#1 of 7 Radom things

1. Night time fears.

I am afraid of the dark. Not the moonlit night, but complete darkness. If I can't see my own hand, and have no idea visually of what is around me, I freak out.

I still suffer from sleep problems, I used to have really bad insomnia till I turned 20. It seemed like I just stared at the walls all night long. Perhaps I was afraid to close my eyes, to surrender to dark, and the unknown of sleep, for who would watch over me if I wasn't watching over myself?

It takes me a good hour to fall asleep, and I need a plotline, a story to tell myself, as a transition between this world, and that other, dreaming one. (Except for about two times a year, when I just fall asleep.)

For the past 12 years or so, I occasionally have hallucinations while sort of asleep ( I have read this is quite common). I will see someone standing over the bed (male), and I scream. It used to really scare me, (not sleep paralysis, I know because I would wildly kick about the air, or run across the room and turn the light on), and then I would sleep with the light on for several nights afterward. Now after I scream, which tends to wake up Bob, who used to jump up ready to protect, but now just rolls over sleepily and says "what?", at which point I say "oh it just that guy who isn't there again", and we both go back to sleep. As a general rule however I do not sleep on my left side till light has entered the sky. For some reason it happens more if I sleep on my left side. I need to face out toward the edge of the bed, not have my back to it.

This actually started in high school, but back then it was a giant, I mean GIANT, spider, almost the size of the bed, hovering above my bed at night, and I would shoot out of bed, and be downstairs with the light on, before I was awake enough to tell myself "hey, you know that isn't really there right?" "yeah, of course I do". "Okay then, go back up to bed". Which I would reluctantly do, with plenty of lights on.

So really I am making progress. Sometimes I even manage not to scream, but I do still always startle, and get that lovely jolt of adrenaline, before I go, "oh yeah, tis nothing".

Before going to bed, I check that all the doors between us and the outside world are locked, (and if opened during the day, check that windows are shut and locked). I make sure the stove and oven aren't on. There are also three items I unplug, but I leave all the rest plugged in. I make sure nothing is out that could be considered a weapon, like rope, or a screw driver, or (of course) knives. Bob wil use the biggest knife for the smallest job (like peeling an orange. Women do this task without a knife) and then will leave it out on the counter. I have some irrational fear that someone will break in, and while probably not originally having intended to kill us (or else they would have brought their own weapons), will decide to anyway because of easy access to killing implements (and also over annoyance that we don't have anything of value to steal).

Once upstairs I make sure that the door at the end of the hall is closed (in that room there are two little doors to attic-like crawl spaces), and that my studio door is closed. I can't sleep if they are open. Bob and Cheese make fun of me for this "what do you think is gonna happen?", I reply "I don't know, monsters perhaps. Monsters who can't turn doorknobs because of their big awkward furry hands.". For some reason it is like an unknown, a variable exists in those doors being left open. A variable I don't wish to risk. Nothing can be ajar either. Doors are either all the way open or all the way closed, same goes for shower curtain. There is something creepy in half opened, slightly ajar doors. I also do not like chairs not being pushed under desks, but left fully out like some invisible person or ghost is sitting in them. So I will tuck the chairs in, and complain to someone (if they happen to be nearby) that they ought not leave them out. Cheese enjoys this, as he thinks it is funny. "What will happen?". me- "Well of course, ghosts will feel invited to come sit in them." The child enjoys shaking his head at me "You're crazy, sooo crazy" he giggles.
Hmm..well maybe, but the thing is it just makes me uncomfortable. Uneasy.

I usually wake up several times a night.

And I still check on Cheese when I wake up. I go into his room, to make sure he is still breathing, then I check that has water in his glass, and make sure he is covered up (if it is cold). I pet the cat once or twice (who sleeps, and/or hangs out, on Cheese's bed at night. I can't pet him more or he will purr loudly and wake up Cheese, who will then yell at me for petting the cat). Cheese is now 11, I try to do this less than I used to, and I had been making some great progress fall of 06, that is until this time last year, when my cousin's little sister went to wake her up for school in the morning, and she never woke up. True there was something wrong with her heart, but for someone like me, who already had irrational fears, who was already plagued with the concern of what can happen in one second, in one moment, if one is not watchful enough, not ever vigilant, it felt like a reminder. But I know she wouldn't want that, she wouldn't want me to find her death a reason to embrace and hold fear closer, but instead to embrace life fuller (in all its unknown variables).

I have faith, I consider myself to be a spiritual person, but somehow I seem to lack trust.
I wish I could be more relaxed, let go of some of this.
I'm trying.

#3 of 7 Random things about me

Bit strange, feels disjointed to go back to this fluff after tribute post, but I feel the need for silly.

I'll explain photo at end of post*

3. I have imaginary boyfriends. Always have. Well for sure since age 14. And I think I always will. They aren't made-up people. When I was younger, I used to crush on boys in my classes, then when I went to an all-girl college, they became guys from TV. I met my now husband just before I turned 18, meeting and later marrying him has had no effect on my having imaginary boyfriends, except for guilt at times.
The longest I stuck with one was 5 years. Usually I go a little over a year with each one. I either then find someone new of interest, or try to, because I don't think such a fantasy life should stretch out for too long. Sometimes I feel bad for the guys I have chosen, like do guys mind being a woman's imaginary Ken doll in this way? The plotlines, are mostly the same as they were when I was 14, true-love, dramatic misunderstandings, with an aim toward marriage and kids. I always restart a new plotline before I actually have to deal with the sleepless nights from crying babies. After-all it is fantasy life, not a virtual one :)

I am between imaginary boyfriends right now, which is far from ideal. I sleep better when I am working on a cheesy running plot-line. All my years of insomnia that was the only way I ever fell asleep, and it still is, I have to have a story, and I daydream pieces of it each night, until I fall asleep. No story, no sleep. Over the years the stories have changed a bit though, when I was young, they were about a horse, now they are about a man. (clairify- I was the horse then, as were the other characters. I date the man now, no horses involved.)

I am using someone temporarily as filler, but he isn't working out very ideally. He isn't on TV, and I need certain markers to ground a good obsession in. But I just don't see anyone on TV who is of interest right now. And I am so tired of crushing on gay men. I mean any man on TV no matter how goofy he may seem, is able to get model pretty women/girls. So it is already a stretch of the imagination to have pretend relationships with them, but when you add in he doesn't even date people of my gender, then that is just stretching, even a fantasy life, too far. "Snap!". I mean if I am the last woman on earth, I want to hold out some hope that I may get my dream man, over some well waxed pretty boy.

Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Russel Crow, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, none of them interest me, nor do any of the younger gen of media men. No Timberlake, no Bloom. No Mc- anything. Ugh, I don't know. I hope I find someone soon. I understand it being hard to find the right real man, but honestly it should be easy to find an ideal imaginary one.

But in the meantime, I keep going back and forth between my new temporary imaginary boyfriend (we keep trying to date but it doesn't seem to be working out) and one of my ex-imaginary boyfriends (it is so easy to fall back with him, but our relationship has far exceeded the time limit, and he is most likely gay. So really I should move on. Plus I don't want to go back to watching the show that he is on). I am very uncomfortable with this hop scotching around between the two of them, while also looking about for someone new, true-love plotlines, don't include being fickle! I feel like a hussy.
I need to find my one imaginary love for 2008. Where art thou?

*Closest I got as of late to finding new man, was falling for an outfit Ned wore on Pushing Daisies. He had on dark converse or vans sneakers, jeans (or so I thought), t-shirt, and an unbuttoned cardigan. yeah, I really liked the outfit. I couldn't find a photo of it though, this was the best I could do. And I like pie.

My cousin, 14 at the time, died on this date last year- December 8th 2006
This is the memory tribute I wrote to her, in her memorial book January 7, 07.
I posted it here this past April, just before what would have been her 15th birthday.
Today, like many days, I think of her. So I repost my words to her.



Hi Alena,
I miss you! I’m sitting here printing out all your tributes (you are so loved), and as I look out the window above my desk, it is rainy and grey and all the flowers are gone. I miss their happy beautiful faces, but I know they will return in the spring (like a gift and a promise from God, though things appear gone from us, they go on and continue in other ways, and eventually we will see them again). How I wish you could return in the spring with the flowers. Spring is my favorite season, and Easter my favorite holiday, and we always spent it at your house (easter egg hunt, good food, chocolate). I will miss you most every year, when the flowers return, and you are not among them. But I believe you, little flower, kind and beautiful still grow and bloom, just somewhere where we can’t see you right now, this I must believe, for it is all my heart can bear. And someday I hope to grow and bloom near you, there will be sunflowers for you, and pink peonies for me, and our souls will walk together in fields of flowers, and we like them, will bloom and grow forever, no partings, no pain, no sorrow (the end of a winter all our hearts must endure till then). Till then know, that thoughts of you will continue to bloom and grow in my heart (that is where I have planted my memories of you). And from now on, whenever I see a sunflower’s sweet joyful face, I will think of you, Alena, and maybe if sometimes for a moment in that moment, you would see a sunflower and think of me too, then maybe our souls can still touch.



Goodbye for now,
Love you always,
Tiffany




********
The song edelweiss kept repeating in my head while I read her tributes and then while I wrote my own, that is why there is bloom and grow echo in my words.
I just sent out my sympathy card to her mom (my aunt), and family this week. I have had the card since last December, but I couldn't bear to send it. I kept waiting for it to not be true, I kept waiting for something to say in the card, that would some how, in some small way be helpful, but nothing ever came to me. I feel bad I had nothing to offer her mom but my own sad heart, standing as only a faint echo to her own.
I put a copy of the E.E Cummings poem in the envelope
********
E. E. Cummings




I Carry Your Heart With Me


i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

********
perhaps a romantic poem but the meanings still seemed right, I carry your heart with me in my heart. And of this wonder that keeps the stars apart.
My hand shook as I tucked the card in and sealed it. I was surprised by this, as I was going out of my way not to think about what I was sending or why, while I did it. But still I knew, of course I knew, and still I felt it.


Yesterday was Friday, she died last year on that day of the week, so I spent the morning revisiting those horribly sad scenes. Knowing now full well, there is no hope for changing how they end.
I can give myself the spiritual beliefs, I can fill myself with them, of soul, still whole, just not here among us, and find some solace to hold onto, but I really have trouble with the physical body part. I got stuck there at times, when I think of her in the ground, and then this voice screams through my head "Nooo". No to her being dead, being there, and no to my thinking of her there. I hate death, I hate the loss of the person, not what was, for you can never lose what has been, but the future loss, the loss of having them in today and tomorrow in new ways, rather than in being limited to carrying them with you tucked inside, woven into as part of your own soul ( I want the separateness of their existence to go on, having adventures and experiences I am not part of, but that I can see and hear about, and be their friend through. I want their footprints still upon the earth through their own feet, not just through ours, all of us, who love and miss them). I hate deterioration. It is hard enough in the leaf and flower, how do I ever accept it in the physical shell which used to house a loved one? I can't think of her that way, or of my Nana and Pop that way. That makes no sense to me.

And on that lovely dark note, I shall have to start getting ready to go to a Christmas party. A family one, but from my dad's side, not my mom's people. I wonder what my aunt, and the rest of her family are going to do today? I have not courage nor heart to call them. I'll talk to my mom later and ask her if she knows. My heart is torn, but when I think of my aunt, of her heart, it feels ripped apart, broken into two separate pieces.

7 Random things

broken up into 7 random posts.
(and not in numerical order)

4. Art school- the nude.

For some reason last week, out of the blue, I was thinking about art school, and figure drawing class. Freshman year, fresh out of high school, there we were, day after day drawing nude women and men. We had names and descriptions for the models. There was the greek god model, he was small of frame but perfectly formed. Pixie looked like a pixie. Hoagie girl, had green hair and smelled like a hoagie. Santa Claus freaked us out a bit, because you know we were drawing this old guy who looked just like santa, only completely naked. There was this african american woman who always had her period when she modeled, as in, we always saw the white string. There were plenty of others, but the time I remember most was the "sorta excited" guy. I went to an all girls college, so there we were a group of 17-18 year old girls (probably about 17-18 of us), drawing this male nude model, and for some reason the teacher kept wandering about out of the room. And the model's um....private part would suddenly rise to full attention, then go back down again. He was constantly giving into it, then fighting it, up and down, up and down, then a little up, and a little down.
Later the teacher commented on our unfinished drawings and we all snickered, (we had all been too busy watching him try to master his domain, to focus on our drawings), we tried to explain to our male teacher what had happened, but we used words like "he really seemed too into posing for us", which our teacher seemed to not understand as being a bad thing, and none of us were able/willing to articulate it better.

As the year went on we got repremanded as a group for not drawing all the parts, for having shady dark areas where genitalia where supposed to be. He said we did fine with breasts, and woman parts, but "where were the penises?", if it is there it should be in your drawing. We did try harder, we did more shadows that suggested form, but still we felt uncomfortable staring at one and representing it fully in our drawings, all of us except for one girl, who boldly and exuberantly took on the task. She made the penis her center piece, leaving the rest of the body behind, she drew giant page filling penises. This made our teacher very happy, and he held up her work and said, see you can do this too. But still we didn't. We were pleased that he was pleased, and she was pleased, but still we were pleased with our shadowy vague parts.

Over Christmas break we were to draw ourselves nude, life size. Different people of course approached this different ways. I can't recall them now, but you know there are plenty of ways to not show parts, and that is pretty much what happened with all of us. I spent hours on mine, drawing myself seated in a rocking chair. The picture was from the side, so the arm would hide my one breast, and the postion I chose hid the other. Anyway I worked on mine day after day, plenty of lines, plenty of detail. The teacher was not at all impressed saying "illustrative. Too illustrative!", and some other girl, Susan, who spent a half an hour on hers, fast drawn shadowy areas ( I don't even recall her's creating form other than black silhouette), oh how he loved her drawing. Which clearly shocked her, as she admitted to working quickly and just trying to get the project over with. I ran into her two years ago, and she didn't remember that critique, but I always will. I learned from that, it doesn't matter how much time you spend working on something, it only matters whether or not it sucks. And also it doesn't matter what you think of the work, your grade will reflect whether or not your teachers think the work sucks.
I still have a tendency toward line over form, but oil painting does help me break free a bit from this. Thank goodness, because when I switched over to oil painting (from water color with pen and ink) start of junior year, my teachers suddenly liked my work a lot more.

As Christmas approaches, I wonder if they still do that, send the girls off for Christmas break with that assignment? I'll have to ask Karen if all the classes had that assignment, or if just that one teacher gave it to his students? I think only he did, because I have a vague memory of asking her this question sophmore year, and of her reacting like "oh my God, what a perv!".

I used to worry that my heart might be ice, or that it may become so. So I worked with chisel and hammer, trying to find a spot to tap through and let some light inside, to melt a bit of the ice away. In a small area, I worked through several layers, when I finally broke through I was surprised to find smoke billowing out. I peered in, and saw not the core of ice I had expected, but one of fire.
And suddenly I remembered that it had always been so, that I was the one who long ago had built up thin layers of ice all around it. That it was the fire that I feared, for if unleashed it might burn a hole through me, through my life, mere kindling, ruthlessly consumed, devouring whatever it pleases, devasting me in its massive glow.
Not made of ice, made of fire.
Trickier to navigate now in some ways, I still have to tap through and reach it, feel some of its heat in my life, but I can't fully release it. I need both. I have to work at the balancing of the elements, tempering the fire, but not extinguishing it with snow.
I have made several holes through. But sometimes I get scared, the fire fed by oxygen, licks at the ice around the holes, and the ice starts melting, and I feel the burning within me, so then I spread thin sheets of ice over them, covering them back up, cooling down. I feel safer, but I feel less, and begin to worry I will eventually grow numb, so I go back and make the little holes again.

I haven't been working on my writing for the past two days, and I doubt I will today either.
I have picked tomorrow, Monday, as the day to get back into the routine again.
I am still working out, just what that will mean, hours or words, and how many.

Yesterday I watched a romantic comedy of sorts, on TV, and found it good for my spirit. Smiled, laughed, felt happy.
I haven't seen anything at the movies (saw Harry this summer, and saw one movie last winter can't recall what it was) or rented anything in ages (since August), so that is my big plan for today. (well and a bit of cleaning)
To go to 48 hr video (where I can afford to rent something), and rent a chick movie.

This may not be as easy as it sounds, as the driveway is currently covered in snow, and lord knows, there is greater chance of the wind blowing it away, then in my picking up a shovel, and going into that cold to do it.

Thank you

I would like to thank everyone for helping me with NaNoWriMo.

Thank you book buddies, Mathew, Paul, Bonnie, Sognatrice. Without the inspiration of your numbers, and your encouragment, and most of all, the sense of your company, I couldn't imagine having done this. I certainly wouldn't have gotten nearly as far.Thank you Matthew, keep that novel walking the trails till it reaches the summit, then walk it back down again. Thank you Paul, it didn't seem at all like you struggled with your writing, but like you had to struggle to find the time in your day to get to it. Thank You Bonnie, you like Paul, had me constantly lagging behind your numbers. It was great receiving your NaNo emails, boy did they help me. Sognatrice, your numbers in the beginning were also a carrot that got me to move my ___ along. You have done well with what you have written, and have been inspiring by how you juggle, and fit many different things into your days.

Maht, well Maht didn't stick with NaNo because of his play and all. I do miss his presence in the blogosphere and hope at some point he will be back. So he wasn't much of a NaNo buddy for me, but what he was, and what I am very grateful to him for is, he was the catalyst. I didn't know about NaNo till I read about it on his blog. And he made it sound interesting and like something I wanted to do. I hadn't heard about NaNo buddies till I read about them on his blog, and buddies turned out to be a very important part of NaNo. Also I wouldn't have been in contact with as many people if it wasn't for Maht's Phoctober posts and his linking, so I am very thankful to him for that.

To those of you non- NaNo-ers, who stopped by and wished me well, encourging me, my heart has much gratitude. Again, I could not imagine having done this without you. Thank you Witnessing. Thank you Vesper. Thank you Vanilla. Thank you Amy. And I believe Minx stopped by a few times too :) Today, I will add, Scarlett, and Gaye! Thank you. Oh and Debi, Dana , and JD, for stopping by too.


It would have been a much harder road without you, and I fear I would have sat down for a break a long time ago, and not gotten back up again. I have much gratitude to all of you.
While I still have a ways to go, I am grateful, and happy to have made it this far, and I thank you all.
I can't fully express or find the words to say what it has meant to me, but from the bottom of my heart, from the well of my spirit, I thank you for your words.

:)
Taff

P.S Thank you to The Individual Voice, and Kyklops for commenting on my post about my half brother, you helped me.

By the bye,
I hope all of you who have the same dream of being a writer, (but haven't been able to make it a priority), find the time and space in your lives, to work on your own novels. I shall need lots of company, when I get to the rejected stage of this process, and would like you all there with me. Unless of course you all plan on never being rejected and know your novels will get published first time out, in that case, maybe you can wait awhile longer to finish yours, not forever (mind you, no no no), but maybe just a little bit longer. :)

Just skimmed back through time, it was a good trip, seeing when numbers like 465 words seemed a whole heck of a lot, such a struggle to finally reach 3,000 words, it helped me to see that yeah I have come pretty darn far. It is work, each step, but I can do it, I am doing it. I will keep doing it. (knock on wood)