I don’t believe in this

I was just wondering why I've had such an insane year and why I can never make up my mind and why I keep alienating people and why I did all this work to change jobs and then took it make and why I moved three times in three months and why I am driving myself and everyone else crazy and have been all year. Why I don't at all know who I am anymore.

And I was wondering if I was having some sort of weird mid-life crisis and I was thinking about being 28 going on 29 right now, and then I remembered before my last birthday being warned by everyone older then me that 28 was going to be rough and the saturn return thing was not a myth. And I just looked it up on google and it kind of freaked me out.

See below:

"Astrologers call the period between ages twenty-eight and thirty "Saturn Return." That's because it's the first time the planet Saturn completes its cycle through your birth chart and returns to the spot it occupied when you were born. Internationally respected astrologer Rob Hand calls Saturn Return "one of the most important times in your life. . . a time of endings and new beginnings."

For most of us, ending a phase of life that is familiar and embarking on one that is new and untried is unsettling, even painful. Few people describe Saturn Return as a pleasant period. While undergoing your Saturn Return you may find yourself turning inward and reflecting on your individual destiny. You examine your true needs and desires and the role you want to play on the world's stage. You may feel lonely and alienated from those around you, while family and friends think you are shutting them out. But this is a necessary period of consolidation, when you must retreat from the distractions of the outer world and focus on yourself at your most fundamental level.

The first Saturn Return marks the end of youth and the beginning of the productive adult years. It is now that you truly become an adult--not at eighteen or twenty-one. You realize your need to define yourself as an individual within society and to demonstrate what you've learned. This transition into adulthood is often accompanied by a sense of urgency, a feeling that you must try to accomplish everything you've ever wanted or planned to do now. Goals start to come sharply into focus. If you have not settled into a definite career, or have been pursuing one that is inappropriate for you, you'll experience a strong push to establish yourself in a more fulfilling occupation.

Saturn strips away illusions and points out limitations, allowing you to view yourself in a harsh, often unflattering light. At the same time, it endows you with prudence, practicality, and the perseverance to work hard toward achieving your purposes. Consequently, this is a good time to rearrange your career or lay the foundation for a new one.

Saturn Return almost always requires some major adjustments in lifestyle, attitudes, and relationships. Anything you have outgrown, or have tolerated but not found satisfying, must end now or be altered to meet your emerging needs. Often interpersonal relationships are deeply affected by Saturn Return. The U.S. Census Bureau lists the peak divorce years as ages twenty-eight to thirty. Some people experience more subtle or private adjustments in their patterns of relating, such as shifts in responsibilities.

Growth is often accompanied by trepidation and turmoil. As the old self is pushed aside to make room for the new, you may feel weak and vulnerable. You want to move ahead, yet are frustrated by a fear of doing so, torn between a compelling urge to throw off everything connected with your past and an equally frantic need to cling to the familiar rather than brave the great unknown.

Even if your external world seems to be in order, your internal structure may feel as though it's being assaulted with a battering ram. Nervous conditions, irritability, depression, insomnia, and feelings of insecurity are common. Most people go through some sort of identity crisis.

Saturn Return is one of the most crucial turning points you ever experience, when you assume the greatest responsibility of all: responsibility for your own life."

That kind of freaked me out. Seriously. Although I stress that I hate taking any astrology nonsense seriously. Exactly all of those things have precisely happened to me in the exact year.

Whatever shall I do?

10 things that were. Awesome. About today. In list format!

1. That it was 58 degrees! Yay spring.

2. At the library, when I was there returning books and all that normal shit, seeing some random person very closely studying my art work not knowing I was the artist and I was there. Much better than the opening in an artistic way, for me. Although the opening was a wonderful time to see all the people I love and hug them.

3. Walking around town running errands and overhearing some very adorable elderly ladies say about me, "oh to be young and walk that fast." Because I've had so much back and leg pain lately and have been limping so much despite my best efforts. And believe me people, I have been gritting my teeth and digging my nails into my palm in order to walk normally lately. So I really really appreciate moving fast without thinking about it.

4. Drinking wine on my porch and reading a book at twilight. For the first time this year. Even though I had to sit under a blanket because after all it's only March 12th.

5. Having a really nice conversation with g earlier and then cleaning my room majorly and doing a ton of the stuff on my ongoing to do list.

6. Having a reasonably pleasant conversation on the phone with my dad.

7. Not being in the kitchen when one of the light fixtures decided to randomly fall down and smash everywhere for no apparent reason. I like NOT having glass fall on my head.

8. Making another bizarre yet successful meal from leftover food from my opening since I am broke yet have a surplus of chips and crackers and cheese and salsa and cookies.

9. Remembering tonight while playing music in my room how much I love Madonna and Courtney Love.

10. Really really enjoying rereading Kate Atkinson's "Not the End of the World", possibly the best book ever written. Goddamn. To write like that. Man.

If You Haven't Seen Me Lately (Art Notes)...

...it's because I've probably been sitting on the floor of my room gluing things together. Endlessly. I hang this show tomorrow, and that's good, because I am literally going crazy. I think.

I've been spending every night for way too many nights in a row staying up all night in my room sitting on the floor working on this set of paintings.

And this is the most personal work I have ever done ever.

So this is sort of like sitting around ripping open not-so-old, not-very-well healed scars over and over. Photographs, memories. Damn.

And listening to music and drinking wine and crying a lot.

Thanks so much to sarah sam and rin (some of my favoprite people) for picking me up and getting me to leave the house last night. Goth night has never been such a healthy thing. Love you guys very much. Y'all have no idea how much I needed human contact last night.

And thanks to brian tonight for the free wine to get me through one last night of this.

I have no idea if this work is even good. This is the first work I've done in ten years without my built in personal critic in the house. She would have put a stop to work this crazy personal and messy a long time ago.

My room looks insane. There is photographic imagery everywhere. And clothing. And wine bottles. And notes to myself. And jars of gel medium and water. I've been living in my bunny overalls and pink hooded sweatshirt (hood up at all times). Today I got up, excerised, worked for 8 1/2 hours, came home, and went straight to work. Today I have eaten one scone, way to much coffee, the free pistachios from the booth (thank you salt-free parrot), and a piece of cheese. I really need to try to stop and eat dinner. Since it's 12:04am now and all and I'm nowhere near ready for tomorrow.

I think after tonight I need to take a small break from either thinking about me or britney spears for a little while.

What I Need To Know

I have this very small collection of vintage reference/instructional manuals that I keep on my desk. I sort of think of this collection as my rules to life.

I am very selective when it comes to aquireing new volumes. I think everyone knows that I have hundreds of old hilarious books everywhere for the porpose of collage, but these books are special enough that they don't even get cut up. Amazing.

Today in the used book sale at the lovely library I found my next book. So now my rules to life consist of 1) Standard Handbook of Cosmetology, 1977, Livestock Judging Handbook, 1947, And The Good Housekeeping Needlework Encyclopedia, 1947. The Needwork Encoloypedia is the book I purchased today, and it begins with the absolutely charming sentence, "Women will always be interested in neeedlwork." This pleases me more than I can say.

I envision someday having a whole set, covering all sort of varied subject matter. Then I will know everything I need to know. What will the next be I wonder?

I love the weird used book sale at the library. Besides that gem of a needlework encyclopedia, I also took home a very strange Japanese English dictionary, a copy of by Nicholson Baker, and a copy of The Will To Change by Adrienne Rich in hardcover. All for only $5! Yay.

Can you tell from this entry that I have a show to hang on Thursday? And have 10 paintings in various stages of completion sitting around my room looking at me accusingly? And that Ive been up all night for the past two nights sitting on the floor cutting and gluing and painting over things? And naming. The naming is also important.

Back to work, lizzy.

random favorite things

Because I have a weird OCD tendency to want to list things, yes. This nonsense below. Things that make life awesome. Are:

Some of my favorite books: Haruki Murakami, "The Wind-up Bird Chronicles," A.S. Byatt, "Little Black Book of Short Stories," Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man," Kate Atkinson, Not the End of the World," Iris Murdoch, "A Word Child", Poppy Z. Brite, "Liquor".

And,
some IMAGES:
1. noodles
2. chicken legs
3. eggs
4. deserts
5. cities

FOODS:
1. hummus
2. saag paneer
3. scallops
4. sushi
5. mashed potatoes

That's all. That's just what I've been thinking about. For whatever reason.

AND,

I love Tom Waits, Britney Spears, and Bjork a lot. And I'd like to visit Toyko, Bombay, Iceland, Morroco, and Prague.

Why do I think and write these things? I do not know.

Tomatoes, mittens, wool blankets, and snow.

I should write more. I know that using my myspace blog for self-improvement is kind of retarded, but I need to write things down, somewhere. So I can stop telling elaborate descriptions of things to myself in my head while I walk for three hours in the cold freezing my hands.

I am having this day of extreme ups and downs. I woke up so happy it was unbelievable. Actually, I also went to sleep that happy. That keeps happening lately. So my lows today weren't even real, I don't think. Just the product of overstimulation and twelve hours of drunkeness and bacon and sausage and french fries and creamed chipped beef. And having an astonishingly good time. And then coming home to a very silent, very grey day.

I am pretty content. But keep feeling melancholy at the same time.

Probably tired, and needing to eat more vegetables.

And melancholy for me always makes me notice details with great clarity. There was a day last week where I still felt so weak and unlike myself from being sick, and hearing Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat at Haymarket changed the whole sense of the day for me.

And today: the surprisingly summer-like taste of a january tomato that shouldn't have tasted that good; the snugglyness of my new mittens on sale at jc penney for $3.29 and put immeadiately on my frozen fingers; the warmth underneath my favorite wool blanket; gold nail polish on sale at target; the beginnings of snow; and the pleasant surprise of a phone call while driving stupidly lost on a highway in the snow. And a date at Stop & Shop. Yes.

Vulnerability: I hate it.

I am in a very bad mood. Because I had to call out sick from work today due to back pain. I tend not to take these back pain incidents of mine very seriously, since they are usually caused by nothing, and go anyway without me doing much but suffering through it.

Last night I just stepped inside my front door wearing the boots I wear all the time and knew immeadiately something was wrong. And it was definitely still wrong this morning.

I had every intention of going to work anyway, because I HATE TO ADMIT DEFEAT. The thought that I really CAN'T do something makes no sense to my brain.

But I got up, and I made it out to vote on foot, and it was pretty crazy because I was limping really bad and had to walk so slow it took me almost an hour to make to the polling place (someplace I could ordinarily reach in about ten minutes) and I was still planning on going to work until I was getting ready in my room and I had been standing still in front of the mirror and I went to take a step and I screamed involuntarily. And then had a really hard time making it the three steps to pick up my bag.

Ok. Don't know how I'm going to be standing on my feet all day and bagging groceries if I can't PICK UP MY BAG. This was clearly obvious from the moment I got out of bed and limped my way into the shower, yet it took me THREE HOURS of being in serious pain and walking around as if I wasn't to believe it.

Why is it so hard for me to take care of myself?
Guilt. Refusal to admit defeat. Some degree of embaressment over having a stupid pain thing affect me. Because someone joked about back pain making me old last night. Because being physically strong is very important to me.

And I know,
because I will feel better later today, because the only thing I can do for this kind of pain is rest, that when I feel better I will feel even more guilty over having given in, because I'll make sure I don't remember that this rest really was necessary.

And beat myself up over how I should have just gone to work. When really, I couldn't. I would habe prefered to have. Because now I feel bored and displeased with myself and out of my body and restless.

I'm going to try to enjoy being in my bed and reading about ten of my favorite novels and wearing my pajamas and a stolen orange t-shirt that still kind of smells like someone and listening to a lot of music. And remembering that this sort of pain is all psychic and stress related and that being nice to myself is something that I need to do ocasionally or I will be unable to walk.