Reason Breeds Insanity

Merideth was here for the weekend. She’s gone again already. It sucks. As I told her sister, I miss Merideth like I would miss the sun if it didn’t rise. I hate it that I get to see her twice a year, if I am lucky. We had a pretty good time revisiting old times. That whole Pretty Woman debacle could be left alone, but other than that, times were good.

Of course we went to 13Graves, one of our favorite cemeteries. 13 Graves is so scary because it is in the middle of nowhere, it is pitch black, you can hear the river running, and a girl was murdered there when we were in high school. The last fact is what scares the shit out of us. Merideth’s sister, Leah, went to 13 Graves on the night the girl was killed. She went to a local church lock-in, and they thought it would be fun to go out to try scare the kids with the whole Halloween, evil spirits, and darkness thing. Plus if you walk across these thirteen graves, one of them “disappears” when you walk back. What happens is that you walk ON the headstones, which are really old concrete bumps used to keep the hurst/death wagon from rolling away, and you forget, because of the scarienss of it all, that you are standing on thirteen. When you started you were standing on the ground and said one as you stepped onto the first one. When you walk back, you count only twelve because you forget to count the one you were standing on initially.

Anyway, when Leah was in high school, they were going to go out there and scare the kids who’d never been there. They loaded up the church van and drove the half-hour to the gravel road that runs along the river. As they were approaching the cemetery, there were about a dozen people walking along the river or maybe they were already in the cemetery. Leah says they had on dark cloaks with hoods and they were carrying some type of lights. She thinks the moon was full, but they still couldn’t see very well because of the thick tree-cover. Even when the moon is full, you can’t see out there. Well, they obviously didn’t get out of the van and they kept driving and just turned on the next road and went back to the church. I am sure they were scared shitless. I saw a group of guys wearing all black in a cemetery at night once. I lost my breath for quite some time. I am sure they were hysterical because of the legend of 13 Graves. The people dressed in black only added to it.

The next Monday at school, a rumor was circulating that someone, a girl, was killed in Wells county over the weekend. They found her body in a trailor, raped and murdered. Gruesomely. The trailor just happened to be graffitied with Satanic symbols and horrible images. The trailor just happened to have several black cloaks thrown on the floor under the body. And, the trailor just happened to be across the road from 13 Graves. To this day Leah will not go back there. Even in the full sun of noon.

Merideth and I go back every time she is home. We want to get a picture of this girl, so we take a digital camera with us every year, hoping to get more than two or three pictures before the camera stops taking them. We have learned in our amateur ghost hunting that the magnetic resonance of spectres makes betteries run out of power. Supposedly rechargeable batteries last longer, so we charged the batteries all day. We got three pictures, one of which I took on the way home to prove that the camera was still working.

This time as we pulled up we realized they had put up a new fence around the cemetery. We were afraid we weren’t going to be able to get in, because in the dark we couldn’t see the gate. We drove along slowly until we foudn the entrance and Liza, Alex, Merideth, and I sat in the Jeep deciding if we wanted to get out or not. This whole situation is pretty funny because Alex is six feet tall and used to be a bouncer at a bar. The three of us are pretty hard core women, who don’t scare easily. But this place makes us all sweat. The headstones were clearly illuminated by the lights of the Jeep, and it didn’t look too frightening, besides it is just dead people, so we got out. We stood, quite bravely, in between the stones near the “13 Graves.” We were all spread out, and I said, “This isn’t that scary.” Just as I said that, Merideth said, “Well, we got two pictures. No auras. Just dust. And the camera stopped already.” As she said it, and the light from the flash dispersed, the lights on the Jeep went out. Black. We couldn’t even see each other. Like drops of mercury, we slid across the grass and coagulated, grabbing each other’s arms. Liza screamed, or maybe it was Merideth. Maybe it was even me. I turned around and walked us back to the gate, “Okay. I am finished. In the Jeep.” We got in, locked the doors, lit cigarettes, and drove away. We never get any auras. We always only get dust.

I am returning to my summer existential crisis. Really it is my perpetual existential crisis. I feel like I am on crack, although I don’t know what that feels like. I don’t feel like I am high from smoking pot, eating ‘shrooms, or drinking too much beer. And I know what those feel like. I mostly feel like my life is slipping through my own outstretched fingers and I am not making much of impact. Or I am making too much of an impact. I am not connected. Or I am too connected. Basically, I am an insecure whiny toddler right now. Sorry, but it’s the price you pay for being my friend. I probably should be on Prozac. And maybe, because you are my friend, you should be on Prozac, too.

I feel like I need to buy things. I need to buy lots of things. School started, I need things. I need pants for winter. I need corduroys, khakis, and jeans. I need new shoes. I need Chucks. I need winter boots. I need matching footwear. I need school supplies.I need to take copious amounts of notes with brand new pens on brand new paper. I need seven hundred new folders to put things in. I need to write everything down in order to never look at it again. I need to eat everything in site for days on end. I need to lose weight. I need to be happy with who I am. I need to run. I need new running shoes. I need new t-shirts. I need some that represent who I am and who I am becoming. I need some that tell everyone my political affiliation. I need a few explaining my choices in beer and beverages. Gunniess and Ginger-Ale, since I can’t get Faygo Rock-n-Rye in glass bottles. I need an air-freshener that changes scents every so many minutes, so that I never get tired of the smell of my surroundings. I need a Super-Shammy to suck up all my excess. I need Oxy-Clean to make it white again. I need bottled water so I don’t pollute myself with the municipal supply. I need fat-free. I need low-carb. I need vegan. I need organic. I need pre-packaged. I need a new iPod. I need a new cellphone. I need little plastic, velcro-backed hooks. I need candy cigarettes and real ones, too. I need small, shiny jewels mined by a child who is missing an arm. I need toys made by women and children with lead poisoning in some two-thirds world country. I need to surround myself with stuff I don’t need. I need to be a good American. I need. I need. I need. No, I want.

My existential crisis is this: I want what I don’t need. Maybe that is the existential crisis. I find my worth in my stuff. In fact, most of my existence is spent trying to secure things that I will never need. I am “perfectly sure of where [I] am in relation to the supermarket and the next coffee break” but I forget sometimes where I am “in relation to the stars and to the solstices. [My] sense of the natural order has become dull and unreliable” (N. Scott Momaday from “The Man Made of Words”). I guess I only need what God provides, but it is so hard to remember that when I see the things I am supposed to “need” in order to be happy. But for those things I do actually need, like food and clothes, I can be vigilant. I can ensure that my choices make an impact, the one I want, and do not make too much of one, the kind I don’t want.

But I beat a dead horse, and it still won’t get up and run.

Jill’s Stuff:

The Sloth

The Allergy Diaries

Joyce’s stuff:

Book Review

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

A ‘Horror of Corpulence’

I feel like these two women have helped me because they have encouraged me, because they tell me when I need to revise or to take a second look at something, and because I can imagine myself to one day write better because they have mentored me. I appreciate their writing as well, which never hurts when I am trying to get better at something. Thanks.

I am running out of creative titles, so I decided to think about an ordinary thing, a lily pad, and try to look at it differently, butt-cheeks. Haven’t you ever looked at a big lily pad and thought to yourself, “Self, that lily pad looks like a butt. In fact, it looks like two butt-cheeks, but green. Perhaps it looks like Kermit the Frog’s butt-cheeks. If Kermit has butt-cheeks, are they round like a lily pad?” I have spent time considering far less interesting musings, so it doesn’t surprise me that here I sit trying to decide if Kermit the Frog—not the puppet because we all know there are no butt-cheeks on a puppet because someone’s hand is up its ass and all it has is a big gaping hole the width of its torso—the stuffed animal, or the real Kermit the Frog, has butt-cheeks. I am going to say, yes, yes, Kermit has cheeks, and yes, they do look, when viewed from behind, like a lily pad. Where the magic comes in, I’ll let you decide.

Today has been a good day. I taught, which is always good but could have been made better if more students had shown up for peer evaluations. I will never understand missing peer evaluations, because that is one of the easiest days in a unit. I don’t talk much, my students just spend the majority of the time kindly critiquing each other’s work. Even if you don’t have your work done, you can come to class and at least fake it. I will never understand skipping rough draft day!

Another positive thing that happened today is that we posted our flyers for Fat Friday Forum. It’s on Friday, September 26 at 3:30 in RB 361. At this Friday Forum, which is pretty near and dear to my heart, Sarah, Elizabeth, and I will be presenting work that will eventually find its way into our self-published chapbook, Boundary-less Bodies, which we will be distributing at a later date. Boundary-less Bodies is going to be about bodies, boundaries, and identity for the most part. I am pretty sure it will be a mix between gender, ethnicity, body size, sexuality, and dis/ability explorations. I hope the reading goes well, because my mom is coming to hear us read.

Finally, I sent the constitution to Jay, so he could put his seal of approval on it. Continuum should be up and running as an official organization by October. Until then, we are going to try to do some homecoming stuff, meet a few times at the MTCup, and possibly start organizing some other events, so we can get rolling right along when we get approved. I keep getting supportive emails from people, which is really helpful. I have never really even belonged to a social/political/professional organization (outside of teaching or English organizations), so I am pretty antsy about starting one! However, it seems like there are a few people who have some experience with this sort of thing that are more than willing to do legwork, but don’t want to be in charge. That’s fine, I can organize, other people can do! And, I promise to try not to micro-manage.

Life seems to be going forward, and Merideth will be here in two days!

Watch this clip from Saturday Night Live. Tell me isn’t one of the funniest things you have ever seen. You lie.

Watch this beautiful video of Ellen and Portia’s wedding. For anyone who doesn’t know, I am one of Ellen’s biggest fans. I have loved her since her first stand-up days, so seeing her happy makes me smile.

I am pretty nervous about school today, because I am trying something new, besides the focusing on the positive and ignoring the negative. I have decided that I am going to live my school life by what I call the “Nathan Plan.” What that means is that I am going to go to school for the sake of going to school, realizing that what I am learning is for me to take away with me, extrapolate it out, and try to make the world a better place. I do not find my worth in BSU’s English Department, the world is much bigger. I am not going to school to make friends, but I won’t be hateful, just not overly friendly. I am not going to school to be popular. I am going to school to learn. I am learning to be selective, which I have to say is sad. I like erring on the side of trusting, loving, and gracing people. I think I can do it, though, this pulling back. I mean even Jesus didn’t hang out with the Pharisees. If he couldn’t do it, I am not sure why I think I can.

I am sorry to belabor this point, I just am really struggling with it all. And trying to “get over it,” as I keep telling myself just isn’t working!