarket for $1. I couldn't believe this had happened.

I don't mean to come off as calling him irrational, because I don't think he is, but this little bit has stuck with me all this time because, again, looking back, it was just a precursor. I should've already known what it be like. I should've known that I did not want to go through my own little conflict at the train station over and over and over again. But, I'm sure I said, Fuck it, we're off to San Diego!" And the thing is I hate stuff like that in people: getting all shitty on someone doing their job, getting a nasty ass attitude while complaining, and inconveniencing others. It's so fucking retarded but it's the fucking truth! Before, I'd joke about never dating someone who returns a gift. Getting all up on the train station girl's face because she can't (or won't, who the fuck cares) answer your question is the same.

As I'm sure it was with him, every time he brought up things I entirely disagreed with, however banal or deep they were, I couldn't believe this was the person I felt I should be with. Whether it was clothes, or God, or work, or politics, books, cartoons, marriage, food, kids, strangers, sex, television, music, family, a lot of the time I couldn't believe what I was hearing, what I saw. God knows what he thought of me. And it makes me wonder, why then did I think this was a viable option?

I think it was my weird hop that he would just relax with me. That he would stop taking everything so damn seriously. He was worried so damn much when people I don't know would announce their engagements, I just wanted him to stop. He'd complain about me spending the night, I wish he would just stop. He would talk about how beautiful everyone else was and how much he wanted to be like them, and I wanted him to stop. He worried so much about ticket sales for his show, and I just wanted him to stop. But I never said so, and he never did. It was ridiculous of me, of course, to think that this man would change so much about himself just because I wanted him to. But even then, at some points, when he gave me the out to just not be together, I recoiled at the idea of him being with someone else, and I told him I didn't want him to see anyone else. Why did I do that? Did I really think he'd change in the ways I wanted? Did I think I could do the things he wanted me to? Did I really want him and I to work out, long term? Did I even want that, period? These are the things that I think about a lot.

Funny sort of thing is, now that he decided to just be a stranger with me again, I think back to 2007 because we maybe exchanged a few emails or myspace comments that year (which don't include the ones about HIV). I think he was with someone, and I wasn't even considering anything relationshipy with anyone. But, I remember telling Golden, back then, about this internet friend I'd made. I remember saying to her I liked him because he seemed more interesting than the people I knew personally at the time. I could be mangling it, my memory is terrible. But I remember him being flirty with me in a message or two, and I remember thinking how often I was in West Hollywood and how we'd not met (we'd "known" each other for about a year then, he lives in Hollywod). But I brushed it aside. I thought he'd be a good friend to have, even just on the internet. I remember him telling me he'd call me back this one time when I actually >gasp!< called him, but he didn't, and that was fine. But, after what we've been through together, and due to each other, I think back and wish I could go back to 2007 with him. Because it was easy then, and I didn't know all these things and neither did he. We could've kept going that way for however long we would. And, I, of course, would stop thinking about what a shitty friend he turned out to be.

He's shitty because he hurt me. He set out to do so, and god damn it, it worked.

One of the last times we were out, he took me to his favorite restaurant. He was right: I hated the place. Pretentious atmosphere, douchebaggery at every corner, and a menu that did not seem at all appetizing. But we had a good walk through the art scene (kill me the fuck now!) just before, and he wanted to show me somewhere he loved. As I said, nothing looks particularly good but a Thai burger (say what?), and he always orders steak (there's a reason for that, I'm sure), and he asked me what I was going to have and I told him, and he got this odd look on his face and said, "Really?" and it made me feel like he was saying, "Really? We're at this expensive nice restaurant and you're going to have a burger?" and it made me feel, don't laugh, as if my food order wasn't good enough for him. Isn't that so fucking retarded? Waitress arrives and takes our order. Later, more than halfway through bad chicken, and his steak, he notices it's pink. He's been eating it this entire time and it's only now that he wants it cooked better. Waitress takes it back to do so three times (or was it two? Does it really matter when the piece of meat in question was the size of his thumb?) until it was good enough for him to take home.

You might think me petty, but these are the kinds of things that when I think about them make me see that I should've known better. I mean, I did. But I did it anyway.

Anyway, it isn't all his fault by a longshot. I admit it. But now, I'm just thinking, what I was trying to do. And for what, and for whom. I don't wish bad things for him, but I'm also not insane: he turned out to be girl-levels of crazy, and a bad person. Instead of thinking more like this, because I am pretty tired of myself having this bullshit conversation with my best friend (I'm sure she doesn't want to listen to me bitch, either), I'll do what I wanted him to do all that time, and just stop.

In 2007 I was younger and still believed I was indestructible.

"Everything is so fragile. There’s so much conflict, so much pain. You keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize this is it: the dust is your life going on. If happy comes along, that weird, and unbearable delight that’s actual happy—I think you have to grab it while you can. You take what you can get. ‘cause it’s here, and then…gone."

— Joss Whedon

Run

I don't want to come off as one of those assholes who find some strange sense of worth in saying out into the world that I never ask for anything (which I don't) so I won't. I'm a different sort of asshole. But in a strange, if not unexpected, turn of events, it's becoming increasingly difficult to put on that I'm fine and everything will be okay attitude when I wake up in the morning. Look, I think I'm a pretty realistic person, I really think I am, and perhaps that's where my naivetee comes from, my lack of maturity, my weirdly romantic notions about the world and life and people (which now sounds oxymoronic), so, realistically, I'm wondering how much longer this will all keep up.

Over the last three weeks, I've built up from walking to jogging 1-2 miles near daily (six days straight, on and off the others) because I've this need for something that is mine, you know. And counting on anything or anyone for it seems awfully difficult. My inbox and voicemail stay empty day in and day out and that gets to be really difficult to deal with given my family's and my situations. That's a huge piece I'm missing, really, daily work. The drudgery most working class folk complain about daily, I miss it. I accomplish things daily at work, frustrating as that may be. So, I run instead. If I could run for ten hours daily five days a week, really. But, please, that doesn't pay the bills.

When I talk to Corey, when I talk to my family, when I talk to my best friend, what can I say, this is a big part of it for me. Perhaps as Corey's intimated in the past, I am one of those people who define themselves by their work. It's become my life and without it, without that sort of structure and discipline, nearly everything else in me stops working properly. You see, it's happen a few times before. Details notwithstanding, I've been here before.

This is all the practical stuff. What's not necessarily the most important in life. But it makes life happen. Let's be real.

So fine, I just lay in bed trying to sleep, worrying about all this fucking bullshit, trying to ignore the slight pain in my knee, and I can't, and I fire up this computer, do some online looking and fill out more and more forms and at the end of each, after hitting the submit button, I think, foolishly, maybe futilely, this one will be it.

Anyway, a little venting and a little me cowering in some corner time is allowed I think. I'm all for a good attitude and all but I'm not made of stone. But while all of this happens, good and bad, I'm going for a quick run.

Good morning.

"I struggled to love and provide. How many of you know the true and bitter force of that simple word provide?"
- Don DeLillo, COSMOPOLIS

I Love You, Bret Easton Ellis

Yesterday, Xeni Jardin tweeted this link. In it, Bret Easton Ellis's feelings on why women aren't necessarily as good film directors as men are sort of criticized. Sort of because, well, where's the support in the criticism? Says the post's writer:

"Where to start? The part where he sounds semi-apologetic about his misogyny and then reclaims it all over again to claim that The Proposal is worse than say, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? How about the part where Ellis thinks a director is always responsible for the visual components of a movie, except for when that director is a woman like Sofia Coppola? Or that women don't have a visual sensibility because he thinks only men get one? Or when he says that all female directors are "emotionalist"?

It is tempting to go through one by one, and point out the absurdity of these claims. Then again, in addition to his printed and onscreen oeuvre, this is a man whose previous Tweets have included, "John Mayer in the March Playboy is one of the most interesting, funny and revelatory celebrity interviews I've ever read. He just gets it." In other words, his idea of revelatory is saying things that are deep-seated, prejudicial convention and protesting that everyone can't handle his edgy truth. So he really doesn't care if it's actually true or not."

I for one would've loved to hear the support against Ellis's absurd claims. Really. I'm not overreaching, I think, because a good argument is based on, well, arguing, but I think this little post doesn't do what I thought it might do, which is tear apart Ellis's comments with supporting claims of the writer's position. But there were none. It read to me the same way it sounds like when folk claim they're Mexican but don't know why.

And what about Bret Easton Ellis's comments regarding women as film directors? He says:

"Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know."

And, just prior to this, Ellis states:

"There’s something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze...We’re watching, and we’re aroused by looking, whereas I don’t think women respond that way to films, just because of how they’re built."

Is there any truth to what Ellis says? The knee-jerk reaction is he is wrong, as highlighted in the livejournal post. But as person who enjoys movies and film, I'm finding it very very difficult to disagree. I'd ask everyone, which are your favorite woman-directed movies and I'd wager a lot of us would need a moment or two of thinking to come up with a few. We can each come up with our favorite movies list in seconds, and I'd ask how many of these were made by women directors and I'd guess none.

It's very difficult to come up with a film that I love that features a woman at the helm. AMERICAN PSYCHO is one (of course, being that the source material is also a top three favorite of mine didn't hurt), and my favorite movie of all last year was THE HURT LOCKER. It isn't that I love these films because they were made by women, but because they're fantastic stories told with such fearlessness and with individual aesthetics that it would be hard to point out each films' flaws. But, personally, aside from these, what else do I get? My boyfriend and I were briefly talking last night about this. I read to him the bit where Ellis says that TRANSFORMERS is a better movie than THE PROPOSAL and Corey's reaction was that the TRANSFORMERS is trash and he really liked THE PROPOSAL. I asked whether or not us liking the movies made them any good (I also said that if given the option between the two, despite the terrible amounts of shit TRANSFORMERS is, that's the one I'd chose to watch), which of course lead us to the bigger question of what 'good' is, which to me sounds like what Ellis is saying: is a movie a good movie because a woman made it? If what I get from women directors are romantic comedies that don't really serve any artistic purpose, how can I not think women make bad movies? It's all in the evidence presented by the creators.

But, here's an example. Take THE PUNISHER: here you have a comics character in two movies made within a decade of each other, neither of which is spectacular film making. The first iteration was made by Jonathan Hensleigh and it's absolute trash. It isn't even fun. Everything about this movie makes me retch because it took what has been a good idea for action movies (revenge!) and made it a caricature that no one finds redeeming (he has a story credit as well). Four years later, Lexi Alexander made the second movie, and it's endlessly a much better-made movie that's not only more fun and violent and funny and exciting. Does it mean that the latter movie is better because a woman made it?

Like Ellis, I love the work Sofia Coppola puts out, even MARIE ANTOINETTE. I think her way of making movies each time has a clear vision and therefore genuinely brilliant artistic value. Kathryn Bigelow's STRANGE DAYS is also an incredibly brilliant film (but now a much dated story than I imagined back in the early 1990's). And I've loved all of Floria Sigismondi's music videos (I've zero interest in a movie about The Runaways, incidentally). So, the women who've access to making movies, how come they make such claptrap trash? What happens? It just seems that even just asking the question, or as Ellis did and sharing the opinion, labels you as sexist and misogynist. Okay. Fine. Just show me where the movies are and I too will re-think my opinion.

“…I’m just tired of being wrong all the time just because I’m a guy…I mean, a male chauvinist isn’t born, he’s made, and more and more of them are being made by women…Women are right. You’re wrong. You get used to the idea. You live down to expectations.” - Chuck Palahniuk, CHOKE

Read: Generation A

It begins with a tsunami and ends on an island.

When bees have been extinct for years and five people from all over the world are stung, forces mobilize and trips into pharmaceuticals and celebrity and religion and World of Warcraft and Abercrombie & Fitch and tourette's syndrome and maybe even a little brain stem cloning happen.

These five people--Harj, Zack, Samantha, Diane, Julien--must surely have something in common that long-extinct bees suddenly have stung them. But they don't. Not really. Not at first. But what happens is as they begin to unravel the reason (not mystery) of what's happening to them, I find myself seeing the world through their eyes. Not because they're their eyes. Their eyes are mine. (In a previous novel (ALL FAMILIES ARE PSYCHOTIC), Coupland introduced an HIV-infected mother and her dysfunctional family. And it seems so prescient that when I was dealing with my initial HIV diagnosis, I read this novel, and I was and am Janet Drummond.) One of the strangest things and most powerful things that Douglas Coupland manages to do with his stories for me is place them in the NOW. His stories and his characters could never have existed at any other point in time. And as I read about Harj while in the middle of the 2004 tsunami, or Samantha attempting to make an "earth sandwich," I know when all of this is taking place. But the ridiculousness of this feeling of NOW for me is that I am Harj and I am Samantha, and I couldn't be anyone else. Like them, I am built for this time on earth and I couldn't have even been conceived of in any other point in history.

Coupland takes a certain amount of story time telling stories. His characters tell each other stories and reveals something that even they didn't know: that once you access your creative imagination and sit around a fire and tell each other stories, we're creating a better world for us all. But as it's asked, why is it so difficult for people to tell stories? Answer:

"Stories come from a part of you that only gets visited rarely - sometimes never at all. I think most people spend so much time trying to convince themselves that their lives are stories that the actual story-creating part of their brains hardens and dies. People forget that there are other ways to ordering the world."

And it makes me believe that Coupland feels the need to tell stories even in the age of digital everything and satellites and sms messaging is even more important than all of this tech. Maybe I'm naive in believing so, but Coupland makes me feel I am right and belong in this world. Stories. Not anecdotes, not jokes, but actual stories. Stories about us--ourselves! Humans as stories! Humans telling stories! And while not necessarily talking about telling stories as entertainment nor as a means to passing down history: when Coupland places the five in a circle, telling stories, this is what will eventually lead to their conclusion: they can save the world.

But ultimately, what GENERATION A does for me is that it makes me believe that we are not doomed in this hyperconnected world. Really, it's not that I believe this will lead us down the path of ruin, me, using this light and machinery to write this, but just because the world is changing, even if by our designs and desire and greed, the world remains a remarkable place that finds its way to let you know hoe much it's worth to stop and admire everything that you've forgotten you have. That I've forgotten I have. And I will always tell you a story.

Written by Douglas Coupland.

Yes

Third week of the new year's coming up, you see.

I don't date is the easiest way to put it because it's succinct and accurate. Because I don't. Most people, good Christ, I can't stand them. But that's not entirely true: I love people of all shapes and flavors. It's when they want to get close to me or I them, they lose their appeal. Which is fine. As I mentioned before, I'm not in this life situation to collect ex's. I'm not looking for my next person to date once this one is done with. Who does that? Why? I never really got it.

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking...

"And when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them, Will you take my heart—stains and all?” and they say, “I will,” and they ask you the same question, and you say, “I will,” too."

...and what I seem to have come up with is a really simplistic answer to a pretty complex question. Because no, I'm not in this to collect ex's. I'm not.

Crooked Little Vein

"If even half of what you’ve told me about yourself is true, you should’vs turned into the world’s biggest asshole years ago. But you’re sweet and you’re funny and you don’t give up. You know how hard it is, finding someone in this town who’s still determined?"

- Warren Ellis, CROOKED LITTLE VEIN

The Sandman

"Love…Have you ever been in love?…Horrible, isn’t it?…It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…you give them a piece of you. They don’t ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn’t you own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like ‘maybe we should just be friends’ or ‘how perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart…It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

— neil gaiman, THE SANDMAN: THE KINDLY ONES

Anansi Boys

"Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs."

- Neil Gaiman, ANANSI BOYS

Love Your Life...

Now, how many times must you prove you're an angel?
How many more demons do you have to strangle?
How much longer must you remain in this dream
Before I finally figure out if you're insane or a genius?

--Atmosphere, LOVELIFE