February 4, 2009

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Okay... I talk a lot online. I "talk" easily... I write with words flowing from my fingertips. I publish, often, with little re-reading and less editing. Janet and I were driving around in some parking lot talking about this. And I told her that I probably wouldn't expose myself quite so much if I let my writing cool and re-read it later. It is, perhaps by definition, passionate. I've also called it Kerouac-ing it. Splorf, onto the keyboard and one click later and you're live, baby, transmitting straight from the heart. We all have to live with it later.

commenting on Jenn's blog nakedly.  yes I am wearing a Steelers hat. So I'm more naked online than in person. In person I throw off this tough guy shit. It's not entirely shit, of course, it's a defense mechanism. Under it is all this mushy, whiny, angry, crying crap. You don't really get to see this in person. Surprize!

In person I scramble for rules and default to some sort of Victorian Era concept of honor and duty until I faint and come to my senses, turning into an instant asshole and sudden anarchist. Honestly, I'd like to do both. I'd like to be relentlessly gallant, and at all the wrong times. I'd like to be a self-protective bad ass who can still be touched and show emotion publicly.

 

This weekend was weird. First, I was thrown an emotional curve-ball by the universe on Friday. Knowing already that one collegue had succumbed to cancer, I read a second email about the father of another colleague and friend passing as well. Head whirling I went online to read a friend's most excellent blog. Fiery empathy and bellowing self-wallowing-pity took her carefully sculpted phrases about love and made them sharp as steel. It sliced me open like a fish. The longing for love is like a lung-flattening scream on a mountainside, sapping you of strength, pointless in its effort. That's what my entrails said as they spilled out, said the fortune teller with oatmeal in her hair. I worked from home.

So there were two funerals. One Superbowl, sandwiched squarely between a Chinese non-religious, and quite passionate service, and what seemed a very traditional Catholic mass, replete with bagpipes (which I thought was awesome), and a lot of standing and sitting and kneeling, the latter of which our whole row opted out. Phew. And one really big run on sentence, she said, re-reading and editing as she went.

Psh. I watched the Superbowl alone, which was good because I was exhausted, nervous and mostly in disbelief that my team won. I ate too many Tostitos. I didn't feel like celebrating.

I did cry at Xiaofan's funeral, and tried to stay very still while I did it. By the Monday service, I would just pool up, and I felt relieved to actually see Maggie before the procession pulled away. I blurted out, twice, that I was also there to give hugs from others. I couldn't remember my own name. But I didn't cry. Not technically. I went out for Pho and continued to go through the motions.