I think the number one rule of blogging is that you're not supposed to apologize when you take a hiatus from blogging because it comes off as even more narcissistic than the actual act of blogging. Like, "I'm so sorry I've been away; it must have felt like the winter of deepest despair without your daily dose of my own personal opinions!" But I really do want to apologize for our hiatus. Not because of your despair, but because everyone else at Collective HQ is awesome at Managing Their Shit, except for me. My inability to properly organize my time/say no/write a recap for my job in less than ten thousand hours is a real nuisance. I've missed you guys an awful lot, is what I am saying.
ANYWAY.
This week's topic is: When you need a laugh, who/what do you turn to?
Mostly I turn to the longest, most stable relationship in my life. The one with my TV. Most sitcoms are funny in a single-viewing kind of way, but these four make me laugh and laugh no matter how many times I've seen the episodes and heard the jokes.
1) Community
2) Arrested Development
3) Golden Girls
4) Friends
Honorable mention for Parks and Rec after season one and The Office through season three.
I, like many other bored-at-work-type people, recently watched the Neil DeGrasse Tyson video where he reveals the most astounding fact about the universe. Here it is, if you haven't seen it, and if you feel like being good-touched-not-bad-touched by beauty today:
If you don't feel like watching it (what's wrong with you?) or you can't because THE MAN will see you, the basic premise is this: We are not really so small, you and I. We contain the universe. Every single of one of us is made of the dust of dying stars.
HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT. I'm sorry, I know this is an old(ish) thought. I already had this information in my brain (somewhere), having stumbled across it in one fall-down-the-rabbit-hole websurfing session or another, but if you think about it, really think about it, it's just so mindbogglingly awesome. I have trouble forming coherent thoughts about it because IT'S JUST SO FUCKING COOL. I wish I could be more poetic but COME ON. An idea that big, that beautiful, is just screaming for some caps lock profanity. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
I was in Chicago with some friends recently, just for the weekend, visiting for another friend's pre-wedding festivities. We went out to breakfast one morning and, as it was a Saturday morning in a busy Chicago restaurant, there was a long wait. As I stood within the throng of patiently waiting customers, trying to ignore the caffeine headache on the horizon and the gnawing emptiness in my stomach, I was overwhelmed as more and more people came into the restaurant.
"There are just SO MANY PEOPLE in the world," I thought, as I huddled closer to my own group. There are so many strangers, so many people I'll never know, never meet, and, at that very moment, it felt like each and every one of them was there in that waiting room. I began to feel smaller and smaller, more and more insignificant, as I gazed at the shoulders and backs (what, I'm short) of the strangers around me. None of those people will ever know who I am. I'm just like so many of them, a carbon copy. And instead of feeling like that meant I was connected to them, to these complete strangers, I felt like I hardly mattered. "There are so many of me," I thought. "WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANYTHING?"
Now. I can easily chalk most of that feeling up to hunger and caffeine-deprivation, but still, I do have to admit that I've been feeling a bit on the worthless side lately, if I'm being completely honest. I spend a lot of time questioning many of my decisions, wondering how I stumbled into this particular career, for instance, and how (or if) I can stumble back out of it. Some days I'm full of optimism, sure I can do it, all I have to do is take a little step every day and sooner or later I'll wake up and be in a different place, without even realizing I was going anywhere. But other days...other days, I can't see anything in front of me but a gray haze. All I can focus on is the success of those around me, their good fortune instead of my own, and I spend so much time wondering what they've done that I haven't, and even though I know the answer is most definitely something like, "WORK HARD, DUH," I can't help but think maybe it's never going to happen. Maybe I'll always be in this place. Bored most of the day. Unfulfilled yet full of regret. A waste of space and potential.
It's days like this that I really need the reminder this video gives me. That I'm OK. More than OK, really. I'm full of stars.
I was sorely tempted to make a joke out of this week's topic, because that's what I do. The oldest thing I own is probably...a book, maybe? My house? But no. If I allowed myself to be completely serious, I'd tell you that the oldest thing I own is me, those parts of me that hold the tiniest bits of the universe, the parts I'm still trying to figure out.
I dissected my first frog in the seventh grade. But I wasn't just handed a scalpel and a dead frog, oh no. First I had to reconstruct a paper frog, putting all of its various organs in their proper places. To prove my worth. So reconstruct I did, in three dimensions.
This is not, in fact, the oldest thing I own. Though I do have some of my mother's and grandmother's jewelry, a James Dickey first edition that I never had a chance to give away, an ancient photo or two, I generally fall in the the Things-You-Own-Own-You Camp. But nothing else remains of my childhood except for this frog. This piece of cardstock marks the very beginning of my origin story; they day I jerry-rigged pop-up frog guts was the day I veered off the well worn path of my peers. It was the day I realized that I am a really, really weird human being.
I am a hoarder. My mother is a hoarder. My grandmother was a hoarder.
I have an apartment and a garage full of treasures. It’s fairly well organized. And I try to go through it at least once a year to make sure I really need the collection of sentimental t-shirts I’ve never worn. (Spoiler alert: I don’t. So every time I reduce the collection by half.) But it’s still a whole lot of stuff. Old stuff. New stuff. Cute stuff. Ugly stuff I think I can make cute.
My mother has moved four times in four years and yet she’s still managed to collect treasures wherever she goes. Old stuff. New stuff. Stuff on sale that’s just too good to pass up. There is a storage unit in Chicago full of treasures (including most of my childhood stuff and probably several never-worn sentimental t-shirts). There is a house in Oakland with boxes. And there is her current residence which generates it’s own finds.
But my grandmother? We are normal, contributing members of society compared to her. She filled up a mansion in California and then when it was full she bought a farm in Oregon. A farm with over a dozen garages and outbuildings and shacks and sheds. And then she filled them all up.
She went to garage sales and antique malls and flea markets and church rummage sales. She had stuff of value (Mayan furniture) and stuff of nothing (boxes of cheap, empty picture frames). She had journals of her life, her studies, her work in medicine and politics and education, and then printouts of websites.
I’ve inherited some stuff from her and it’s old stuff. I’ve inherited some stuff from my mom and it’s old stuff. I’ve bought some of my own old treasures at garage sales and antique malls and at flea markets. I try to be prudent and non-sentimental as much as possible. And at least mostly organized. But I inherited more than just the stuff. I inherited the love of stuff, of possession, of a few of my favorite things.
I can’t tell you the oldest thing I own cause I own so many things. But age doesn’t matter. I love them all. My stuff is my home.
Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And years later, they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them how to hold on a second longer.
Yesterday I saw a man assaulting a woman in the parking lot of a restaurant. She was my server, as friendly as can be. When I walked out the door, she walked out the door, and a man grabbed her, someone she knew, started choking her, threatening her, shaking her so hard I'm surprised he didn't snap her in two. Every instinct inside me told me to hurl myself at that man, to tackle him to the ground, to get him away from her no matter what. But he was jacked up and twice my size and who knows what he had in his pocket. So I called 911, gave a detailed description of what was happening, went home and cried myself sick.
I cried because I couldn't stop him. I cried because I didn't know if the police got there in time to see his hands around her neck, to take him away to jail. I cried because that woman was probably going home to him later, and if he'd choke her in daylight in a crowded parking lot, what would he do behind closed doors? I cried because the system is broken, because where could she go even if she wanted to get away? I cried because a month ago, I had to separate a little girl from her dog to take them to different shelters, because two months ago I walked out of a Manhattan bakery with a five-dollar donut right past a woman who was begging for change, because three years ago I bypassed a homeless woman in Munich who was using her one blanket to cover up her dog, because there's so much misery in this world and I can't do anything to stop the bleeding.
This week's Collective topic is: What's the oldest thing you own?
The oldest thing I own -- or, well, the oldest thing I ever saved up for and bought for myself -- is an autographed photo of Yvonne Craig as Batgirl. It hangs on the wall in my office next to framed prints of Batwoman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel. I've got prints of my favorite non-hero comic book characters dressed like heroes. Prints of my favorite non-hero TV characters dressed like The Doctor and his companion. I've got action figures, mugs, lunch boxes, Hermione's wand, TARDIS replicas, Gandalf's staff, books and books and books and books about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Last night, Amy petted my hair while I sobbed, petted my hair like she's been doing since we were kids. I said the thing I've been saying since I was a child: "If only I were Batgirl ..." And she said the same thing she's been saying for 18 years: "Even if you were, there would always be one more person to save."
Somehow it makes me feel better when she says that. Better because even imaginary heroes are inadequate sometimes. But I surround myself with those guys anyway, like I've always done for forever.
My favorite print I own is of Dean Trippe's"Butterfly." He's the sidekick of a sidekick, less powerful than Birdie who is less powerful than Knight-Bat -- but he's just sweet enough to think ice cream and love can change the world. I don't have a suit of body armor or a tricked-out motorcycle, but I do have sugary snacks. And so much love it breaks my heart into ten billion pieces some days.
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