Micro Managed

I work, a great deal more hours than I was expecting to right now.  The money is okay.  The people I work with are strange mix indeed.  Despite the variety of ex cons, young pups and old men that fill my night working in the trucking business - I have no freedom. It seems that every possible moment of my work day (most peoples bedtimes) is filled in by phone calls, reports and constant interaction.  I am in no way blaming the men that work with me - I can imagine that they are as sick of their tethers as I am (perhaps even more so).  I just wish there a way to handle all of this interaction with more precision.  By sunup I have completed five major reports, monitored the dispatch and handled drivers problems for an assortment of clients.  By the end of my day - I have completed at least three more major reports that are in essence the same reports only more information filled in.  /sigh  It is mind numbing.  I'm exhausted and there are even points when my throat begins to hurt because I've talked so much throughout the night.  (Can you believe that?)

All these trails of paper make me feel micromanaged and horribly inefficient.

Tears in the Night, My Mother's Cabinet

My mother’s china cabinet is made of a dark wood with glass and wooden filigree.  Inside it she collected Auntie Mama Cookie jars and an odd assortment of old photographs.  It has been in every apartment, every home we ever lived. It is one of the few things of value that our family actually owns.

Last night I dreamed about my mother. She has been dead now for 11 years.  It feels like only yesterday that she died, that I heard my brother’s voice over the phone and that stone fell within my heart.
Tonight I dreamt of my brother’s house where my parents lived with him – where my dad still does.

In the dream I went home to find another woman in the house with my dad.  My mother was in another room broken hearted, on an old mattress – down the dark hallway.  My heart lurched.  How could my dad be doing this? How could my brother allow such a thing? 

“She’s been dead a long time” he says – as if excusing my dad’s adultery. 

“How can she be dead if she’s in that other room crying? I say logically and for a minute - confused.

I yell at my father then, putting my hands over his face as if to strangle him.  I’m screaming at him over and over that he can’t do this to my mother and that I would make him pay for hurting her.  

My brother reaches into her cabinet and brings me a photo of her with him from years ago.  His hair is longer and blonder but he still has that amazing smile and those cornflower blue eyes.   I began to sob. 

And to wake knowing she is dead, with a pillow covered in tears- is more than my heart can bear.

And now I sit, four-something in the morning, still crying over my own certainty that my mother was there with me last night.  I felt her, I saw her – she spoke to me. 

Bringing out the dead

The long dead have always fascinated me.  The stories they leave, the articles of clothing and materials they discard by accident - on purpose.  This last year the real world has hit me full force - knocking me from my historical pursuits. I was hit with reality - squarely and most painfully.  I realized that the Ivory Towers are gone, that people not only don't understand history but they don't want to.  I am a historian, a writer - perhaps a professor - but definitely not a teacher.  I don't like children really - and certainly don't want to spend my time in a middle school or high school classroom. (in this country at least)  What I want to do requires a lot of soul searching, of setting my priorities solidly in the right direction.  For now it is study for comps, pass them - then work on my thesis.  After all the academic pressure is off - I will be free to pursue what I really want to do with vast accumulation of knowledge - WRITE.  I want to write.  I want to write on history, on passion, on whatever strikes my fancy and I want to leave a novel behind that like a handful throughout my life - will leave others breathless.

I must clear my life.  The internet has cluttered it in a way that is alarmingly like a drug addiction.  I will be removing myself from constant updating, from the latest meme's and frantic correspondence.  I simply must.  

Computers have made us all ADHD.  

I want soft lights, rain outside and a few hours to spend talking myself through my own thoughts. 

Holosuite / Fifty Shades of Quark's

So I'm watching DS9 and Quark offers the doctor a night in the holosuite.  It then occurs to me that I have never really given much thought to what my pursuits would be if I was given such an offer.  What would it be? Where and When would go?  I think such an exercise of creation would be beneficial and practical really.  I don't think women really spend much time exploring what really turns them on. We accept that we are supposed to be turned on by men (or women), enjoy their touch and their scents but I would guess that few sexual interactions have been judged by what we hold inside - our secret desires.  Perhaps every woman (or men too) should take a few moments and jot down on a piece of paper what their ideal seduction would entail.  I for one would have in the past where the language was sweeter and the buildup longer and more satisfying.  Setting is important too.  In my holosuite I would be outside, exposed to the sky and earth but isolated so I fear no intrusions. (or extra eyes) Stopping with these few lines you can decipher many things about my sexual nature.

1. I need more romance.  The slower nature of the "courtship" is really a hunger for intimacy and flair.
2. I have a longing to feel free, less bedroom - more adventure.
3. No prying eyes - well I have no secret desire to watched.*

* This last statement is precisely what I'm getting at.  If you are writing your perfect holosuite and a mob of men are watching while you are being ravished - your secret desires may entail exposure, excitement, a need to let go of control. This is often a reflection of your daily life.  Those who are in control all the time often like a submission, a little exposure to offset those worries that bog them endlessly throughout the day.

Men often ask why women read Romance novels and scoff at the bodice ripping and throbbing members. But instead of jokes they should be paying attention.  What most women really want can be found between the ridiculous covers of those books.

Romance novels are the closest thing we get to the Holosuite. Perhaps this is why Fifty Shades of Grey did so well despite the rather unimpressive writing style.  Because every woman is different.

And women should write - write their desires down as they come across them if they aren't particularly good at expressing themselves verbally. What books turned me on?  Interview with a Vampire was a big one - and for many different reasons but here are a few:

1. Louis - Louis was the artistic, human one.  The one that was kind in his killing - regretful.
2. The coldness, the fear - the allure of death and then life eternal.
3. The warmth of the blood itself - the giving of life and sharing that deep crimson intimacy with someone.

But this might not be every woman's cup of tea.

Finding YOUR turn-on's and sharing it with your partner is vital for a healthy and lasting relationship.

I wish we had Holosuites - it would be proof that our society had moved to a point of comfortable self awareness.  That desires and interests could be safely shared with others and with oneself with judgement or shame.

Piteous Man

Rich tin’s throaty passions he calls from the corner.  The wicked lament of woe has become his bread basket.  Here he preys on the kind, the weary and the luckless.  He knows that guilt and fear will overcome their revulsion, their anger at his filthy shiftless appearance and he exchanges them both for the nod of goodwill that he and they know to be untrue.  He makes them pay for their privilege to be kind because the Church no longer sells their pardons. 

He waits on cool corners with his designer dog wearing a hero’s clothes that have been discarded to charity years ago.  The hero has forgotten them but their symbols are still in service – active duty if you will.  He is pushy and is shameless.  He makes more than I and pays nothing in.  No tax, no levy on the kindness of strangers.  No tariff on the silvered chips of guilt hitting plop plop into the can. 

He smiles, his teeth yellowed from tobacco that he can afford, ground down from the junk we buy him.  He is this piteous man who lives comfortably in an apartment downtown.  I drown in debt, in loans I cannot pay, working jobs that will have me.  He smiles at me when I glare at him.  He knows everything.

Vestal

Ah purity - thy fate is dull as it is replaced.  Nevermore the sweet innocent, the protected - the vestal.  How long ago those days were when choices were replaced by angry members and I was shocked and awed by my own pain, my own repression - the heavy silence that followed every heinous act.  Although this unlocking, this movement from protected to discarded isn't thrust by force for all girls or boys - it is traumatic.  For some it takes years for the reality to sink like a stone into your belly for others - perhaps the more "disadvantaged" it is instant.  There is nothing after this holy moment that renders oneself complete again. All the build up, all the push by hormonal drive cannot hope to ease the reality that is the sheer weight of disappointment.  Your previous purity ripped asunder and in it's place is nothing more than idle bragging rights that left to darkness is only bluster to hide that emptiness, that loneliness that creeps on after the sex is done and nothing in your universe actually changed for the better. It is in that moment that some (not all - some come later) that you realize it can only get worse from here.  Popping morning after, dry swallowing  the old HiV cocktails (I'd like my retro virus to say "Wowsa!"), bearing parasites or scrapping that bloated uterus' - if the best outcome of a bad situation is nine months paid off at "We Care Adoption" - then sign these girls up for Vestal duty friends. Bring it back in style.  Put it too some hip Dub beats and stick it on the YouTube.  The big "O"? Sad face..... the big Oooooooo is that your herpe? *evil grin*

Summer Heat

The summer has already begun.  Outside the light is blinding, skin melting and comforting. This last winter was hard on me.  I was in Seattle apart from my family.  I spent the majority of it wet and cold - climbing in and out of buses for hours at a time. There was a point that I felt as if I'd never be warm again. It was a shame really because the winter was so bitter - it made you want to do nothing and Seattle was such a beautiful city.

But now - the sun shines high and hot in Kansas.  If it wasn't for my instantaneous sunburning I would lay in the yard all day - soaking it's warmth inside of me. It is hard to feel sad when you are in it's yellow light, radio on, windows down and you are driving by fields of green.  The other morning I drove in with the sound of summer birds cheerily singing and I felt as if I was going to break into song like some Disney cartoon.

Then it hits me.  Exhaustion.  This schedule is horrible - I work at night, all night - in a stressful job to come home and clean, deal with my children and my pets. I try to lay down in the afternoon but the heat clings to me, to the house, to my mind.  Sunshine is like coffee to me - making my body buzz and my mind blur from thought to thought - causing me to be unable to sleep long and soundly.

It has been weeks since I slept well. /yawn