Unwanted Roommates Part II

At least I can view this situation as somewhat comical. I mean, seriously, I've been perched in the same papison chair for over two hours, meticulously patrolling my Pier 1 carpet(the same hue of tan as the buggers) with my jeans well-tucked inside of two entirely different boots with a three-inch differential in heel height, something that is clearly evident whenever I stand up to get myself another glass of water; then I sporadically begin pacing the carpet, waiting, in this ridiculous outfit, wielding a spray can of Tilex as my weapon in hand and the boots on my feet as the "deadly" weapons.

This will be funny sometime in my future. I swear it will be.

Unwanted Roommates

I have lived in New York City for about six years and never have had unwanted roommates (well, unless I count the one who had a propensity for my clothes that grew to the point that I discovered a collection of select pieces of my wardrobe under her bed, or the one who left me with three months of unpaid bills). But I knew these people were living with me; I had chosen them, and as such, I dealt with each situation accordingly.

Today I killed - smooshed, to be exact - not one, but two unwanted roommates, roommates whom I had never invited into my apartment and who were little, brown, crunchy, and who jumped. Jumped so high that I was afraid of leaning down too far for fear that they would touch my face or my hair.

All plans of going to sleep early tonight have also been smooshed because I am awaiting the sight of yet another cockroach. I am wearing two different boots, because the right boot that I used to do the smooshing is under quarantine in the hallway, saturated with Tilex that supposedly kills everything. And I feel violated. Not to mention nauseous.

My little cute home has been invaded by these guys (I can't even fathom that they are girls, because I have heard in what is perhaps an urban legend that if you smoosh a female cockroach she still can leave her egg sac and bear many cockroach babies) and I am totally grossed out. I don't keep food here; my refrigerator is pitifully empty but for a bottle of ketchup (the world's best condiment) and a jar of grated cheese (a close second with garlic powder for the next best condiment). So here I sit, in my comfy papison chair, waiting to spot another one. Because a cockroach can be an anomaly, but two in the same day definitely hints that there is a family living here. A family that I did not invite to live with me but who regardless exists somewhere near the bookshelf, under the furnace, dangerously close to my bedroom. And yes, the space between the bottom of the bedroom door and the family room is more than one-eighth of an inch, which is the amount of space the websites I have consulted until the point that I felt like throwing up have told me is that through which cockroaches can slide.

Jumping cockroaches! Leaping lizards! Disgusting no matter what, and I would very much like to sleep without dreaming of them, but I don't know if that's an option now, as I am sitting, awaiting, with my jeans tucked into my two different boots and my eyes frantically scanning the carpet for signs of movement.

How do I get rid of these little buggers??? I want to be able to host guests in this little apartment of my own, but with these uninvited roommates, I don't think I can.

Light

When I was eight years old, my best friend AB and I would sit at the piano and play and sing our own version of Debbie Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” – of course, to the applause of our parents. Twenty years later, my friends still light up my life.

I have had amazing experiences over the last week in that I’ve been able to spend time with friends I have known for a long time – some of whom I’ve kept in touch with regularly, some of whom I had not seen in nearly ten years (yes, I went on a vacation) – and I am so deeply grateful for these friendships. What I learned about myself through many of these discussions (AA, MB, KJ, CS, DW, et al) will inevitably come out in future journal entries.

Because what I see in the mirror is sometimes ugly and negative and dark. And that self-skewed image also sometimes keeps me from realizing the light that I know I can, should, could, do (whatever the verb may be), bring into others’ lives. The challenge that I personally face is to not let myself be consumed by the darkness and to instead recognize the brightness that is equally there, equally intoxicating, but perhaps much more frightening, and for me, much more intimidating. With no apologies, with no excuses, I have let the darkness take me over sometimes, randomly, or intentionally, but not inconsequentionally.

But the wisdom of my friends reminded me, albeit often inadvertently, that life can still be lived on the side of lightness amidst hardship. And the strength of my friends inspired me, again often inadvertently, to realize that I, too, can overcome the adversity and emotional pain that is part of life.

So over this past week I have been reinvigorated with new light, and I hope that I can - and I will try - to keep that light shining.

Tonight, AB came to my apartment and helped me change the light bulbs that hang from my ceiling. (I'm not tall enough to do it on my own.) So twenty years later, AB - thanks - "You Light Up My Life."

Awareness in Falling

I am so tired. I am so grateful that I listened to my body earlier, just now a couple of hours earlier, my body that told me one thing: relax. Fall into yourself.

Now I have had two glasses of wine. Or, rather, what I think are two glasses of wine, because the lonely “wine glass” that exists in my apartment is in the dishwasher. And while sometimes I am invigorated by that one glass of wine, immediately after my first few sips I knew I had made the right decision, because I felt exhaausted, removed, as though my body was falling into itself.

When I was eight years old, at one of my first "sleepover parties", at Betsy’s house, my friends promised me a sensation so powerful that even gravity would be defied. “Relax,” they said, and we were eight, and we were trying “new things” – as new as eight-year old girls did in 1985, and I was excited, and not even a little bit scared. I lay flat, stomach down, face down on the shag carpet that was so popular at the time, and I heard the giggling, the “shushes,” the ever-quieter jabbering. “Relax – and we’ll make you fall through the floor!” said Betsy, and I relaxed, they quieted, and the lights turned off as I closed my eyes.

Blackness: vision replaces itself with a dark, infinite space. Silence: hearing bends back into itself and is replaced by noiselessness. The odor of the dog-stained rug disappears, and I am still, so still that my touch sensors are desensitized. And these eradicated senses fade into nothing, or perhaps re-form into everything: there is absolute emptiness and intense fullness, simultaneously, yet none of which I am consciously aware. I am not sure if the gentle upwards tug on my arms, the slight touch against my palms, is real or imagined, if my spine is actually being arched backwards, if my head is truly being lifted up and tilted behind me. There is no external awareness at all: all I am is my body, all that is is my body right now, or my mind, maybe, because that’s where all the questions are, the anticipation. Then even the mind starts to quiet, as even gravity begins to lose its power, because my body – this obviously massless, formless figure, like a spirit transcending a wall – is, indeed and suddenly, falling through the floor, and I feel that falling and no other sensation. And my stomach is the first to turn on again, because it flips, and then in response I frantically flip open my eyes, afraid that I am really falling through the floor, which of course I am not.

But when I do open my eyes and immediately tangle myself up into a sitting position, I am sorry I did. I have also tangled myself up mentally again, with the lights blaring in my eyes and the girls’ voices skipping like grasshoppers and the harsh smell of popcorn invading my nose. I want to go back to the place I was in, to the space of myself. I liked the simplicity of total awareness, and I am eight years old and far too young to know that total awareness is not always simple.

Saturday Night Pause

There’s something about finishing a project that makes me want to drink.

Sorry, but it’s true. No matter how long I have been awake; no matter what else is looming on the horizon, I just want to drink. It’s been that way since college – it’s like I hold my breath for however long it takes me to push through whatever it is that I’m doing – and when it comes time to exhale, I feel it everywhere. I feel the tension in my muscles, reminding me that they, too, are inside of me, and that my body wants to relax just as much as my mind has, however temporarily, been lightened of at least one thing.

Now, in a strange coincidence, I had to say “no” to three parties tonight that I really would have liked to have gone to. The thirtieth birthday of one of my closest girlfriends from high school; the not-quite-thirtieth of two of my guy friends whom I haven’t seen in forever; and, finally, a random house party with a new friend from school who apparently is a little more low-key than I am about the amount of things we have due on Monday.

Eight o clock on Saturday night and my choice is, sadly, none of the above.

I wonder what this means for me. Does it mean I’m growing up? Does it mean I’m simply too exhausted to get all prettied up and put on my social face and hop in a cab and meet and greet – meet and greet people I love, people who wouldn’t care or even notice if I arrived in the same zip-up sweatshirt and jeans I’ve been wearing for the past two days, but who would just be glad to see me? Or does it simply mean that I actually am so tired that what I really want is to curl up with my own bottle of wine, sit in my own cozy apartment, and fall into my own good night’s sleep? (Notice, of course, that the bottle of wine just slid into that sentence. I don’t even pretend it’s a glass sometimes.)

Oh, and I feel the justifications coming on… if I sleep well and early, then I’ll awake refreshed and ready to be creative and… the wine store is only a couple of blocks away and… I should get my own dinner soon anyway because the sushi delivery guy is becoming a little too familiar with my nightly order…

I’m letting my body make its own decision tonight, and what it needs is perfectly clear. It needs a little “me” time. And, having just written out a little schedule for tomorrow, I agree that it is making the right decision.

Relics

I've been involved in a school assignment that has taken me further than any school assignment has taken me in the past. This is one reason I haven't been writing in this blog lately - because I've been writing so much for school that I am beyond spent.

One of the many aspects of the assignment is to find family relics. Just now, changing from school clothes to sleeping clothes (yes, I WILL sleep tonight, as I have not done for three or so days), I realized that I do not have to look any further than my own body for the most important relics. The jewelery that I wear are my relics. Yes, sometimes I put on costume jewelery or additional jewelery to emphasize an outfit or something, but relics of my family history are permanently around my neck and on my hands. They all mean a great deal to me.

I wear four rings and two necklaces. On my left hand is a ring given to me by my oldest aunt, who followed her dream to be the intelligent, self-sufficient woman she is, skilled in computers, leaving our family's origins in the Bronx to go to California when the technology industry was just beginning. So when I look at the middle finger of my left hand, I what I see is her strength in moving across the country in the ring she purchased on her first independent trip to Mexico. On my right hand, on my ring finger, I wear a ring from my grandmother, who has a January birthday, with five garnets (the stone of January) to symbolize her five children, giving back to her. On the middle finger of my right hand, I wear two rings. The one on top is a small braided band that I bought for the equivalent of two American dollars when I went on my own personal adventure to Mali, West Africa, and lived there for six months, and was given the band by my family there. I wear it to protect something else - the ring that lies beneath it on the same finger. This ring was carved by my grandfather when he was in World War II and, an artist at heart, a musician specifically, who used his time to carve a ring from silver New Guinean coins in the form of eight interconnected hearts. This ring may be my most treasured possession.

On my neck I wear a necklace, longer and given to me by my mother, that says "LM." The L stands for my first name; the M for my great-grandmother who emigrated here from Italy by herself in the middle of the night and was so strong and beautiful that I am honored to have her name as my middle name. And the other necklace I wear is from my ex-boyfriend, and I have no idea why I still wear it all the time, but I can't figure out everything right now.

Those are my personal, physical relics. I don't have to search for them anywhere, because I see them on my fingers any time I am typing; I see them around my neck any time I look in the mirror.

I hope this makes sense, because I haven't slept in three days and I am probably blabbering on and on and... god bless my family. Whichever god or power anyone believes in, whichever god or higher power I believe in, there is something that I believe is more than we are as physical figures on this earth. And I embrace those symbols that represent the emotions that were a part of every single piece of jewelery that I wear, forever connected to my body, forever a part of me.