NoraSawyer.com

I’m wearing my mother’s dress. Although I’m not sure who’s worn it longer now, me or her. She used to wear it sometimes on Sundays when I was fairly small – maybe eight or ten (which is really young, now that I think about it: alive for only eight years? Small). And I have a picture of her wearing it sometime around ‘94 – ‘95, holding Ebony and Merlin’s leashes in the yard.

Anyway, I started wearing it sometime around then – which was I guess late high school for me. I can remember going for brunch with James, wearing the dress and my glow-in-the dark John Fluevogs, which were subsequently ruined by cat vomit. But they didn’t fit anyway, as much as I wanted them to.

In college, I wore it a lot. On my second or third date with G, I was wearing it when he asked me how I managed such a delightfully small waist on a steady diet of beer and tater tots. I still don’t have a good answer for that; at the time I just blushed prettily (as I was wont to do).

Today, Brian and I woke early (or I woke early, and darted around the house like a hummingbird until he got up, too. Then we went of a delightfujl morning walk: we started at the dog park (where we played with a lab mix named Pansy, a pit bull named Toro, and a pony-like Great Dane named Mojo). Then we wandered down to the Castro, where we are brunch (macaroni-and-corn pancakes with blood orange mimosas), bought canvas folding chairs, and went on to Delores Park.

It wasn’t until Brian started to get a migrane (ow) that we headed home. And now I’m sitting in the dark quiet apartment, reading Karen Armstrong and writing to you, and thinking about my dress, which has parrots and flowers in it, and has started to look worn at the shoulders.

I was already late, it wasn’t really the bus’s fault. The extra wait certainly didn’t help, though.

When the bus finally arrived, there were enough of us to fill three busses. I stood, looming over a squirming toddler in his fathers lap, a man’s elbo in my back and some woman squished up against my boob. The woman kept trying to make conversation with the toddler, then grinning up at me, as if to say ‘aren’t we great chums now that we’ve shared this adversity?.’

I smiled grimly, inwardly reciting a litany of complaints that, in sum, made me want to leave San Francisco, break up with Brian, and go live on an island somewhere where the only thing I’d have to do in the mornings would be to wipe the sleep from my eyes, pull a knit cap over my matted hair, and shake my fist at passing boats and seagulls.

Although, I guess I’d keep Brian, so long as he didn’t keep eating all the Amaranth Flakes.

“Become who you are”

I first read Pindar in High School, after stumbling across that quotation (which the Nietzschians among you no doubt recognize) in an academic journal.

Now I really had no business reading Pindar, Academic Journals or Nietzsche in High School. I was really too young, and on some level still regarded ‘becoming who I was’ as the quest for the most authetic punk-rock boots. And so the quotation nagged at me, a constant reminder of things beyond my ken.

Looking back now, I can see this was a my Tragic Flaw – I really had no idea who I was – I didn’t really even understand the question, or how it might be played out in any real way.

But I’m at work now, and shouldn’t be blogging.

Shaw’s comment on my Jesus-complex post (two down) got me thinking about belief, and Gibson’s Passion, and Religion in American Society Today. In some ways I think The Passion is just great – its Medici-like gradiosity harkens back to a simpler time, when folks who had money could spend it on stupidly huge declarations of belief. Its just out there, and in some ways, that rocks.

On the other hand, there’s the whole ‘Jews killed Jesus, you’re all going to hell for not thinking what I think’ thing (which also harkens back to a simpler time, when folks in power could expend it on stupidly huge demonstrations of force) is a bit hard to stomach, and a distasteful thing to endorse. And I hate gory movies.

Do I have a point? No.

But I do wonder sometimes about my own beleifs, in religion and politics. I’m so postmodern sometimes, I’m always looking for another angle, another way of looking. Maybe that’s why I love Dante so much. His universe is more limited and knowable than mine, and it is his, entirely.

Found poetry inspired by the 23rd page/fifth sentence meme. If you’re freakin’ tired of said meme, please do not click on the link. You have been warned.

So, after calling in sick (with every intention of spending a nice day in slack-off mode), I ended up actually being sick most of the day. Is the universe bent keeping me honest, or what?

Heh. That reminds me. When I was a kid, I could never understand why I should just try to be good. Being good had no draw for me – I wanted to be better than good: I wanted to be Jesus. I can recall my mother, or some sunday school teacher, telling me about the second coming, me trying to act all casual, asking “could Jesus be a girl this time?” as if I had no designs on Mesiiah-ship myself.

Later, when I was about eight or nine, I the coming of the apocalypse was one of my biggest fears. I’ve always been a slacker.

On Thursday, I posted:

Why do I get so annoyed sometimes? Is it anyone’s fault but mine that folks just don’t get what I’m on about?

As Shaw so kindly reminds me, even the most off-the-cuff blog entry finds an audience, and the less information said entry gives, the more likely its Rorsachification by the reader. I’m tempted to put the entry in context, but I’m never sure how much real life I want to expose to the internet world. So for now, Rorsachificate away.

I can’t help but follow instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

If we also set out to deprive the common man, [who has neither science nor art] of his religion we shall clearly not have the poet’s authority on our side.

Why do I get so annoyed sometimes? Is it anyone’s fault but mine that folks just don’t get what I’m on about?

For once, my result doen’t match Bibliogal’s or Aaron’s. Hm.

Could it be I’ve come into my own?