Hell Hath No Fury...

... like me, right now. I was here in Lamont at 12:30 last night, happily using the last 15 minutes of library openness to put the finishing touches on the 8th page of my paper... why, then, was I here again before 9 AM, when the paper is not in any way due today? Let me tell you.

So, at 12:30, the computer abruptly stopped everything it was doing and told me it had gone into a "Deep Freeze" mode and that the keyboard and mouse were inaccessible. I got up to inquire as to why this had occurred, and discovered that all the student computers had, in fact, done this. I then was told that they do this EVERY SATURDAY at 12:30, but usually they are closed so it doesn't matter, and I guess they just didn't both to tell anyone that this was going to happen. If I had known even 5 minutes ahead of time, I could have saved my document and sent it to myself with NO TRAUMATIC EFFECTS whatsoever... but I didn't. A fairly nice young man came over and tinkered futilely with the computer, during which process an appallingly loud FIRE ALARM started going off literally in my ear for a minute and a half. This is apparently the way that Lamont informs its patrons that it is time to leave, and also permanently damages their hearing. My ear is still slightly achy/itchy this morning.

So I left, with no knowledge of how much paper I had lost, and no copy of the paper on anything but this machine. It was, of course, dark and rainy, though thankfully I had an umbrella. I started stomping home, and as I got to the science center, I caught sight of a very drunk young man in something like a slightly oversized suit jacket. And other clothes too, but not a whole suit. He was walking along, swerving all over the path like I've never seen, totally alone. So at first when I saw him I was nervous, not certain of what he was doing or what was going on, but as he got past me I realized, as he stumbled over to the rope that bounds off the grass and then confusedly to a bush, that he was probably totally disoriented and trying to go home. But in this state who knew if he even knew where his home was. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't want to approach him in case he was agitated or scary, and even if I had I wouldn't have known where to take him if he told me he lived in X dorm, but I also didn't want him to keep wandering around and get hypothermia, or stumble into the road, or just fall asleep with alcohol poisoning or something.

So I followed him. It was a bit awkward, since he kept stopping and drifting off in different directions, or just standing there for a long time, but I tailed him all the way back to the other end of the yard. At one point there was a hopeful moment when he seemed to be veering towards the door of what I hoped was a dorm, but it was short-lived, and the next thing I know he was, in fact, stumbling into the road across from the Au Bon Pain, heading on out into Harvard Square. Now I really didn't know what to do. It didn't make sense to follow him all the hell over Cambridge, but it was stupid to leave him now after all that, and when he was potentially in a more dangerous situation.

I was hestitating on my side of the road, when a shadow figure sort of loomed up toward me out of the darkness... and it turned out to be a nice, sweet-looking young man in a big bulky coat who wanted to know when the buses stopped running. For no reason I understand except that I wanted to give him hope or something, I said that I thought they were still running (I actually didn't have the slightest idea) but that I knew the subway had stopped, or stopped around now, or something. When I looked up again I saw that I had lost the drunk boy, and so I decided to go over to the ABP, which apparently is open very late, and ask them if they had seen him, and also if they would call the police. I should interject that my phone had run out of batteries in the early afternoon. As I made it over there, I saw there was a policeman standing in the doorway! I went over to him and explained the situation. He said he had seen the drunk guy and wasn't sure what was going on with him, but, after ascertaining that I didn't know him or where he was supposed to be, he told me that he would check up on him and help him get home, and disappeared purposefully around the corner.

So I continued walking home. At this point my feet and the bottoms of my pants were extraordinarily wet, and I was extraoridinarilly agitated. Being outside in the middle of the night by myself was NOT AT ALL acceptable, and now I had an even longer walk ahead of me than I normally would. At one point I gave up and hailed a cab, only to find that the cab driver didn't know where Beacon St. was. Now, under normal circumstances I could have told him how to get there, most likely, but at this point I was so at the end of my rope that I wasn't sure I could think that clearly, and I also wasn't sure that I wanted to get in a cab with a driver who didn't know where Beacon St. was. It's an enormous street! It's the main street in Somerville, which is so much enveloped by Cambridge that there is NO REASON, at the proximity we were, for this man who navigates streets for a living not to have a clue where Beacon St. was. So I walked on. My shoelaces on one shoe were permanenetly untied at this point, and they and my umbrella made all sorts of unpleasant flapping and slapping noises that I tried not to attribute to frightening attacker people sneaking up behind me.

I finally made it home, called Charlotte and Rachel for some support, and got to bed probably a little before 3. I set my alarm for 7. I got out of bed around 8 and made it in the door here by 9. I came right over to the computer I was working on, and found that it had automatically saved a draft of my paper... that had nothing but gibberish on the very top line, a disgruntled arrangement of the words "Harvard College Libraries." It also had the most recent copy I had saved... about 2 pages short of what I had left with. Two fairly hard-won pages in a paper that is not going at all the way I want it to at this point.

So I went up to the circulation desk and asked the guy working there if there was someone I could speak with who dealt with the computers.

"Uhhhh..." he said with a little chuckle. "Well, there's no one who deals with the computers exactly, but there might be someone who could help..." "

Well," I began, "I was here last night at about 12:30..." And that's as far as I got.

"Oh. That sounds like... I don't think I can help you." He went and got some kind of administrator, telling him there was a "lady" here who needed help. (Am I a lady to college undergrads now? Not that I would necessarily want to be a girl, but it was weird. I've also noticed that in this post I've taken to using 'young man' for men younger than me, meaning they are younger than me but I'm not sure how much. Bizarre quarter-century-ness.) Anyway, the administrator came over--he looked uncannily like Ben from lost--and listened to my tale of woe, expressed doubt that anything would help, but came over to look at the computer. At least he told me that he had told the powers that be to stop the deep freeze during exams, but somehow it had not worked. Which is slightly better than if no one did anything at all and just decided it didn't matter. So Ben looked through my files, and poked through some other files, and came to the conclusion there was nothing to be done, unless I waited til Monday and talked to some computer expert folks at Widener. I said this would not be helpful, and explained fairly calmly that I lived off-campus, that due to this problem I had not gotten to sleep until 3 AM, and that I had to wake up again at 7 in order to get back here, so it really was a major inconvenience. He was not unsympathetic, but seemed more concerned with expressing his own innocence than actually listening to what I had to say, which I find a lamentable human trait. If I am ever in a customer service position again, please remind me that it is more important to hear people than to excuse yourself.

So that's it. Now I'm here, I'm starving, I'm exhausted, and I have to re-write 2 pages of an already plodding, idiotic paper.

Fuck you, Lamont library. If I knew how to dismantle this alarm behind my head, I completely would, and take it as a goddamn trophy to hang up on my wall. If I could dismantle this computer without causing further harm to my paper, I would be sorely tempted. I don't have anything more to say, but I have not exhausted my rage and disappointment. I want my two pages, my breakfast, and my equanimity. Fuck you.

Ghosties and Ghoulies and Long-Legged Beasties

And things that go bump in the night.

This post could be so many things. I'm waiting to see what is actually going to come out of me. Because I feel that I could be philosophical, or wildly angry, or just tired. Perhaps I'll have a shot at all of them.

First, I think, the anger. Yesterday anger was definitely my deadly sin of choice. First of all, Septa is certainly aptly named, if by Septa we wish to refer to a sort of sluggish and fetid septic system: it is irritating and it stinks, but you'd sure as hell rather it worked (in its own inimitable way) than not at all. And I DO NOT want to pay the normal amount for my transpass, and then have to pay all kinds of taxi charges and walk my legs off anyway because the train and the LUCY whatever don't actually run at the right times or take me where I want to go. But I don't know if I can keep getting up at 7 AM to get to work by 9. I mean, there were ways in which it was nice today, but I'm really tired now and it's only 10 AM, and because of the show I will have to be here for about 12 more hours. Same for the walk home- generally I like it, but sometimes I like to get home and start dinner BEFORE 8 PM. Septa: YOU DO NOT STAND UP TO THE TIGER. YOU SUCK HIPPODICK. PLEASE WORK AGAIN, OR FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Then, the CREEPY FUCKING NEIGHBORS. The CREEPY FUCKING NEIGHBORS decided to decorate their CREEPY FUCKING HOUSE for Halloween with a carefully detailed assortment of bloodied and mutilated baby dolls, complete with bloody handprints all up the front columns of the house and little nooses in the trees. Fucking gross, tasteless, creepy, and disturbing. I began to cringe from passing the damn place. But, at the same time, it is their house and they can, I suppose, decorate it as they please, whether or not I find it acceptable or pleasant. Granted, I don't actually feel this way... of course, I wanted to take all their baby dolls away and paint flowers and rainbows across their windows (in a vindictive kind of way). But I do understand what is the law of the land, and it makes sense to me. So I, while not accepting their decorations as such, was prepared to live in peace. However, I'm coming home from work... after a LONG day, with irritations that may be described hereafter... and I am hungry, and I've been walking for about an hour and forty-five minutes (see above re. Septa). And I see this crowd of people outside the CREEPY FUCKING HOUSE, having, apparently, a CREEPY FUCKING PARTY. Except at first I just thought it was a party. I even felt more kindly disposed toward them... I thought, hey, they're just having a Halloween party like everybody else, obviously they just got... carried away with the babies, and probably they are normal human beings after all. The I see this man in a creepy staring mask, walking up and down the sidewalk, dragging his shovel behind him so it scrrrrrapes all along the cement, then scrrrraping it back the other way. I don't know what the man is doing. At first I do not suppose it has reference to me. (I'm not sure why I'm switching tenses wildly in this narration, but please forgive as I do not feel like going back and making it all consistent.) Then, as I get closer, he starts following me down the sidewalk. I saw his creepy blank staring leering face entirely too close to mine, and I heard his shovel dragging and scraping along behind me even when I refused to look back, and it made me shudder and put my hand to my face, and I was sooooooooooooooooo angry at him for frightening me. I was a little electric bundle of anger and fear. Right before I went in my own building, I saw this man carrying a garbage bag coming toward me out of the shadows and my whole body tensed. It was a nice old Asian man, smiling at me as he brought out his trash! But my body did not believe.

Then Rachel came home and I gave her a violet plant and a card for our cohabitation anniversary, and we decided to go to the Indian buffet because they would have dinner ready right away and that is what we required at that time. So... back out the door, back down the street, and as we got close to the CREEPY FUCKING HOUSE I began to hear that scrape scrape scraping again and I saw the masked man was still going up and down the sidewalk. He started following close to Rachel and I as we passed, and this time we were hedged in on the other side by a man in a red demonic mask leering up at us too. The blankness of the masks was the most horrible thing about it. The fact that I could not tell where their real faces began, that they could see my whole, real face with my feelings on it and all I could see of them was leering, malevolent rubber. I felt such malice, from them and toward them. I was so hungry! I wanted to scream obscenties at them in a way I have never done. I walked a bit faster, and when I turned my head and saw the red mask right beside my face, tilted in ill-intended curiosity, it was more than I could take. I don't really know how it happened, but I felt something break inside of me and suddenly I was charging down the street away from them, not running but marching as fast as I could, getting away. I walked like this until I was halfway down the next block I was trembling deep inside with anger. Anger was all I could feel, and tension, and nerves, and a terrible boiling rage with only the lid of my skull to keep it inside me. I kept marching all the way to the restaurant. Ocassionally I felt my mouth stretch in a strange nervous/bitter parody of a smile, the social-ness of my self breaking through, the feelings breaking through in a way they knew was appropriate. But mostly... tension, anger, anger, anger, tension, fear, anger, anger, rage. This wholly hot and consuming, absorbing rage, and so much tension that I flinched when a man in a doorway lit up a cigarette, the flame flashing into its small life pulling some string inside of me. I could not calm down. I could not stop feeling it, though somehow I knew that it was my choice to feel it. How both of those things could be true I don't know. When I could finally speak I began to rant about what they had done, this harrassment, how they had no right to follow me and frighten me... and Rachel said, "They're just idiots, it's Halloween." And I heard my voice passionate and trembling, rage and tears bundled and wound up inside it, saying, "I don't care what they are, I don't care what it is." No forethought in that voice, no reason. Only pain and rage, and a sort of vocal ultimatum... I remember the feeling: They are my enemies, don't ever defend them, even with their own stupidity. The sound of my voice was... striking. Different. I stewed inside my anger, on and on, and I began to wish for it to stop. I had been imagining impossible revenges, and had taken great satisfaction in imagining stumbling upon a police car, magically stopped on a curb, waiting, and telling them that there were people harassing passers-by. But at 40th st., in front of the Fresh Grocer, I imagined killing them. It didn't just cross my mind, "I'll kill them," I imagined doing it. I imagined their fear. I imagined their pain. I imagined cutting their throats and I saw the blood. I wanted to kill them for real, and I imagined it all. And as the bloody images passed through my mind, I felt my shoulders begin to relax. I felt the tension seep out of my chest.

I had been thinking just hours before about compassion, and forgiveness, for matters so far beyond being scared and harrassed in the street. And here I was with this violent, explicit, burning anger in the heart of me. And I still feel it, when I think about what happened. In some ways I love my anger, although I refuse it often and I fear it, too. But it makes me feel more powerful, to know that it is there.

I have been thinking so much lately about evil and violence... Capote, Turtles Can Fly, The Autobiography of God... it's like I asked the universe, Evil 101, please. I've been dreaming about powerful male captives that kill and charm and break away. Captives I should perhaps kill but that I never do. My dreams have been very full, very vivid, very frightening. I am always in charge, and I capture these men, and I do not kill them, and they escape again. What is this evil of my soul? What am I to do with it? Has it been there all along?

Evil. The destruction of our spirits, the desecration of our bodies, the blinding of our eyes. Evil... the chimney stacks of Auschwitz. That evil before which our whole society trembles and turns away. That skeleton face with eyes gone that will haunt me forever. Evil, evil, evil... the death of a soul. Evil in the choosing not to see, not to know the evil that is done by other hands. Evil in the silence and evil in too much speaking. Evil in killing, in dogmatism (of any kind), evil in the refusal to listen and understand. Evil in the giving in to manipulators, be they rich or poor. Evil in the rejection of the self. Evil in the mis-seeing of another. Evil in my heart. Evil in the grasping, greedy, frightened parts of the whole. Evil in putting away the things I wish to do in the name of confusion or lethargy. Sometimes I am dogged by evil, followed by it like a man with a shovel, and I can feel it dragging, hear it scraping behind me though I dare not turn around and look.

I am tired. Evil is insidious. And I do not begin to understand it. Is there something in the cross, beyond all voyueristic sadomasochistic ecstasies of pain, that can teach me about evil? Standing at an intersection to itself, wrapping evil in the mantle of holy blessedness? (Or blessedness in a cloak of evil?)

Since it is All Saint's Day, and I have the litany in my head:

Mary Magdaline my name-saint, pray for us,
Peter chosen patron, pray for us,
Sweet beloved John, pray for us,
searching Augustine, pray for us,
Martha, Mary, Miriam, pray for us,
Sarah, Hagar, and Rebekah, pray for us,
Felicity, Perpetua, pray for us,
and all forgotten women, pray for us.

Andrew and Michael, pray for us,
John XXIII, pray for us,
Frank, Patrick, and Jon, pray for us,
Uncle Alan and my brother, pray for us,
Jane Divo, Father Norcott, pray for us,
Judas and Shawna's mother, pray for us.
All who perished under evil hands, pray for us,
all the hands which dispatched them, pray for us,
Pilate, Johnson, Lincoln, Kennedy, pray for us,
Theresa and Julian, pray for us.

C.S. Lewis, Meister Eckhart, pray for us,
Rumi and Mohammed, pray for us,
Hallaj and the Bal Shem Tov, pray for us,
Margery and Margaret, pray for us,
Paul and John the Baptist, pray for us,
Chrysogonus and Blaise, pray for us,
Lucy, Anne and Catherine, pray for us,
Rachel and Elizabeth, pray for us.

All you holy men and women, pray for us.


All the mysteries, and the greatest mystery of all to me is me.

I still feel the surge of fire-anger-heat inside, and the prick of fear.

November has come. I am stepping into it; take my hand.

One Show Left, or The Post About Everything Ever

So much... so much... SO MUCH has happened, is happening. There are so many things to say. And I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this, except that I want contact with someone, something, and half the apartment is cavorting at a bar, one quarter of it is cavorting in the shower, and the other eighth (excepting myself), is in some sort of catatonic state on the floor.

The problem with writing after so long is that I feel an obligation to catch up, and if I tried to do that now, I would be here for the next several months.

My God, the Fringe. The Fringe, my show, the Fringe, the apartment, the Fringe. Can I just say I feel everything about it? I feel everything about it. I feel that it is going wonderfully and horribly, and I love it and hate it, and all the gradations and shades in between. I know I couldn't keep this up for that much longer, but the fact that tomorrow is our last show might also break my heart. For good reasons and bad ones. Good reasons like love and wonder and delight in what we have done, are doing, in the talent and energy and the amazing women all around me. Bad reasons like panic over Philadelphia, and fear, the terrible cankerous fear of the moment when we all are definitively split. Fear that the moment has come and gone already, and that I am singularly disposable, less-than-ardently loved.

My own need to be loved haunts me. There's very little I can say about it without cringing. It follows me like a child, like a parasite... the more I hate it, the more it grows in power.

Well, and. And I saw a wonderful show tonight. It said lots of things, some things beautiful, some difficult, some weird. It was about terrorism, I guess, but about the terrorism in our hearts, too. Some of the things it said were so much like the things I was trying to say in my play. It was extremely frightening. I loved it, although it was sometimes extremely hard to handle. I think I sort of want to talk about it, but Crista has disappeared, and Rachel hated it so much she practically fled through the streets of New York to get away from it, which was extraordinarilly irritating for those of us trying to keep up with her. (I think you got that message from me, anyway, Rachel, but if not I apologize, because I don't want to be one of those weird passive-aggressive types who vents her frustration only in a private-public forum such as this one.)

So whatever... I mean, I'm annoyed... in fact, there are lots of little annoyances adding up to a little flame of anger inside of me, though the anger is not for anyone in particular, it just... is. I think mostly I'm lonely. Which is an odd thing in an apartment full of people. Or maybe it's to be expected. Why am I so concerned with having a place? Why do I need to be loved, not just at all, but in the right amounts by the right people at the right times?

I mean... it isn't all the time, but it's enough. The strange squeezed feeling inside, and the way I click, suddenly, into some kind of tunnel vision. I want to feel important! I may as well be honest. But inside I feel greedy, and grasping, and strange, for wanting this. And I hate being angry, but at the same time I can feel myself making decisions about it. Like, going down the street after Rachel, I could feel the anger come and offer itself, I could feel the warring desires to move toward it and away... the need to stay with the depth and the open space in me from the play vs. the need to be tethered and responsive to other people's feelings. What I don't feel is the moment of decision. I just seem to slip by, from one to the other, and then it has occurred, and my distress at that fact serves mostly to entrap me the more.

What is it that would be enough? When I was walking down the street, I had a moment of clarity, and before that while sitting and watching the play. In the play it was about compassion, about the tricky, particular nature of compassion, and the simplicity of it, that it is compassion that is holy and filled with truth, and compassion that tells the truth to our hearts in the face of horror and confusion and pain. Walking down the street, I was arm in arm with Crista and I realized that connecting is what matters, connecting with whomever is beside you, with as many people as you find... that it isn't who or for how long that detirmines connection and love, but only the magic that happens, between so many people. Like that old footprints on the heart thing, I guess... but it was very powerful. It made me see that I have not lost the people I loved, that the love is real even if it is only for a little while.

But somehow I moved from that to the complete particularity of anger, self-pity, grief. Anger at being abandoned, self-pity at same, grief at losing. Perhaps I am just afraid to be alone with myself... not to tangle myself up in my feelings but simply to be with them. I don't know, but I want to tell someone, Please don't go. Please don't forget me, Please love me. I'm here, please love me enough, love me with an ardent sort of echo in your eyes. Notice all the things about me that no-one has, and tell me so that I should know.

Am I talking to a friend, many friends, a lover, someone I want? Am I talking to God? No, I don't think it's God. Am I talking to me?

Weechee-in. Help me.

At the play there was a warm certainty. You must pray, I thought to myself, you must pray, pray and be full of compassion. But when I thought of prayers, of praying, of the supplicating act, that was not it. That was not what the warm certainty was asking for. My faith is perhaps being shredded by claws. Perhaps they are divine claws, or my own. Perhaps I shall make scarves out of the tatters.

The woman in the play said that great things are seen, are built, are understood through bodies and bloodshed and seeing such things. She did not name the cross, but I thought of it. She was wrong, I know that she was wrong. Or... that's not it. She was right. But there is another way. Make eyeholes in the mask of my beliefs, let me see it, let me see.

Then there is the voice that says I am afraid to see, that I am afraid always, that I am... Well, you know all about it. My God-- just realized I've turned into Professor Dilexi. Stuck between going forward and going back, between the unknown something and the known purgatory. Limbo! Like Bingo only less singing involved.

All right. Starting to ramble now. One show tomorrow. One show left. I'm scared. I feel sort of pierced. I will see my aunt tomorrow. Why doesn't my father call me back? Why doesn't he want to see me? Well, that's another thing.

One show left, one show. I do love you, you know.

Stop. Think. Speak.

I would like to propose this threefold system of communication to President Bush, and also specifically to Randi and Michael of the box office. Especially President Bush, but since my influence on him is limited, I guess I'll have to start small.

Today I was reading about Bush's speech last night regarding our progress in Iraq, and it was so deeply angering to me that I simply had to violate my vow of silence on matters of import at work, and bring it up to Albert. He agreed... in fact, he had become so angry viewing the speech that he turned it off.

My anger stems from two basic things: First of all, the speech seems to me to be deliberately, blatantly, flagrantly misleading in its constant references to September 11th, and now the link between Iraq and that attack is explained as a common ideological framework. Last time I checked, we cannot attack people because they share an ideological framework with actual military enemies, no matter how insidious we view that ideological framework to be. For example, I feel that refusing or being unable to discriminate between members of a population... or even a general cultural group... (eg. U.S. citizen vs. President Bush, U.S. citizen vs. British citizen, Iraqi leader vs. September 11th attacker, Iraqi vs. member of other Middle Eastern country)... is, in fact, a disturbing ideological framework that we seem to share with our enemies. By that logic, the next step the U.S. should take is to invade itself.

Anyway, as Albert and I were discussing this without going into a whole lot of depth, but expressing our mutual anger, Randi came into the box office. Albert proceeded to say that she was a fan of Bush, and we were off to the races. It was very strange, and at some point when Randi said "they were all out to attack us, anyway," I literally started shouting, "Who? Who? Not Iraq, tell me who?" Which is highly unusual, and partly attributable to the fact that Randi seems to say almost everything at top volume and with total conviction. But it was this total jumble of sometimes contradictory cliches, and I was trying my best to argue back rationally... Randi was literally saying things about how all people in the Middle East wanted to kill us, and just complete bollocks, but with such incredible conviction! I was quite worked up, though, and it surprised me. I guess the nice-quiet-worker facade got torn right open.

I kind of liked it. Although I was sort of trembling with anger at some point when Randi and tall young Michael proposed sending all the prisoners to fight in Iraq. I said something scornful about training, and they sort of said they were kidding. I think Michael sort of just likes to get a rise out of me. I do NOT like it when people think it's funny when I'm angry, and a lot of people seem to think so. Why? I have as scorching a wrath as anybody else, when roused.

And, one good way to avoid such wrath is to try out Stop Think Speak. Not necessarily when you're talking about your annoyance at work or your ex-boyfriend or your mom... but when you're talking about large global events and war? Please. Give just a moment's ponderation to what comes out of your mouth!

I wish I could convince people that the passionate application of their minds matters, and is worth the trouble.