tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12976084266063741452024-03-13T10:23:44.653-05:00Caroline Loves You Even Morecarolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.comBlogger223125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-13111988807131388862017-11-03T11:17:00.000-05:002017-11-03T11:17:06.415-05:00Nina Simone is an American and So Am I (the final installment) Chicago reintroduced me to Nina Simone the summer of 2013. When I found a best of album (<i>The Very Best of Nina Simone: Sugar in My Bowl 1967-1972</i>), I discovered Nina's contribution to the civil rights movement and, subsequently, her slow disappearance into what I would later learn was bipolar disorder.<br />
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I waited tables that first year in the Windy City, and I would come home in the middle of the night, put in my headphones, and take Linus for long walks while I listened to music on Spotify.<br />
<br />
I introduced myself to lots of artists that year because I had access, like I was getting away with something. To name a few, I explored the likes of Tupac, revisited the 90s, and stumbled upon Nina Simone's <i>To Be Young Gifted and Black</i>.I was growing up older, colder, and so was she.<br />
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I recall one evening hearing <i>Mississippi Goddam </i>for the first time.<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><i>Picket lines</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><i>School boycotts</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><i>They try to say it's a communist plot</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><i>All I want is equality</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: center;"><i>for my sister my brother my people and me</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">In the documentary, <i>What Happened Miss Simone </i>(Netflix 2015), there is footage of Simone asking Dr. Martin Luther King what to do with all her feelings of rage. He, of course, encouraged her to focus energy on the nonviolent protests that would later go down in history as true democracy in action. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">But they killed him. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">So she sang this song, raging in a glorious, vulnerable masterpiece that the time for silent protest was over. That it's taking too long. Moving too slow. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">And they ran her out of the country. She was destroyed politically and publicly. The beautiful black woman with the incredible voice was not singing the songs that everyone wanted to hear. </span><br />
She wasn't smiling or trying to be nice.<br />
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Today there are so many voices scrambling and screeching to be heard and so many lives lost to alcohol, pills, guns, and violence, corporate violence, that America is not what they told us it would be. Yet, "they," whoever they are, are still trying to tell us that we need to hold on...for freedom? For what America......was?<br />
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America enslaved, tortured, raped, and murdered, countless human beings. Take a day and listen to the words to songs like "Strange Fruit," and "Mississippi Goddam." Take a month....take a month that is longer than February, take two months, and listen to the voices of those that have been trying to play by a set of rules that offers them very little.<br />
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Just like rage that gets stuffed down for far too long, the urgency of the song builds:<br />
<br />
You keep on saying "Go slow!" "Go slow!" But that's just the trouble...<br />
<br />
"Do it slow,"<br />
Desegregation<br />
"Do it slow"<br />
Mass participation<br />
"Do it slow"<br />
Reunification<br />
"Do it slow"<br />
Do things gradually<br />
"Do it slow"<br />
But bring more tragedy<br />
"Do it slow"<br />
Why don't you see it<br />
Why don't you feel it<br />
I don't know<br />
I don't know"<br />
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The "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality is impossible in a nation controlled by large corporations.<br />
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The lies about black crime told to make white girls afraid. The false masculinity of the disillusioned men who rape and take what they have literally been taught is "rightfully" theirs by design. The white boys and girls that scream "all lives matter" who have been told the lie that the Black Lives Matter movement is a personal attack. It is not.<br />
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And the churchgoers that voted for our current president and still try to talk to me about love that surpasses all understanding.<br />
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We have all been lied to. Why don't you see it? Why don't you feel it?<br />
<br />
Nina Simone's family found her years later, drowning in depression. It's hard to see the world for what it is as an artist, as a lover of what human beings can create through expression, and keep going.<br />
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When you see the lost, the unloved, the broken, and the hated, all marginalized and demonized so that one group of people can say they are better or stronger, so that someone can claim ultimate power and final say, it's hard not to drown in hopelessness because what's the point?<br />
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And that is what is happening to this country. It is ignoring the rage that it is due. Because we have all been lied to, been distracted, been in love. The Bible teaches that only the Truth will set you free.<br />
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So we are all in prison. Quietly, comfortably, wasting away in a prison that we don't have to accept.<br />
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You cannot live a lie. You can try. You can surely try. But it will eat you up, destroy you from the inside out. You can dress it up, buy all the best treatments for gaping wounds, but it will kill you in the end.<br />
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It's too slow. The admitting of our sins. It's time to admit them.<br />
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How long can we live in the safe notion that if we keep quiet and pray about it, it will work itself out? We are the answer to our prayers. We are the present and the future. What we do...not say....not pray....but what we DO is the only thing that matters.<br />
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It's not time to let go and let God. It's time to stand up, and be counted. And it's time to start paying attention. Those who are living are suffering...including you.<br />
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I am a terrible vessel.<br />
<br />
History is full of prophets that we've chased away because they did what we were terrified to do: be completely vulnerable. Like Nina Simone.<br />
<br />
America wanted Nina Simone to pay for her "sins," while it continued to ignore the sins that would bring it...bring all of us....to this point in history.<br />
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Maybe an angry black woman isn't the problem.<br />
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"Oh but this whole country is full of lies. You're all going to die and die like flies."<br />
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She said in an older interview, used in <i>What Happened Miss Simone </i>(Netflix 2015), that her biggest regret is not getting to play classical piano at Carnegie Hall. The interviewer was astonished. Nina Simone had played Carnegie Hall...but not classical piano. That means something to a musician, the dream of creating something beyond words in a space made for that very creation.<br />
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Instead, at Carnegie, she played what audiences wanted a black woman who could play and sing to play, and when they didn't like what she sang, they threw her in the fire, to burn.<br />
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And burn she did.<br />
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Before the truth can set you free, you need to know what it means to be free, but, more than that, you have to try to imagine what it means not to be.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://harveyfaircloth.com/blog/hf-icon-nina-simone/" target="_blank">Creation</a></td></tr>
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<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-66524222481848059412017-07-22T11:38:00.001-05:002023-01-31T11:13:31.855-06:00DetailsI've had a lot of time lately. To think. I spend hours in the sun, laughing at myself for the meager attempt at farming I've managed to scratch out of this wet hot American summer.<br />
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And I'm beginning to remember the tiniest of details in my story.<br />
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Like the bird's nest in the garden of our house in North London, Turnpike Lane, April. Saturday morning, the sun was out, and Liam and I were doing the Guardian crossword. We had already broken up, but we lived together, like we always did. I remember the baby birds, singing like they never sang before, and I was annoyed, suffocating.<br />
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I wanted to stand up and yell at him to make this work, to love me like I was willing to love him. But it was too hard. Always too hard.<br />
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Yet here we were. Like nothing had changed. Sipping coffee in the garden, listening to the screeching baby birds. Reading the fucking Guardian.<br />
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There are days I feel like I've been sitting on my hands for my entire life, listening to others map out a course that would be perfect for me, lists of things I should do, and biting my tongue.<br />
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The little girl me is kind of ticked off. Where did she go? Why did I tell her to get lost? When did depression find me? Huddled inside of myself.<br />
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When I did begin to take my walls apart, I found that the clarity, thanks to my own imagination, was superb.<br />
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I probably punished Liam for a lot of things for which he was not responsible. It's okay, though, because I punished myself pretty hard with my next boyfriend, and even harder after that for punishing myself so hard with him. I mean, I liked my last boyfriend. We had some magical times, but we hurt each other pretty badly, and I surprised myself at the amount of total bullshit with which I was willing to put up just to feel like I had some semblance of the beginnings of a nuclear family to prove that I was, indeed, capable.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNmm8-5X4RxTfiCAvw1eozsFlNQzP1A4EMV6Hwu6pelswcgYUEhJlGugkoBhCUVzZBRKIafdg-P3obdq6aTvxnuR7lgW_XBa7_6zcT3mPE7YmAeTMPrylMx-42nKxo-RTylb33GVzuG8/s1600/liam.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMNmm8-5X4RxTfiCAvw1eozsFlNQzP1A4EMV6Hwu6pelswcgYUEhJlGugkoBhCUVzZBRKIafdg-P3obdq6aTvxnuR7lgW_XBa7_6zcT3mPE7YmAeTMPrylMx-42nKxo-RTylb33GVzuG8/s320/liam.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes. There was a time I took cute pictures with boys. </td></tr>
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Liam was good to me. Liam courted me. He wrote to me. He listened to me. He came to visit me. He stayed with me, gave as much as I gave. It wasn't perfect, and his list of cons is just as long. But that's the way it will be with everyone.<br />
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Plus, I was on the precipice of depression, untreated, and even I wasn't prepared for what was coming.<br />
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Every day I have to forgive myself. To remember that I am worth courting, worth chasing. Because I didn't believe it when it first happened to me, and I wasn't able to fully accept it.<br />
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The more I open up, however, slow down, breathe, half smile, speak softy to myself, the more I am able to remember those details and mine them for what they mean to me. What they can teach me.<br />
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On my last night in London, at the pub with the whole gang, my friend Paul asked me what the real reason behind all of my wandering was, and I don't even think I hesitated when I replied, " For my daughter, so she will wander further, live more fully, and be proud of me."<br />
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I may not have a daughter, or a son, but the message is still very clear.<br />
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Life continues. People are born and people die. Love is found and lost, and baby birds yell like little boys when they're waiting for breakfast in the back of some house in North London.<br />
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None of my experiences stand alone, and even the tiniest details, regardless of the circumstances, combine to comfort me when I feel lost, when I forget who I am and where I'm going.<br />
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<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-38672717443688878892017-05-22T13:05:00.001-05:002017-05-22T13:05:18.926-05:00Live for LoveI want to posit something to all the boys and girls, women and men out there. I want you to consider that perhaps existence has been presented to you in one particular way, and because of this, your subconscious and conscious life's goal has been to meet a manufactured set of criteria. But you already knew that. You just forgot. I forgot too.<br />
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I can't say for sure, but I can guess that I started to forget after I reached the age of being capable of baring a child. I was fifteen and playing the coveted role of Zaneeta Shinn in my school's production of the classic <i>The Music Man</i>. My dance partner and I, the featured "cute couple" in the show, spent night after night learning the most menial of steps, flirting but not flirting. </div>
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He was popular, handsome, and ended up with his face on the hall wall for eternity after being named our equivalent to "Prom King," but since Prom was sin, we had to make it seem more prestigious. I knew where I stood and how he felt about me as soon as we took hands at our first dance rehearsal, and he told me my hands felt like grandma hands. </div>
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We are animals after all. </div>
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If I'd realized what was happening (had I been like five years younger) I'd have laughed it off as a "this guy," moment, but I was fifteen. I didn't want to have grandma hands because no one would love me. No one would love me if I had grandma hands! </div>
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I felt that way too when my friends treated me like a freak for things like...eating tuna salad for lunch. Who will love me if I don't exclusively eat chicken fingers!?!?! When they laughed at me in fourth grade because I started getting boobs. WHO WILL LOVE ME IF I HAVE BOOBS?!?!?!?!</div>
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Shame. It's a shame. How terrified I was of not being loved, lovable. For what else was I supposed to live? But for love?</div>
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This is the message we get every day. That love is this thing to which we should aspire, that it is shiny, and plastic, and precious, and pretty. Just like America.<br />
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Except America isn't pretty. America is violence and horror, greed and rape. Her beauty is in her age, the monuments to her natural history. We the people package beauty and sell it like the ancient forests we decimate for parking lots without a second thought. </div>
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So too is life. It isn't romance and happily ever after. It isn't good and bad. It's mostly ugly.<br />
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There can never be joy without pain. There can never be love without loss. There can never be life without death.<br />
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It isn't a game. And it isn't for sale. And you are unique out of every single person in the world. Shiny and pretty and perfect doesn't exist.<br />
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But you do. And imagine, just for a moment, that the love you seek is inside of you. All of it. The love you ache for at night. It's inside of you. And it is a well.<br />
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Live for that love.<br />
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"and you will have the suffrage of the world." Ralph Waldo Emerson. </div>
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-48353774014343265102017-03-30T09:25:00.001-05:002017-03-30T09:25:15.825-05:00Water Safety<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV0ZtU6xOe8qGJx4OXX6KKqoLEK9d1XRY_rMgW50Mwawm9nZNarjmxLixpmA8w7N8B7RxrN6m59JM79CuwXy9VpIZ6GhySQw-LbGWvZZFFev2W8sD2kAZS4F9q0D14qwFl3rXCLpEb8tc/s1600/point+break.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV0ZtU6xOe8qGJx4OXX6KKqoLEK9d1XRY_rMgW50Mwawm9nZNarjmxLixpmA8w7N8B7RxrN6m59JM79CuwXy9VpIZ6GhySQw-LbGWvZZFFev2W8sD2kAZS4F9q0D14qwFl3rXCLpEb8tc/s320/point+break.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2536569/Gerard-Butler-surfer-role-played-Patrick-Swayze-remake-Point-Break.html" target="_blank">Bodhi...and Keanu</a>.</td></tr>
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Life comes in waves. The good and the bad. And it never stops. That's important.<br />
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I learned that a woman's emotions are like a wave from John Gray, PhD, in his New York Times Bestseller <i>Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus</i>. I was lying in a hammock on a porch in the middle of the woods in Dahlonega, GA. The porch was attached to a cabin. Don't worry. This part is not a metaphor.<br />
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Destin, Florida: white sand beaches, buckets of crab legs, and Super Mario Brothers in the arcade in the lobby at the Hotel. I loved the beach. I wore a bathing suit all the time and my hair was (as usual) fantastic and mermaid long. I sat in the sand for hours, letting the waves of the Gulf wash over my legs, letting wet sand pour through my fingers. Swimming, running, building and tearing down sandcastles. I loved myself at the beach. I loved my parents at the beach, on vacation, our tribe, our pack.<br />
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I forgot how to enjoy the beach eventually, was seized with the fear of the sight of my own body. Be it too pale, too thin, too wide, too wobbly, too red, too scarred with psoriasis, I stopped being able to see myself in my mind's eye as anything but a deformed figure, confounded by the covers of magazines, the comments of others, the images in which we all find ourselves drowning on a daily basis.<br />
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Or maybe it was the fact that by the time I was in my twenties, my options for swimwear were suits that effectively "hid" my stomach or resembled my underwear drawer, neither of which I felt had anything to do with the original concept behind swimming: physical activity. Maybe it was the fact that, the older I became, the more my choices of ways to present myself to society began to diminish, to bottleneck as the road narrowed for my sisters and me.<br />
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Books, films, legends, and tales about life, all words for the ladies limited to the slender path on which slender women, girls with diet cokes, brides and bridesmaids, mothers and wives, princesses and queens saunter through life. As for the protagonists of those stories, let's be honest, what woman can't relate to the story of another man, conquering his fear and striking out on his own, men and women are the same, right?<br />
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Women see the world through our own eyes, and we are guided by forces of nature that, I can only speculate, were deemed too frightening and difficult to be talked about. But they need to be talked about.<br />
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Over the last few years, I have "come into [my] cycles," as Clarissa Pinkola Estés would say in a book a producer from the Mortified podcast recommended I read, <i>Women Who Run with the Wolves</i>. I've probably talked about it before. Anyway, I came into my cycles because I started tracking my period. All that to say, I got one (ten) of those period tracking apps. And my life will never be the same.<br />
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How funny, this little thing, this monthly incident, this "inappropriate" topic of conversation, as a good friend of mine would say, affects every single human being on the planet, not just the women. A period is not just the physical, and the physical is real, exhausting, terrifying, and an all around glorious ride; yes, I said glorious. A period is emotional, visceral, natural. It is not just that few days of bleeding, it's a constant cycle of hormones, instinct, and insight into what makes women, in fact, so very different from men.<br />
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I have a transgender friend, a man. He told me it was stark, the contrast between hormonal cycles as a woman and hormonal cycles as a man (and yes, men go through hormonal cycles), that it was easier, but unnerving how different he felt inside as a man.<br />
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My body changes every day. I eat, sleep, and think on this cycle, swell into my curves at just the right moment, and experience heightened senses, not because the "right man" walked into the room, but because I am an animal and my body screams to reproduce, to continue the cycle.<br />
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For a more...tangible example, along the same topic: I recently started using a Diva Cup instead of my old faithful, since period number two, tampons. It was time for me to stop pretending to be a feminist without always giving myself the option of actually saving my own menstrual blood if I felt like it. If I FEEL like it.<br />
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I had no idea...but now that I've spilled it into my hands* and watched my own blood run through my fingers...I deserve everything. Cookies. Cookies and Milk. Cookies and Milk Ice Cream (B&Js). Puppies. Flowers. The sun on my face. The wind at my back. And to wear whatever I want without fear of sexualization, assault, or eternal damnation. I am a warrior. I deserve better.<br />
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I already have the moon, though, he and I are kin, controlling the tides together along with every other beautiful woman on the planet.<br />
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Now, my life is just riding the waves, and I respect the waves. The crimson waves. I'll say it in the words of a dude, so my dudes can follow me through this one. As thrill seeker Bodhi, performed by Patrick Swayze in the hit action/surf/so much more film <i>Point Break</i>, put it, "Life sure has a sick sense of humor," and he was a surfer. He would know all about riding the waves.<br />
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So what does the world look like through the eyes of a woman? If you're not afraid the answer will be too bloody, you can always ask. <br />
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*it doesn't have to be so violent, but I haven't gotten the total hang and balance of this <a href="http://divacup.com/" target="_blank">Diva Cup</a> business<br />
<br />
P.S. Ladies, track your period. Learn your cycles. For apps, try <a href="http://hormonehoroscope.com/" target="_blank">Hormone Horoscope</a>, <a href="https://www.helloclue.com/" target="_blank">Clue</a>, anything that isn't pink?carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-45680346814557966682017-02-20T14:07:00.000-06:002017-02-20T14:07:42.407-06:00Cookies: From the Unpublished Archives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wrote this blog on my second day of trying to vacation in Georgia in September, after I sold my car to the guy that towed me back to Chicago when I broke down in Indiana.<br />
<br />
On the second day of my vacation, I took a cab, a Lyft if you will, to pick up my rental car at the train station. My driver was a delight. I don't know what it is about me, or maybe people just want to talk sometimes, but I keep getting life stories from people I just met, and I'm like, okay life, is this like, the epilogue to the long lesson you've been teaching me for the past few years? Because I still can't figure out how to voice record on my Samsung Galaxy S7, and what good is all this talkin, if I can't record it without people's consent?<br />
<br />
Within a minute of closing the door of the car, she began to tell me the events of her morning until this point in time, 7:30 a.m. Her daughter was having trouble in her second marriage. She hated her daughter's first husband, but she actually liked this guy.<br />
<br />
That story led us to the topic of dating. She was 70 (yes. seventy), married simply because it was a hassle to get divorced, but considering that perhaps her marriage was giving her an excuse to avoid getting back out there. She was kind of dating a guy that she liked, but he was being weird.<br />
<br />
My lovely Lyft driver explained, "I don't understand why men always be acting like I want to tie them down. I'm tellin ya, I just want someone to hang out with, to have dinner with, wine, to go to movies with. I'll pay! I don't need your money. But men always be acting like I need to work for it. Why I gotta work for it? I'm the one with the cookie. You want the cookie don't ya? You work for it."<br />
<br />
The same analogy Buffy used in <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer </i>Season 7 episode 22 "Chosen" to explain to Angel that she couldn't handle romance or dating the morning of the apocalypse:<br />
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<br />
Something happened with the Lyft app, and I didn't get to rate or tip her, which crushed me, so I'm going to have to write a letter to their offices. I wonder if they need plants....<br />
<br />
My drive was atrocious. I always always always forget that the road through Indiana to Atlanta, Georgia is always heavy traffic and non-stop construction for six hundred something miles. It is a sin. If sin is real...that is what it is.<br />
<br />
The air changes in your car (sexy Nissan Sentra), the smell changes, when you come across the mountains in Kentucky. Ever since my father took me to the place I was born, I have felt the Appalachian mountains coursing through my veins, singing to me.<br />
<br />
There's a weird thing that happens when all that work you've been doing in therapy starts to pay off, like when you notice the difference for the first time after starting to work out. Like, all the horrible ugly faces you made while you lay there, drenched in your own sweat and tears, headphones in and up, suffering the strain required of a broken heart or determined chest presses without a spotter, and the pain that comes afterwards as you shove Ben and Jerry's in your face crying, "I need this for energy!! Nothing else makes sense!!!!," were totally worth it for what's coming.<br />
<br />
When the veil begins to lift, you start to see each step or misstep was just what happened along the way. I feel like I've been kind of whining about this for a while, but it's worth repeating: Nothing happens for a reason save that life exists to continue to exist, so the world keeps turning, and there's not a damn thing you or I can do about it.<br />
<br />
But, the people in your life. They are everything. Second only to you. Because you are life, racing forward, surviving. You are brave because it is hard. Like we learned from Buffy in <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2016/09/labour_54.html" target="_blank">this post from Labor day.</a> The hardest thing in life is to live it. And yeah, I've been living. A LOT. And it's been really hard. But it's also been really rewarding...unless I lose my mind....or maybe still rewarding.<br />
<br />
When the fog starts to clear, you begin to see everyone else, lost in their own pain and fear, or inability to explain how they feel, even to themselves sometimes. I know what that's like. I'm not kidding when I say I suffer from depression, and my depression can be black as night. I'm learning not to discount where my scars have come from, the memory of suffering that makes it next to impossible for me to trust anyone but my dog.<br />
<br />
We are all lying in wait for the next predator, men and women. We are screaming our stories at each other expecting to hear something different, but it's the same story, over and over again. That's what I mean by equality when I say, with extreme trepidation and equally fierce fearlessness, that I am a feminist. We are all living in the same world, and we're all terrified of each other, but we're all we have. We're the only reason we keep living. Right?<br />
<br />
I suppose a nihilist could argue that nothing matters but pleasure and pain, and that's fine. It's lonely, but if it works for the nihilist. The reality is that relationship, sex, love, is a drug, and it's the strongest by nature. It's survival. So the nihilist also finds herself in a cycle of relationship, unable to stand to actually be lonely. That requires the acceptance that one actually experiences connection with others. If you never let yourself face life without that connection, you don't really know what it means to be completely empty, do you?<br />
<br />
I do. I know what it's like to stare into the abyss and let it tear your soul apart, like in Doctor Who, when the Master looked into all of time and went insane and turned David Tennant, the tenth Doctor into a tiny Doctor and put him in a cage while he took over the world in order to destroy it because time is nonsense and everything is meaningless, but the Doctor couldn't let him. Everyone has to believe in the Doctor just as hard as he believes in them, which is the point of Doctor Who, that he believes in you.<br />
<br />
I used to weep for people and their inability to take the leaps that I've taken in my life. Angry that so many would choose to be safe in a world that can never truly promise anything in regards to safety. Everything you know could fall apart in a matter of moments. I know what that feels like. Trust me. I can tell you about it, if you want. <br />
<br />
I'm not angry any more at the people I love. I understand. If you can postpone the shock of reality in your life, I suggest you relish that time. I try to hold onto those moments in my life now with both arms. I've lain in bed at night with my arms wrapped around my shoulders, weeping at the vastness of being alone. Now my arms are full.<br />
<br />
I did not know how to go about things because that book hasn't been written yet. I had to do the research first. Now I bask in the glow of the terrifying world we live in, where voices are rising out of the mob, voices that have never been heard before, telling stories of roads that have only recently been traversed.<br />
<br />
Those roads are still open. They are waiting to teach us to be better helpers of one another because we are all we have. I want to help the voices. I want to encourage them, to encourage you to love yourself, not only so that you can love others, but also because loving yourself is the greatest challenge you will face, and the rewards are like a wellspring...I imagine. I'm new here myself.<br />
<br />
I've been baking cookies in waves for over a year now, since I first hit the bottom of my well, coping in the best possible way. It's cool, though, because I've also been moving my body for the better part of every day in some form or fashion. Treat yourself. Learn to make something you love. Learn to make yourself, and be what you love. Then teach others to do the same. You are a wellspring. You are the answer. You are overflowing.<br />
<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-84781177802033384692017-02-11T11:59:00.001-06:002017-02-11T12:03:32.253-06:00Return of the Timeline: 2009-2013, When I Lived in Georgia, The Beginning....part II. If you were to ask my father which series he prefers of the first two Star Treks, between The Original Series and The Next Generation, having seen all of them, he would choose TNG. If you were to ask me, having seen MOST of TNG and a good portion of The Original (I have no idea why I'm capitalizing "Original"....respect?), I would choose TNG. Kirk's...great, but Jean Luc Picard is my prince.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/wesley-crusher" target="_blank">There are pages dedicated to this boy. </a></td></tr>
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I feel like I grew up with the sweater master himself, Wesley Crusher, but it wasn't until a year ago that I actually realized he was leading his own depression and anxiety awareness campaign (well, the actor Wil Wheaton, not Crusher, although he is the son of a doctor). I'm not going to say it wasn't pleasingly nostalgic when he popped up back on the scene. I'm just not going to say it. It was even more enjoyable to hear him talk about his own struggles with <a href="http://projecturok.org/wil-wheaton/" target="_blank">GAD</a>, but nothing struck me more than when I heard him speak about the difference between life with and without medication. It was uncanny (and you can hear it at around 2:56 on the video that is linked to GAD up there).<br />
<br />
To paraphrase, he describes life with depression and anxiety as life in a room that was so loud, the only way to live was to "deal with how loud it was." I heard him say it (on The Nerdist Podcast, hosted by fellow Memphian, Chris Hardwick, of <a href="http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-billy-hardwick/" target="_blank">Billy Hardwick</a> and bowling and stuff), and (duh) I cried.<br />
<br />
Deal with how loud it is.<br />
<br />
At 29, I was exhausted. Falling asleep crying and waking up to more misery. I was in love, or I wanted to be in love...to be loved, as I loved, and I was panicking in the shower about hitting my head and being found days later because no one stopped by my house in the woods where I had no one that I knew well but a man I didn't really understand and who couldn't really understand me. I had a Master's degree, enough experience traveling and living abroad to write a novel, and I wept for myself because I couldn't bear the weight of the noise, the relentless droning of, "It is not enough. It will never be enough."<br />
<br />
It wasn't until I had a breakdown in front my boyfriend, an honest to God weeping, no words, terrified, breakdown, that I was prompted to do something.<br />
<br />
I realized I had hit the "proverbial" bottom.<br />
And I stopped crying.<br />
<br />
I called my dad, told him I needed help. Then, I drove myself to Alabama and commenced some of the oddest days of my life, the days I floated there, on the bottom, on my back looking up at the expanse of the deep well above me, leading to nothing.<br />
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My doctor told me to stop taking my birth control as this might have been a side effect (a minor side-effect....panic attacks and suicidal thoughts). I wondered if I would have to be hospitalized. I stared off into the foothills of the Appalachians. I saw nothing. I felt heavy, on the verge, tipping.<br />
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Then, because I had taken it previously, a doctor prescribed Zoloft. He should have told me to start with half a pill, but he didn't, so I spent the first twenty-four hours smiling like a weird android and trembling. I halved it.<br />
<br />
Then, the noise stopped. I didn't notice at first; it takes a moment for it to creep up on a person. I was with my mom in Chattanooga a few days later. We walked around the city, around the "Choo-Choo," and I thought of how romantic it had all seemed in the old song. Now, rusty and surrounded by concrete, the trains just sat, quietly. Like I was doing. For the first time.<br />
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My mother asked me once what I was thinking about, and I paused, listened and replied, "nothing." And I meant it. For the first time in almost thirty years. And it felt so good.<br />
<br />
It doesn't last. One can't just take medication and expect everything to be okay. The depressed brain is pretty convincing. There's a lot of searching: searching for the right therapist with no insurance, searching for the right psychiatrist with no insurance, searching for the medication that works that you can also afford without insurance. Then, there's the search for the way to move forward, search for the people that can be trusted with the darkness, the people that can handle it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=37&page=2" target="_blank">The Internet is for Star Trek</a></td></tr>
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Discovering what I can handle. Moving forward despite how easy it would be to stand still. These are the voyages of my life. My trek through the stars of my own universe. See...I'm bringin' it back. Like a circle. Like time.<br />
<br />
This was a moment, along my timeline, like on any timeline, a milestone. One can look behind for clues as to why it happened, but what lies ahead requires focus, an expanse stretching as far as the universe and as deep as the deep well in which I had once floated calmly, gazing up into nothing, except nothing was freedom. Nothing was peace. For the first time.<br />
<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-83838368309670984382017-02-09T12:22:00.000-06:002017-02-09T12:22:09.187-06:00From the Untitled Archives<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found this post the other day and realized I'd never actually put it out there...or maybe I put parts of it out there, or a different version or something, but, reading over it, I liked it, and wanted to share. I'm currently working on another time-line piece, but it's taking a minute to process through MY SOUL. So, forgive me. I spend about 20% of my time trying to figure out what I want to write about, 77% agonizing over actually writing, and maybe 3% actually writing. It’s a shame the way this writing messes around with my heart. Ya know? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So....this is back in the fall of 2016....a different time indeed. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summer is almost over, and as the cooler air floats in and settles on the concrete, grass and astroturf of Chicago’s myriad of front stoops, I feel an all too familiar looming sense of terror. Winter is coming. And winter is going to hurt. It has me questioning every choice I’ve ever made as I spin out of control down the tunnel of sugary marketing ploys painted orange and yellow. It’s beautiful, but it’s also unsettling (and way too sugary), to say the least. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7kd8-L42BCU/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7kd8-L42BCU?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am unsettled, and I know exactly why, for the most part. My therapist keeps telling me I’m more together than I’ve ever been since she’s been working with me, but I can’t get behind it. Of course, that’s always been my biggest problem: getting behind myself. I play a good game, but I really don’t trust my own instincts in that fiercely confident way that I want to. I haven’t given enough merit to my own accomplishments. </span></div>
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</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sure, I like repeating that I have a master’s degree, especially when people ask if I can do things like, “hold this.” I can toss in a good multi-cultural factoid when the conversation turns to travel and world view. Heck, I can give you relationship advice as I’ve spent a gooooooood looooooooooong time analyzing my past relationships and doing my damnedest to see the whole picture, but I certainly can’t take my own advice, and I wouldn’t bet on my answer with a quiz team, and I’ve rarely relished in my own innumerable memories. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I maybe give myself credit once every….3 or 4 years? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, I’m due for a “me” party, time to reflect on all the choices I’ve made and where they’ve led me. It’s natural for me to want to reconsider my choice of settlement during this time, as I’m more open to the time it will take to make the right decision. I’m not desperate….but again, winter is coming. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">As I compose my list of pros and cons for going back south, I keep getting sabotaged by those old demons I've been fighting off for a while now. That's natural, I bet. When I lived in The South, home, I was always a little frustrated. I felt stifled, held under water as I kicked and fought my way to the surface of whatever I needed to learn about myself. Everywhere I went, I was followed, at my heels, by these memories, this PTSD, the beasts. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Describing the beasts, using literal terms, makes them seem ridiculous, even to me. Par exemple, A friend in a rocky, at best, relationship found an article about gaslighting and shared it with me a few years ago. Gaslighting is basically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity. It's been popping up a lot lately, I think, in the media, part of the whole carnival ride paradigm shift. I had never heard the term before she shared the article, but it made sense to me. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was awash in memories of old boyfriends turning on me suddenly, telling me I was yelling, I was out of control, crazy, when I didn't feel like that, like I was yelling. I didn't feel rage. I didn't feel out of control, but they said I was. They told me I was losing it. Instead, I saw myself as the little girl I used to be, with dirty knees and wide eyes feeling like she was being ignored, feeling like she was not being heard. It was confusion, desperation to understand. A little girl asking, "please help me understand. How can I help? What can I do? What am I supposed to do?" It was empowering to finally have a word for something that affected me so deeply, helped me recognize that little girl.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not two days after my friend had shared the article with me and her boyfriend, I remember sitting in one of the classrooms of the old theater where I spent the first solid years of my thirties. It was after the usual Saturday night show, and we were drinking beers and trying to make each other laugh. I remember her boyfriend mentioning the article around the time all the mens' voices had raised at least a few volume levels. Everyone laughed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Gaslighting? Like I'm actually making her think she's crazy?! How crazy is that?!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And everyone laughed. The whole room roared with laughter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I waited for the noise to die down so that I could point out the irony, but it didn't. He kept going, harping on what an idiot notion it was to even think of complaining about being made to think you're crazy, and how crazy she was. She was so crazy. They're all crazy. Crazy. Crazy. CRAZY CRAZY CRAZYCRAZY.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And I just sat there, expressionless...the beasts nipping at my heals. But I didn't turn around.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If I had been strong enough to turn around and face them, I would have said to him, in as non-threatening a voice as humanly possible, "Well, why do you think she feels that way? What's going on in her life that is maybe causing her to feel like she's losing it...if it's not you?" It seems like it should be easy, but as I ask the questions, I begin to feel the tension. He bristles, worried that I'm about to get angry, "crazy."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Weak me gives into the accusations. She buckles and cries out, flies off the handle. "I'm not crazy! I'm not yelling! I'm just....please let me finish!" She tumbles into her own trap and ends up in the fetal position, weeping the tears of defeat whilst listening to country music, the music of pain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Strong me. Stops. Listens. Takes a deep breath, and says calmly how she feels, how she sees the world regardless of who is listening. She explains that she understands his point of view, that it's hard for everyone, for all of us, but we have to be able to have a dialogue, to ask questions, to be questioned without getting defensive, to give answers. We all get defensive. We all put up a wall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then, she is done, regardless of what is said after. She has said what she wanted to say. The rage of the subject before her, behind her, is noted, but not adopted. She turns inward to the little girl with the sticky tears on her face born of the confusion that comes from miscommunication, from being ignored, from being told to shut up, to sit down, to be different, to be different, to be different, and she embraces her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I will dry her tears and hold her in my arms. Then I'll make a lot of cookies, and regardless of what the CDC says about cookie dough, I'll eat the hell out of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I think of other girls and women that face the same dance as society urges them to be a partner instead of a person. Relationships are a choice, after all, not a requirement. I think of men that face the same quandaries, the same unimpeachable ideals of how they should look and think and act. We are all in this together. Let's admit our fears. Let's be honest. For once.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If I can do this. If I can really trust myself. I can begin to trust others. I can begin to trust other women and men, young and old. I can carry my own suffering, not as a wound, but as a badge, tell the stories of my journey, lean in, leave my house...I can help, and that's all I've ever wanted to do.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HPz72TiBM85Mnj-kYgE9VkVnV0SnNKWX2CxKQ4ird2n0cb02igWlYaFw35qYz0DKM4E3nXpyJQ03yxdxgZEiumKltm9ChTT2oQfJmCO2qYS0utJ86oShgLtipyicZ_5jdR6OejL-toE/s1600/IMG_4656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HPz72TiBM85Mnj-kYgE9VkVnV0SnNKWX2CxKQ4ird2n0cb02igWlYaFw35qYz0DKM4E3nXpyJQ03yxdxgZEiumKltm9ChTT2oQfJmCO2qYS0utJ86oShgLtipyicZ_5jdR6OejL-toE/s640/IMG_4656.jpg" title="" width="480" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He likes Righteous Babes. What can I say. </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">*If you have never seen <i>Beasts of the Southern Wild</i>, stop everything and change that.</span><br />
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<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-88127770620280152272017-01-28T10:01:00.001-06:002023-01-31T11:36:50.807-06:00Return of the Timeline: 2009-2013, When I Lived in Georgia, The BeginningIn the spring of 2009, after the exciting election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, my boyfriend decided he wanted to move to Georgia to manage a restaurant and winery for some of his family members. I have always been desperate for adventure, and he promised me a garden, told me he liked the way he thought when I was around, and that he would be able to add me to his health insurance plan. He also bought me an iPhone. I <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2009/07/brave-new-world.html" target="_blank">moved to Georgia</a> for a garden, an iPhone, and health insurance.<br />
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I must have been quite a mess before I left everyone I knew and loved to live in a small town with a guy that had never really been the nicest person to me. Oh, he tried, but he wasn't ready for something like this, and neither was I. Looking back on things, I feel like I should have been able to see my inevitable major depressive breakdown coming from a mile away, but I didn't. And suddenly I was alone in a cabin in the woods with very little natural light, a new Netflix account, no friends that really <i>knew </i>me, and a workaholic boyfriend. I was teetering on the edge of a terrible realization.<br />
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I went to Dahlonega, GA on my own for the first time to scout a place for us to live. I stayed in a charming bed and breakfast with lovely hosts and enjoyed drinks and dinner at a local bar while I mulled over my housing choices. Dahlonega is possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Even today, when I drive through the hills, I am overflowing with words and thoughts and feelings....all of which require a full symphony to express.<br />
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However, the other side of that coin is crowded with all sorts of different discomforts, and my least favorite has got to be the tick. I became obsessively terrified of ticks. I had been terrified of them before, found a tick in my head on the last day of camp when I was about ten years old and will never forget the sound of someone repeating, "it's digging into your head" in terror as I sat, helpless to do anything about it. Years later, I remember finding a tick on my hiking boot the summer I lived and worked in Shenandoah National Park, plucking it off with my thumb and forefinger, laying it gently on the asphalt of Skyline Drive in beautiful Virginia, and violently crushing its horrific shell with a rock from the side of the road. Ticks and Black Widow spiders. That's when I let out the rage.<br />
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That summer, we could see ticks floating down from the trees and alighting on patio decks. I could feel them gently gripping the hairs on my legs before attempting to clamp down into my flesh. I huddled in my room in the bed, bingeing 30 Rock and imagining I was hearing my phone receive multiple text messages. No one was texting, though. And if they were, I couldn't trust them. They didn't know what I was going through.<br />
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I left for <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-czech.html" target="_blank">Pilsen, Czech Republic </a>to teach English in late July, eager to get back to Europe, to some form of activism, but I found myself feeling overly nostalgic for my time living overseas. I knew this would be my last visit to a different continent for a while, and I was in the middle of a major depressive break. I sat up all night on the weekends, crying and writing letters as little girl Caroline to my parents. Seriously. I think because of a chapter in the book <i>Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus</i>, or maybe <i>Getting the Love You Want</i>. Also, Seriously.<br />
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During my stay in <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2009/07/up-down-escalator.html" target="_blank">Pilsen</a> as a teacher of English that summer, I had the rare opportunity to watch the Health Care debate in the U.S. from the outside, and let me tell you, it was not pretty. It didn't help that I was also watching the state decide <i>my</i> fate as a citizen from the outside, that people with whom I went to church and sat beside on Sunday mornings were addressing me personally to say things like:<br />
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"I'm sorry, Caroline, but a health care system that allows patients with pre-existing conditions just can't exist here."<br />
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Take a minute with that.<br />
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We sat together in church and heard the same sermons and stories about self sacrifice, piety, love that passes all understanding, and this is where they took it. But politics don't belong in church anyway....right?<br />
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I cried myself to sleep every night, and when I opened my eyes in the morning and realized I still had to get up and teach classes, I cried some more. The ONLY way I made it out of my door every day was with the help of the Wellbutrin a friend was sharing with me because of my debilitating depression and rejection from buying healthcare and, consequently, medication. It was not really the drug for me, but it got me to class, and it previously helped me finish my Master's thesis.<br />
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This is the life to which my fellow "Christians," my extended family, condemned me. I certainly made the best of it, didn't I? <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoD8i1n2t_GDlOq6NKysnjIK5-52s0iTB5KfjPi42sVtmVTlHhx4WFhECnXWgTO5jI-C_kmj3SWdzQSpCMzD46KEah4UpGZkEyK91ZX3tdt4C5zPt4QDJPLRRtwh3qIj92Ei_FOEMnrmE/s1600/firey+talks+at+the+pubs.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoD8i1n2t_GDlOq6NKysnjIK5-52s0iTB5KfjPi42sVtmVTlHhx4WFhECnXWgTO5jI-C_kmj3SWdzQSpCMzD46KEah4UpGZkEyK91ZX3tdt4C5zPt4QDJPLRRtwh3qIj92Ei_FOEMnrmE/s320/firey+talks+at+the+pubs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drinking and speaking English, pic credit Mayinka Maya</td></tr>
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<a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2009/07/joan-jett-has-made-it-to-czech-republic.html" target="_blank">I taught an advanced all ages class</a> and a <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2009/07/grrrrrrammar.html" target="_blank">beginner adult class</a>. I was originally told I would be teaching intermediate adults, but when my first session "meet and greet" activities garnered horrified stone faces (I love the Czechs), I suspected that was not the case.<br />
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I cried a lot. Not because of the students...they were incredible, striving to communicate with me on the same level through shared language...that level at which adults begin to understand each other...usually over wine and beer...delicious, fresh, czech pilsner. We played guitars and sang music at pubs into the wee hours. We talked about poetry and politics, family and the future. They were so excited about Obama as was I, despite the very public battle for the fate of my well-being going on across the pond.<br />
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On the last night and at the farewell party for all teachers and students at the Summer Language Academy, after multiple shots of local clove liqueur, girlie shots of a minty beverage referred to simply as "green," and more beer than I can ever remember, a student lifted me off the ground in celebration, then, unaware of his own strength, dropped me hard on the dance floor. I landed on my feet, but one of them was twisted around backwards, and I heard a pop.<br />
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Needless to say I definitely hurt something, but the alcohol numbed the initial shock of everything, and I limped out of the hotel with a gooey smile on my face and attempted to walk back to my dorm alone. Luckily, someone was behind me that could see my struggle to walk, announced himself, and swooped in to pick me up as I apologized profusely for my own body weight.<br />
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He, another teacher, get me back to my room and offered me a few different methods of pain relief. I accepted a couple, but I had to draw the line when, after telling me how remarkably beautiful and mysterious he found me, he offered to make my night...with a loving nod to his wife. I respectfully declined.<br />
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Then, I sent an email to my boyfriend and called him on the phone to ask him to take the train into Atlanta to help me with my luggage the next day as I would be having a difficult time walking and carrying things. He said he would, but when I finally arrived after a miserably painful trip back overseas, he hadn't come to the airport to help me. When I called him to find out where he was, he got mad at me because now he was going to be late getting back to work. He had taken time off to come and pick me up and how could I not consider his job when thinking about my injury. He convinced me that I was ungrateful, and I went back to the corner of my bed, to 30 Rock, a silent phone, and no one.<br />
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That's when I had my break. My depressive breakdown. That's when I started on the long road to finding the best anti-depressant. And that was really the beginning, when I actually became a resident of Georgia.<br />
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The links throughout are blogs from my early days in Dahlonega and from the Summer Language School in Pilsen that year. Enjoy!carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-67977187849975223342017-01-24T11:28:00.000-06:002017-01-24T11:33:50.402-06:00The Voices of Reason<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgllKNM06_xroZ0okJwapefE7JJJgPGndXvBEzQZ4bIvUqLs_Dx7-pXx1pa4YEDEPtEXoj8JpoE4IJhzIBRIAoMNDiMzDlh5tGCnS7fOg30YKQwD5cxNw2h75oQ34p2ydtaXK8WwicxG7U/s1600/Colbert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgllKNM06_xroZ0okJwapefE7JJJgPGndXvBEzQZ4bIvUqLs_Dx7-pXx1pa4YEDEPtEXoj8JpoE4IJhzIBRIAoMNDiMzDlh5tGCnS7fOg30YKQwD5cxNw2h75oQ34p2ydtaXK8WwicxG7U/s320/Colbert.jpg" width="252" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/arts/television/stephen-colbert-the-late-night-hope.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0" target="_blank">The New York Times</a></td></tr>
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I fell in love with the standup of David Cross during the last four years of George W. Bush's presidency. I was an angry girl, in recovery from the first time my heart was truly broken. He was recommended to me by multiple friends, and I laughed, but more importantly, I let go of the rage I was harboring deep in my belly.<br />
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David Cross was mad, and the title of one of my favorites of his is a good indication of that anger: <i><a href="https://youtu.be/F2ROmrQVSp8" target="_blank">Shut Up You Fucking Baby. </a></i>It was glorious. He railed against Rumsfeld, the whole lot of goons surrounding the biggest goon in the White House; the tension in my neck relaxed. It was science, catharsis.<br />
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He took on 9/11 and the pure insanity that gripped the nation long enough to re-elect the man that got us there in the first place. Well, the man that opened the door for the men. I can't blame Bush for the shit that ensued in the years following my undergraduate study. I blame corporations. For everything. And David cross took it on with the kind of joy a child who has just received a Star Wars Lego set would exhibit.<br />
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And that was his job. The joker. Counsel to the king, to remind him that he is still human. I've been so confused these past months, feeling out of sorts, pulled apart, a bit undone, I feel less human and more experiment to see what happens to a woman in low boiling water. <br />
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During the Bush administration we had Jon Stewart for our unveiling of the irony within the political world, then we got Stephen Colbert, and even Larry Wilmore. Then, we lost them all. And for a moment, no one realized what was happening.<br />
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But now it's happened, and I honestly have no idea what tomorrow will feel like, or the day after tomorrow. I learned my lesson. I'm still awash with emotion, but I noticed Jon Stewart's name the other day in the closing credits for Stephen Colbert's new project: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in which Colbert Executive Produces, writes, and stars.<br />
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I've been watching the opening monologues of a lot of late night hosts, including the lovely Samantha Bee whose show <i><a href="https://youtu.be/8okdzcz7PTM" target="_blank">Full Frontal</a> </i>is on Wednesday nights on TBS, as well as the charming and intelligent <a href="https://youtu.be/lg9Tu79F4qE" target="_blank">Seth Meyers</a>. They are all taking up arms, in a sense, aware of their jobs as the tellers of jokes, the tellers of truth. It's the worst of what we need to hear as a species, and that is why it must come to us in words that are gentle on our ears. Our laughter softens the blow without making the blow any less effective.<br />
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Stephen Colbert has been especially hard on the newly elected president, not as his previous character from Comedy Central, but as himself, as we've come to know him through his many projects and interviews.<br />
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Stephen Colbert is mad. And he is not backing down. He is coming at what has happened with a collected fury, using as soft a voice as possible to shout that we must not normalize what is happening in our government right now. It must never be normalized.<br />
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Do you miss Jon Stewart? Don't worry. He is also an executive producer for <a href="https://youtu.be/0L9ZDnOB5ZU" target="_blank"><i>The Late Show with Stephen Colbert</i></a>. He knows what his job is, and he is ready to work.<br />
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I know what it feels like to be that girl, to be confused and angry about everything that is happening around me. It's an exciting time, though, when you find your voice, your voice of reason. We all thought George W. Bush was the worst, but we were probably wrong. I hope we aren't, and I'm going to do my best to remain calm.carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-63886110309712216982017-01-19T18:22:00.000-06:002017-01-19T18:22:03.131-06:00The Hardest PartIn Mr. Semore's Senior A.P. English class, we practiced writing without stopping. Every week We would get out a notebook, he would set a timer, and we would write until the timer went off. Ball points on paper for thirty minutes straight. It wasn't graded. It was practice. The hardest part of writing. The act of writing.<br />
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It feels like it ought to be simple. My brain is constantly full of words. Sometimes shouting. Sometimes singing. Laughing. Crying. My body is an extension of my brain; therefore, it must be simple to carry out the task of transferring what's in my brain onto a page. It must be. Simple mechanics. </div>
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In my first college level acting course, we spent a lot of time focusing on breaking down a character into actions. Acting is, after all, action. Reaction. Experiencing stimuli and having to shift. Seems so simple to define a person's actions. Acting seems so simple. </div>
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What do you want? That was the question that threw me in Acting One. When I started college, I had such a small view of the world. Oh, I made up for it in books and plays and band and choir. I spread myself across the full extent of my...seedling of a world view. But I didn't know what I wanted.....pizza? Not when I was nineteen. </div>
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What will you write about today? That was the forbidden question in Mr. Semore's class. It is the poisoned dart, the words that scroll across my brain when I sit down and the timer starts. Because I can never ask it once, once I ask it, the question just increases in size, like a sea monkey, in my brain, until all I can think about is the damn question itself, and my brain refuses to send any signals to my hands so that my hands can put words on the page. </div>
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Then there's the voices in my head, the ones that tell me I'm ridiculous. I'm wasting time. I'm wasting my time. I've taken workshops, sat through countless therapy sessions, and prayed on my knees to silence them, but they persist.<br />
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I know how to do things. I know how to write. I know how to act. I know how to make amazing chocolate chip cookies. I know how to eat an entire batch of amazing chocolate chip cookies. </div>
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If I want more than that, something bigger, broader, more complex, my confidence wavers. Because I want to write about...I fun no...life, and I want to help. I want to help myself (by emptying this overstock of vocabulary and unfinished ideas that swirls around in the centrifuge of my mind non stop), and I want to help you. </div>
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But what do I want to write about? When my heart is broken along with the rest of the country's heart? When I'm angry along with a million other women? When my worldview is stretching beyond what I thought possible? When I still feel I don't know enough and am not qualified in the least?<br />
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To be or not to be? We keep asking this question, shouting it up and down hallways, into the vast expanse of the night sky. What are we supposed to do? What are our actions? Why are we here? </div>
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Shakespeare says, in Hamlet, that we're afraid to die because we think too much. Life is hard, and most of us do very little to change anything because we're too busy trying to calm ourselves from the thought of not being able to hear our own thoughts any more. We're afraid to die because we don't know what happens next, if anything, and we can't seem to come to terms with it. </div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">Thus conscience does make cowards of us al</a>l</div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">And thus the native hue of resolution </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">And enterprises of great pith and moment </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">With this regard their currents turn awry </a></div>
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<a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamlet&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene" target="_blank">And lose the name of action. </a> (1780)</div>
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The thing is, I'm not afraid of death. I don't know what is going to happen, but I'm not afraid of it. I don't WANT to die, but I know I must. I'm sure if someone told me it was going to happen tomorrow, I'd freak out and lose my mind, but I recently did that thing where I finally realized that it's going to happen, that it's inevitable, and suddenly, all the things that were cluttering my brain dissipated, even if only for a moment. </div>
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How does this help me? You ask. I don't think about it. I stopped thinking about what to do to make sure I'm ready when I die. I stopped asking, "what do I want?" I answered the question. </div>
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To be here now. </div>
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Despite everything. Despite the coming years and the dread I feel. Every minute I spend here makes up for a multitude of hours I've spent agonizing over what happens when I'm not here any more. </div>
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It's self preservation. All signs point to "this sucks. die. you will anyway," but I want to stay alive just for now. To see what happens. To see where I go. To see what I can do to help. And I want to do the best with now that I possibly can. </div>
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Just like <a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~param/quotes/annefrank.html" target="_blank">Anne Frank</a>, in spite of all the hurt and horror, I still believe in goodness. I still believe in hope. I'm saying I'm better than you. Obviously. </div>
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It seems like it should be so simple, doesn't it? To make up my mind to be happy. To do my laundry in spite of the fact that I really don't know what I'm doing. </div>
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The best advice I've ever gotten is seemingly as simple as they come. In the words of former Mayor of Memphis, the illustrious W.W. Herenton, upon one of the last victories in his seventeen year reign, "<a href="http://www.isiahfactor.com/2007/11/05/memphis-mayors-campaign-slogan-was-shake-them-haters-off/" target="_blank">shake them haters off." </a></div>
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And that, my friends, has been the hardest part so far. </div>
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More. To. Come. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.memphisflyer.com/backissues/issue528/cvr528.htm" target="_blank">Willie</a></td></tr>
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-44758793100522572942016-12-05T07:31:00.002-06:002016-12-05T07:31:26.765-06:00The Return of the Timeline 2008-2009Breaking up is never easy. Perhaps that's why I avoid relationships these days. Losing love is so painful. But then again, I have a dog, and I realize the implications of that as it concerns my future happiness. All that to say, I returned to Memphis after spending almost a full year in England and Europe, and I got on with things after the required mourning period.<br />
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Despite a brief bout of dizziness brought on by the immensity of the American road and driving again, it wasn't long before I moved into an epic apartment with my best friend, slid back into teaching Intensive English to international students, and found a posse of summer fun friends to idle away the hours in the thick southern heat.<br />
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I also went to as many shows at the Hi-Tone that I could fit into my schedule: <a href="https://youtu.be/B5aEGO1Ueyc" target="_blank">Lord T. and Eloise</a> (to be covered in champagne), J<a href="https://youtu.be/n71kpqfW9LI" target="_blank">ack Oblivion and the Tennessee Tearjerkers</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/2eaQXOgGYEQ" target="_blank">Harlan T. Bobo</a>, and everyone's favorite Memphis band: <a href="https://youtu.be/Uf9KVPEtIVs" target="_blank">Snowglobe</a>. It was the tail end of my golden age of Memphis music.<br />
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I rode my bike to the farmer's market on South Main, drank beers in the upper brothel rooms at <a href="http://earnestineandhazelsjukejoint.com/" target="_blank">Earnestine and Hazel's</a>, and played trivia at <a href="http://www.youngavenuedeli.com/photo-gallery/" target="_blank">The Young Avenue Deli</a>. I walked everywhere, rarely left the "Parkways," as the midtowners put it, even explored, in detail, the ancient forest in Overton Park that some would destroy completely for more parking. I was what I always wanted to be, but I was still antsy....never content.<br />
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It was the first summer I didn't spend overseas in a few years, so I soaked it up. Whenever I found myself longing for the connection to the rest of the world, the glorious blend of cultures, I stepped out of myself while I taught at Intensive English and looked at each of my students, pictures of the world themselves, sharing in a common language. It felt like home.<br />
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I went camping with friends from the neighborhood and graduate school, spelunking and skinny dipping in the Cumberland Mountains. We ate pot brownies in a cave, and I drank bourbon from a flask and felt it warm with my heartbeat. Then I sat in the middle of the cave and giggled so much I couldn't stand up. In my dreams that night, everything was pink.<br />
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I somehow lost a ton of weight from walking and cooking for myself, being too busy to eat or think. I managed to show up at my ten year high school reunion with a bangin bod, and I wore a dress I bought at Old Navy for five dollars with a pair of white Converse. I was underdressed, but still me, so it was fine. People don't tend to judge me as harshly as I assume that they do, as harshly as I judge myself.<br />
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What good is an epic apartment without epic parties? My best friend and I threw a party for her birthday, found out we had a knack for it, and threw a few more gorgeous get-togethers of like-minded individuals, recyclers, Obama voters, volunteers, gorgeous artists packed onto our 6x6 balcony like sardines. The cops came once because the volume of conversation exceeded what the neighbors could handle. It was a weekend, so they just told us to move the party inside.<br />
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The guy I was tryina hang out with at the time was giving me a little bit of a run around. That was my first mistake. Sometimes a girl has to learn the hard way that a guy is a butt. He had everyone guessing, our group of friends wandering what he was doing with three different girls, all smart enough to know better. And despite all the warnings that always come from people that mean well, I won, and I followed him all the way to a small town in Georgia to learn my lesson.<br />
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That, my friends, is how I found Georgia and began to dig in the earth again, digging and scratching, uncovering the next chapter, what it felt like to be physically strong as my mind began questioning things it never had before.<br />
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My return to Memphis was a good time, a whirlwind, but good. I kept a decent log of it starting <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2008/05/strange-new-world.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Be warned, though. It begins as a day by day recovery from heartbreak. Just how it is.<br />
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-89201262577467241992016-11-24T16:24:00.001-06:002017-11-05T00:15:39.807-05:00The WolfI've been feeling the claws of my wolf tugging at the skin around my heart the past few weeks. She whispers poetry to me as I sit with my legs crossed, my mind humming, words that get lost as the river rushes forward. She wants to speak, to scratch off the sweet facade of my quirky sarcasm, my humor. I'm a dream girl and she's a rabid wolf, but we inhabit the same house. <br />
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When we were young, we used to play in an enchanted forest, she and I, dirty hands, dirty knees, a mind racing, in love with everything. Boys chased us, admired us, and we felt no shame, and we loved all of them. We smiled up at the stars every night with hope, no pictures or expectations, just hope that life would always be this close, this immediate and real. </div>
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"One day you'll have to let someone take care of you." He said it to me after church, knowing how I felt about him. The men in my life began to notice me, but shy away from me, to tell me everything, but never speak to me in public. At some point during my adolescence, my focus shifted to the male gaze and away from the wolf, my protector, and I have spent the majority of my life chasing it, like a rabid dog, desperate to be saved, and cared for, to be fed. <a href="https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/" target="_blank">The Male Gaz</a>e. </div>
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As your teachers are attempting to tell you how to see the world around you and decide for yourself what you will do about it all, the rest of your immediate surroundings are drooling over the opportunity to tell you what you must do and how much it will cost. The first thing you learn, as a little girl, is that you must be what you are not, and you are never to be who you really are. "Be yourself" is an idiom that means little to nothing. How am I not myself? When I attempt to live the life I feel I am supposed to live. </div>
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And the fairytale is that someone will save you from the drudgery of a life with no direction...leaving you one direction: attempt to attract and maintain the male gaze. And oh what an occupation it becomes. It consumes you. Look at me. See me. Admire me. </div>
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I hear that I am beautiful but I cannot believe it this morning, staring into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror. The bones in my face are misplaced and misshapen. I am beginning to see lines. I am older than I was even three years ago. Rigid. I don't go out as often as I used to any more, but there are bills to be paid. I while away the hours at work or at home with my dog. I fear the city leaves me feeling trapped.</div>
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In so many ways I have become who I am today, who I always needed to be, after roaming the streets of Chicago in the frozen twilight. Yet I struggle to shake the shackles of male attention. How can I exist without it? I wonder. Everything I have ever been taught has projected an image of myself to me as a member of a nuclear family, casting everything I am and always have been as merely a fraction of the whole in holy matrimony. </div>
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I gambled away my life on the idea that my worth could be broken down and placed in a box marked with someone else's name, and that his name would make me free. In my quest to prove that I am smarter than the average white woman, I have spent a lot of money and time just to be able to convince the male gaze that I am worth the attention, the seal of approval.</div>
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As a teenager I prayed to God, why did you make me this way if you wanted me to be silent? Why did you make me so loud? I wept, and I begged. I hunched my shoulders and hung my head. I curled up inside of myself until I found that validation...in someone else, and when it ended, I felt the weight of the world crashing down around me. This path of righteousness had led me to a crushing defeat, and I have been desperate to trust myself, much less anyone else, since that day.<br />
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How does a romantic recover what is lost when rejection means she herself has fallen short and will continue to struggle until she can prove herself worth it....the male gaze?</div>
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Don't be all yourself. There is nothing wrong with you, but maybe don't be yourself entirely right away. Don't put it all on the table. Like a hammer. If I had one...I would hammer in the morning just to piss off the neighbors. </div>
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The girl, the me part of her was tired and sad and scared for a while. She was hungry, starving, screaming at people in traffic, at stop signs, "I am lost! I took the wrong road and now I'm lost! and it's no one's fault and it's everyone's fault, and it hurts like hell." </div>
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And then she wasn't lost. One can only wander so long in the mucky mire of the darkest woods before she is discovered by her wolf half, for if she is half of anything, it is this beast. And then the beast begins to claw away, dragging her fingers through the layers upon layers of delusion, freshening the wounds so that they might heal properly. </div>
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You are just now learning how to live, aren't you? The woman I work with, five years my senior, hypothesizes. She drives me home on the horrible days so I don't have to ride my bike, and we "chill." She is Puerto Rican, familiar with my neighborhood from the days when it was patrolled by rival gangs. I love the folklore, but even folklore is too safe. </div>
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Retired gang bangers have shown me their battle scars in hopes that I might provide them the comfort they felt certain my respect in conversation truly communicated, bullet wounds. But my wounds are just the same. We fight the absence of choice, carry the rage of our mothers before us whose choices were fewer and voices were ignored or forgotten. We are all the same, the oppressed, and we are all completely different. </div>
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I cannot imagine a world where I fear the pain of a bullet on a daily basis. I cannot imagine what it is like to be intelligent yet marginalized and stereotyped twice as much as even I am, that your sugar and spice must be extra sweet to cover up the chains of an earned collective rage. Black women have the right to be angrier than anyone else every day of their lives. I don't know a lot of things, but I do know that.<br />
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And I too own my anger, such as it is, close to my heart, where it is warm. I used to weep for my capacity to love. A burning energy in the pit of my stomach, wasted on my failure to matriculate.<br />
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But not failure. Oh no. There is so much use in the world for the love that compels me. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole, and Gilead is my heart.<br />
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You can heal yourself. It is not easy, but it is within you. </div>
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The wolf is in front now, and she roves, and hunts, and warms my feet at night. She doesn't want to bite, but nature compels her toward self preservation. Her language is truth.<br />
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I am thankful that we found each other.<br />
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-70504349726700689652016-11-18T07:28:00.000-06:002016-11-18T07:28:02.976-06:00Pep<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Hi Folks. How ya doin? I know. It's been a tough week. I've had highs and lows, said things I'm proud to have said as well as things I'd like to crawl under a rock for having said. I have run the gamut, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. As soon as I saw the country going red, like Fiver's dreams of blood covering the fields around the warren in <i>Watership Down </i>(my favorite book/<a href="https://youtu.be/vHo-1KWS6yM" target="_blank">movie with a soundtrack by Art Garfunkel</a>), I flashed back to 2000, and I lay on my back on my bed staring up at the ceiling in total silence, listening to the beating of my heart and the rhythm of my own breath. </div>
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Then, like I imagine happens when one is falling, my brain flipped through my entire life from then, 2000, until now, 11/9. It was all pretty fresh, as I've been recapping it here in the blogosphere since my birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was like my brain cogs kicked into overdrive, and I blew through the memories like they were on a <a href="http://tsc-jamaica.com/stationerycentre/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Rolodex-66704.jpg" target="_blank">rolodex</a>, a <a href="http://nrcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/image_rolodex1.jpeg" target="_blank">dense rolodex</a>, my friends. Dense. Like the smoke over Georgia right now.<br />
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I'm going to finish the timeline (I know, thank GOD) after I say this.<br />
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I thought the world was going to end when W was elected president, and it mostly didn't, sort of. That was an exhausting eight years. I couldn't even get through all of em. Had to leave the country, and I racked up a sweet lil chunk of credit card debt that I later paid off with student loans trying to stay as far away from George W. as I could. And despite my plans, I did most of it on my own.<br />
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During that time, I graduated from college, got engaged and un-engaged, survived my parents' divorce, back-packed Europe alone, obtained a Master's Degree, sold my stuff and moved to another country and returned to the states to catch Barack Obama accepting the nomination for President in 2008, and it was hard as hell. All of it. Every single thing.<br />
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Don't ever get confused and think things are supposed to be easy. They aren't.<br />
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I made it through that, and I almost made it through the last eight years too. Speaking of "almost," it was almost a year ago that I found myself at the bottom of my depression, deeper than I'd ever been. My anxiety had driven me to cut back on my medication for fear of running out by screaming at me, "This isn't working," until I gave in and started taking two pills rather than the prescribed three. Within a week I could think of nothing else but death. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I also didn't know how I was not going to do it. I could not imagine myself alive in the future.<br />
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Yep. I even called some suicide hotlines, and you know what, they TOTALLY helped. One told me they were sending an ambulance because I needed to be hospitalized and the other said, "Do what?" after I explained to her my "reason for calling." Yeah. In the end I just laughed. Hysterically. Then I sent my therapist an email entitled "Suicide" about how I needed to see her as soon as I could to talk to her about how to get out of the hole and because I refuse to think about things before I do them.<br />
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Now here I am. The country just elected a con-man to its highest office. The church in which I was raised has revealed itself to be at the feet of a political party. My heart is broken for the marginalized of this country, for the women of this country, and I started my damn period! Dammit.<br />
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And who knows what's going to happen. I mean, holy crap. I've been coping by sharing New Yorker and Reductress Articles and memes on Facebook, binge watching <i>The Crown</i> on Netflix, and spending more time with my dog, running around, giving him long massages, spooning. He is oblivious.<br />
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Yesterday I practiced yoga while listening to both Chomsky talk about power structure and Franz Schubert Sonatas in unison. I'm training. I'm getting pumped up.<br />
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I've been honest to a fault my whole life, a terrible liar. I cannot play it cool. I have been, unabashedly, myself, and people tell me they admire it, but it's a curse, you guys. I mean...I'm a pariah. I'm like <a href="https://youtu.be/tvVoY-PTf6s" target="_blank">this guy</a> mixed with a <a href="https://youtu.be/WsaOn85TqUE" target="_blank">giraffe when it starts running</a>, hilarious and majestic to watch, but usually completely misunderstood (yeah....that's the simile I'm going with) And I cannot stand injustice. I will not sit down for injustice. It's my dumb superpower.<br />
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Now the gloves are off. Everyone is out in the open, nowhere to hide, and I see all of you, just as you've been able to see me all this time. I've been training for this my whole life. I've been keeping my head down, putting up with a lot (despite what you might think, I have put up with A LOT), and now I don't have to. We're all telling it like it is. I get to be all me.<br />
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Scary? I used to be scared of it. All me. If you think I'm a lot, imagine what it's like for me to deal with myself. I spent a good deal of time last Christmas in my old room back home in Memphis with all my pictures, class notes, and diaries, and I discovered the part of me I have been ignoring for far too long, and she's hungry. <br />
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Both Bikram yoga and Bicycling through Chicago are great ways to relieve anxiety. The goal in Bikram is to stay in the room while in Chicago cycling it's to stay alive. So, I wear a bright yellow reflective vest, flashing lights, and sometimes a giant puffy bright white coat that makes me look like a big marshmallow wearing a reflective vest and riding a bike. I look good, is what I'm saying.<br />
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Yesterday, dressed as such, I pedaled quickly along five o'clock traffic downtown on Halstead as huge trucks pulled up beside me, and I leaned forward and pedaled faster. The sky was dark and pink and the smell of the chocolate factory clung to the humidity and made me hungry. Every moving car terrifies me, every step I take I consider and reconsider a million more times than anyone should think about anything. Last night, the only word running through my mind in the dusk on my bike was "live." Live.<br />
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So I am not afraid of the coming months. I want to live. I want to fight. I want to inspire, to encourage. I want to heal, and I want to play with as many puppies as I possibly can until the day I die.<br />
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Anything worth doing is going to be hard. Anything REALLY worth doing. You can't let that stop you.carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-91139344670562412632016-11-01T07:55:00.000-05:002016-11-01T07:55:29.659-05:00Nancy Caroline: A Timeline, 2007-2008, or A Slower, Meandering Stroll Down Memory Lane Through the Lens of Academia<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: -18pt;">
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<span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Oh man, you guys. It's been a crazy week. The freaking CUBS are in the WORLD SERIES, and</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">here I am, living in Chicago. Baseball games take up a good bit of time, my friends. Also, I'm</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">slowing down a bit and lingering a moment with the details on these last few because I'm</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">actually processing some of the experience as we speak. Isn't that exciting? So, we continue</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">with my time as an American citizen with a work visa in London, UK. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><br />What I didn't learn from actually receiving care from the NHS, I learned by working in an NHS facility. I worked in a small three room office area with a bunch of women, half registered nurses and half “nursery” nurses who ate avocados and passion fruit and gossiped as I filed paperwork or entered data onto the local as well as the larger NHS server.<br /><br />Every time a baby was born in our neighborhood, the hospital would send a new paper file and a fun book for the nurses to give to the new mothers on their visit. Each nurse would schedule a visit with new parents to discuss baby proofing and, in general, what the family would need. The NHS would provide baby gates, plug guards, anything you can think of to make the home safe for wiggling newborns who would swiftly grow into crawlers, walkers, and then little humans. They even gave away cloth diapers and fashionable liners for the diapers. There was a laundering service for the diapers too, included with, you know, citizenship.<br /><br />Every week, at different locations within the neighborhood, new parents were invited to come to a baby clinic to have their child weighed (my job), inoculated (not my job), and to speak with a nurse about any concerns they may be having. It was an opportunity for struggling and frightened parents to ask lame, run-of-the-mill questions while the registered nurses stealthily looked for signs of postpartum depression. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Baby clinics were paid for by taxes that everyone (<i>everyone</i>) pays in England….just as all health care in the country was paid for by taxes that every pays.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">It was hard for me to hang out with a bunch of newborn babies as a woman in my late twenties with powerful hormones. I watched nursing mothers, smiling down at their children, glowing like Madonnas. I wanted a baby, but I also didn’t want a baby, you know? I just wanted to breastfeed...one day. </span></span></div>
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The city of London was a beast. She was immense, ancient, gray, and often very lonely. I experienced a decent amount of anxiety knowing that my work visa would run out in six months, and if I didn’t get married, I would have to leave without even seeing half of her. I saw a lot, though, the Tate Modern (free), the British Museum (free), the British Library (where they keep the Magna Carta-free), Borough Market, a street food market where I ate ostrich, smelled a truffle in a jar, and was able to prove to my English friends that America made a few small brewery beers (not just Bud). </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We also left London, took trains to Manchester (<a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2007/12/christmas-pants.html" target="_blank">for Christmas!</a>), York (kind of like Gatlinburg, TN, but English, and way less seedy, much more quaint), and . </span></span><span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">We spent a weekend in <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2008/03/irelandy-part-i.html" target="_blank">Cork, Ireland</a> with a graduate school friend of his that was studying some kind of geology <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2008/03/streets-of-irelandy-second-installment.html" target="_blank">there</a>, and we spent a long weekend in <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-best-angle.html" target="_blank">Sardinia, Italy</a>, rented a car, and explored the rocky coast of the island. W</span><span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">e travelled to Carlisle back in England to see Carlisle United play a riveting football match with some other team I can’t remember and to visit my boyfriend’s grandmother, who lived there and hated America and everything she stands for. She loved the Romans, though, and she drove us to see Hadrian’s wall in one of the most picturesque drives/walks on which I’ve ever been in my life. I saw pastoral in person. It smelled like sheep manure.</span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I had a romance with the London Underground that started out like most loves do, as a spinning, terrifying happiness. The tube was deep, dark, bright, and bustling, and it coursed through the veins of the city like lifeblood. It's always a good idea to take it slow when entering the world of the London Underground, at first, but I quickly graduated from standing on the right-hand side of the escalators to walking them two steps at a time on the left like the rest of the Londoners who were almost late for work but determined to make the best time.
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We had our bad times. Some days I climbed deep down under the city and felt a sickening anger at all the bodies squeezed together on the platform, trying to fit into the next train, no one making eye contact. Sometimes I wanted to speak my mind, like people that get on trains and talk a lot, then ask for money, but I wanted to comment on how ridiculous everyone was in the spirit of bitterness that was already seething from every Londoner on the train that day. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I wanted to laugh and make sarcastic comments about the futility of the rat-race, but I didn’t dare. My accent would have given me away as an American, but I grew accustomed to the nuances underground. The first time I felt like I belonged in London, I was in the Underground, breezing through the tunnels, oblivious to the crowd, listening to Regina Spektor (probably), and for the first time, I didn’t stop to check the map to make sure I was going down the correct tunnel or to have a mild panic. I just kept going. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the way to the Tube every morning I received a free paper telling me what Amy Winehouse had done the night before and a free paper in the evening telling me what Amy Winehouse had done that day. It was charming. Especially the one about her going to the corner store to get an “iced lollie.” Fucking precious. The paparazzi. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This happened every day until the story broke of the Austrian man who kept his daughter locked in a secret underground “apartment” he had fashioned so that he could rape her and father a few kids by her while only letting a couple of the kids live upstairs in the real world...for 24 years. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yeah. That is something that happened. I’m not going to go into it more than to say that it is something that actually happened, and I had to read about it every morning and every evening on the Underground. You can read about it </span><a href="about:blank" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">here on Wikipedia</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Needless to say, I dove deep into a depression. My boyfriend didn’t know what to do. I didn't know what to tell him. It was everywhere, this story of a monster, destroying the life of his daughter. I couldn’t understand why. Why did it happen? How could it happen? Is this real life? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don’t think the story made it over here in the U.S. I think there is a certain level of filtering along with a general apathy for anyone else that isn’t us. Yet, here I was in BBC land, where everyone knows everything about everywhere like a bunch of elitist nerds, having to read tabloid coverage of this...discovery? Event? Horror?</span></div>
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The man refused to admit he had done anything wrong until he watched her testimony, and then suddenly, he shifted, plead guilty. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We broke up. I think I never got over the advice I received from a coworker I had for a short time when I worked as a receptionist for an investment bank. She was from Peru, gorgeous, patient, confident, and comfortable in her own skin. The day we met, as she was training me for the position, she asked me about myself and, within an hour of hearing how I happened to be in London, asked if my boyfriend had any intention of living in the States if I wanted to go back one day. We'd had this discussion, he and I, and I he'd told me, no. I was on the fence, but not really. Her immediate response was "you need to be with someone that wants to be where you want to be," and she was right. It took me about nine years to figure it out, but I figured it out.<br /><br />I had a drink with her close to the end of both of our tenures in London. She was heading back to Peru to be with her family while she and her husband raised their daughter, who put a kink in their plans to move to Australia and travel more, but she was not sad. She said she relished the strength and courage she felt in having conquered a city like London. I felt the same way. We parted on the Tube platform on trains going in opposite directions. I remember her on the train, waving goodbye and smiling, shouting at me to come to Peru. Still need to do that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I had some crazy romances between then and now. Kissed my boyfriend like we would never see each other again at two different airports after we broke up (yep, two). I fell madly in love again, and I cried some real tears as I tumbled out of it. <br /><br />I just kept moving, desperate to find a way to transform my passion into my action, the missing link that Margaret Fuller found in Ralph Waldo Emerson's new school of thought, Transcendentalism. Emerson said the world is all confusion and madness because man is disunited with nature. If man were to go back to the natural world and live in communion with her, he would transcend to a higher level of humanity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fuller responded that he was close but left out a word. Man is disunited with nature, yes, but, more importantly, man is disunited with <i>his</i> nature. The world, society, tells man that he is "masculine," and society defines that word for him just as it tells women that they are "feminine" and define feminine as less than masculine (exact same concept for race). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Masculinity is defined as strength, power, and femininity is weaker, more delicate. Margaret would argue that nobody really knew what it meant to be a woman because women were denied the very right to know themselves freely, to own their own lives. Even women my mother's age lived in a prison of limited options, but they angrily held their tongues for lack of another choice. As roads begin to open for women, as more women fight to stay alive where most women die, we see a million new pictures of what it means to be a woman, and the more we know, the more we can share. <br /><br />Fuller said they are parts of a whole, the masculine and the feminine, that we all share in every aspect of them, but, for the sake of civilization, we deny those parts of ourselves that do not coincide with our respective genders. Did I lose you? Girls wear pink and boys wear blue because that's what stores sell for boys and girls, but we are all colors. We are all passion and strength. We are all emotion and electricity. It's time to embrace it. <span style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8642/8642-h/8642-h.htm" style="text-decoration: none;">Fuller said that in the 1840s</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We've now passed the time to embrace it. It's time to catch up. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">And time to move on to the last 8 years of my majestic and fascinating life.</span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Go Cubs. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLYeOCKK3GA5r4QIKfhZCpQl_qs4Roo9H9gTUQLeaWHJvLL3bpN9RoY4mnzfIYj1H2Wkf5P9O8xhdUHOHeR8RMLl9UbpQwbgxGhf0vSERUunkC5jTjIkEsdlaiQJ8_Vws_yVe18vv2Wc/s1600/1929657_515971409010_8342_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLYeOCKK3GA5r4QIKfhZCpQl_qs4Roo9H9gTUQLeaWHJvLL3bpN9RoY4mnzfIYj1H2Wkf5P9O8xhdUHOHeR8RMLl9UbpQwbgxGhf0vSERUunkC5jTjIkEsdlaiQJ8_Vws_yVe18vv2Wc/s400/1929657_515971409010_8342_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Us.</td></tr>
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<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-35765108445625171222016-10-26T08:29:00.003-05:002018-01-04T21:40:58.916-06:00Nancy Caroline, A Timeline: 2007-2008I took wellbutrin to get through writing my Master's thesis. I went from scattered and emotional to jittery and ultra focused. I wanted to get out of the states, get back to my man, get back to a country that valued...well, humans. So I dove in while my thesis advisor was facing his own struggle with politics at the university. His notes were always charming. Like a monkey throwing poop at me. Charming. I taught classes at the university during the day and sat in front of a computer at night. Then I defended it, and they passed me with the caveat that I continue the research.<br />
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Margaret Fuller challenged every notion of woman. She called it as she saw it, faced off with some of the greatest thinkers of her time, or any time. She travelled, single, with the permission of her family, as an adult, and she left everything to work for a newspaper in New York. She was a literary critic, transcendental disciple, and foreign correspondent. I cried when I wrote the last few paragraphs of the paper, when I wrote about her death. She was full, even then, at too young an age.<br />
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My dad drove me to the airport in Atlanta on the day before Thanksgiving. I had two large suitcases and a Klonopin. I bought a huge Captain Morgan's Spice Rum at the duty free...to remind me of home....<br />
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Then I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for my new housemates in Turnpike Lane (North London) and they all remarked how clever it is to have a holiday entirely devoted to eating. The English love food. they eat food at the table. I never ate a meal with people that wasn't at the table in England. At my boyfriend's parents' home, we ate most meals in the kitchen and special meals in the dining room. We had wine with every dinner, and the English use both hands to eat. I love it. I used to practice eating with both hands when no one was home when I first noticed the distinction. It might look really simple, but it is not.<br />
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I spent a majority of my social time in England sitting around tables and discussing the legitimacy of homeopathy (home-ee-op-athy), world news, or differences between American English and English English. Once, the core group of friends (my boyfriends' friends), sat around a table and discussed the fact that none of us had done crack and whether or not we should try it. The consensus was no.<br />
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There were always pints. The boys drank cider, and when I made fun of them for drinking what we would call a "bitch beer" in the U.S., they retorted that cider was a, "man's drink," due mostly to the high alcohol content of most English Ciders. I always drank Bitter. It was creamy and foamy. I liked that.<br />
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You can't buy Fritos in England. There is no equivalent. In fact, most U.S. junk food can be found only at a novelty store in China Town that sells primarily American sweets. Chips and salsa aren't free, and authentic Mexican food is really and truly non-existent. And that's important, access to Mexican food, to comfort food.<br />
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I worked as a receptionist for a bank then as a PA for the CFO of a charity organization who was also a "Dame," like Judy Dench. I scheduled luncheons for her with duchesses and the like, and when I asked where she would like to luncheon, she simply replied, as if I should have known, "the palace." I contracted the Norovirus and wept like a baby while I projectile vomited along with the rest of the nation that had recently been instructed by the BBC to stay away from Hospital if you begin to experience symptoms of the virus. Then I finished out my tenure working with baby nurses for the NHS, which, although it has its drawbacks, is quite the organization.<br />
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I had a doctor whose office was about a two minute walk from my house. To make an appointment, I simply registered at the office once and never filled out paperwork again. Then, when I needed to see the doctor, I simply called the office and chose, from the myriad of options, when I wanted to come in for an appointment. When I came in from my appointment, I signed in, sat down, and waited for them to call my name in ten minutes. Then, I sat in the Doctor's office, face to face with him, and discussed my issues. He gave me as much information as he could, sent a prescription to the pharmacy next door, and I was done. Then, I left the office and picked up my prescription for 7 pounds ($14). That's all the money I spent. It was HORRIBLE. If I had questions, there were hours during the day that I could call and speak with a nurse, and getting an appointment was never, ever an issue.<br />
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What I didn't learn from actually receiving care from the NHS, I learned by working in an NHS facility. <br />
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I don't have a ton of pictures from England, so here's a picture of me eating a bus in Rome:<br />
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Tune in tomorrow for the next installment. If you want to delve further into my life after moving to England, you can go to the very beginning of my blog and start with this one: <a href="http://carolinelovesyoumore.blogspot.com/2007/11/ghost-town.html" target="_blank">Ghost Town</a>.carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-44871255150633567582016-10-20T08:06:00.000-05:002016-10-20T08:06:09.114-05:00Nancy Caroline, a Timeline: 2006 - 2007 (slowin it down a bit)<span id="docs-internal-guid-e4ffaef4-df8e-c677-9e63-e2fd402aa760"></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwp1tC7C_DWNh0C8BnOQUs-P4Bg5maUxwqWYTatPrixyx_3WUtk6aTHXXE1whV5NxiBVvAjrSB0KENDMBJPmYp-9hGVfuXl2mQN0Zg7EI_NlyKNkFntrvPVI0UZFwYxDx0pXzLz9ETe0c/s1600/1910293_512802822260_9687_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwp1tC7C_DWNh0C8BnOQUs-P4Bg5maUxwqWYTatPrixyx_3WUtk6aTHXXE1whV5NxiBVvAjrSB0KENDMBJPmYp-9hGVfuXl2mQN0Zg7EI_NlyKNkFntrvPVI0UZFwYxDx0pXzLz9ETe0c/s320/1910293_512802822260_9687_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apparently...we look like we are "straight up gay" in this picture.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I started Grad School in 2005, drank like a fish, spent New Years in New York after both of my grandmothers died within a month of one another. I tried to date, but everything promising terrified me to the point of self destruction. I did lots of self-destructive things my first two semesters in graduate school. I had never rebelled as a young thang. I was steadfast and loyal....good. Oh how I tried so desperately to be good. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then the summer came and my best friend and I lived like we were kings....that drank a lot, loved the boys, belched and farted like no other woman has or should, woke up hungover...most days, and laughed...because it was the only true remedy to the hell of real life. We shut down the </span><a href="http://www.memphisflyer.com/TheWheelhouse/archives/2013/02/12/a-fond-farewell-to-the-hi-tone" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">Hi-Tone</a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (the original Hi-Tone on Poplar Ave) on a weekly basis, broke into apartment complexes with pools and jacuzzis, befriended booth owners at the Memphis International BBQ festival, danced at the Lindy Hop, danced, drunk as hayle at </span><a href="http://earnestineandhazelsjukejoint.com/about/the-bar" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">Ernestine and Hazel's</a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and ate McGriddles....so many McGriddles. We had a love affair with Midtown Memphis. We were partners in crime. She turned to me one night and told me that it was a time we were having and that it would have to end at some point, and she was right.
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I taught English in the Czech Republic, but not before stopping over in London to visit my college roommate who happened to be there attending art school. We went with an Englishman friend of mine (that I kissed a bunch outside of <a href="http://www.downtownmemphis.com/guide-to-downtown/buccaneer-lounge/" target="_blank">The Buccaneer</a> in Memphis while a bluegrass band played inside and then months later again in a churchyard in Prague after getting totally wasted at a nightclub on dollar beers) to a club called The End where the DJ </span><a href="http://pitchfork.com/artists/7723-erol-alkan/" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Erol Alkan</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hosted a party, </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2006/dec/19/bintheredonethatwhytrash" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trash</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which he ended every night by playing The Smith’s classic “</span><a href="https://youtu.be/n-cD4oLk_D0" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a Light that Never Goes Out</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” while the English boys smashed their beer glasses on the floor, and everyone, everyone, EVERYONE sang along like the night would never end and we would never grow old. My local tour guide (and worldwide makeout buddy extraordinaire) also introduced me to my next boyfriend that night, a fella from Manchester that was studying Diatoms to predict climate change (I think) in grad school. We talked about England’s recent loss in the World Cup, to Portugal, and he struggled to describe how it felt to know he had to wait four years for another chance. I helped him by reminding him that presidents in the U.S. serve four year terms. He laughed at my cleverness. He turned to me at the end of the night, pointed up to indicate the song everyone was singing, and yelled over the pulsing crowd, “THIS IS A TCHUNE!”
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I took a class on Emerson the semester after that summer, and fate’s hand dipped its fingers back into my stew. The instructor, on the first day, informed the class that we would just be reading a lot of Emerson and if anyone wanted to drop the class, that was fine with him. No one dropped, and we entered into a philosophical journey that led me to my research obsession, how to apply Emerson’s transcendental tenets to women in a world that did not allow women the freedom to “transcend.” The instructor introduced me to Margaret Fuller and her essays, letters, journals, and activism began to guide my life in directions I had never imagined. I spent the next two years, travelling with my English gentleman and reading about Fuller, buried in printouts from JStore, academic articles examining Fuller’s relationship to her mentors like Emerson and Hawthorne, her admirers like Poe and Whitman, and her relationship to herself, the most torrid, the most confused, as she wrestled with society’s expectations and her own nature. She was a beast of an intellect, obsessed with learning as much as she could and sharing that knowledge, but her fervor was lost on the men in her life. They did not know what to do with the feelings they had for her that she pressed them to explore in the name of life and liberty. They would fall short, literary giants, lost for words in the company of a woman that did not fit the mold. How curious it is that her history is known by so few…
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7QbwY5b6EOA-kbgIK-W0XGiVOqymZxc2geEC5tm6_H667ketgFUw9mZWYCrbZytLMkViTXiAmarVdJ_v8bUfarBRanAc3FZPPrkc4S7RYZql6FLn_IwoVM_Y7oTsJHs3FgFrM2qsRUQ/s1600/1928991_512803790320_9518_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic7QbwY5b6EOA-kbgIK-W0XGiVOqymZxc2geEC5tm6_H667ketgFUw9mZWYCrbZytLMkViTXiAmarVdJ_v8bUfarBRanAc3FZPPrkc4S7RYZql6FLn_IwoVM_Y7oTsJHs3FgFrM2qsRUQ/s320/1928991_512803790320_9518_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beautiful Bar"th"elona</td></tr>
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Before I finally put pen to paper to write and eventually defend my Master’s Thesis, We travelled to Spain, Valencia and Barcelona, road bicycles out into the countryside and ate Paiaya and locally grown almonds on the beach of the mediterranean sea as the sun set. Then we fell asleep listening to the echoes of night owl footsteps along the stone streets below us. We fought. We went to food markets and bought avocados that we ate on fresh bread spread with Marmite and bananas. It was weird. We visited art museums and read the labels for each piece, took naps in the park, and fought. We made it to Prague a few days before we were to begin teaching in Pilsen, and we explored her medieval streets until our whole bodies ached, and we fought. Then, we taught English for three weeks in West Bohemia, drank with teachers and students from all over the world but mostly Memphians and Czechs. We smoked Hookah in a tea lounge off a quiet street in the center of the city, drank liqueur that put hair on my chest, and ate beef knuckles and Goulash, slept on beaches in the shade, and road trolleys everywhere. And we drank beer, rushing under the city from the source, pure and fresh, our nourishment, for in the Czech Republic, beer is food. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then....I sold my stuff, and I moved to England with the intention of not coming back for a long time. </span></div>
carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-35764287395420956462016-10-18T07:43:00.000-05:002016-10-18T07:43:39.045-05:00Nancy Caroline: A Timeline 1999-2005<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abilene, Texas. That is where I decided I needed to go to college, in the desert in Texas. It has a great many gems (including some fantastic steakhouses and some hole in the wall BBQ places that are decent for Texas) and it is a unique city, but in Abilene, I discovered the maze of my brain, and I dug down deep, saw the abyss for the first time, never recovered. The four years I spent in college (1998-2002) were exciting and tumultuous and the world changed forever for everyone. I made new friends and strengthened my bonds with old friends. I opened the door. I didn't look back. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1999-2005</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis after a miserable few months of pain, panic attacks, embarrassing tests, magic muscle relaxers, and steroids that eventually led me to contract Mononucleosis from the cesspool of germs that is a college campus….for Christmas 1999. During Finals week I remember thinking, “If I die this week, at least I won’t have to feel like this.” Because of my diagnosis, I would not be able to buy health insurance for myself until I was 34 years old. Ulcerative Colitis is too expensive to treat. So I haven't.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I fell in love for the first time, with a boy. I could write you our story, and maybe one day I will, but it would take too much time. I feel, after more than ten years, that today, I remember why I loved him, and the time we had, and it doesn’t hurt. He broke my heart, and I am certain I broke his. I was more graceful about it, although he would argue. My tongue was always too sharp. He did things in secret. A sharp tongue stings, but betrayal is like taking a gutting knife and stabbing it into the side of my waist and not ripping it out right away, just kind of tugging it and watching that hook blade thing on the other side of my flesh while I ask, pleadingly, what I can do to make him stay with me. You never forget pain like that. I still have the wedding dress because you can’t return a wedding dress.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early one September morning, my senior year in college, after Biology, my only 8 a.m. class my entire college career, I walked towards my Strength Training class to discover that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York. I spent the rest of the day sitting in rooms with people I knew and saying nothing.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2002 I graduated from college and thought, as my mind wandered during the commencement ceremony, that I had no idea what to do with my life, that I was going to have to start making adult decisions, and I had no clue how to do that.
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGLl9Qvif_8UoA7cqrUhKudO0Jq95mwFg-eVEWhosTVxEqx93D_I8ImmGMyUC2lhiZF76qerNU2yuGVkzrOhGqNFB48bFVjHpM0dcIhhuHPPIvgnYKzrsmVeGjOzNKKE1-ob_pa67LYg/s1600/green+apt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcGLl9Qvif_8UoA7cqrUhKudO0Jq95mwFg-eVEWhosTVxEqx93D_I8ImmGMyUC2lhiZF76qerNU2yuGVkzrOhGqNFB48bFVjHpM0dcIhhuHPPIvgnYKzrsmVeGjOzNKKE1-ob_pa67LYg/s320/green+apt.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I left Abilene, and I lived in an apartment that I painted Kermit Green in Lakewood, Dallas, TX, to remain somewhat close to my boyfriend. I had always imagined I would go to North Carolina, my birthplace, and pursue a life there, in the Blue Ridge mountains. In Dallas, I waited tables at a dinner theater called “The Pocket Sandwich Theater” in which “melodramas” were performed and popcorn was served to throw at the bad guys. I taught Junior High School in south Dallas for a year, worked as a cocktail server at the original Dave and Buster’s and performed improv with Comedy Sportz in Plano, TX. Then, I gave it all up to move back to Abilene in an attempt to save an engagement that didn’t want to be saved, so that when I realized I had to let it go, I also discovered that I had nothing else to hold onto. My mother drove me from Abilene back to Memphis, and I started over. Completely.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My parents separated. My unit, my family cut our ropes and went floating out into space in different directions. This, three months after the end of my engagement.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I moved into an adorable apartment in Midtown Memphis, pre-gentrification, paid about $475 for a one bedroom with a little balcony, bought myself a queen size comfy bed because an old friend of mine told me, one night, whilst in each other’s embrace, that his father taught him a good night’s sleep is always a good investment. </span><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I dated the charming and ever steadfast lead singer of a metal band and waited tables at the Outback Steakhouse. I made friends that I still cherish to this day. I blended in. Kind of. I was still spinning from the fallout. So....
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I bought a Kelty backpack and took it to Europe along with a Euro-Rail pass, and some various sundries. I got wasted in a pub crawl in Berlin, cried alone in a hotel room in Switzerland while I ate an entire jar of Nutella with my fingers, saw the last installment of the Star Wars prequels at an English theater in Austria, ate Gelato twice a day in Italy, cried alone in a “cabin” at a family campground outside of Rome while a German family played some sort of talkative sport outside my window, nursed a hangover on the isle of Capris, and wandered the streets of Pompeii on my own. I stayed in a Best Western for one night in Paris and took a bath (it was awesome), fell down in a conga line in a cozy little pub in Brugge and later offered to have a threesome with a couple after we smoked a joint under a bridge in some misty night scene from a movie, but in the end, I just went back to my hostel and farted in the echo-y bathroom with another girl until we hurt from laughing.
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-52135360752503165442016-10-16T11:27:00.000-05:002016-10-16T11:29:50.094-05:00Nancy Caroline: A Timeline 1979-1998Here it is, either my ultimate narcissistic gesture, or something I had to do to be able to see what others see in me. I started writing my timeline on the eve of my birthday, last Tuesday. Birthdays always offer an opportunity to reflect. Funny how that is. How, before, it was a celebration of milestones, and now, it's a time to look back and let go, to remember and look forward. Great time to do mushrooms or something, so if anyone's selling, I'm looking to buy.<br />
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Once I started, and the years began to reveal themselves to me, I realized how much fun it was, to look back over my life and condense it to fit a timeline of events. Each bullet point could fill an entire chapter of a book, and each time period, a volume, and that is the gift I have been receiving since I wished for it years ago, to own my life.<br />
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We <span style="font-family: inherit;">begin with the beginning, my formative years, as a little girl in the world, connected to the ground through roots that grew out of my vel</span>cro tennis shoes, sent shoots out from my fingertips, and bloomed at my lips.<br />
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Birth, Hickory, NC to James Anthony Allen and Martha Lois Nevills. Cesarean section. Explains how ravishing I am.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Moved to Memphis, TN in a really cool 70s car so that my dad could go to school for Theology. I ate ice cream for the first time, I hear.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I make countless cassette tapes of myself hosting some sort of talk show. I never listened to the tapes because I always always always hated the sound of my own voice.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have vague memories of dirty knees, spider webs, Christmas lights, and kittens. Also countless hours digging holes in the back yard or on the playground and searching patches of clover for one with four leaves.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I sprained my ankle on my tenth birthday when I jumped off this Hamburgler on a playground at McDonald’s that you climbed up into like a hamburger jail mouth thing. My parents regaled me with stories of the day I was born to help keep my mind off how bad my ankle hurt that night.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mom and Dad used to wake me on Saturday mornings by “sneaking” into my room on their hands and knees, but I always heard them coming because they couldn’t stop giggling.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I kissed a boy for the first time in the back yard of a house in Memphis after we jumped on a trampoline and drank orange-tangerine Mystic Waters until we almost threw up. It felt rushed and close. I said, “Orange-Tangerine,” when it was over. That was pretty much it.
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I took piano lessons, sculpting classes, art classes, and drama classes because my parents were pretty intent on making me into a complete and interesting human being.
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I got my period!
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I played the flute, and I loved it. You might say, she was my first great love. In those moments I spent alone in a soundproof practice room, I learned how to be honest and open, how to think and how to feel, how to sit with myself. Then, I got scared that I would stop impressing people, and the more frightened I got, the less I wanted to play my flute, until I stopped altogether (but only after more than ten years).
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0AJUAYvIMG0qTTORRStgHr4mvzaPJChzxHdEtVqCh7A6O7om2HmsB10YdHz6Ya2M0UWGkuPUC3oHf1exocj36fCAqZ81pp05hfh6czUxA7XLfK1a76rMjY4VJ7v4t4-kdj8cDB4D3Qw/s1600/Prom+%252798.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ0AJUAYvIMG0qTTORRStgHr4mvzaPJChzxHdEtVqCh7A6O7om2HmsB10YdHz6Ya2M0UWGkuPUC3oHf1exocj36fCAqZ81pp05hfh6czUxA7XLfK1a76rMjY4VJ7v4t4-kdj8cDB4D3Qw/s400/Prom+%252798.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prom '98</td></tr>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I discovered the Theater, my second love. I’m not 100% sure who, my mother or father, gave me my keen distaste for dishonesty, but the only real gift you need to be able to enjoy theatre is the ability to look life in the face and not back down from what you see. We back down from life in a lot of ways, take the easy way out, wonder what that ache is, even though we know. I felt like I could be myself in the theatre crowd. And then, for some reason, probably anxiety, I felt like an outsider, but that was much later.
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I graduated from High School.
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-87469785098702089032016-09-22T22:23:00.000-05:002016-09-22T22:49:49.018-05:00I Sold My CarToday marks the first day of my vacation. I'm taking a vacation. Some old buddies from my days in the Atlanta improv scene threw together <a href="http://therelapsetheater.com/show/come-back-throw-back-reunion-tour/" target="_blank">a reunion show</a>. We've all since moved to different states, kept in contact, but not all been together since Matthew and Carol's Wedding, and not everyone made it to that. Of course, not everyone is making it to this either, but it's as good as any reason to head to the Atl.<br />
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Chicago is moving ever closer to winter, and as it does, so too does my soul. My dark, deep, troubled soul. I'm better, but I'm trepidatious. I'm keeping my head up, though. I've been biking the past few days...days merely, after about a month long break, and I've been feeling this intense level of uplift in everything. Despite a brief moment of loss of control right around the worst days of my lady cycle, the days leading up to the last have been easier than ever. And A LOT has happened. </div>
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I've been weeping and gnashing my teeth over my recent gumption to move into sales at my current job. I'm good at working with people and getting people to trust me (like a fox), and since I actually genuinely try to be an actual trustworthy person, it's kind of easy for me. The hardest part is getting the hell off my own back and ass. </div>
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I've been trying to figure out what this damn demon creature at my heels has been, this anvil tied to my ankle and dragging me down into darker waters. I've been fighting it, like a warrior princess. </div>
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And just like every warrior princess, I've had to solve a problem....not like Maria.....like Caroline. If you've never seen Spirited Away, change the status of that. Put it on your list. It's a great example of the maze of trials I've been tripping along these past months since December, when I couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted to die. </div>
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The story is universal, like a fairy tale...but the kind that hasn't been altered by religion, by dogma. The kind that empowers because it forces the hero to solve a problem, to meet with the hag, and to obey her commands without complaint. To do the work. </div>
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When the problem is solved, the hero has succeeded and receives that for which she has been fighting. In the case of Spirited Away, the hero's parents have been turned into swine, and she must complete the tasks to solve the problem and to return her parents to their human forms. </div>
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People want to help, and people do what they can, but she has to turn the levers, choose which doors to open. </div>
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I think somewhere along the line, whether it be white male supremacy or capitalism.....or is white male supremacy just a small bi-product of the inherent nature of capitalism (I'm more inclined towards this)....we stopped appreciating having agency over our own lives. We stopped being taught what that meant, and I'm talking about all of us. </div>
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I always imagined I'd send my old 1999 Honda Civic off into the sunset with a final road trip, but the girl wasn't having it. The clutch needed to be replaced. </div>
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I called Triple A, and to send me back to Chicago, they sent the guy that took me to the mechanic I had to visit in Indiana, where my girl gave up the fight. He was a big man with a long white beard. He had a step-daughter with him that told me about her boyfriend's recent arrest within the first minute of meeting me, and we all piled into his old tow truck. </div>
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I finally hit that wall of "how much money do I want to keep putting into this car," namely because my dad hit that wall a while ago. I spent the better part of my day in a tow truck, with this unique family who loved Linus, of course, and discussed the basic realities of living life with me, which is a lot to ask for from a day, and I didn't ask for any of it. </div>
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At one point my chariot driver turned up an old country song on the radio and started singing to Linus as we chugged our way into the belly of the beast of Chicago rush hour. Every time someone honked at us for running red lights, the man and his daughter would yell at them as loudly as they could...from Indiana, but speaking that Chicago road rage language that you really can't appreciate until you realize how many assholes own cars in this damn town. </div>
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She regaled me with stories of her "old man" and how his ex has been making their live's a living hell since he started dating her. Which reminds me. I want to challenge all women...and all men with this: no one can steal your boyfriend or girlfriend. Everyone has free will and the ability to make choices. Don't ruin both of your lives by trying to get someone that didn't choose you back into your life. Choose your life over that nonsense. </div>
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I said this, or some version of this out loud in the truck, and my driver, in between drags from his cigarette, leaned forward and pointed at me to affirm my musings. We also smoked a joint in the truck, once we were in Illinois, and it wasn't a crime; he didn't because he was working and driving, but his daughter and I partook and he told us about driving a tractor trailer coast to coast for years. "It gets in your blood." </div>
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He drives a tow truck. He also drives a limo, wears a suit or a tux, depending on the event, but if he can drive his beat up tow truck, he'd rather do that, meet people, buy old cars and work with his neighbor to fix em up and resell them or sell them for parts. It made me think: don't do what you do because you need a job. Do what you do because you HAVE to do it....even if it's driving a truck....do it because it's in your blood. I mean...do what you have to do to get to that point, but don't ever stop trying to get there. Success has many faces, and contentment is not always what you expect. </div>
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I had respect for this man, and I think he shared the same for me as he helped me swing myself from the cab onto the flatbed to grab something out of my trunk. So I sold him a monument to my past, parts of which I continue to leave further and further behind each day that I wake up believing I have inside of my little frame everything I need to take care of myself, and if I don't know how to do it yet, I'm open and excited to learn because if I never stop learning, I never stop living. (and you're welcome for that sentence)</div>
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I do a lot of things that make me nervous, that make my heart race. Sometimes getting out of bed is that thing, and sometimes counter offering a price $50 higher than my potential buyer's initial offer makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. I did it anyway, and he said yes. So I got my stuff, and I said goodbye to my girl. May she live in our hearts forever. </div>
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And I keep looking forward. I have a whole vacation to enjoy. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwhjsd3mMbThxUHRp47zYT1RBSOlV2cD4Ux1B2ONzBVPTXQ7HaYA5eFgxjEkrlJmgDAc4OUeSb9pDf3QigOtPmEuvG11HYz4uD2Ib2EpIZsc33Rrv8WdoTk2QDN54qdTCVx0LLM7s2as/s1600/what%2527s+that+paper+thing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwhjsd3mMbThxUHRp47zYT1RBSOlV2cD4Ux1B2ONzBVPTXQ7HaYA5eFgxjEkrlJmgDAc4OUeSb9pDf3QigOtPmEuvG11HYz4uD2Ib2EpIZsc33Rrv8WdoTk2QDN54qdTCVx0LLM7s2as/s400/what%2527s+that+paper+thing.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ol' Emmie, Dec. 1998 - September 2016. Photo Credit: Apryl Cox-Jackson</td></tr>
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-18972525372983565522016-09-12T07:18:00.000-05:002016-09-12T07:18:37.951-05:00Connection<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are, at our core, animals. Society, in fact, is a way that we separate ourselves from the animals. Society grew from our ability to create and write down a language, and more than a few theorists believe that this, language, is what has separated us from our true and happiest selves. Once we learn language, some say, a veil is drawn over our eyes, and we no longer feel like we are a part of everything else that exists because we have created a way to differentiate ourselves, for lack of a better way to say it, in writing. I now see the difference between myself and the not myself which is represented by these symbols that are not the same as the symbols that represent me. Am I just making it worse at this point? I know I’m ALWAYS harping on this. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1cf48e32-1e4e-a62e-8478-e6ca923cefb5" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are a part of everything around us, but we separate ourselves from whatever isn’t human, and we don’t stop there. It seems we are constantly on the lookout for more ways to differentiate ourselves, to feel unique, when the reality is, we ARE unique, without making any attempts. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I, in my desperate need to put my hands in the dirt, planted some tomato plants I bought from Home Depot in my backyard in mid July. As I watched everyone tout their own home grown tomatoes, I dug up my young tomato plants and moved them to an area of the yard, I felt, had more sun exposure. Maybe minutes. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I bought a full length mirror at Lowes, and every morning I would prop it up on a bucket full of water and angle it so that the sunlight was reflecting off of it and onto my tomatoes. I have no idea if that was even useful. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also packed the kiddos in with mushroom compost, fed them fish emulsion, and spent at least five minutes with each plant a day, chatting and pruning back the endless shoots that they send out, desperate to grow, to vine. Talking to plants totally works. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I even resigned myself, in this Zen Buddhism sort of way, to only getting a couple of pieces of fruit. The act of planting and tending was emotionally worth the time it took because it reminded me that nothing is as straightforward as life. It just keeps moving. It just keeps swimming, regardless of me, regardless of anything. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have discovered a number of tomatoes now, each different, green, transparent, each a beautifully sculpted expression of life, and I am a part of it. Finally, again. There is no subtext, nothing to decipher. When I think about it, I know what they need, just as I know what I need, and the work that I do to maintain them is an extension of the work I do for my own maintenance. </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything else is just signs and signified, a way to distinguish ourselves from the rest; the distinctions are obvious, but the connections are what matter the most. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlikrrpXxs6qFXZFVjvg1XS4QZYNaIDI-QB1hpEpfbGxAq-svZHE0bF1rKheBvX2SyBazGZpUwSSvj35w7VDc47p1m_NSOin7i4YYKsOz-uMI2E-XLu7RgzyvpC1uUT2O4OUbQLNbP2RA/s1600/babytom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlikrrpXxs6qFXZFVjvg1XS4QZYNaIDI-QB1hpEpfbGxAq-svZHE0bF1rKheBvX2SyBazGZpUwSSvj35w7VDc47p1m_NSOin7i4YYKsOz-uMI2E-XLu7RgzyvpC1uUT2O4OUbQLNbP2RA/s640/babytom.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-32787109492987846442016-09-03T14:48:00.003-05:002016-09-03T23:07:45.458-05:00Labour<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here I am. Saturday afternoon, and I’ll admit it. I lurked a couple of times on Facebook and Instagram because I love everyone’s pictures, but since I've been forcing myself to stay away from it, I have been more connected and more aware, and that has made all the difference. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-505c3c35-f182-49fc-6da3-ff4e231c2961" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s been nostalgic. Remember when we didn’t live like this? It wasn’t that long ago that life seemed a little simpler, but I don’t think I would give it ALL up. We live in a remarkable time and have access to so much information, it's hard to imagine not having this kind of access, but just like everything else, it requires temperance. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s something that I’ve noticed: the longer I sit still, the more I want to sit still, and the longer I sit still, the darker my thoughts get. Nothing makes me feel more hopeless than multiple days sitting in front of my television, computer, or phone thinking of all the things I need to do and not doing them. Don’t misunderstand me. There are days when all I need to do is sit in front of the television, but there is never a day that I don’t need to walk my dog or feed myself, and therein lies the distinction. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Say it’s age, say it’s the drugs, but I’ve always been this way. The hardest part of my whole life is actually having to live it. Just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer said in Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 episode 22 before sacrificing her life to close the door to a hell dimension that her annoying fake sister's blood opened by doing <a href="https://youtu.be/Poypgvdnn80" target="_blank">this</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.38;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At dinner with a lifelong friend the other night, I confessed that I would never be happy if I couldn’t make myself do things after she admitted to the same foible. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, if I’m not doing anything, I’m lost. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life is work, but you do have to be conscious of your own threshold. You have to find the balance. Even the French, with their, like, five or six weeks of government mandated vacation time (it’s not a joke, that’s real as hell), have to do laundry and wash dishes, cook for themselves to feed themselves, sweep the damn floor. Life is work. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life is not “success.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m a good salesperson. I can close. <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">However, m</span>y assignment for this month at work is to find 20 viable leads...over the phone. I got the assignment and a book on cold calling. I’m a good salesperson, but this assignment is balls. I’m not jazzed about this part of the job, but I’ll do it because I need the money and the practice of having a work ethic. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not kidding when I say I’d rather produce than market and sell. I can only take the weight of the American economy for so long. I’ll produce what you need or want, and I’ll make you feel good about buying it from me, but I’m not desperate to make you my bitch, and therein lies the distinction. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s where the manic-whispered violence of <i>Glengarry Glen Ross</i> (which I fell asleep during: brass balls, always be closing, we get it) comes into play, the desperation to control people for what it pays, and trust me, it pays well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, that's computers...phones...touch screens...healthcare...if we can't live without it, they'll always have the most money. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that’s capitalism. Y’all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Happy freaking labor day weekend. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There's a bouncy castle a couple of back yards away from me and a kid friendly DJ. But the weather is incredible. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIY7efjJvRrrmrbTWIuvbyXjt8EDwotonFXQJWVGIIy_gZXgkA7e2ii5mRaxM5ET15V96o9-Zuf89z8Xpg-PCnO3eEHz2Cnrw3006_UYftfldOfFOgJJtQSXfyChyphenhyphensLq84eqN-6YsH8AU/s1600/Dog+Walkin+Fanny+Pack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIY7efjJvRrrmrbTWIuvbyXjt8EDwotonFXQJWVGIIy_gZXgkA7e2ii5mRaxM5ET15V96o9-Zuf89z8Xpg-PCnO3eEHz2Cnrw3006_UYftfldOfFOgJJtQSXfyChyphenhyphensLq84eqN-6YsH8AU/s640/Dog+Walkin+Fanny+Pack.jpg" width="377" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-82274296932995367542016-09-01T07:28:00.000-05:002016-09-01T07:28:15.657-05:00Over the Hump<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wednesday was exhausting. It was my route day, the day I traipse around River North, Chicago with a little green bag on my back, an apron, shears, loppers, leaf bits and stems, a towel, a spray bottle containing mild castile soap, mint alcohol, and leaf shine (so calming), a copy of Clarissa Pinkola Estès’ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Women Who Run with the Wolves</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a water bottle, ibuprofen, and a two gallon water bucket. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-9427cb58-e366-9a83-33ce-4dcccf8b77ac" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the end of every Wednesday, I am sore, I am hungry, insatiably, and I am content. For the most part. I love working with my hands. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s hard to be away from social media on this day because it can be a bit of a lonely day. Despite the sweetness of the little fellas (plants), they don’t say much. I tried listening to music in between my accounts, and that helped a bit, but all in all, I felt a lot more connected with my surroundings and at peace. Dangit. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I felt a little grateful too. Sometimes I dread this day because I’m tired, or stressed, but today I soaked it up. It helped that it was about 75 in the sun with no humidity with a pleasant wind by the river. I took bigger mental pictures of the towering shrines to corporate America. It’s such a remarkable panorama from 57, but the buildings are so close, I feel I could wrap my arms around them on 43. On 25, I’m inside a photograph, surrounded by mirrors, flashing in the sun, and beneath them, there is a river, and on the river, there are boats and kayaks, trees and tables under umbrellas, buses and cars, cyclists and pedestrians, but on the other side of the double paned window, it is silent and still. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lady at the front desk of a hotel I service asked if I would like a bottle of water, and I responded with wide-eyed disbelief, a pause, and, “yes.” “Well, get one,” she said, “you deserve it.” Well done, front desk lady. I totally did deserve it. I gulped it down on my way to my last stop, this company that edits media: commercials, film, lots of commercials, all sorts of different people on computers. It’s probably my favorite stop. Mostly because I have a crush on every boy at that office. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They all have beards and tattoos and stare at computer screens watching the same millisecond over and over again until it’s perfect. Hello? I mean, even the guy with the ponytail is hot, especially the guy with the ponytail. It’s work, y’all, so I gotta just enjoy it for what it is, but I’d marry any one of those nerds if they asked. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The woman that produced the “like a girl” ad campaign...I think, also works there. She introduced herself to me on the elevator one cold day back in March, said she admired that I worked with plants. She was everything a powerful creative woman should be, mostly because she told me to eat whatever I wanted when I was there in front of the interns, who then had to hound me to eat waffles every day after that. I treated a pest problem in one of her plants and revived her Jade. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there’s the office manager, who has a desk in a closet and dresses like a QUEEN. She is fierce. She’s got this 1950s pinup girl thing going on, and her hair is almost always done up. Sometimes she’s got a killer face on too, and she’s lovely without makeup. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s the fun stop. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I hopped on the Grand bus heading west and squeezed myself into my spot amongst the sardines. Look. I’m not railing on babies and kids and stuff. I love em. But I hate...with a passion reserved for very few…those giant SUV strollers. At 5:30 P.M. on a Wednesday going OUT of downtown Chicago. The front half of the Grand bus was overtaken by a slew of precious children, a wagon, and an SUV. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every time the bus pulls aside to pick up new riders, everyone looks around desperately for a way to squeeze five more people, and they all look butt hurt the whole time, as do I. We were surrounded by a sea of traffic as well, so it took a good half hour to get the half mile out of the center of town. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I finally acquired a seat, after watching a little girl try to pretend she knew how to tie her shoes until a standing woman helped her, and she hugged her knees to her chest with a satisfied grin. I took out the huge book I’d been lugging around with just enough time to read about three pages before pulling the “let me off” chord. It’s a dense book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I listened to music the whole time, too. Billie Holiday and Fiona Apple, Sinead O’Connor and Tori Amos. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This morning, there are dark grey clouds in the distance, and I am going to a Cubs game tonight, so I hope they clear up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm starting to think that maybe taking a week long break from social media is a good idea once a month. After all, who am I beholden to on the internet? Who am I beholden to in the world? </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJATjmoh-YzlSIUSMOTk1DwMfFEdXMxxErteQeETq2XvTvEp3bw_gheG_VT36_jmg2Xg_r-LPTlZLRAfH8O9Ltyy-54Qv6VkgeLujc4F_vQpfb1pSFqrpEjAbLj3e7hdoYjynxdZaLFOI/s1600/Photo+on+9-1-16+at+7.23+AM+%25232.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJATjmoh-YzlSIUSMOTk1DwMfFEdXMxxErteQeETq2XvTvEp3bw_gheG_VT36_jmg2Xg_r-LPTlZLRAfH8O9Ltyy-54Qv6VkgeLujc4F_vQpfb1pSFqrpEjAbLj3e7hdoYjynxdZaLFOI/s640/Photo+on+9-1-16+at+7.23+AM+%25232.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-81721278809630512892016-08-31T09:49:00.000-05:002016-08-31T09:49:47.190-05:00The First 36<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After surviving the first 36 or so hours away from the socials, I find myself more energetic, and more positive. It could also be the hormonal roller coaster. Might as well go with it. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-dfc9ac88-ddcf-cb4e-0ba4-516e1852302c" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway. Had a productive day of sales calls in the hour away suburbs. The first stop was a company that makes flavors for my presentation of my “Holiday” design. Look. Guys, I’m not gonna parse words. I don’t have positive feelings when I think of Christmas. I’ve had some pretty bleak Christmases in my life. Some distant and some recent. Some frozen nights alone, even if I wasn’t. I’ve had some pretty rad Christmases too. Don’t worry. Roller coaster. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I designed one though. Kind of my worst, visually. I’ve gotten better at the rendering program at work, where I impose designs onto pictures I took on site. It’s so basic. It’s Excel. “Rendering program.” But seriously, Excel is impressive. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And she, an exotic woman wearing color contacts that made her look kind of fiercely terrifying, loved it? Now that I’m remembering, she was surly at the beginning of our last meeting, and within a minute, she was sweet as honey. She softened and smiled at the pictures that I really didn’t have much to say about….other than, “remember...we talked about how you wanted that, well…” Probably my worst work, in my opinion, but keep in mind, my opinion is the harshest. She waxed sappy about Christmas, and wanted to do the whole thing, or most of it because, of course, it’s a lot of money. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No decision was made, but plans were discussed. And you shake hands and leave. It’s so gross...except, Christmas. And Plants. It's hard to go wrong with those. Well, definitely plants, at least. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our next stop was a wedding venue, that almost went out of business, or there were rumors, that we obviously should have heard but didn’t. It was a redesign proposal for a three year contract signed by a lovely...suburban girl, who hated the design for which she signed and wanted a new one, for free. And she is getting it….at cost. I think. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We call her “glitz and glam,” which she probably said about a million times while she was explaining what she envisioned as she jazz-handed in front of her face. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I like to say mean things about her to my colleague, who designed a gorgeous installation for them the previous year. She tells me to stop, that the customer is right...but with just enough of a twinge of distaste. And by “say mean things about her,” I mean I just say, “glitz and glam” over and over again while I jazz-hand in front of my face. I’m vicious, but I still don’t want her to walk up behind me while I’m doing it. Because that would be uncomfortable. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, she was magically satisfied with this, my colleague’s third attempt to meet her requests. So we all had a pleasant ride back to the city. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I get home from work, I'm now greeted by the happy excitement of two dogs, Linus and Fela. It's a frenzy of snouts and tails, tongues and toes, and I trip over them all the way to the back door where I can let them out while I check on my garden. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's surprisingly easy to let go of social media. I still occasionally feel that pull, but I know it's just an addiction, that I'm looking for someone to notice me, or to feel like someone notices me. With a tap of my finger. And I know that's what the world of computer geniuses wants from me. To be addicted. To need it. Halt and Catch Fire is a good show. Really good soundtrack. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having said all that. I shall talk to you all tomorrow. If I can find the time. </span></div>
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-6584728181464336812016-08-30T07:42:00.003-05:002016-08-30T07:42:57.403-05:00I Can't Let Go or The First Fourteen HoursI'm taking a break from social media this week. This is a blog. It's not really social. No one gives a random monologue at a pizza place with their (gender neutral, y'all) friends. Blogs are pure narcissism, and curiosity that feeds that dirty, filthy narcissism. <br />
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Having said that, allow me to get back to blogging. Not tryina post a bunch of serious projects that I begin and leave nearly finished for longer than most people can keep paying attention. I just want to get back to the fantastic details of my wild and crazy existence.<br />
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Well, I'm super hormonal right now, and I'm having some allergy issues that are sucking me dry and having to take these decongestants makes my brain meds all weird, but I gotta keep myself clear so I don't get an infection. Y'all. It's hard being a person.<br />
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I currently live in a house in Humbolt Park Chicago with a vegan pedi-cabber, a divorced and angry chef, a super chill and flaky chef, Linus, and Fela (fay-luh), the vegan pedi-cabber's dog...who is also...a vegan.<br />
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In a few days, the chefs will both move out to be replaced by a Mexican lady chef (for. real.) and a dude named Charlie who totally lives up to how cool his name is and who used to work at Target. I have a garden in the back yard, and I worry myself with the path of the sun and how my tomatoes are NEVER going to get enough direct light. I will at least have about three, which is FINE. I started late. I'm still going to get lettuce, and radishes, and Zinnias.<br />
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My street, despite the mid-summer barrage of fireworks, is rather quiet and comprised of mostly homes, mostly Puerto Ricans, mostly older couples. Everyone speaks spanish, has multiple small dogs, gardens in one way or another, and everyone over 50 sits on the porch for the better part of the day. Sometimes they play cards; sometimes they just watch, and the ice cream man comes around bringing joy and treats (including nachos!) playing the same stupid song over and over again for the entire time I was doing yoga on the back porch yesterday! (I'm so sorry. I know. I know how this looks.)<br />
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I sell indoor "plantscaping" designs, for a company that does that sort of thing, as well as build and install botanic art, and this other rad southern girl, ten years younger than I am is teaching me floral design and planter box design....yeah. Planter box design. Thriller. Spiller. Filler. I'll slow down.<br />
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I'm mostly well. Despite the usual ups and downs. And the moon. Sometimes it still gets dark, lonely, but way less often than it used to do.<br />
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I am working up the courage to take an improv class after quite the hiatus, provided I can keep from getting angry (per my therapist). I have this frustration thing I'm working on.<br />
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I'm not writing enough. So. That's why I'm here. I'm writing here, and I'm writing other places. All this week. I need it. I need to get it out of my stuffy head.<br />
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There. I feel better. I'll probably see you guys tomorrow. I'm needy.<br />
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<br />carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1297608426606374145.post-60955316908803560462016-08-04T07:27:00.000-05:002016-08-04T07:27:26.369-05:00Finger Wag I'm currently overloaded with political nonsense. I can't escape the constant buzz of tension that comes from waiting to see what's going to happen next, nor can I escape the deafening silence of knowing that none of it matters. Because none of it really matters. I suppose.<br />
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Except, it does. It matters to me.<br />
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In 1988, I was in third grade (and it took me way too long to remember that). I turned 9 that year. I played way more pretend then, hand-copied the parts of the encyclopedia about space in preparation for graduate school, and was totally voting for Dukakis.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/dukakis-and-the-tank-099119" target="_blank">I don't even remember this.</a> </td></tr>
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I also didn't have boobs, so the rest of the girls had no reason to be jealous of me. We told each other everything, how we felt, what we thought about things, no questions, judgements, just camaraderie.<br />
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Thus, it was perfectly natural for one of the girls in my class that came from one of them well-to-do families with a mansion and a heated pool in the back yard, to share her thoughts on the evils of the democratic party as such: "My brother and I saw some homeless people with Dukakis signs, and we asked our parents if we could spit on them, and they said yes, so we spit on them and yelled 'Bush Quayle!'"<br />
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As I reminisce, I feel a little bit of anger at the simple fact that I had to hear someone say that about other human beings at such a young age, which means they had to hear it from other human beings even before I heard it.<br />
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I don't remember a damn thing about Michael Dukakis, except that he was a democrat, and we were democrats, and we were always going to be on the losing side, especially in the south....and that some people think it's okay to spit on other human beings for showing support for a candidate that was promising to provide them with relief. They knew nothing but the black and white of it and that mom and dad said it was okay.<br />
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That girl, those girls went on to bully me through 4th and 5th grade, send me home crying to my powerless parents, "I don't know why they don't like me! I don't know why they do this to me!" I can't figure out why my mom and dad never told me the truth: Boobs. Instead, they told me my forehead was so big (it's a five-head) because my brain was so big....which is gross.<br />
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I've been going back there lately, exploring the upside down place of my childhood past, especially since the campaigns kicked off.<br />
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I keep getting frustrated and angry at the constant sprawl of negative media options. My politics haven't changed, although I find them to be a bit more middle of the road in a place like Chicago. There's a reason this city owns the state of Illinois when it comes to national elections. It's an opportunity to see the other side of the political spectrum.<br />
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I see random posts on Facebook from old friends that I've forgotten to hide about how voting for Trump is probably harmless and voting for Hillary would be like unlocking the gates of hell, and I see posts from new friends in Chi, talking about how voting for Hillary would be just as bad, if not worse than voting for Trump.<br />
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I hear and see the nightmarishly garish things Trump says about Hillary and the nasty things people say about Melania.<br />
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I hear the rage when an adult says in front of a child "I'll never vote for that bitch," or, "Hideous woman," or "no wonder her husband cheated on her," and the classic, "I just hate her."<br />
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Every time it happens, I think of that nine year old who won the giant bucket of candy hearts on valentine's day for guessing how many were in it, and I think of the things she heard from the mouths of other babes (with smaller bubes), and how those people treated her, and I'm sad all over again. For me, for other people that can probably relate, and for all the little girls and boys right now that get to hear and see the disgusting way women are being treated in this election.<br />
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Think how you want to think, and vote how you'll vote, but pay attention to the messages you're sending to each other. We need each other.<br />
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We can treat people better. We can do it better than anyone else can. Who else is going to do it, anyway? Politicians? Let's let them do their jobs and focus on what's right in front of us. This awesome blog. Read it again.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.realclear.com/politics/2016/01/07/insane_political_quotes_12644.html" target="_blank">Bush Quayle!</a></td></tr>
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carolinelovesyoumorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07949147947707046081noreply@blogger.com1