Just Kristin

Peo­ple pray to their deity, or ask inter­ces­sion of a saint or rep­re­sen­ta­tive spirit, when they no longer pos­sess con­trol or under­stand­ing of a painful sit­u­a­tion. I com­pletely under­stand the desire to do this. In order for this activ­ity to have any ben­e­fit, how­ever, at least one of two things have to be true: 1)The recip­i­ent of these invo­ca­tions has to exist and be endowed with the power to grant the request, and/or 2) the sup­pli­ant needs to believe absolutely that the result of his plea is the will of the god­head that they hold as supreme. For me, there­fore, this type of relief is not an option, and in some ways I am sad­dened by its absence. What do I do, then? I take my meds reg­u­larly. I trust in sci­ence. I offer love and care to those who suf­fer. (I am try­ing to do this even for myself.) I try to make right deci­sions when the deci­sion is mine to make. I try (but mostly fail) to not obsess about the things over which I have no con­trol, and to focus instead on those over which I do. I cry a lot. I allow oth­ers to be a strength to me.

*pause*

More amus­ingly, how­ever, if I may dis­tract my mind with some­thing I have noticed over the last month or so, I would like to posit that I, along with many oth­ers, have begun to pray in a new and dif­fer­ent way. I don’t know if it grew out of celebrity wor­ship or from an innate(?) belief in the heal­ing power of well-wishes, but it seems that the var­i­ous social media venues have become con­duits for mod­ern kurushii toki no kami­danomi. I have, and have seen oth­ers, tweet or FaceBook-comment celebri­ties in order to get them to acknowl­edge or address some char­ity event, cat­a­stro­phe, or even sick friend, rel­a­tive or pet. Obvi­ously, when spread­ing the word has a direct cor­re­la­tion to the amount of assis­tance a cause will receive, this is an under­stand­able peti­tion. Those of us, how­ever, who sim­ply want to hear, say, Neil Gaiman wish our ill loved one well, must have some other motive. As I can only speak for myself, I can say that in my case, the use of my own despair and the pain of my pet to gar­ner some new prox­im­ity to fame is not rea­son in the slight­est. I can­not think that of most peo­ple, really, if their anguish is true. That, then, leaves the idea, amor­phous though it may be, that obtain­ing this bless­ing from a per­son you hold as a role model or per­sonal source of inspi­ra­tion will some­how work a kind of magic… Are we really that in need of gods? Read­ing what I’ve writ­ten, I can tell you with cer­tainty that my cere­bral mind scoffs at the idea. My sad lit­tle raised-Catholic inner mon­key, how­ever, knows that any­one who can cre­ate sto­ries or art or music or humor that moves me must be able to help some­how. A nod on twit­ter as the new papal wave or por­tent? A saved re-tweet as a mod­ern relic, and back­ups as reliquaries?

I need a nap. I need a nap with all my peeps and furba­bies around me. Thank you to every­one who puts up with my drivel.

Today, inspired both by Essers and the Lucif­er­ous Logolepsy site, I have come up with a term for “sleep-tweeting”:

som­nip­ip­i­la­tion: made from Latin roots for sleep — “som­nus” and twit­ter — “pipilo”

I will see it soon in the OED, I’m sure. :D

I know I am not alone in my fear of clowns, and I am also aware of this fear’s irra­tional nature, espe­cially since I 1) have never seen Stephen King’s It (and love Tim Curry enough to negate that movie’s creep fac­tor even if I had), and 2) had spent quite a bit of my child­hood as a friend of lovely clowns, one of whom I hope takes no offense at this rev­e­la­tion of my fear. Per­son­ally, I chalk it up to a mix of uncanny val­ley taint and the clowns’ faces being painted with dis­com­fit­ing lev­els of exag­ger­ated emo­tion. Some­day, when I have the time, this not-uncommon fear might make an inter­est­ing research topic.

This post, how­ever, is about some­thing else from child­hood that didn’t begin to scare me until adult­hood, but which dis­turbs me far worse than clowns, and, I believe, for more and bet­ter rea­sons: the ice cream truck. Am I alone in this, I won­der? Here are some of my reasons:

• The vans, innocu­ous to chil­dren but rec­og­niz­able to adults, espe­cially those of my age or older, as col­or­fully decked-out and refrig­er­ated ver­sions of the vans we girls were told to avoid, and that held (less often than imag­ined but more often than is soci­etally healthy) all-surface shag car­pet­ing and a large mat­tress in the back when dri­ven by mus­ta­chioed, hairy-chested, medallion-wearing disco man-whores (or their progeny).
• The hor­ri­ble music, so warped that it couldn’t have been long after it started life as a sprightly, music box ren­di­tion of “the Enter­tainer” or “Turkey in the Straw” before it was some­how melted in the fires of hell into a wilted, minor-key ver­sion of its for­mer self, a tune that some­how sug­gests ice cream to chil­dren and every­thing bit­ter and evil and cor­rupt to adults.
• The pic­tures of all the treats on the sides of the van, none of which could ever taste as good as they look, even at their most faded. Per­haps, viewed in a char­i­ta­ble light, this is a les­son taught early about the dis­ap­point­ments inher­ent in an inescapable adult life of cubi­cles and roach-coaches, but isn’t that a bit cruel? I mean, that’s like sit­ting at the food court above the ice rink and yelling at the young Olympic hope­fuls hav­ing lessons below, “I hope you like doing triple-lutzes while wear­ing a Min­nie cos­tume!” (Per­haps they shouldn’t serve beer at the food court…)
• The incred­i­ble pull the damn ice cream truck has on chil­dren! They come run­ning from every­where at the sound of the truck’s ghostly tune, and with such demented fer­vor that I can only imag­ine them fol­low­ing it into the ocean if it went there, all of them slowly going under in a parade of screams and warm, clutched quar­ters, and melt­ing Rocket Pops and a final dirge of that awful music…
• And, if that all were not enough, now there is this:
  
  Can you see it? Oh, the horror!!!

It had never occurred to her to lie about the bruise. She had been sub­con­sciously care­ful while bend­ing down to check the ripeness of the squash, but once sat­is­fied that it was still dinner-worthy, she stood with such pur­pose that her temple’s impact with the cor­ner of the kitchen island made her feel tipsy before the pain came. She remem­bered her inter­min­gled laugh­ter and tears while answer­ing the first con­cerned com­ment from a coworker the next morn­ing, and was con­fused at their inabil­ity to offer at least a sym­pa­thetic smile. Was she so clumsy, so ditsy here at work that this fur­ther proof of her lack of coor­di­na­tion made peo­ple worry for her health? It was only after the fifth iter­a­tion of “Oh, I hit it on the edge of the butcher block in my kitchen,” that she real­ized her office-mates might actu­ally be sus­pect­ing Louis of abuse! She cursed her lack of fore­thought and, tho it was already too late, began to for­mu­late a men­tal list of less attention-getting pos­si­ble causes for her dark rain­bow of an eye. She would have to be more care­ful in the future lest some well-meant, nosy soul call the author­i­ties to her home to check on her. She might even have to move Lou out of the chest freezer, just to be safe.

The last cou­ple days Smoo has been ill, and I have had lonely dri­ves to and from work with­out her. When not talk­ing to mom, I have been using the dri­ves to lis­ten to a lot of the pod­casts I have been neglect­ing. On my way home today, I lis­tened to the first half of a recent This Amer­i­can Life which dealt with the effects of early parental death upon the sur­viv­ing child. To say it caused inter­nal panic would be to grossly under­state its result upon me. I have, over the past few years, become a bit more afraid of death. I sup­pose that, com­pared to pre-med me, this is a healthy, or at least desirous thing. Many of the things that I am hav­ing to come to terms with now that I can access them — fear of my own mor­tal­ity, anx­i­ety at my capac­ity for anger at peo­ple other than myself, a sense that I may actu­ally be capa­ble of doing some­thing worth­while — all these things make me ter­ri­bly uneasy. Never before have I felt so alone on the water with­out pad­dle or compass.

Oddly enough, my old stand-by cure for men­tal anguish still works. I have whipped out a bunch of Geof­frey Abbott books and calmed myself with the tor­tur­ous ends of peo­ple too far back in his­tory to engage my rage. What is wrong with me!? I think I need this shirt for a mul­ti­tude of reasons.

I have pre-ordered Geof­frey Chaucer’s lat­est work, Geof­frey Chaucer Hath a Blog, which I have been read­ing all the while, but now will be able to read any­where, to mark up and learn from and laugh and require oth­ers to lis­ten to parts and to (pre­tend to?) find it as hilar­i­ous as I do! I do not know who the Chaucer blog­ger is, but I love them, and am grate­ful to them for all their work. I hope to see this book on the NYT Best Seller list! Buy it, every­one, buy it!

Here is the invi­ta­tion: Peo­ple out there who think favor­ably the DC Arch­dio­cese’s deci­sion to with­draw char­ity assis­tance from fos­ter chil­dren and other need groups, and also to stop insur­ing their employ­ees’ spouses, all because gay mar­riage became legal: Why do you think this is right? I *know* it is legal. Don’t give me “free­dom of reli­gion” expla­na­tions, because I am aware that the arch­dio­cese is free to help whomever they wish. I am, instead, look­ing for an answer to the ques­tion posed by their choice of dogma over the core teach­ings of Christ. What I am ask­ing for, here, is your expla­na­tion of why you think Jesus, a man who dined with & washed the feet of sin­ners, sup­pos­edly for­gave all, and died for our sins would approve of the with­drawal of Church-based sup­port of the needy over a distasteful(-to-the-church) law. Tell me why Jesus would be fine with the pun­ish­ing of the mem­bers of a third party — and down­trod­den ones at that — over a sin­gle, “sin­ful” legal deci­sion on the part of the gov­ern­ment. You see, I was raised Catholic, and, despite that, even read the bible, but I missed the chap­ter and verse where Jesus denied fish and loaves to the masses because there were money-lenders in the tem­ple. I grew up spend­ing Sun­day morn­ings sit­ting in mass, singing Matthew 25:40 and think­ing that its mes­sage was a great life rule whether one believes in god or not. Its use in masses stands today as fur­ther proof of the DC Arch­dio­cese not prac­tic­ing what they preach. At any rate, please explain. Keep in mind here, that your rebut­tal should cen­ter not around the legal­ity of the Archdiocese’s actions (as your free­dom to sup­port whom you will is just as legally sup­ported in this coun­try as is the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state), but around their applic­a­bil­ity to the Archdiocese’s stand­ing as a Chris­t­ian(?) (here’s a def­i­n­i­tion) orga­ni­za­tion. As far as I can tell, the law is not forc­ing them to aban­don Chris­t­ian val­ues. They have sim­ply picked their bible verse, regard­less of the fact that in doing so they are harm­ing far, far more peo­ple than they might ever be help­ing(?), and are bound and deter­mined to fol­low it straight to heaven(?). So, you with the answers: you have as long as you need. “Jesus would approve of the DC Catholic Archdiocese’s deci­sion because… ” Go on. Discuss.

I am sure that this will pass, but I resent it in the same way I resent sleep when it catches me… I am tired. I occa­sion­ally remem­ber that I have to bother peo­ple about fin­ish­ing my incom­plete course from last semes­ter, that I have to pay for school if I am going back, that work has more hur­dles lined up for me on top of the ones I tripped over last week, and the knowl­edge of it all ties me in a big­ger bun­dle of the same knots I end up in when, hav­ing finally sat down at the end of my day, I find that I still have things that need doing. “Can’t leave things unfin­ished!” the voices say, and I believe them, and I get up again to do it all before I sleep. I always do. Damn sleep. And so I know I will get up again and keep run­ning, but to what end? Is it only so I can get it all done before I sleep? Or is a con­stant, fran­tic doing a way to some­how stave off sleep?

Things were musi­cally more inter­est­ing back in the day, when DJs actu­ally spun records, when they needed to have actual skill to tran­si­tion between songs and seg­ments, when a knowl­edge of both music and sound equip­ment was required for the job. Sure, lis­ten­ers would hear irri­tat­ing songs as often as they’d learn about some new and excit­ing band or style, but that was the trade-off. I really didn’t want to rant on the death of radio, how­ever, as I have been made happy by turn­ing off my radio and groov­ing instead to Radio Par­adise, SomaFM and Pan­dora. I really wanted to share a dis­cov­ery (read: per­sonal abil­ity to find mean­ing where there is none).

On this blog, I have a list of songs that make me want to pee faster when I hear them when I am in the restroom at work. (Some­one thought it a fine idea to put a radio in our bath­room, osten­si­bly to give us a sound­track to do girls’ room things to.) For some rea­son, occa­sion­ally a song will be play­ing that dis­turbs me mea­sur­ably more than sim­ply hav­ing a sound­track does, and I add it to the list.

Today, how­ever, I had a dif­fer­ent reac­tion to what was play­ing while I peed: Come Sail Away by Styx is a longer-than-average song, and I couldn’t help but think that — at least back before pre-recorded blocks of song — it would have been used to give the DJ the chance to relieve his blad­der. In effect, I felt a kind of kin­ship at the thought of pee­ing while some­one else, briefly escap­ing from their booth (which, in my head will always look like the stu­dio at WKRP), also peed. I look for­ward, now, to hear­ing any of these or these songs and once again bond­ing with my (child­hood mem­ory of a) local DJ.

Last time the river between our offices and Fash­ion Val­ley flooded, there were ducks swim­ming across the road. I love ducks! This time, how­ever, the cur­rent is too strong and the ducks are too smart to be out in this weather. Wendy and I went to check it out, and to watch peo­ple (who are appar­ently less smart than ducks) try to tra­verse either road, only to finally honor the block­ades and flip a U.

I love the rain, but I do wish it would soak in. And, as long as I am wish­ing, more ducks, please!