zeldafitz

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Ornately Colored Hats and Resisting Self Pity

I have a Snoop Dogg song in my head, along with half a lake. Can someone perform an exorcism?

I had catastrophe dreams all last night involving inner sprinkler systems, kitty litter on counters to put out fires, and hiding from an NYC mounted policeman under a bush. I was also in a 3-D teen horror film—3-D in that I was a part of the film and couldn’t escape the weird ear slicing carnage. A dream the other night involved watching an enormous beautiful Greek Orthodox Church implode like Vesuvius in a gorgeous sort of slow motion fashion and all that emerged were ornately cut and colored hats.

This is one of the best assessments of George Bush I have read to date, especially with regard to the hurricane, his reaction and his presidency. It’s by David Remnick, in the New Yorker. Here’s a highlight:

And yet, to a frightening degree, Bush’s faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the crisis. Suntanned and relaxed after a vacation so long that it would have shamed a French playboy [LOVE IT!], Bush reacted with fogged delinquency, as if he had been so lulled by his summer sojourn that he was not quite ready to acknowledge reality, let alone attempt to master it.

I was talking to someone the other day about her blog and I could tell she didn’t want to talk about mine because you kinda know when someone thinks it’s a frivolous “vanity” project or some kind of “waste of time.” But she did say, “You’re a pretty good writer.” Then she followed it with, “You going to do anything with that?”

Nah, I think I’ll just continue unfulfilling my promise and not living up to my potential. Thanks for asking!

I mean, I don’t believe in excuses, but IF I DID, I have plenty. Not the least of which is, we found out when we got back from vacation that MZA lost his job. So I am the sole breadwinner right now.

I had to pee really badly the other day; my mother called me in semi-tears; I was cramming a final fork into a jammed dishwasher; Daisy was intermittently encircling my knees; MZA was on the computer downstairs in a bit of a funk; I had to pee (did I mention that?); I had ongoing vertigo/nausea/confusion, and suddenly I felt entirely overwhelmed.

My mother had walked her indomitable friend Aunt Donnie, a fellow Women’s Airforce Service Pilot (WASP), out to her car after their visit. My mother was wearing socks and tripped on a hose that was spritzing the elaborate flower beds around her place. They all came out and got her; she was OK. But she was tearful when she called me and the sensation of walls closing in was augmented by my temporary deafness—as though my body was providing an aural metaphor for the constricting feeling of defeat or something. And man, you know how you try not to slip down that slope. It’s a hard slope not to slip down—the Self Pity Slope that is. I am resisting it.

It was one of those things where I thought MZA’s contract renegotiation would actually bring a raise and that maybe I could cut my hours and, well, write, and of course you know that didn’t happen. Not only did he not get a raise, he got the opposite of a raise, so I guess that’s why it stings sometimes when someone asks, well why exactly are you not fulfilling your promise?

I have a New Yorker cartoon on the fridge:

I don’t know what you do if that happens. I’ll keep ya posted.

I want to go read a book in the nettled silence of my bedroom. On gossamer green sheets underneath my flowered duvet. With sun dapples on pale yellow paint.