A bit of randomness for your Sunday Morning

I had a meltdown yesterday, one of those spectacular crying episodes that come out of nowhere. The kind where you start off crying about something little, silly even, and then all of a sudden it becomes a waterfall and those things you cried about months ago seem to have happened yesterday and need fresh tissues and a space to be heard. I am sure it was brought on by all sorts of things and the fact that I could not control it was somewhat scary at the time but given a few hours of perspective (and some cold pizza – ahh self-medication) it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal now. The big deal comes now.
What do I do from here? Essentially everything is finished yet I still feel somewhat in limbo. Work has finally calmed down (though I say that and will probably need to knock on wood to avoid another upheaval – Ok done.). The divorce is really and truly final and I can now say, for good or ill, I have been twice divorced. Though the second one was executed like a back alley kidney robbing in Thailand. I lived but it still hurts like hell and the lingering infection weakens me, but it is done and I can never go back. Someone else has my kidney now and I paid for it. I have no children. I have no family here (though my self-made family of friends is very comforting and I am so glad to know people so kind and selfless).
I suppose it is a quiet Sunday morning of questions. The sun is bright the air is cold my winter pajamas are more then warm and comfy and I look forward to a day in the West with friends who are fun and funny and have great hair ;-)
I need to make some tea and get over myself. Do some reading and writing. Quit cleaning to take my mind off things (yes I live in a very neat apartment, I have a cleaning problem – when I am agitated I clean. You should have me over sometime; I am really good at it).
Things to state for the record before I go for tea:
1. Walter is a very wise man and no one in my life has ever listened so hard to me and figured me out so well – thank you to whomever it was that brought him here
2. I miss my family terribly and wish like hell I was closer to them, but I know I will probably never live in North Dakota again. Which is really sad because part of me wants to very much but it is not financially possible. Everyone should experience the open like one can experience it in North Dakota. It makes you breath differently.
3. The Man From Snowy River is my favorite movie; I don’t have a favorite book because I can’t choose.
4. I have lived here since 1992 and have more close friends then I’ve ever had. They make being here bearable.
5. I miss Goddard and my friends from there. They are scattered and busy and I wish we could all live in a commune together because they are magic for my mind and for my heart
6. CBS Sunday morning is my favorite show. The Robot once described it as morning news for the geriatric, but I still like it and always will. I’ve been watching it since it went on the air 26 years ago. Same for This Old House. It reminds me of my dad and I won’t miss an episode.
7. I love tea and toast in the morning because of my life-changing trip to London with friends I have now known for 12 years. I think of them every single Sunday morning when I have tea and toast.
8. I am homesick for places I have never been

Up too early

This is one of those days where I am up WAYYYYY too early for the amount of sleep I got. Went to bed past midnight and was up at 5am (the usual time). I don’t know what it is about me that doesn’t allow me to sleep in. Maybe it was the years of chores I had to do, but even then my father wasn’t a task master – if I wasn’t up, he just did them, which I guess made me feel guilty so I made sure I was up, but regardless – I’ve been off the farm for a good long time now and I still keep the farm girl schedule – what gives?

A few important things:

My mom is OK!!!!!!! She went through the heart procedure yesterday and all of the times I talked to her after she sounded very much like herself (perhaps a bit more surly, but who wouldn’t be after being forced to lay still for over 8 hours). They will likely let her out of the hospital today into the care of one of my siblings for a few days. It was so awful having to carry the cell phone in my hand all day long. I hated being so far away.

The band is going to Amsterdam!!!! How much fun will THAT be! Suggestions for touristy things are welcomeJ

It is Walter’s Birthday today. Friday the 13th. He made it through one of the toughest years imaginable and I am so very proud of all that he has done the last few months. He took a terrible thing and turned it around into something positive for himself. I know he is still sad about Mary and what she and the Robot did, but he doesn’t talk about it much. I think he’s been dealing with it through music and art – which seems like a good way to go. I am trying to be as good as he has been about dealing with it. I have to admit I still have very dark thoughts and sleepless nights and cry a good deal. I think if we had not become friends after all of this I would have been lost. He and the music and my family and friends kept me from killing myself. If you listen to The Long Wait – you will hear that pain of loss. Funny thing is that he wrote that only a couple of weeks before the whole thing happened. (Little did we know it was happening already)? He has premonitions like that all of the time – a little scary actually. He seems touched in some way.

Read a few articles on Chuck Klosterman that were written by Boston based mags after his reading the other day. Poor Chuck, he’s going through personal stuff too, which sucks. His book is good if you like his essays, he certainly has an open and breezy no-nonsense style common to those who tell stories in North Dakota. I am glad he can translate that out to the world. Could North Dakota become a cool place to be from rather then just a cold as hell place to be from?

There is cool band news on the horizon – I can’t talk about some of the things, but we have TWO shows left in October. Monday the 23rd at Club Passim (Which is also an art opening. Should be pretty darn cool – that show is FREE

Also on Oct 29th we’re playing mass Morgue – if you want tickets get them NOWISH, I think I have 1 left but I can get a few more!!! We also have a ton of shows in December (some ion NYC) and some in January. So far Nov is mostly free – but you never know ;-)
Is a move to NYC or Portland or LA or San Francisco in the cards to the Broken Toys – we’ll let you know!!!

I’m off for a long soaking bath before work. I love my new tub!!!

Happy BD and D day

It has been a strange and exciting few days. So many good things are happening it is almost hard to believe. The only thing I really need is some more down time to write and relax.

We played the Stone Pony in NJ with a band called Soil Work (MTV video, European tour and the whole deal) odd to play a metal show with the kind of act we have. And I was the only chick, which meant my normally outlandish costume was made even more so by the fact hat every man in the place was staring at my boobs since they were the ONLY ones around.... But I screamed obscenities and compared tattoos with the rest of them. Soil Work was very nice as were everyone at the Stone Pony and Max Cruise. I don't know how many of you have been to this famous club, but it is in a really odd and surreal place in NJ. It looks as if the area once was very beautiful - over the top gorgeous and now it is trying to be that way again but has quite a few years to go.

Also other exciting news we are going to be on NPR!!!! Yes my friends, it is happening!!!!! I can't say much now, but to be sure I will be giving full details when I contractually can!

ALSO!!!!! We are going to AMSTERDAM!!! Check back for show details (there may be some, there may not) - can the dollies survive customs? Wait and see!!!!

So those were the exciting bits, the strange bit comes now... It is a weird day. One of those days you are unsure you want to do anything about. Today is simultaneously the day I am officially divorced and is the birthday of the person I am officially divorced from. I know many of you know this as I have already gotten a few emails today wishing me well and hoping I am moving on. I wish him well also. I hope that this new relationship he has brings him the kind of joy he was searching for and meaning through honesty, integrity and love. No vinegar here only hope. But a simultaneous divorce/birthday is not really the oddest part. The most weird is I received his teeth in the mail. OK, not really his teeth but a panoramic x-ray of his oral cavity. His ghost teeth smiling as me, suspended in black with silver fillings shining bright. It was certainly a bit of a shock to pull that out of a nondescript envelope. Granted, it was not entirely unexpected that I would be receiving an x-ray in the mail, but what I had expected was my own teeth. Now I am wholly unsure of what to do with this artifact. He is currently enjoying the benefits of health care that I am paying for (much to the distaste of my lawyer who advised me over an over again to save my money for something more useful - but I was insistent he have the option of taking care of himself - probably stupid of me but I always did have rose coloured glasses) So should I send him his teeth, would he want them? They are the only copy... it is certainly an odd dilemma. I have one more thing for him too, something I know for sure he would want, but haven't had the strength to send. I'll get to it I suppose.

Now this next thing isn't weird, but I have to admit it is quite worrying. My mother is ill. She has to have a procedure done on her heart. Anyone who knows my past knows my father died of a stroke after two heart attacks so I am not unfamiliar with the tragedy of heart problems. The comfort is she is doing something about it, but it is still a scary prospect. Sometime I think Robot left because of all of the pain he might have had to go through and finding someone younger whose family she was more then willing to forget makes things easier. Dealing with just one person - one who will not have health problems for years and one who does not have a family makes it far easier to focus on yourself. But that is an aside and probably one with no basis in anyone's reality but mine, but I am so good at that ;-) Anyway, this Thursday my mother will be in the hospital. I am 2000 miles away from her and I do not feel that distance more then at times like these. I know things will be fine, she will come out of it healthier then she was before and the recovery will be relatively short, but I still want to sit at her bedside. I want to be there at the hospital. I feel far away and scared and inadequate.

I look forward to Thursday night and hearing that my mother is OK and better then she was.

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

The last four books I have read in the last four weeks are (in this order)


1. Genealogy: A Novel by Maud Casey
2. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir by Debra Marquart
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman IV

Seems like a weird combination when you think of it, though three of the four have a directly connection to me in some way and the fourth ended up making me feel like I had a direct connection to it.

First, Maud’s book. This came out a few months ago, but I did not read it when it came out, nor did I go hear her read parts of it in NYC when she was there – The reason – because I knew it would make me fall apart. Maud writes about mental illness in this book, specifically bi-polar disorder. This illness is something that we both have experienced intimately though from completely separate vantage points. When I worked with her (she as my advisor at Goddard) I knew about this connection at first only by instinct, then later after a little research through her writing about herself and her experiences. We never verbalized this connection between the two of us, but I have a few letters from her (ones that were writing to me about my writing during the course of stuffy at Goddard.) She actually helped me not quit Goddard when things became particularly bad. During one of my residencies I was getting phone calls every few minutes and crying a great deal, my heart split in two with my desire to hold and comfort my husband in his time of breakdown and my equal and seemingly opposite desire to stay and be a student and learn. My now Ex-husband sent me the mixed messages that bi-polarity brings into a relationship so I was constantly unsure and overly sensitive to not going to be glued to his side. He had his family and ways to work through tings but neither of us were confident he could make it without me. He ultimately did (though he did come to visit) and I ultimately made it through the residency (which I have to mention here is only 8 short days but seemed like an eternity). Maud helped with her attentiveness and kindness and, believe it or not, reading assignments for class that dealt directly and openly with aspects of the relationship people have to their own mental illness.
I know I haven’t actually talked about the book here. All I can say is read it. I marked several sections where there were lines that I had to read over and over again because the sentiment was so beautiful or the words and the way they sounded together were so visceral. I love Maud’s writing. It is intimate and fully realized and makes one weep with the context of all of the pain and promise rolled up into one.

My connection to the Horizontal World by Debra Marquart is a physical one. I grew up very close to where she did, though, it seems, about ten years later then she did and a bit more our of the cultural loop then she was. It was amazing to me to read this memoir, which is partly told in story form and partly told with historical and cultural context. Some of the things she said rang so true it could have been me. Particularly the working parts. Butchering chickens and castrating calves and some of the other things (town girls verses farm girls) did not enter my life at all. I love seeing how people who grow up in literally the same place can have such different views on things. The decade makes the difference in some cases, but in others it is a matter of personality and perspective. She does, however, talk about her father in the same way I talk about mine. A kind of longing reverence that hints at a closeness not really discussed or physical, but one of mutual respect realized after the heart attack. It did drive home one thing though, my mother really does know everyone. She knows Debra’s sister who owns a bar on Main Street in Napoleon. She knew of her family and talked to her mother at some meeting or another (I think maybe the electric cooperative meeting, but verifying this would mean calling my mother). When I write the memoir I plan on writing about my life in North Dakota – aspects of it will be the same. How I am now a stranger in my own community, though I have to admit I felt that way much of my kid-life. Also, my perspective on how I will always be drawn back there. Something about the people and the landscape IS in you, always. Perhaps it is the wind that always blows, it pushes the dust straight into your cells to bond with your DNA. This book is not really about North Dakota – it is about being a special person from a special place and trying to connect all the parts of your life together into something that makes sense – and each one of us can identify with that.


Now it is truth time… I picked up The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger at the airport wanting one of those “plane ride” books that you can breezily read on the plane and leave at wherever your destination is without guilt because the book was candy for your brain and didn’t make you think at all and you left it on the table at the B&B after finishing it without a second glance. But that is not what happened. What happened was an instant and searing connection to this book. It doesn’t really need help from me to sell it, but I have to tell you to buy it and read it. It will be one of those books you keep on your shelf and look at from time to time (after reading it) and remember how it made you feel. For me it was like reading the book “She’s Come Undone”. The author found some way to tell a story really foreign to my own experience (or anyone’s I would think) but tell it in such a way as to make you believe it and sympathize with it and hope beyond hope that time will bend, just this once, for these people and the inevitable will not happen. I think that is what the connection was. The inevitability of time and of being and of what will happen in your life are so starkly illustrated here that you can’t help but see your own lifetime rolled out in a single line like a heart monitor print out with the steady and rhythmic peaks and valleys getting scattered and messy near the end and finally stopping all together. Such a wrenching book that I cried several times and hand to have tissues within easy reach for all of the last four chapters.

So why, after that roller coaster of a ride that was the Time Traveler’s Wife did I pick up the new Chuck Klosterman book? Because he was coming to read and I really wanted to see him and get him to sign a copy of the book for me. I actually wanted him to sign my hardcover of Fargo rock City (which is a book that is funny as hell – as they would say in my home state) but that hard cover is at my sisters house and I literally found out he was reading near me the day before it was to happen, so there was no time to get that book to me from North Dakota. Chuck’s reading was fantastic. Filled with Emo kids that he constantly made fun of without them knowing. I love seeing how he has changed over his years of living in the cities and writing. I met him once when I was younger. I hadn’t realized that he was actually a SENIOER when I was a 7th grader; I thought he was a freshman that is how awkward he was. But I have a friend whose older brother was his friend and we went to a football game and I met him. I didn’t actually remember this, but when his first book came out, my friend called me and said “OMG that’s Chuck – I haven’t thought about him since we met him at that football game.” So I had to read the book. This new book is a collection of pieces he’s published with extra commentary for context or things that got left our of the original piece or updates on things that have happened since the essay (article) was published. It also has a piece of fiction in the back. I’ve read this book mostly in the bathtub. My singed copy now sports curled pages from the humidity of a steamy bathroom. Now Chuck, don’t take offense – I read in the bath thing I really want to pay attention to and absorb. Your book is like bath salts that soften the water of my brain and make the ideas flow into the soft cells like softness into soaked skin.
It was weird to get him to sing a copy of the book. I waited inline with all of the kids and actually talked to him about where I was from etc. I know I am one of the slew of people he will see during his singing tour and he will not in anyway remember me or our encounter, but he doesn’t have to, because I will and I will write about it and it will affect me and he will go on with his NYC writing life. I did, however, give him a copy of my CD. He will probably not listen to it, but I had to do it. Who else is a rock writer for famous magazines that I once met at a high school football game and grew up in the very same small rural state that I did. Right – you guessed it, no one.

These four books seem to be emblematic (sorry about the over used word) of my life at the moment. At once looking to my roots and my past. Dealing with what happened to me and the ramifications of mental illness, looking to the future of my band and where I want my life to go and connecting with different experiences with that one thin filament of emotion. I think anyone could read any of these books in any order and feel how similar they are and how, in spite of the subject matter, they connect to each other and to the world in similar ways.

Thinking about this makes me excited for what is next – suggestions welcome.