Monday, November 30, 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The park today.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

the lure of November

It seems odd, that my year in review occurs in November, and not, in say, January, or perhaps in March, around my birthday. I cannot find a reason for this, other than every couple years or so, usually around the end of October, my life seems to upend itself and unravel to nothingness, and then I spend two years on a blog detailing the reshaping, the weaving of the new life that began in November.

It dawned on me recently that I started this blog about a year ago. I won't go through the tedious work of listing what's changed and hasn't changed, since you have been here with me for the last year and lately I've talked a lot about my emotional state. Let me just say that it has been a very interesting year and I have learned about myself and who I want to be and how those two beings aren't so separate and distinct anymore. This year I really learned how to be comfortable in my own skin.

There is something to tell you. There is a man who shares my bed with me sometimes and I haven't talked about him because I didn't know what to tell you. He's not my next boyfriend, he's not going to be my husband, he may not be a long lasting part of my life. And yet, he has already had a huge impact on me in just a couple month's time. He's helping me get over the love of my lifetime and he is fulfilling a wish I made over the summer to have a man in my life.

He has this amazing solid huge body and I find myself fascinated by the way his muscles drape over his limbs, the way the shadows fall across his arms, the way his shoulders feel under my palms. I am amazed by his arms, huge heavy things I can barely wrap my fingers around and I am pleased to be given permission to touch and hold him. He sits next to me, afraid to disrupt my motions, while I explore his body as if on a topographical mission. I love watching the tree trunks of his legs move through the world, he is like a centaur and his body is sensual, suggestive, and he isn't even aware that it might be. He travels through the day in a tangle of awkward mentally induced bindings, but I get to see him unbound and it is the most beautiful thing.

As if the pleasure I derive from his physical being isn't enough, he has a brain that would stir envy in the hearts of most men and he shares it with me, in short bursts throughout the day, in occasional long conversations on the phone (which is rare for me) and I am constantly intrigued by what he has to say, how he views the world, what new piece of knowledge he happens to be dissecting every day. This is the part I fear the most. I could easily not fall in love with a body, but I find it hard not to love his brain. I relish in just about every interaction and constantly long for more, knowing full well that I could wring a wet rag out to stiffness and still not be satiated, so I try to leave him be sometimes.

I think more than anything, this year, I have finally found the freedom to be pleased, to have pleasure, to seek out pleasant things. As a kid, as I grew up, I was very careful not to have too much fun. Having fun was how you got hurt. This summer and my friends have helped me learn how to reap a joyous pleasure from life as a adult.

So I will spend the next year continuing on this libertine path, I hope I will learn how to relish with words what I have learned to do so well in person. I have never been able to celebrate the good things and always been better at moping over the miserable aspects of my life, especially in my writing. It'd be nice if I could find the words to celebrate my life. If that is the case, perhaps that means I will blog more often...

as always, thank you for being here with me.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Leaf collectors

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

why why why

One of my newly acquired friends seemed to have dissected me well enough in only three months (he is smarter and more observant than most) to declare, when someone asked how I could say such a thing about myself (some deprecating statement about how I am most certainly not awesome, especially when you consider that things which are truly awesome are vast and amazing and do in fact incur the awe of the viewer, admirer, etc.), that I, Christine Fugate was full of...(and here he paused in an effort to find the exact word he needed to fill in that blank, which, had he held it up in the air a second longer, I might have added the word shit) he said,...doubt.

And there, in one word, in one statement, in one fell swoop, my life had been summed up for me and presented to me as a thing not to worry about anymore. It was his complete and succinct definition of me that I had been trying for so long to grasp, what was it about me that always led me not to trust anyone or care about anyone or question everything everyone said to me.

[In fact, I questioned myself out of many things that weren't so bad for me, with assurances now by hindsight, because I simply could not accept that there might be something valuable about me that made those things part of my life. I peddled in doubt, which I masqueraded as love, sex, violence, anger, bitterness, envy, hate, etc, just to give myself something to pass the time. My mistrust was heralded. Hating never felt so good. Nothing stood a chance in my life. I wore everything down, whittled away at all that was good, wiping wiping wiping with questions, concerns and wonderings. Or as Kurt Vonnegut said better in Cat's Cradle:

Tiger got to hunt,

Bird got to fly

Man got to sit and wonder

Why? Why? Why?

Tiger got to sleep,

Bird got to land,

Man got to tell himself he understand.


because you see, I kept asking why and I kept trying to convince myself I knew all the answers. And I didn't know anything and there was nothing to know; I just had to see myself from this alternate perspective, which had been tried before, but this time, it was so simple, just that one word (doubt) struck through the entirety of my being. There are no more questions to ask about why I am the way I am, that is why and that is all I needed to know.]

It's funny, because I keep thinking I'm at the top of where I can ever be emotionally, that I've reached the absolute summit and when I get there, I feel good about for a little while until my eyes adjust and my vision clears and there in the distance I see another peak I have to climb. What surprises me sometimes is when I look the other way at exactly how crazy far I've come and I see that there were shorter ways to get where I am now, with less struggle, less angst, but I went at it full of doubt. I didn't trust the way or myself to know the way.

Fuck doubting. Fuck doubting everything for doubting's sake. I'm tired of it. I say I'll be bold and saucy, a truthteller, a lover, a person who doesn't hold back. The pleasures I've garnered since that thick crust of misery was pulled away has been amazing. And I want more. Problem is, I can't stop being addicted to that shit. I can kick it for a week or so, maybe a month, but then I mess something up and it all comes raining down on me and I feel that familiar sense of failure and then the flood of questions and I hate myself more than I've ever hated anything. Because if I can't love myself, how can anyone else love me?

Friday, November 6, 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

Sunset