There's something in the air... and on the lawns...

Tis the season.

Not the season for holly and mistletoe and big red suits and jingling bells.  Not yet.  Despite what discount mega stores may imply with their months-early stock.

Nay.

Tis the season of spiced apple cider.

Of pumpkin patches and burnished horizons.  Of flooded red bogs and thick rolling fogs.

the season of crisp morning air and long knit scarves and frost on the fallen leaves.

Tis the season wherein the atmosphere seems to crackle with a charged energy--a mystery and a nostalgia.

Tis the very witching time of year... When the veil seems thinner... when the paranormal seems not only possible, but probable.

I can very nearly TASTE the spirits in the air around.

I adore this time of year; the dichotomy between the cozy and the Cryptozoic titillates and tickles me.

Imaginations gambol and fancy takes flight.  Whispers and whimsy and wild propositions.

Tis the season we humans indulge in comfort food, indulge in earthly delights before the torpor of winter saps us of out virility and vigor.

Tis ghost-hunting season! mwahahahahahahah!

That being said.

It is also, unfortunately the time of year where people insist on decorating their suburban lawns with the most ridiculous bullshit.

Being Irish, I have some serious pet peeves on this subject.

Let's start with the acceptable, and work our way toward the vomit-inducing, shall we?

So, being a New Englander, the type of autumnal home decoration that I not only approve-of but almost DEMAND?  The obligatory harvest display.

Get yourself some various gourds (the more gnarled and mishaped the better), grab a hay bale, a corn stalk or two and some mums?  You've got yourself a classic Fall tableau.  Throw in some brambly branches and we're golden.  Also acceptable?  A charming and traditional-looking scarecrow.

A little too Martha?  Tough.  This is what autumn in new england should look like.

Look at all the gourdy gourds!

Ok, so say you aren't the suburbanite, better-homes & gardens type.  Say you want to play upmthe fun and drama of this scintillating ans spooky time of year?  Well, then, naturally you will want to decorate for all hallow's eve!

But if you're going to do this, please jesus, do it right!

If you're going for spooky, by heaven, commit!

Now, honestly, this CAN be done without special effects and big budgets.  Check out these simple, yet stylized solutions:

Simple yet elegant.  Done well and not over done.


Ok, so if that's too tame for you, you'll want to explore creating some fucking installation art.  You'll want to TRANSFORM your mundane suburban lawn into a creepy, eerie nightmare!

Stylize, helped to great effect by the fog machine.

Add caption

The ufo is fucking stellar!

Yeah.  Dry ice or a fog machine really fucking help.  everything.

If you choose to do this, folks, there are no half-measures.  Half measures are for pussies.  Go big or go the fuck home.

COMMIT, dammit!

Make little kids shriek in delighted terror, and make other adults green with envy.  Be the haunted fucking house you dreamt of as a pre-teen.

And dont' by any means, get sucked in to the cutesy trap.

The nauseating, icky, pablum that floods mega value marts this time o'year.

                                                                                                                                                                               The inflatable sort of generic bullshit that makes your eyes roll back in your skull.

That makes you literally retch as you drive by.

And, for god's sake, please don't buy every single inflatable lawn ornament and stick them all out there together in a horrible pastiche with no rhyme, reason, or thought to composition.

Guhck.


And don't even get me started on costumes...

Turbulence and Trauma

It has been a turbulent few weeks.  Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with my birthday!  I may be one of the few folks who doesn't give a fuck about turning another year older.  Maybe it will feel different when 30 rolls around, but 29 was thoroughly unevenetful and unemotional.

Having to suddenly go off all my meds because of insurance complications, on the other hand... not pretty.

And my doctor tells me that doing this literally causes brain damage.  Not figuratively, not "It's like causing brain damage", but it ACTUALLY damages my brain.  Possibly irreparably.

Oh. 

Well. 

Oh well.  What can you do?

So If I begin to drool more frequently we'll know why...

I had a mixed bag of a weekend.  Some real highlights; friends, family, and relaxation with the hubs.

However, as I was ridiculously busy I failed, for the second weekend in a row, to even make a dent in the mountain of correcting I need to get done.

It is becoming a serious concern.  Term ends next week.  Yikesaroni.

And this weekend meant facing a lot of different people weilding the same dreaded question:  How's work?

grumble.

The more I was asked it the less sure I became. 

How is work?

Fine.  I guess.  I think. 

It isn't a natural fit.  It just isn't.  I love the kids to bits, and I really like my collegues, and I think the school system is wonderful.  It just...

Guys, I'm not a teacher.  At least not this kind of teacher.  Can I teach?  It seems so.  But it does not come naturally and it does not bring me the joy or satisfaction that I think is necessary to making it in such a demanding, pressure-packed career.  I mean, you gotta want this bad to put up with the incredible stress, pressure, bullshit, and hassle.

And while I want A JOB bad, I want A SALARY bad, this chosen path just isn't superb for me.

But I'm working at it.  Everyday.  Working so hard I practically collapse from exhaustion at the close of each day.

Working and wondering when or even if I'll ever feel confident.  Or qualified.  Or even comfortable.

It is nearly 1 AM now.  Just finished lesson planning a few minutes ago. 

Time for bed.  I have to get into work early tomorrow.

Looking forward to enjoying some autumnal delights and ghost-hunting this weekend!

To internet or not to internet.

not intentionally promoting a book or movie, just an appropriate image.

Officially another year older. 

A new job.

In a new district.

The same insecurities.

It has been more than a year since I started therapy.  I have now tried quite a few different chemical and non-chemical solutions.

I am far from cured.

In fact, I worry lately that I'll never get there.  To destination happyville.

Or even contentment county.



Today, for the first time in a long time, I played a scene in my head.  Like I used to do.  A new scene for Cedar Falls.  It wasn't anything terribly awesome, but it was something.  There's been so much of nothing for so long.  Occasionally there'd be snoppets of dialogue.  Images, certainly.
moments.

But this was an entire scene.  With my old friends. 

But this maked me more than a mite concerned. 

Concerned, because I've noticed that my characters only come out to play when I've missed a dosage.

Yeah.

How's that for a demon to stare down? 

I can only create when I'm crazy?  Well, isn't that the struggle artists, actors, musicians, and comedians have been enduring since Prometheus gave us fire? 

Not a comfortable notion.  I don't believe I'm equipped, mentally to examine this complexity further.  Don't think I have the emotional werewithal, you know?

Today was one of the roughest I've had in a while...  well... so in a month or two, I guess.



Something's been on my mind all week.  I meant to blog about it sooner, but . . . lethargy, procrastination, and legitimate business often prevent me from getting my thoughts down into this ether when they manifest.

Most thoughts wear themselves out and dissipate before the next time I sit down to type, and so many of the times I jot a mental sticky, a "Oh, I should blog this", many of those times are utterly forgotten, lost to the sirens of the ephemera.  Mental stickies are not as effective as actual stickies.

But this "oh, I should blog this" is still hanging on the cluttered bulletin board of my conciousness.  In fact, it stands ut from the rest, and I keep revisiting the thought each day, mulling it over some more, dissecting it more, playing with it like a cat with its dead thing.

 I saw this platitudinous thing somewhere in the wild blue yonder (the interwebs) last weekend:

And I thought: Hmm.

And then I thought:  Shut the fuck up.
And then I thought: Yeah, maybe if there were no bills, no responsibilities, no risk, and no regrets!
And then I thought:  The internet pisses me the fuck off.
And then I went and did something else.

But later I thought:  Well, what the fuck do I do while I procratsinate?

Video games?  sometimes.
Write?  Not so much anymore.
Masturbate?  Meh.  Not with any great panache.  Not a moneymaker there.
So... then... well... I happened to be procratinating when I found that little gem in the bowels of tumblr (I hate it when my red head art-porn sites have pithy posts...).

So what do I (and most of the western world nowadays) do when I am actively procratsinating?  I internet.

That's right.  I verb it.  I internet the fuck out of hours and hours of my life.

Failblog.  Facebook.  Blogspot.  Hulu.  Pandora.  Amazon.  Wikepedia.  Link after link, page after page, whim after whim after facy after impulse.

I internet.

Can one internet for a living?  I imagine lots of my generation has discovered how to do just that.  They're cleverer than I.

But when I'm at work this mental sticky seems to loom larger and larger.  When I struggle to keep pace with the real educators.  When I am pulling out my hair over the enormous responsibility that I never really wanted and don't believ I'll ever be equal to.

I wonder: what SHOULD I be doing while I procrastinate, and there fore doing instead of teaching for the rest of my life?

No answers have revealed themselves.  But a feeling of anxiousness fills me whenever I ruminate upon the niggling, stupid, nothing of an internet kind of thing to fucking say.  What a fucking post card it is.  The worst kind of platitude or aphorism or whatever the hell it might qualify as.

And yet it looms.

And I feel... unfulfilled.  And I feel a wanderlust.  And a fierce urgency to find out.

But stickies, by nature, aren't the proper medium for details, plans, or roadmaps.

Just imperatives.

Attending this anxiety group makes me more anxious than not.  I'm learning breathing techniques and trying to re-wire my negative thought patterns into more positive, empowered ones. 

Bleck.

I wish I had a 'restart' button, or that I could load from a previous save.  But how far back would i go?

High school. 
Maybe younger?

Shrug.  Sigh.  Roll eyes.

Living a worthless life-- and being aware of it-- is an exhausting, demoralizing thing.

Two suicide attempts in 29 years.

If my life is old school nintendo, then I won't get to load from a previous save if I attempt one more time.  NES didn't have any save files, you know?  If Mario bit the big one and had no more free guys?  That was it.

No matter if you were one level in or all the way to the scary tanks.

Dead was dead, back in the world of old school videogaming.

Excepting, of course, that you could simply start over.  Sure it was back at the very first level, but at least it didn't like permanently render your system out of order or anything.

I imagine a successful suicide attempt would result in total system failure.

 unless there's an afterlife.

Which I doubt.

Feral Beasts

"My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off. "
~Ray Bradbury

In searching for some inspirational quotations for my students I came across this one and it, well, it sort of bit me in the leg and I haven't been able to shake it all day.  I have  read many, many pithy, funny, touching, moving, and revelatory quotations about the writing process, but this is the first time I'd ever read this one.

And at first I dismissed it.  Pffft.  Silly.  Grr.  Not what I was looking for.

Then I revisited it and examined it as a possibility because it seemed like something that might appeal to my middle schoolers.  Personifying untold stories as little beasties that latch on with lock-jawed tenacity.  It wasn't what I needed today, but perhaps I ought to keep it in mind for future inspirational quotage.

But it kept coming back to me at random intervals throughout the day.  And I realized why the thing stuck with me more than all the Twain quotes, the Stephen King quotes, the Plaths, the Woolfes, the Hemingways and Keruacs, the Angelous or the Wildes.  Even though I've never been particularly interested in Mr. Bradbury, nor felt a particular connection to his works, the gentleman scholar has hit my proverbial nail in the head.

My stories, my epics, my ideas--they come like feral beasts out of a wild yonder; they appear unbidden and they are determined to upset the natural ecosystem, the natural balance of my metaphorical natural order of things.  And, rabid, crazed and unrestrained, they sink their teeth into me.  And the only course of action, the only way to fight them is to give them what they want.  

And that's how it feels when I'm compelled, impelled, coerced into my 'creative writing ventures'.

And perhaps why, in absence of one of these clawing, scrambling monsters I find it so damned difficult to create, to produce, to output.  

But the little ghouls, the little animals are so inconvenient!  So unreliable! 

And so I am not a writer, but one who now and then writes.

It isn't 'fancy', for that word is too polite!  Too whimsical and smiling.  

It is more a fight-or-flight response to a mortal imperative; I'm attacked and I respond as I must in order to survive.  I write to feed the gnashing maws; I write to exorcise those wild jaws that have me in a veritable deathroll.

And when it is done, when they are temporarily sated and they slink back into the unknown and unknowable ether from whence they came, when that happens I am spent, I shiver and weep and usually hate.

That's writing...

 

 

 

Or!  Or perhaps this quotation struck a particular cord with me today because my beastly insane-o-cat attacked me quite randomly yesterday-- as I'm correcting papers all of a sudden I let out a blood curdling screech in response to the very real and very 'not-just-playing' claws sunk into my exposed lower back.

Still no idea why the neurotic little shit wigged out like that.  We think he might have been after a string or a moth or even a shadow.  Whatever it was, boy was he ever intent on murder.   It looks like I've been bitten by the demon monster from paranormal activity!