Silly Rabbit...

I think my luck is taking a turn for the worst. It was just a week or two ago that I split open my fortune cookie and found not one, but three fortunes inside! I thought things couldn't get any better. Then I had my Oliver related physcho-cokehead hot boy incident, the Valentines day puking thing occured, the day after I ordered my new computer I found out that my job just started giving a corporate discount on the very same brand, this afternoon I was licking an envelope and I got a paper cut on my mouth, and tonight while I was in the shower shaving my legs I dropped the razor, I grabbed it a bit too hastily and severly cut my thumb. I think I need to go rub a rabbit's foot or Buddah's belly or something!

I'm baaaack!

and what a long strange trip it's been...
Traveling always does something weird to me-- something good weird, I guess, because it always makes me want to start something new when I get back. It's good to stir things up. While I'm on the road I always have strange unsettling moments though. I get all detached feeling and very confused. The trouble with this trip was that the best part happened early on and it sort of pettered off from there, due in part to the holiday and everything being closed. The last day of a trip is always the worst and this trip was a remarkable example of this.

On our last day we went to The Four Seasons Hotel for tea. It was something my co-worker suggested and it sounded like an amusing way to spend Boxing Day. We got dressed up and arrived at the hotel's posh little sitting room. It was filled with overstuffed chairs and little coffee tables, christmas trimmings dripped off every available surface (in a classy way, of course). There was an old man playing christmas songs at the piano. He was wearing a velvet suit jacket although the room was very warm and during his breif pause between songs his head would bow and threaten to droop into slumber, but then he would jerk up stumble right into Santa Clause is coming to town.

I felt like a tremendous slow child sitting in my fat armchair, towering over the little tea table in front of me. I was instantly emarrassed by my foolish outfit. I was wearing a black dress and a grey cardigan, but as an afterthought I'd put on black knee socks over my black stalkings, there was no full length mirror in the hotel room and I foolishly accepted my dad's comfirmation that this wasn't a bad idea. The cardigan, knee length dress, socks and my large round-toed shoes made for a ridculous combination.

My emabarrassment over my clothes made me immediately shy, I clammed right up and the whole thing was made worse by my dad's patronizing attitude. He immediately asked the waitress if they served mince pies, saying it was the whole reason I came to England, that I'd been talking about those silly pies ever since we'd arrived. As the waitress poured our tea she gave me condiscending smiles and asked over and over if "I was enjoying my afternoon tea?" I nodded and showed her a wide grin as my big feet squirmed around and nervously tapped the rug. I knew I was acting freakish, but I couldn't stop.

Then I went upstairs to use the lavatory. It was all oak and brass with rows and rows of dressing tables, each surrounded by mirrors. There were cloth towels and bottles of mineral water with glasses. I sat down in one of those pretty little bathroom stalls and took a shit. Then I slinked back downstairs to finish my tea and scones with clotted cream, smiling goofily at the wairtress all the while.

The Rodent Mire of Childhood

I’m reading Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. It is a brilliant and frightening book about a family of circus freaks. One of my favorite quotes is about the grief and darkness of childhood:

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into…
...How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilized anesthesia. That terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood (p.105-106).

This was what I wanted to talk about in reference to the Scientology play, but with the awfulness of the day I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and write anything that wasn’t obvious. It was fitting that the play was a spoof on a children’s Christmas pageant, because Scientology is all about the belief in the purity of childhood happiness and that to attain such happiness one must erase all memory of the sour moments that tainted it.

It was interesting seeing children talk about these things. It was apparent that they knew that the play was funny and sarcastic and they got a kick out of it. Hearing children proclaim that childhood is the one time that people are truly happy drives home the absurdity of the statement, because everyone does this. Everyone looks back at childhood as a glorious and simple time.

I do have the distinct memory of wanting to indulge my parent’s belief in my innocence and I was a tremendously fearful that they might discover that I knew more than I let on.

I remember when I was 7 years old eating dinner with my mother and my aunt; half listening to them talk about another aunt and uncle. “They want to have children,” my mother said.
“But they sleep in separate beds!” I blurted out. My mother and my aunt stared at me in disbelief. “You got that from your dad, didn’t you?” My mother asked. I nodded yes even though it was a lie.

When we got home I sat in the darkened living room watching through the kitchen doorway as my mom and my aunt interrogate my father. He denied saying anything, but they refused to believe him. I felt terribly guilty and vowed to one day apologize to him about the whole matter, but I knew I’d have to wait until he was on his death bed because it would be far too humiliating if he wasn’t on the verge of dying. That vision of sitting by his bed and confessing everything was the only thought that gave me comfort.

Sunday

Yesterday was the most depressing of Sundays.
For some reason I’d been looking forward to Sunday all weekend. Sleeping late. The lazy, easy afternoon. Sunday night in front of the television. Stringing popcorn for the little Christmas tree. But then it came and it was just disappointing and awful.

All day nothing felt right. Everyone was strange. People didn’t fit together. Janine and I wandered the aisles of the grocery store listless and sad, unable to decide on anything. The weather was snowy and rainy and slushy and difficult.

Saddam Hussein was captured, but he turned out to just be a scared old man in a hole. Everyone on the news pretended to feel triumphant, but I’m sure some of them were disappointed. His scraggily grey beard and frightened eyes, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

He must be the loneliest. Sunday of all days I understood him. Mass murder, genocide. A monster, so mean, and so bad he dug himself in deeper and deeper and then he got caught. Cornered there alone in his hole, there was nothing. Nothing left to him. He burned it all away hating and now no one loves him. The loneliest.