give me that old fashioned morphine

It is raining in Memphis and it has been all week. We go through a monsoon at least once a season it seems, which is generally OK. I remember the draught that threatened to dry up my mom's spring in 2007, and as a daughter of the rural South, I know that rain is a good thing, but this dump of precipitation is threatening the Cooper Young festival tomorrow, so for now, I say "RAIN! Go! Away!" so that I can stroll around drinking beer out of a plastic cup and looking at arts & crafts which I probably won't buy. I am not completely broke as a joke, but seeing as how I just got a half check the last two pay periods, I will be coasting on fumes as the month runs out. Boy, I hate that. That is what leaving work for two weeks to see cool shit will do to you.

Paychecks. With the same regularity of Memphis monsoons, I experience a crushing disappointment in myself quarterly with this fucking job I hate. I go to work and come home & go to work and come home & go to work and then come home unable to smile or laugh one day. Then I lament loudly, in a really boring fashion, about how much it SUCKS, how STUPID I am to have gotten myself into this position, WHAT ON EARTH will ever change, how I have NO SKILLS, etc. etc. etc. Usually by the next day it is gone, because, well, what's the point.

All of this is accompanied by Brandon's insistance that we don't have to keep doing any of this. We don't have to have an apartment, I don't have to have a 9-5 job; we don't have to live or stay anywhere for longer than we want to. We've seen enough of the world and people thriving in it leading unconventional lives to know that it works. We have this bundle of money in the bank that sits and waits for us to do something with it, and over the last six months we have made all sorts of different plans for it. I am terrified of doing anything; I am terrified of doing nothing.

A few months ago we were going to have a baby, and now we are not, and I can't say that I don't think about it every day. I think about it when I see a fat pregnant stomach; I think about it when I interview women who, in this city where the infant mortality rate is absolutely stunning, have managed to push out 2 or 4 or even 6 babies under a banner of poverty & stress. I wonder why & when & how, and then I just sit quietly with it all. I don't feel depressed by it, I don't get in a really sad mood about it, it's just always there, reminding me that I won't have something that I thought I would.

So I think about having a baby; I think about buying a house in this city that I do really love. I think about putting all our stuff in storage and cutting the strings for awhile. I think about moving to the field behind my mother's house and planting a really huge garden and living out of a camper. And I think and I think and I think...

And then I get up, walk the dog, take a shower & come to work again.

What am I doing, exactly? And why?

Do you ever feel so restless that it seems like your muscle-covered skeleton might leap right out of your skin and run away without you? I feel like that lately.
The way I'm living my life is getting to me, I reckon. Earlier in the week I had a complete breakdown about my current work situation. I've calmed down now, which is nice, because it means I don't have to direct my face toward the inside of my cubicle and try to cry covertly. Plus I ran out of Kleenex last week, so I couldn't even mop at my face and nose when I was done, I just had to let it dry naturally. Which feels as weird as when there's no TP and you have to "drip dry," as we called it when I was growing up. (Some people use humor to diffuse emotional talk... I use potty scenes).

So I've choo-choo'd past the self-hatred phase of this lovely epiphany and now I'm in Confusion Corner. Which is in the same zip code as the Desperation District, apparently.

I'll cut the shit now. I feel at my very core that something is wrong with the way I'm living my life. I feel like I know the truth, and that is that all of us don't have to participate in society in the normal way. I'm so close to being free. I don't have a mortgage, or a child, and these are things I don't have on purpose at this moment, so that if I wanted to or needed to, I could step out of the life I'm living now with relative ease. But the problem is that I have a big voice inside myself that tells me I need to do what's practical, what's responsible. The voice is the one that wakes me up in the morning and ushers me along to work. It has some big points, like health insurance (fucking health insurance!), and sometimes it ticks ticks with an annoying insistence about the fact that neither myself nor the tiny eggs inside me are getting any younger.

The battle between these two parts of myself is getting more heated every day. They're both so insistent that sometimes the psychic force of their collision feels like an actual vibration in my head and chest and stomach. I know, I sound like a crazy person. But honestly, I just don't give a shit anymore. I am tired of being careful. Blog entries in which the person is depressed are really boring, but it's just as boring to tiptoe around your personal dysfunction just because you never know who's watching. And I don't feel depressed! I feel like I'm 10 seconds away from bursting out of myself! WHO'S WITH ME! ?!?

One day late.

Yesterday was the six-month anniversary of our wedding (which was 6/07/08, fucking darling, right?) I wanted to post because in the past little while we have been so happy, or as we like to say at our house, "et up." As in, "I am feeling absolutely et up with love for you today, honey." And I wanted to say "Happy Anniversary," to myself & Brandon, eventhough a) it's really only a half-anniversary, and those are generally not recognized in our house, and b) B doesn't really read my blog very often. He's a technophobe.

I have this spooky, mystical, rock-solid certainty in our relationship. I can see all these ways that we have made each other different, happier people, and I just thrill at the mystery of our future.

I walked down the aisle to the Cat Power cover of "I Found a Reason," recovered by our wonderful friend Pete, who flew down to TN from NY just to come to the wedding and play guitar & sing at the ceremony. Here's the Cat Power version, accompanied by the least-weird homegrown video that I found on Youtube. There was one "for House fans." The internet is weird.

If you're reading this, I love you, darlin'.

so it's better my sweet, that we hover like bees, 'cause there's no sure footing...

I'll tell you what I hate, and that's having an evening like I did last night. Come home from school, take off your bra, reheat the pineapple tofu leftovers from the Saigon Le, talk to your husband and say, "Stay at the bar as long as you want, I've got homework to do anyway," eat some salad with entirely too much ranch dressing on it, throwing your fears of fattyhood to the wind for the moment, sit down in front of the laptop to study genetics and attachment theory and the like, only to find yourself totally seized by THE TRUTH. THE TRUTH will not leave your pathetic little brain alone; it talks to you in both the voices of a sing-songy little child as well as a smug, know-it-all adult. Last night THE TRUTH shared with me the shivery proposition that all this school nonsense might be a total waste of time, and it's possible I get done and still find myself in total hate with whatever job I have, which, as THE TRUTH helpfully reminded me, I am right now. In hate with my job, that is. It smirked as it said "You always talk shit about college being a waste of time, do you really think it's your hope for this so called 'better life,' Amanda? What a chump."

THE TRUTH is really fucking rude.

So I slid down the mega-slide of doom, which happens to me pretty rarely in these modern times, especially considering the depressive mess I was from, oh, I don't know, 15-22? When reaching the bottom of the mega-slide of doom, I can stare at a wall for hours. I guess the idea of proposition of living in complete misery for the rest of my life entertains me so much, I don't need anything else. If I saw someone staring at a wall like I do in these times, I'd say "Jesus Christ, that person is fucking depressed!"

I hate remembering things like, in my life, I'll spend more of my waking hours being paid for working somewhere instead of getting to spend time with the people who actually mean something to me, and I have to have a full-time job in order to have health insurance so that anything that might happen to me wouldn't destroy our lives financially. All this, plus you just die at the end of it all, anyway. Sometimes I just don't think I am cut out to live a conventional life, but I've been hammered into the shape of it by the way I was raised and my poor little brain just freaks out and feels desperate when trying to figure out a way to escape it all.

I'll be better in a few days, I always am. I don't really stew in misery that much anymore, something I am really grateful for. There are a lot of things I am grateful for, actually, don't get me wrong. I am so happy that we have these great friends in this city that love us as much as we love them, and I'm happy that I have an understanding mother who is my best friend in a lot of ways, and I can share so much with. I'm so happy that I have a partner who I can lay in bed with at night and be completely entertained and entertaining by dumbass shit we do for one another, and laugh until I cry with him. So, I'm not miserable. I am just boringly confused and uneasy.

let it leave me trembling, trembling

I'll tell you a phenomenon I love: Listening to music that reminds you of a particular time in your life and having the same feelings that affected you then rise over you in an awesome wave. That is an incredible feeling. I am sitting at work this morning listening to Neko Case's album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (and no, she's not the only music I EVER listen to) and I am stricken with the sensation that I am driving my car down the interstate on a hot summer night and falling in love with Brandon Dill all over again. I remember one particular night distinctly, driving the both of us from Wendy & Mark's in Nashville to B's hovel in Murfreesboro, right after I'd gotten this album. Despite the fact I should have still been traumatized by the end of a long-running relationship, I knew deep down inside myself that what Brandon and I were feeling about one another was pretty dang undeniable and I was so fucking excited about the whole thing every minute. And I still get really excited, even though sometimes we are freaked out about money or generally pissy or bored. I really believe that things are better with him than without him, and better than they would be with anyone else because something that lives inside the both of us, something deep and old that connects to our hearts & our minds, that part of the both of us recognized the other as soon as we looked at each other and paid attention. We try to remind each other how lucky we are to have found one another quite often.

I had a lovely time at my mother's this weekend. The air is crisping up and her orchard is full of apples, pears, and muscadines. If you've never eaten muscadines before, they are very sweet when they get ripe but have a thick, bitter skin and seeds. When I was a little girl my father used to !PoP! the pulp in my waiting mouth and this is the way I still eat them today. I tried to teach my five year old nephew how to feed them to me in this way, and ended up with a mouthful of fingers.


My relationship with the land I grew up in, the house my great-grandparents built there in the 1930s is very deep and complicated. There's some kind of psychic impression that has been left there by the four generations of Yarbros that poured their love and work and lives into the place, and I feel like it's my destiny to end up there with my own family someday. Finding a way to survive there would be wonderful for Brandon and me, but it's a hard thing to figure out, because the nearest towns offer nothing in the way of opportunities financially, much less socially. In some kind of fantasy world, we could have a retreat for all types of creative people and that would solve both problems at once. I have long had dreams of living in that house and inviting a huge circle of friends to visit twice a year to eat fresh food from long tables scattered across the back yard while lightning bugs flash and naked babies run around with great abandon. Maybe this is possible? Some practicality in me pooh poohs the possibility, but it's the same little voice that tried to tell me it was impossible to go live out of a pack in Europe for three months, and I did that, so you never know.

My mind is on the blink...

Well we had a pleasant journey to Chicago and back and here I am, once again, working for the man. My job has been shifted around, September being the first month that the change took effect, and let me tell you, so far, it's the bees knees. Two days in and not a single interview!

I really do love Chicago. It's so overwhelming to be in such a HUGE city when I'm so used to living life here in what now feels like teeny Memphis. We went to the Jazz Fest, and the Art Institute, the beach, hung out with our great friend Simon, and ate lotsa food of course. Incredible deep dish Chicago pizza and Indian food; also, I went into this sweet shop on a street full of Indian & Pakistani restaurants & shops, and got some excellent halva; I hadn't eaten any since I was in Greece, and what I got in this shop was excellent, both carrot and pistachio. I have to check some markets here in Memphis and see if I can get any. So, Chicago joins the list of "Cities in Which We Might Breed;" it's really the only one on the eastern side of the states. We have to do some more scouting in the West before making any kind of decision. The thing about being married, in my late twenties, is that I feel that the decisions I am making right now will really have an incredible impact on things for years and years to come. Oh Lord, anyone who ever reads this has seen this diatribe countless times, so I will spare you.

I started this Master Cleanse thing yesterday. I have done it once before, in early 2007; it's that cleanse where you have no solid food for 10 days, you only drink this lemonade concoction that is sweetened with maple syrup and spiced with cayenne. Also laxative tea at night and a "salt water flush" in the morning. I have not yet done the salt water flush because I'd have to do it at work and we all know how shit-shy I am (it pretty much makes you pee out of your butt. No joke). I've got to figure that part out. Today is day #2, and I have a kind of slight dull headache and a serious lack of energy, even though I slept like the dead last night. I know from my prior experience that my exhaustion will go away in the next couple of days, but dammit, all I want to do is go home, crawl in bed, and pull the covers over my head. Speaking of sleeping, I had a terrible dream this morning in which Bad Guys were somehow taking my mother's house away from her, and in it, all dream-Amanda could do was sob uncontrollably. I mean, throughout the whole dream, all I did was cry. I have these on occasion and they're particularly sucky because the already present helpless feeling is just magnified tenfold by the crying.

So all in all, this blog is much like my dietary life right now: BORING AS HELL. However, when I'm once again on the food wagon and regaling you with tales of my booze-fueled evenings, it will be all worth it, kittens. Because I'll be skinnier.

P.S. Liz, Amy, and I, as well as some people around here who don't actually blog, will be meeting at Jasmine's in Cooper-Young tonight for an early dinner (5:15ish). The husband and another pal will be tagging along, and anyone from my wee internet world is welcome to come, too. We'll have a fine time. Jasmine's got some of the best tofu that you've ever eaten, buddy.

Please don't let me be misunderstood

I'm listening to the All Songs Considered "Best CDs So Far" show, and I've got to say that I'd always heard of Panic At the Disco! but I didn't know how much they truly sucked until a few minutes ago. Goddamn, I hate shitty music that is just a ripoff of bands too old for kids to know the difference. They sound just like The Smiths to me. I'm always desperately trying to find some new music that's not too whiny or overproduced. Sometimes I have good luck with ASC, plus, I love Bob Boilen; he's so earnest and sweet. If I haven't found a new band in awhile, I start to feel dead inside. I have a couple of good leads from this show.

So, I am starting the Masters in Social Work program @ UT Memphis this fall, and I was really pleased and surprised to find out just how cheap my tuition's going to be since I'm a state employee. Yippee for cheap schoolin'. I can't believe that I'm going to be back in school again... this time I plan on actually studying. I was struck yesterday by the idea that I might be ready to leave Memphis by the time I get done; it will take 3-4 years for me to get my degree, and I'll be at least 30. It will more than likely be baby-making time, unless I inherited my mom's reluctant eggs (that's unfair, could've been my dad's sperm that were reluctant). Do I want to raise kids in the South? Do I want to stay here myself? Etc. etc. Just your normal "Oh jeez, I guess I'm a grown-up now" confusion.

There is a rather complicated debate about navigating to a certain resturant going on in the next aisle of cubicles. It's getting heated. Every once in awhile, you can hear punctuations of "Ridgeway!" and "LAMAR?!" For some reason, I love to hear people trying to give directions, it always ends in a big debate.

Well, I am heading to Decaturville for the weekend. B is still tied up in Memphis Most photography work, so I decided to head to my mom's for some family time. I bought some smoked salmon, cream cheese, bagels, orange juice and champagne so we can have a special breakfast one morning. What a sweetheart, huh?