My friend Niki (aka Nicols Fox, see link at bottom of page) is just about the coolest person I know.
I met her in grad school. She's roughly my mother's age and has been a role model and in some ways an alternative mother figure for me. She lives by herself in a cottage on the quiet side of Mount Desert Island in Maine. Some of my earliest on this blog were about a visit to her home in July of 2005, just a month and a half before The Thing.
She's a role model because she transformed herself in the second half of her life, and she makes being an old maid look damn appealing. When she was in her 40s she was the wife of a Republican politician in Virginia and the mother of two. Since then she has divorced, survived breast cancer, moved to Maine, finished an MFA, started a writing career and published four books, changed her lifestyle to reflect her semi-neo-luddite philosophy, and generally followed her own vision.
But I always wondered about whether she would stay up there in semi-isolation till the end. I worried about her a bit. Now I have learned that she put her house up for sale and is considering a move back to Virginia, because of a multitude of health problems.
She was so gung-ho into living on Mt. Desert. Just as I was about living in New Orleans, I suppose. We both had the feeling that we had found our place. But life is a series of storms and upsets, with interludes of semi-contentment if you're lucky. Now we are both in search of a new home and the next interlude. I'm going north and she's going south. It would be cool if we both ended up in VA. But I'm sad. I don't want her to be anything but healthy and in her element. I wish I could buy her house, too, as a way to hold on to that moment now gone.
I have a job interview at a state court in Norfolk on the day before my dreaded b'day. One of my fellow interns from this summer is interviewing in the slot after me, so we can get together and have a drink afterward. But the job is the opposite of the job in New York. It doesn't offer any of the things I want except a means to get established in VA.
I got back together with Mr. M about a month ago, but now I have second thoughts. Or I need to think about the relationship in a different way. I absolutely want him in my life. He is my closest confidante, but as a boyfriend he is hopeless. He does love me, despite what I wrote in an earlier post. But he chronically cannot get his shit together. On any given day I go to class, then to my externship, then run errands, then read for next day's classes, then work on my paper, then walk the dog, while he "managed" to get some laundry done and went to the drugstore. He still hasn't "managed" to do anything about work or school or making any plans to do anything. It drives me up a tree. I don't want to nag and for the most part I don't. At least he knows he's got some issues with this and he's in therapy to work on it. But still, I find myself losing respect for him. And I realize if we were just friends it wouldn't bother me very much. I sometimes get momentarily annoyed by my friends' flaws and foibles, but for the most part I don't notice them very much. But in a boyfriend I find this unacceptable. Instead of getting annoyed, though, I think I need to get detached. If he doesn't affirmatively do something, our romance will die a natural death because I am not going to move to Minneapolis. Hopefully the friendship will survive. And if he does actually do something, it will be a wonderful surprise.
Being romantically alone doesn't seem so bad as long as I have good friends and a social life. Right now I'm in a cycle where I'm madly horny for about two days each month, during which my dreams are just sex, sex, sex, and I have to masturbate in the middle of the night just so I can dream about something else--kind of like when you keep dreaming about peeing until you get up and go to the bathroom. But the rest of the month I don't think about sex at all, except maybe to think how annoying is that random, compulsive hormonal stupidity.
In other news, a murder in my neighborhood at 11 a.m. today, and a carjacking late thursday night/ friday morning.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Fall back
I had a strange vivid dream about being in Milwaukee. I've never actually been there, and my dream Milwaukee obviously had no resemblance to the real thing, because it was steeply, mountainously hilly. More hilly than San Francisco. Only unlike S.F. it gets snowy and icy in the winter, and I was wondering about how people handled those steep slopes in the snow. But it turned out that Milwaukee's bigger problem was that there were huge tigers wandering the streets and attacking pedestrians. I hid from a tiger in a pile of big bags of dog food. I was wedged in between 50 pound bags of dog food and feeling crushed.
A totally nonsensical dream, but when I look at it for a minute I can see meaning in it. The dog food, for example, is about feeling overwhelmed by the cost of feeding and maintaining Hank (he just had a $500 vet bill), but he does keep me protected from dangerous things in the street.
Why specifically Milwaukee? I have no idea, other than it's geographically proximate to Minneapolis, and I know Mr. M visited there with a long-ago ex-girlfriend. But still, I dunno.
However, snow and hills are relevant because I have a second interview with a small law firm in New York State, in a town on the Hudson and near the Catskills. Supposed to be very, very pretty, and less than two hours to Manhattan by train. I hit it off with the partner who interviewed me at Tulane, and the firm itself seems nearly ideal in its clients and specialties. But it's in New York, which is not in the south and which has a serious winter. So now I have to figure out whether this is really a problem, or whether it's just about assumptions that should be questioned.
I lived in NYC when I was 18-20. I was lost, clueless and formless, and the city was threatening and overwhelming. The last winter there I found particularly hard. And so I ran off to the south, which seemed like an easier place to be. At the time I had the idea that I was going south to get myself together and gain some kind of wisdom, but I was foggy about what kind of wisdom this was and how I was going to get it. But once I got it I was going to come back and take over the world. Because I assumed that to take over the world you had to be in New York or at least in the Northeast.
But in the south I gradually came to the conclusion that maybe New York wasn't really the center of the universe. And even more gradually I came to the difficult conclusion that I wasn't going to take over the world and live forever. Nevertheless, I did get myself together and now I feel ready to participate and contribute to "the human endeavor." I don't think that requires going back to the NE.
But still, when I lived in Memphis I visited New England quite a few times--Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and I always felt bad about returning to Memphis, which seemed flat, junky and unlovely in comparison.
From the time I moved to New Orleans to the time of the Thing, I was always happy to come home to New Orleans, because I was in love with and happy in NOLA. But not so much anymore.
But winter. I've been working with the assumption that I have to avoid places with serious winters. There have been times when I've had very bad seasonal depression. Even in New Orleans. It's the dark more than the cold. But then I always liked going to Vermont in the winter, albeit for short, discreet periods of time. The hard thing about a Northeastern winter is that it gets so grey and stays that way for such a long time.
Still, the external factors that trigger my depressions only do so if there's a sort of nascent depression waiting underneath. The year that even a New Orleans winter seemed much too much to bear, and I could understand why someone might jump off a bridge, was the winter that Mr. M shut me out and disappeared.
Also, I can get horrifically depressed at that special time of the month, but only if I'm sort of depressed anyway. When I'm happy with my life, I barely notice my periods at all.
And now Katrina has introduced me to the wonders of Wellbutrin. So maybe a New York winter would be bearable. I would have engaging work. I wouldn't be broke anymore. I could buy a cute old house and hibernate inside. I'd be close to my sister and Miss S. I could go spend the holidays on a tropical island. When the weather got better, I could go hiking on the weekend, or to the shore, or to NYC.
Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my worries away, because I just want to get something lined up so that I won't graduate with six figures of debt and no job.
The other immediate possibility is working for a particular federal agency. Depending on who wins the next presidential election, this agency might turn out to be a worthwhile place to work. For now, though, the appeal is mostly tactical. I could live in Arlington, take the VA bar, and be in a better position to get a job in Richmond. I developed a crush on Richmond just because it has lots of pretty old neighborhoods with pretty old houses, because it's just the right size, and because it's geographically well placed. But I don't really know anything about it as a community.
Post-K, all assumptions are subject to question. But that makes things harder to figure out. When can you trust your gut and when is your gut clinging to unhelpful fears and prejudices?
Sort of ironic, I had an earlier interview for a clerkship in Puerto Rico, which I didn't end up getting. When I got the interview I sort of dreaded the idea of living in San Juan for two years, but before long I enthusiastically thought of it as an amazing, exciting, un-turn-down-able opportunity. Which I was then bummed out to lose.
My NY interview will be in the winter, so at least my gut will be able to make a more informed choice.
A totally nonsensical dream, but when I look at it for a minute I can see meaning in it. The dog food, for example, is about feeling overwhelmed by the cost of feeding and maintaining Hank (he just had a $500 vet bill), but he does keep me protected from dangerous things in the street.
Why specifically Milwaukee? I have no idea, other than it's geographically proximate to Minneapolis, and I know Mr. M visited there with a long-ago ex-girlfriend. But still, I dunno.
However, snow and hills are relevant because I have a second interview with a small law firm in New York State, in a town on the Hudson and near the Catskills. Supposed to be very, very pretty, and less than two hours to Manhattan by train. I hit it off with the partner who interviewed me at Tulane, and the firm itself seems nearly ideal in its clients and specialties. But it's in New York, which is not in the south and which has a serious winter. So now I have to figure out whether this is really a problem, or whether it's just about assumptions that should be questioned.
I lived in NYC when I was 18-20. I was lost, clueless and formless, and the city was threatening and overwhelming. The last winter there I found particularly hard. And so I ran off to the south, which seemed like an easier place to be. At the time I had the idea that I was going south to get myself together and gain some kind of wisdom, but I was foggy about what kind of wisdom this was and how I was going to get it. But once I got it I was going to come back and take over the world. Because I assumed that to take over the world you had to be in New York or at least in the Northeast.
But in the south I gradually came to the conclusion that maybe New York wasn't really the center of the universe. And even more gradually I came to the difficult conclusion that I wasn't going to take over the world and live forever. Nevertheless, I did get myself together and now I feel ready to participate and contribute to "the human endeavor." I don't think that requires going back to the NE.
But still, when I lived in Memphis I visited New England quite a few times--Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and I always felt bad about returning to Memphis, which seemed flat, junky and unlovely in comparison.
From the time I moved to New Orleans to the time of the Thing, I was always happy to come home to New Orleans, because I was in love with and happy in NOLA. But not so much anymore.
But winter. I've been working with the assumption that I have to avoid places with serious winters. There have been times when I've had very bad seasonal depression. Even in New Orleans. It's the dark more than the cold. But then I always liked going to Vermont in the winter, albeit for short, discreet periods of time. The hard thing about a Northeastern winter is that it gets so grey and stays that way for such a long time.
Still, the external factors that trigger my depressions only do so if there's a sort of nascent depression waiting underneath. The year that even a New Orleans winter seemed much too much to bear, and I could understand why someone might jump off a bridge, was the winter that Mr. M shut me out and disappeared.
Also, I can get horrifically depressed at that special time of the month, but only if I'm sort of depressed anyway. When I'm happy with my life, I barely notice my periods at all.
And now Katrina has introduced me to the wonders of Wellbutrin. So maybe a New York winter would be bearable. I would have engaging work. I wouldn't be broke anymore. I could buy a cute old house and hibernate inside. I'd be close to my sister and Miss S. I could go spend the holidays on a tropical island. When the weather got better, I could go hiking on the weekend, or to the shore, or to NYC.
Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my worries away, because I just want to get something lined up so that I won't graduate with six figures of debt and no job.
The other immediate possibility is working for a particular federal agency. Depending on who wins the next presidential election, this agency might turn out to be a worthwhile place to work. For now, though, the appeal is mostly tactical. I could live in Arlington, take the VA bar, and be in a better position to get a job in Richmond. I developed a crush on Richmond just because it has lots of pretty old neighborhoods with pretty old houses, because it's just the right size, and because it's geographically well placed. But I don't really know anything about it as a community.
Post-K, all assumptions are subject to question. But that makes things harder to figure out. When can you trust your gut and when is your gut clinging to unhelpful fears and prejudices?
Sort of ironic, I had an earlier interview for a clerkship in Puerto Rico, which I didn't end up getting. When I got the interview I sort of dreaded the idea of living in San Juan for two years, but before long I enthusiastically thought of it as an amazing, exciting, un-turn-down-able opportunity. Which I was then bummed out to lose.
My NY interview will be in the winter, so at least my gut will be able to make a more informed choice.
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