wish you were here

Something I started on but can’t seem to finish from a couple of months ago:

don’t want my life to be the remix of grandma’s–
in a cabin in canada, the winnipeg winters
driving her to madness between
a widower and a bottle of bourbon.
she never learned how to drive so a road trip’s out.
guess she figured out early on
that the best prize she could win was a husband,
and when the warranty expires and god collects
the damaged parts,
it’s her that’s left with the dents and dings.
she’s already outlived one of her children,
so suddenly life became her fault.
she’d call me on my birthday apologizing
for mom’s aneurysm, as if she were the one
standing with the TNT, waiting for blood.
drunk, she’d say she always knew
what was going to happen after the fact.
hindsight always makes us psychic.
I’d like to think all those things
thinned out in consecutive generations:
mom started working right out of high school
and before she knew it
a man and kids were upon her,
and I swore I’d give myself a chance to figure it all out
before it was too late.
and now, at my quarter life,
I’m dying to find my own name.
I’ve been stuck with the one I was given,
but I’m living like I have a hyphenated body.
give me some letters, any letters,
and let them make sense of me.

Wait. Must make tea.

…

Okay. Water’s boiling. So. Last night, the Post-Thanksgiving shindig. It actually went really well. Nice and laid back, good food, good people.

Actually, this whole weekend’s been good. Friday night went down to the Ice House downtown to check out their 80′s/electroclash night, and it was like the old days boogieing down at House of Blues when they played a mostly New Wave/New Romantic setlist rather than the invasion of 94.1′s insistence on the occasional “Dancing Queen.” Ryan, fresh from being free of being one of the Owners of Roma, was one of three DJs spinning. He was not in a good mood– someone with a key to Roma broke in Wednesday night and took $3000 they were going to pay back to the original owner, which put a little damper on the night.

Other than that, the night was as perfect as I could want it to be after a week being a hermit. I got to go dancing, which I haven’t really done in awhile. I got to forget about things for awhile and be a little silly. There’s something to be said for distraction.

Went to lunch with Kim to procrastinate on the mopping, a battle which I fought half-assed, and by all accounts, pretty much ended in a draw. But the food and conversation was good.

With everybody over last night, it was just plain nice to have people around. It’s so chilly outside, and I haven’t done much writing this week besides the blogging, because now that Roma’s gone my Place to go to write is gone with it. I like being inside a cafe to write– people going in and out, having conversations, and sometimes I can people watch with headphones on. Roma was perfect for that. For now I have to find a new place to go, and I know at some point I’m going to get ready to go to Roma without realizing that it’s not there anymore, even though there’s a good chance it’ll open back up, just maybe not as Roma.

I’ll find a place. I can’t write at home, so it’ll be somewhere.

And being at home has made me really think about things this week, mainly how I’ve been practically trained by living in Vegas to be fixated and judgemental on a person’s visual appearance and presentation, and because I’m not one of those people who jumps out at you visually, I tend to just automatically assume nobody’s interested in talking to me. And while that may not be true on the whole, I’ve been out with so many friends who get random guys talking to them and then suddenly I’m noticed because I have to say something funny to make myself not invisible. And this is why I’m so quiet usually at social functions: sometimes it’s because I just would rather listen to the conversation, but usually it’s because someone hitting on a friend of mine really isn’t interested in what I have to say.

This week, thinking about that, I realized that while it’s a crappy situation to be in for someone with bad self-esteem anyway, this year I’m starting to appreciate my own talent. I’m starting to know when I’m on. And I know I can look like I have nothing to say, which makes me invisible in some ways, but I’m not out to impress those kind of people. It’s as if I believe in love at first sight, just not necessarily when they look at me. And that’s okay. I get props from the people I respect, and I really appreciate that and take it to heart when I’m in that kind of social gathering.

I want to break myself out of that habit of automatically thinking I have no chance because I’m not strikingly beautiful or even strikingly cute on the outside. Vegas has made that habit very bad for me, and I’m ready to stop doing that. I want to be quiet because I’m trying to be mysterious, not because I think nobody likes me.

It’s not a New Year’s resolution. It’s a prayer for myself, like the one I made years ago to stop hating myself. I let myself fall into that trap because of a boy, and I’m not doing it again because of someone else, and especially because of me.

Not that I want to be chipper all the time. I just want to push myself to be better not because I think I suck but because I’m not satisfied and I have inspiration and creative stimulation in the life and people around me.

Yeah. So that’s been my week, for the most part.

Today I want to write. I’m going to have some leftovers and probably head over to the Coffee Bean to try and force square pegs into round holes. Er, so to speak.

Aside from a small mess at work, Thanksgiving was pretty chill. Went over to my Aunt Kathy’s house to visit with some of my mom’s side of the family. Actually ended up talking music and the local music scene with one of my cousins which was nice. Sean wanted to leave early, of course. He’s not comfortable with family functions, and while I can understand that somewhat, at the same time it just makes me sad that he doesn’t want to deal with it. I actually like both sides of my family as people, along with loving them very much, so being around them all doesn’t annoy me. It’s like Sean and I switch roles at family get-togethers and parties: he ends up in the corner watching TV with one of the kids and I’d rather hang out with people.

He’s like that with dad’s side of the family too. He doesn’t like people wanting to know what’s going on in his life. It’s good to have some privacy, but being completely closed off doesn’t make life any fun. Sean doesn’t trust anybody, so it makes him not want to take risks– and I thought I was bad. I’m just going to leave it there.

Then I went over to Kim’s for some dessert and a couple of movies. A nice time all around. Greg makes good pie.

The holidays have been good so far this year. I’m hoping this’ll continue into Yule and Christmas– last year I was lucky to have all the girls here for my first holiday without mom and dad, and it looks like a lot of people are going out of town for Christmas, and Sean’s leaving the day after to go out of town for a few days, so I’ll be kinda stuck here by myself, essentially. I’m determined to get through it.

It’ll stay good, I swear.

Sorry for being frumpy this week. Can’t help it. The winter does this to me almost every year.

I should talk about last night’s last open mic at the place we call Roma. It was bittersweet, I guess that would be the best word. The place was packed, the poetry was good, and we ran until a quarter to 11.

I did a new piece, Ireland Forever, an old Jason Quiggle piece called To My Beautiful Tribe, and a piece by Kamal Symonette-Dixon. I got a lot of comments about it being the best performance I’ve ever done there, though in my mind it wasn’t all that different from any other performance aside that it was the last one at Roma.

Andy K and I did an impromptu haiku head-to-head of some of our best stuff– and, of course, it ended in a draw. The crowd this time actually had good energy and kept it up, even until the very end.

Andy K and I ended it out with How to Write a Politcal Poem, which became a crowd favorite over the past month or so.

I’m still a little numb to the fact that tomorrow will officially be Roma’s last day of existence. It’s depressing in that subtle, acute way that doesn’t seem to hurt that much at first, but then later on when you have that huge breakdown you realize it had more impact than you wanted to admit.

Boys. Bah humbug.

I’ve been really quiet this week. I’ve also been staying inside this week, for the most part– I made a couple of Trying To Do Work excursions to Roma, both of which failed miserably because even though I’d been sitting there, surrounded with notebooks and journals and papers and books, that somehow makes me more approachable (to people I already know, which disappoints me in the Wanting to Get to Know Boys Dept.)

I’ve been feeling really grumpy with my fiction lately, in part because I’ve been doing some reading but no new ideas, and because even the novels that I have going on in my head don’t want to figure themselves out yet. And it might just be because the only thing I have to distract myself from with any fiction right now is my being single, but that’s what I’ve been writing the bulk of my poetry about recently. All that fatalistic crap.

Though I’ve been thinking about my characters quite a bit lately, from stuff already written and stuff not written yet. I think they’ve been trying to talk to me, but I’m not sure how to translate it all yet.

It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change gotta come.

(I’ve been on an Otis Redding kick lately.)

Last night at Roma, I met the new owner of the space. Her name is Alexis. She was meeting with a friend of hers to talk about redecorating the place. I’m not sure of the timeline (we’re all guessing the first of the year is when it’ll be back), but she plans to keep the cafe funky and keep it a performance venue, while adding an expanded menu and possibly having a catering service out of the back kitchen.

I’m crossing my fingers. She seemed like she knew what she wanted to do, and seemed to understand the importance of the place in the local scene. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her in-depth, but she had a very firm handshake, so that was comforting.

Holy balls.

So I’ve found this site called the Blog of Death, and though a tad morbid, actually chronicles obituaries of famous people who have died. I go there every few days to see if someone who’s work I’ve seen has passed without much press.

The first thing that shocked me was Matthew Jay, an up and coming British songwriter whose major debut record I postitively reviewed for CityLife a couple of years ago, had killed himself in October.

And then, today, I find that Jonathan Brandis, star of The Neverending Story 2 was found dead in his apartment last week of an apparent suicide.

You don’t really read about these things unless you go looking, I suppose, but it still saddens me that even the smallest of influences on your life still shock you when they go.