12.27.08
Posted in holidailies at 7:55 pm by krystyn
I am safe here in this little apartment, away from the outside world.
I am unpacking a box full of art supplies, and near the bottom are a bunch of old letters and things. I see some of the blocky horrible handwriting I always used to make fun of, and I think to myself that I am not really going to do what I usually do when I go through my things. I am not going to head down Memory Lane. Not tonight.
Tonight is for making a little headway. It’s hard. This stuff has sedimentary layers. Some of the layers are very important. I found a small card envelope stuffed full of old movie tickets. Many of them are heat-printed, so I can hardly even tell anymore what movie it was for originally, as the letters have faded right off the perforated paper.
Right now, I am trying to find the things that have nothing imbued; these are the items not imprinted with pieces of my soul, man. Those things gets separated out, and will either get given away or sold or recycled.
I have been through two cross-country moves, after I spent 4 or 5 years in an apartment that was a dumping ground for all of the other moves my family went through after my parents’ divorce, and after 4 years of living with someone else. The jumble is understandable, and almost enviable. There is a pretty decent record of how I got from there to here. It is a huge soup of time and memory, poured haphazardly into small cardboard book boxes.
What’s tricky is that some of these are time bombs, and they haven’t gone off yet. They haven’t gained their full potential for enlightenment and perspective. Others have been wrung dry, and yet still others reset every few years – a fuse that just needs a penny jammed in to complete the circuit.
If I may resort to an utterly nerdy analogy, these time bombs are sort of like those mysteriously sealed chests in Chrono Trigger. The amulet I’d use to unlock the memories isn’t charged, and I’m not in the right age to activate the full power of these things that I keep lugging around with me. Some of ’em will do a little something for now, but it’s better to wait, to sift out the chaff and pare down, and wait until later for the big reveal. But, I can re-box and re-organize and get down to the nitty-gritty, and prep for a day when I’ve a mind to visit some of where I’ve been, and see if it all lines up to where I’m going.
One thing remains true, though: I have lots and lots of boxes of crayons. I’m not entirely sure how that happened, but there it is, nonetheless.
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12.26.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:32 pm by krystyn
Many people I know seem to have grown up with an innate sense of direction. Even if they were the sort to change majors a million times during their college years, or seemed to flit from job to job, there was an overtone or aura to them that suggested that, no matter what, things would fall into place.
I’ve felt like that at times, myself. There was a good period of time during high school (of all the times!) when everything I did felt like a building block. Ca-click, ker-chunk, each tiny little experience and interaction felt like part of a greater whole. I felt disappointments as keenly as any other 15 year old might, but my life was a sketchbook. That cute boy not liking me back, me stumbling and dropping my books all across the hallway during passing period, not getting the role I wanted in the Winter Musical, well. They were all theoretically very small events, to my mind. I’d seen my parents divorce, and I’d moved a handful of times before I even started my Freshman year. These slights to my ego were crosshatches, shading, embellishment. Occasionally, erased and forgotten.
I had an occasion to sit down and say important things to someone yesterday, and I walked away shaken, upset, sad, and like I failed. And yet, I am not sure how I could’ve done any better. For the first time in a while, I was at a complete loss as to what to do. The words that came out my mouth were awkward, and sounded to my ears like they were coming from way far away. They were in the wrong order. I started crying at one point, and my nose ran like I was a two year old having a tantrum. I was wiping at my face with tissues, and I said goodbye approximately half a dozen times, and I wondered if maybe I was just making a fool of myself. And then I felt stupid for worrying about that at all.
But when faced with the things I was really saying, and what I was really doing, I began to fall to pieces. This odd, juvenile detachment, as tear-stained as it was, seemed to be the only thing that kept me from completely flying off the handle, emotionally.
I feel stung, a whole day later, that I have somehow failed myself and everyone involved. That I am just not the person people think I am, and that my ability to find the right words simply dissipated. I was grocery shopping earlier, and the mundane activity suddenly put everything into a little sharper focus. The foreground pulled itself away in bas relief from the rolling countryside of my emotions: Nothing mattered, and everything matters. That it what the perspective gives me, a whole day later. Great. This doesn’t solve a damned thing.
I am reeling.
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12.25.08
Posted in holidailies at 2:42 pm by krystyn
Tired, with a headache. Possible caffeine withdrawal.
There was one Christmas when I was a kid where it had been snowy and cold and delightful leading up to the holiday, just like the television tells you it ought to be, but when the day dawned, the temperature was in the 60’s. Most of the snow had melted away, leaving only wet, sort of dirty white clumps of sno-cone snow, in and amongst the dead leaves and the beige-amber grass dead on the ground.
The smell was awful, to me: it was flat, metallic, sort of organic. We threw some windows open in order to ‘enjoy’ the warmth, but it was just wrong, the whole day. There was no smell of winter snap and dry wood and candleshine. There was just damp rottenness, and a feeling like the world might end.
This Christmas is a little like that, and not just because of the weather.
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12.24.08
Posted in holidailies at 12:39 pm by krystyn
When I was a child, I would get these books, one at a time, on a subscription. They were always about real people, and about a particular trait they possessed that allowed them to succeed at something great in their lives.
What you didn’t know about people like Marie Curie, Abraham Lincoln, Louis Pasteur, and the Wright Brothers is that every single one of them had an imaginary friend, some sort of creature taking the form of some instrumental item in that person’s life (a book, a test tube, a compass, etc.) who would appear and accompany the story’s hero, giving them advice and telling them that they were capable of achieving the thing they were setting out to do.
These imaginary friends appeared in their childhoods, and would follow them through their lifetime. The artwork for the book was very cartoony, but you would see each person age or become slightly more defined and sophisticated as they came into their own, achieved the things they had been working for their whole lives.
One of the things I love the most about this series is that moment when you get to the end of the story – there is a conclusion, a sense that you’ve just read a simple and child-like abbreviation of some great person’s life, and if you were brave enough, you could turn over the very last page and read a very adult-like biography of the person you’d just followed from childhood. At the top of the bio was a much more realistic pencil sketch of the person, and you felt like you knew her, because you’d just followed her from birth, practically.
And you knew a secret that the adults didn’t always know, which is that they all had a little voice inside telling them to keep on, keep going, that they were eventually going to be great in some amazing way.
Even though my little niece Julia is barely two, I am giving her three books from the series, and will send more as she gets older, and will have a little brother to read to. It’s my hope that she loves these books as much as I did.
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12.23.08
Posted in holidailies at 6:09 pm by krystyn
And I ask him if he remembers when I was so small, and if he remembers tucking me in so tightly I was a cocooned little pillbug of a child, and do you remember? do you remember? do you remember smushing me into the mattress so I would bounce back up, giggling? And because I was a pillbug wrapped tightly in a blanket, I could not fight back or do anything but laugh helplessly.
And I ask him if he remembers singing “Reveille” in a da-da-da-da-da-da sort of way in the morning, way too early for us mortal tiny young pillbugs on a Saturday when even the cartoons haven’t started up yet, and I tell him other things until I stop and look at the window and the grey day outside, and I laugh and feel my throat catch a little and say, “I suddenly can’t think of any stories, isn’t that dumb?”
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12.22.08
Posted in holidailies at 12:57 pm by krystyn
The scrape of a knife against toast almost burnt.
Birds chirping.
Windchime clanging and vibrating in the wintery rainy wind.
Coffee maker percolating and making rather quietly violent pops and bursts of steam-powered exclamation.
The thunk of the laptop lid closing as the cat sits on the laptop.
The boring white noise whine of the space heater.
The constant far-off rush of freeway noise.
Occasional cars motoring by at 5MPH along the side drive, by my kitchen window.
The floomph of bedclothes being shook out and laid flat on the mattress. Smaller ploomphs of pillows.
Padding of bare feet on hardwood floors.
Heart kerthunk, kerthunk, kerthunk.
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12.21.08
Posted in holidailies at 9:38 pm by krystyn
I had the epiphany today that a big part of my heart feels strongly that I don’t want to leave California right now.
(I’ve been considering the possibility, as I am uncertain about my future, job-wise. It’s only prudent.)
I was putting away dishes and tidying up my apartment, and I thought, I don’t want to go. The arrangement of the plastic cups lined neatly up, the way the sunlight was coming in the windows. I don’t know. I am tired. But I like the way things fit in this place, how there is (almost) a place for everything. That I have once again reached a place in my head where I can get rid of more things, pare down, get more efficient.
I love the wooden floors here in this apartment, and I like that down the street there is a good Chinese place, and a 7-11, and that on a clear day like today, the sky was so blue, and the world was brightly lit, and the mountains in the near distance were crisp and astoundingly gorgeous and tinged in charcoal, deep green, slate blue. Winter mountains, no snow. I am not sure how people can stand having the opportunity to look at that every single day.
I want to stay put. I am a stay put-ter. And I’ve been flinging myself around too much, trying to go where the wind goes, following the risks until I’ve become addicted. I need to let my blood slow, so my heart stops racing from the excitement, because if I don’t I won’t know what excitement is, anymore. I am a slow and steady girl. I want to look around me and drink it all in. Even if I don’t like it. Even if it worries me. Even if I don’t fall in love with this place.
What’s tough is that there’s lots of half-baked stories, as part of this girl’s Worst Holiday Ever. I want to talk about so many things, but there’s just too much that is not story, only a chaotic tangle of what-ifs and strangeways.
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12.20.08
Posted in holidailies at 9:23 pm by krystyn
This morning I drove to Beverly Hills.
It was early enough in the morning that not many people were out. And that, my friends, is why Los Angeles loves its brunch: it seems no one can bear to rise and simply do breakfast when the sun is up. There is lolling about to do, the sleepy re-shevelement of hangover cures and walks of shame, and then off you go to your little cloistered patios with your cute toy dogs and your giant sunglasses, and you have something that is a little bit eggs and toast, and a little bit tofu steak or salmon or chicken ‘n’ rosemary, because it’s noon, or nearly 2, and your body wants that next meal’s texture on your tongue tout de suite!
So, I am driving for what feels like forever on Wilshire, and I see some buildings I recognize as having seen before with my own two eyeballs, and some others that I know I’ve seen, but perhaps not since 1985 or so, or maybe not at all in reality, but in some movie. And that is Los Angeles weirdness, too, along with the brunchness.
And it’s a bright morning, and it’s somewhat cool, with a bit of that wintery bite that I have missed from Chicago. With the streets empty, and with the bright pale lemon light of December, the plate glass displays and windows of these shops and small highrises glint especially cleanly. Every building looks deserted. Only a few people hang at the bus stops, or cross the street with small amounts of groceries in handled plastic bags. These are the only signs that this city has any inhabitants whatsoever.
For several minutes at a stretch, I am in a video game. These sidewalks are so wide, so empty, that I could just drive up on them and plow right into that department store and go looking for power ups. I can careen around this corner and hope to trigger a cutscene of awesome. Maybe some atmospheric techno will kick in, and a timer will appear on my windshield, red alarm clock numbers blinking threateningly in a countdown.
Even the screening I was going to was in a building that looked fresh and new and never-used: the lobby was decorated cleanly and sparingly with shiny antiseptic holiday stuff, and beyond the twenty or so other people parking in the lower-level garage, the place was empty, non-functional. It was truly bizarre.
But the screening was fun, as I got to watch the rest of Tropic Thunder with Bret, who is my connection for these things, and it was great to be able to take a break from the cabin-fevered doldrums of staring at my laptop with eyeballs falling right out of my skull, willing a job to leap forth from my e-mail lists and chat channels, taking short breaks for sustenance and coffee. Tropic’s a lot of fun, and very, very funny, and although the concern was that it was too “insider” to really make it with audiences, the truth is, I think a lot of it reads well.
However, the Hollywood-specific jokes still evoked the strongest reactions from the audience I was sitting in, like when one of the characters screams: “That’s it! I’m going into catering after this!” Loud, boisterous guffaws from nearly everyone in the theater.
And then on the way home Google Maps told me to take this crazy twisty road through the hills (Coldwater Canyon/Mulholland Drive, if you’re curious) to get back north again, and while it was neat, I may not head back that way with my current car any time soon. Crazy mountain inclines and slow sharp curves are not something my car currently excels at, so I was a bit stressed until everything leveled back out again on the other side.
Dinner tonight was a nourishing and tasty roasted acorn squash, with a Boca burger on the side to make it more meal-like, as I can sometimes get all single dish-y when I am feeling lazy and tired. The apartment smells pleasantly of squash and savory garlic butter, and the world feels very quiet and cozy. I am glad. The last few days have been challenging and cold, but I feel bolstered enough to take on the next week now, thanks to the squash, the screening, and all of my dearest friends who have really been there for me over the last couple of weeks.
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12.19.08
Posted in holidailies at 8:52 pm by krystyn
I made cake in a mug today.
It was a bit too dense and dry, and the cocoa itself was a bit stale, but overall, it was a three minute experiment in weird microwave cooking. I did not finish it. I expect next time it will be better.
I feel very much as if I am in a bizarro world. Everything is slow, and cold, and colorless. It’s strange to be here. I sleep, and I make coffee, and I stick to a very rudimentary routine.
These still waters are a horror of grief, though, underneath. There are things I just don’t want to talk about just now, and so I want to be quiet and calm, and I succeed a little less than I would like.
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12.18.08
Posted in holidailies at 7:25 pm by krystyn
There are days — like today — that are very flat, and very sad, and there is nothing to do but keep on and do what you can to exist and work through to the next moment which will hopefully feel as though there is more to all of this than anxiety, unemployment, and loss.
I have dreams and ideas and plans for a creative life. That has not changed, nor will it likely ever change.
It has been who I am since very early on, and is something I am just now coming into being in a real, tangible way. It’s been hard for a lot of people who have known me a long time to understand or to see this clearly, I am finding. I think a lot of people have known me all my life as a girl who was willing to compromise overmuch, or surrender to apathy so easily that I must have seemed so easygoing, so normal, so not worth the fuss.
I am a storyteller, and I want to be a person who brings people together to solve things, to better each other, to find connection where previously there was none. I am out in the world now, traveling and exploring in the literal sense, as well as from my laptop. I am reaching out, and placing clues everywhere. The stories that we create together are powerful reminders of the potential for human greatness, and it’s really one of the few things that keeps me going.
It is not as though I have suddenly found this calling. I have known it since I was very small.
I am finally attending to it, like I wish I had had the strength, support, and resources to do so years and years ago. Sometimes, it takes a long time to be brave, and to acknowledge desire. Sometimes, stupid crap gets in the way.
I’ve invited a lot of stupid crap into my life, let me tell you.
This year has turned out to be one of the best and worst years I have experienced in a long time, and it looks to turn downward even further before the clocks ticks over to 2009.
But I shall still tell stories, and I will still find ways to encourage connections where before there was nothing but misunderstanding or emptiness. This is what I do, and what I am.
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