Bordering on Hoardering (Episode 1)

I’m a hoarder. Not the sort you see on tv with overflowing toilets and every issue of the New York Times since 1982 and eighty cats and food garbage everywhere, but if I see a shiny bit of metal on the street I pick it up, and I keep tags from clothes and every business card anyone’s ever given me. I keep the crissy-crossy net bags from fruit.  I keep scraps of paper that people have written their phone numbers on, even if I can’t remember who they are and haven’t seen them in a decade or more.  I might need it. Might use it for an art project.  Might reread it, rewatch it, reexplore it. It might be important; I don’t want to forget. It’s a symptom of my anxiety disorder (yayyy) and a side-effect of my creativity (non-sarcastic yay). So basically I’m about a skein of red yarn and a wall full of maps and photographs from being one of those over-caffeinated crime show problem solver cliches.

And it’s gotten to the point where I can’t handle all the stuff anymore, and it isn’t fair to me or the people around me.  So I’m doing a thirty day challenge, getting rid of a milk crate’s worth of stuff every day for (you guessed it) thirty days.  Yesterday was my first day. My pastor helped me out, which is totally awesome.   He compared it to holding a spider when you’re arachnophobic. I need to learn to hold my spider.  Today I got rid of a bunch of jeans that have holes around the thighs rendering them unwearable unless I am super lazy and out of clean pants, and a bag of torn cardboard (huntsman spider held).

But this is hard for me.  So I’ll be doing an episode every week or so (or whenever I get overwhelmed) until it’s done, because maybe that’ll make it easier. Because I need support from you guys.  Because this is my room:

28 days left. 28 spiders left to hold.  I don’t think I can do it.  But I need to, so… episode one is done. Roll credits.

How Not to Write Flashbacks: A Case Study Using Summertime Girls

Summertime Girls by LFO.

This song is deceptive since when he’s rapping it seems as though he’s making sense. This. Is. A. Lie. Let me break it down for you:

Yeah, I like it when the girls stop by in the summer
Do you remember, do you remember
When we met that summer?

Okay, good start. Not terrible.  You’ve set the scene. Summer.  You’ve established the conceit of the song– you’re speaking to a specific girl, the “you,” about what happened in the summer. Probably a romance.

New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits

Up until now I really thought you were singing that they had a lot of zits. Hits makes more sense. Okay. I get it.

Chinese food makes me sick

Me too!!!  But my sister pointed out, it’s pretty nonsensical, unless you point out that your aversion to Chinese food began that summer or it had some sort of significant tie in with your summertime relationship, which is never clarified. It’s like saying, “I had a good time in high school; I hate potatoes.”

And I think it’s fly when girls stop by
For the summer, for the summer

I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch
I’d take her if I had one wish
But she’s been gone
Since that summer, since that summer

At this point, the song still makes sense. This is about to change.

Hip Hop Marmalade spic and span
Met you one summer and it all began
Your the best girl that I ever did see
The great Larry Bird jersey 33

Complete gibberish.

I just can’t. Where do I start?  The two middle lines are connected, but beyond that there’s nada. Was Larry Bird jersey 33 that summer? Now?  Why does that matter? Did you enjoy watching basketball together?  What is hip hop marmalade? Is it different than regular marmalade?

When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets

When I read this, I literally said aloud, in astonishment, “That doesn’t even rhyme, bitch” despite my efforts to moderate my language. That’s how bad the writing is. Look at what you made me do, LFO. (I’m so sorry.)

Call me Willie Whistle ’cause I can’t speak, baby
Somethin’ in your eyes went and drove me crazy

Obscure reference to someone I think was a clown?

Now I can’t forget you and it makes me mad
Left one day and never came back
Stayed all summer then went back home

A bit rudimentary, but you’re back to making sense. That won’t last long.

Macauly Culkin wasn’t Home Alone

WASN’T HE?  AND EVEN IF HE WASN’T HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO YOUR SUMMERTIME ROMANCE AT ALL? I’m sorry, my keyboard got away from me. I feel like you’re just talking nonsense, now. Are you doing this to hurt me?

Fell deep in love, but now we ain’t speakin’
Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton
When I met you, I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

So… you’re just saying something  about the girl, then some weird pop culture trivia from the eighties? This does not a flashback make. That works better in a visual medium. In an auditory medium it sounds like you ate a bunch of old magazines and then got sick.

 

Cheery Pez, Cold Crush, rock star Boogie
Used to hate school so I had to play hookie
Always been hip to the B-boy style
Known to act wild and make girls smile

Love New Edition and the Candy Girl
Remind me of you because you rock my world

At this point, I’m letting the nonsense wash over me. This is the ocean from which stream of consciousness is fed.

You come from Georgia where the peaches grow
They drink lemonade and speak real slow

Shut. Up.

You love hip hop and rock ‘n’ roll
Dad took off when you were four years old
There was a good man named Paul Revere
I feel much better, baby, when you’re near

I could literally expound on this until I die. I want this written on my grave. This is so bad that I’m starting to feel Stockholmed.

Music tastes.

Family trauma.

AMERICAN HISTORY, WHAT. (Potentially the Beastie Boys.)

Back to the girl. But present tense, even though you haven’t seen her since the summer???

You love fun dip and cherry coke
I like the way you laugh when I tell a joke
When I met you I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

Uuuugh, what is this, a commercial for the place? Also: I’m just skipping all the refrains because why bother.

 

In the summertime girls got it goin’ on
Shake and wiggle to a hip hop song
Summertime girls are the kind I like
I’ll steal your honey like I stole your bike

Has the statute of limitations run out on that bike thievery?  I can’t arrest you for your lyricism but I can definitely look into that bicycle incident.

Boogaloo Shrimp and pogo sticks
My mind takes me back there, oh, so quick
Let you off the hook like my man Mr. Limpet
Think about that summer and I bug ’cause I miss it

Okay, these images work in a weird way for me. Maybe I’m growing accustomed to your writing style.  Maybe it’s the slow creep of madness.  Off in the distance, a wolf howls. An ancient, eldritch groan sounds as the space between worlds grows a little thinner.

Like The Color Purple, macaroni and cheese
Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees
Call you up but what’s the use
I like Kevin Bacon, but I hate Footloose

Liking a good book and a food type.

Reference to Wizard of Oz, A BUNCH OF TREES WHAT DOES THAT MEAN WHY DO YOU HATE ME WE’VE NEVER EVEN MET.

Relationship regret.

THAT. IS. NONSENSE.

Came in the door said it before
I think I’m over you but I’m really not sure
When I met you I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

You are clearly not over her. You wrote a whole dang song about how you’re not over her. You want to call her. You actively miss her. You think about that summer all the time.

And then you just repeat the refrain eighty times. That’s surely a sign that you’re over her. Now, if you’re looking for me I’ll just be banging my head against the wall and warbling along. New Kids on the Block had a lot of hits; Chinese food makes me–

 

What it Sometimes Feels Like to Be a Writer With Anxiety

We’re going to send you swimming with sharks. They might eat you. But they might not. See, that’s a risk you have to take, when you’re a swimmer.

You shouldn’t worry about it. You’re an extraordinary swimmer, for a swimmer with no formal instruction. Wait… you mean you went to college to get your swimming degree? Why did you do that? Are you going to teach swimming? No? Then why couldn’t you teach yourself how to swim? There are so many great swimmers who are self-taught.

You don’t think you can make your money just swimming, do you? There are examples of people doing just that, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Not everyone can be Michael Phelps.

Anyway, don’t worry about it. Either the sharks will eat you or they won’t eat you. It’s out of your hands now! Doesn’t that make you feel better? What do you mean that it actually makes you feel worse? I swear, swimmers are so neurotic.

Besides, plenty of people who have been eaten by sharks go on to live perfectly productive lives.

Your style of swimming isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s okay! People swim in different ways! But your style of swimming might end up with you being eaten by a shark. I just never want you to forget that there are two ways this can go: eaten, or not eaten. It’s a binary system. But you just have to keep trying, every time you’re bitten! Get back in the water! Getting eaten by sharks is part of the job description! If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of getting eaten by sharks, you should probably quit swimming altogether. Maybe just swim in a tiny pool in your backyard. You know, the kind they buy for babies.

I have some experience swimming. I washed my face in the sink once when I was twelve. I take the occasional shower. I know exactly what it’s like to swim. Probably even more than you. I’ve never been scared of being eaten by a shark. I’ve never ever seen a shark in the sink or shower. Are you sure sharks are as scary as you think they are? I don’t think they’re a big deal, personally, but I guess I get why you’re afraid of them.

Have you tried not being scared of sharks? Hope that helps!

My Garbage Hip and Me

I’m not complaining. I know a lot of people have it much worse than I do. But I figure that maybe if I talk about it, it’ll help me to be less grumpy as winter comes on and chews up my joints.

The ache in my hip is constant as a toothache.  When I sit down for too long, when I stand my hip will give out underneath me like a marionette with a cut string, and it hurts as sharp as spear.  On my x-ray, my right hip looks like a mountain range, jagged where it should be smooth.

It feels like that moment after an ice cream headache crests and starts getting a tiny bit better, if you paused it right at that second and had that feeling go on forever.  It feels like two hours after you have a charley horse and you’re still cramped.

Winter makes it worse.  Me not doing my physical therapy makes it worse.  Doing my physical therapy hurts, too. Staying on my feet makes it worse.  Staying sedentary makes it worse. Me thinking about it makes it worse. Me ignoring it makes it worse.  Maybe talking about it (without expecting solutions, really, guys, I have tried everything except robot legs so please  please don’t suggest anything, unless you actually have robot legs for me) will help.

On the Subject of Paris

I know the last thing anyone needs is some white American’s two cents on the issue, so I will try to make this as gentle and short as I can, out of compassion for those suffering.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts telling people not to pray because faith is what caused this problem to start with, and there are more important ways to render aid.  I agree that prayer should be where we start giving aid, not where we end. But faith is not the problem.

Skin color is not the problem, either. To blame religion and skin color is to simplify something very ugly, to give yourself a sense of security. It’s the same as covering yourself in a blanket to hide from monsters in the dark. It’s to say, “If I avoid belief, and brown people, and immigrants, I will be safe.”

The truth is that hatred is to blame. Hatred, and the perpetrators of these atrocities. And hatred is widespread. You can’t look in someone’s heart and see hatred plainly, which makes it utterly insidious. You can’t filter out hatred or pick it out of a person the way you’d pick out gold when you’re panning a river. You can’t categorize hateful from loving the way you’d categorize differently colored beads. Hate is not visible, and hate breeds more of the same. Hate is frightening that way.

Yes, it’s easier to assign blame to physical traits or religious ideologies. But easier does not mean correct.

On the Occasion of Your Next Camping Trip

Dear Myself,

You cannot sleep on the floor.  You think you can, but you can’t. Your joints are literally made of garbage, rusty straight pins, and spent elastic.  You are a broken toy. On the x-ray, the smooth curve of your hip looks like a mountain range.  Your spine is a spiral, a DNA helix.

You will feel like a child.  Your backpacker’s heart will feel like you’re giving up to bring a cot, but if you would not ask an elderly friend to do it, you shouldn’t do it either. I know that you won’t hold back from most things, but do refrain from sleeping on the ground.  I am telling you from the future and the past, you will walk in a shuffle for days afterwards. You will not want to lift your feet off of the ground. You will want to sink into the couch and become a cushion. You will lean your head back and only move your eyes, like a chameleon.

The pain lives inside you like an animal. Curls in your knees.  Gnaws at the back of your neck. Sharpens its claws in the ball-and-socket of your hips.  Don’t make things easy for it.

Trepidatiously, and with a reluctance to move,

Yourself

Art Thoughts in Order of Frequency

1. Is that blood or paint on my finger? (Yes.)
2. Is that a bruise or is it marker on my arm? (Yes.)
3. Is my skin peeling off or is it glue on my wrist? (Let’s not tug too hard at this loose thread.)
4. This paint/clay/sharpie/glue is on my face/in my hair, isn’t it? (Always.)
5. Ouch! Crap crap crap crap crap, no, no I’m good, I’m not bleeding, I’ll be fine.
6. …nevermind. There’s the blood.
7. How far can I push it before I’m not making this art piece better anymore and I absolutely ruin it?
8. Do I still have fingerprints or did the hot glue gun finally jump-start my career as a cat burglar?
9. I need to stop biting my nails so I can actually dig into this without my fingertips hurting.
10. Where is my paintbrush/pen/stylus/other paintbrush?
11. …how has it been eight hours?
12. Did I have a life before this project?
13. Annnd my favorite sewing needle disappeared again.
14. I found it!
15. Is it mixed media if it include tears?

Fear is for the Birds

I may or may not have screamed (I did scream), picked up the baby where he was sleeping, nearly breaking the cardinal rule of babies (that is, to never wake them), and brought him back to his room and put him in his crib and soothed him back to sleep and sat on the mattress on the floor, alternatively breathing and praying that my delicious chili dog was not going to make an encore show.

I was going to die up there. I knew it.  I went to Facebook to say a capslock goodbye to all my friends and family and resigned myself to my fate. My iPad would not let me say a capslock goodbye to all my friends and family, not because my iPad had a faith in my strength of constitution, but because it was so old that it doesn’t know how to stay on internet pages for longer than four seconds.

The cat. In the house. Had a dead bird.

So, maybe it wasn’t dead. It flew into the window trying to escape. Then the cat came back from the window with a grey mound of feathers in its mouth that was shaped like a bird. Maybe the bird fooled it. Maybe it was playing dead. Maybe it had an extra bird coat and flung it over a crushed pinecone.  But more likely it was a dead bird and so I had to do what any superhero-obsessed nanny would do: save the baby, and hide like a coward.

Which I managed quite well, I think, considering.  I called for backup.  The wee one’s granddad checked to make sure there was no bird in plain sight or in my shoes.  And now I’m home where there is no dead animals anywhere, with feathers or otherwise.

Probably I could even manage zombies better than I can manage dead birds.  The same unholy terror people have when they deal with heights or public speaking or public speaking from a great height, or death, or death after public speaking from a great height, I have for dead birds.  I can’t explain it. It’s visceral.  Maybe I have my wires crossed and the ‘dead birds’ wire is linked up to the ‘being buried alive’ feeling, but whatever it is… it’s the worst.

So, I saved the baby today (though the baby was in literally no danger) and my panic attack was enough cardio for the next couple months; I think today was a success.  A weird, upsetting success.

Sneaky Plots

If you want me to be a part of a sneaky plot, you have got to let me know. I am not good at improvisation.  The look that you give that means you-should-play-along-with-what-I-say I take as the I-have-gastronomic-distress look.

Many sneaky plots have gone to pot because of me.

You should actually just tell me to smile and look like I’m not up to something, but don’t tell me to say anything. I give it away, if people know what to look for.

What to look for: I laugh.  I look at the sneaky plot leader. I go all deer-in-the-headlights. I tell the truth.

I do enjoy sneaky plots. I like pretending I’m part of a secret.  I love tiptoeing through the dark on an excursion to do something silly and covert.  But you need to let me know, or I will ruin it on accident.

The Only Solution is to Boycott. Or Girlcott. Who Knows Anymore.

It matters a lot what kind of bedding and toys you buy your child. After all, without gender signifiers, how are you able to tell if a Barbie is a good toy for your rough-and-tumble eight year old boy. Who is a boy. A. Boy. (Boy.) It’s almost like you’ll have to know what the child actually likes instead of blindly buying whatever is the bluest or the pinkest! Oh the humanity! Without the signs, you are unable to distinguish. It’s now like shopping blindfolded.

It’s true that if you give a girl a truck she will definitely be a lesbian. That’s the liberal agenda. They want to make more gays by confusing your toy purchases.

So you storm the Target closest to you by using the Stores Near You tab. You bring a large decorative fork because you couldn’t find any farming impliments to brandish. You use the flashlight app on your iPhone instead of lighting a torch.

It’s worse than the Tea Party has reported. Now as soon as you walk in, it’s anarchy. The bathrooms have no markers! However will you know where to discreetly eliminate bodily waste!

All the clothes are jumbled up in a heap, hangers abandoned and akimbo. The liberals are digging through the pile of clothes on their hands and knees. When you walk past, they all turn their heads to you at once and hiss. Their children are wearing gender neutral roughspun beige sackcloth. They all have bowl haircuts. It’s impossible to tell them apart.

It’s with horror that you realize the slippery slope this has become. It’s the transgender-liberal-gay-PC agenda.

There is something wet and red on the floor. Blood. But is it boy’s blood or girl’s blood? You’ll never know. There’s no sign.

As you get closer and closer you see that the blood is the concentric circles of the Target logo.

You back away slowly, the only sounds the whir of the automatic door and the shuddering death rattle of conservative American values. Gone. Everything the forefathers had worked for is gone.  The sound of the air conditioning wheezing as you step out of the door and into freedom sounds suspiciously like, “Thanksssssssss Obama.”