(because it belongs on the FP… – promoted by pfiore8)
ThreadBare is a word-association-inspired invitation to use the ‘threads’ of conversation to:
1. use the concept of an ‘open thread’ to open hearts, open minds, and open cans of whoop-ass (sparingly, and only where appropriate. cans of whoop-ass are always on the table).
2. bare your
soul, if
you choose.
feel free to discuss personal issues, preferably your own.
3. discuss,
analyze,
and hopefully
rejuvenate
areas you feel or see as ‘worn thin’, whether personal, societal, site-related (issues, please…not ‘issues’), or miscellaneous. toss around some ideas. we’ll try to keep them in the air for you.
4. start an online mosh pit
lets bump. lets get sweaty. lets all groove the same beat for a moment, and be people together, and be. there’s no use fighting it, the internet has become…IS…its own plane of existence. lets be that plane’s hottest dance club.
the first time is saw the cure i was 16. i wore my hair very much like the lead singer you’ll see if you click the link. i kinda cleaned up my image when i had a baby three years later. i stopped dying my hair black, and i started brushing it regularly. but i still went to see the cure whenever i could. ive never been to 2 cure concerts with the same person, though. every time they came back around, i was in a different place in life, different friends, different hair. ive seen them from the back row, and ive rushed the stage. ive seen them when the lead singer was wearing a team ussr (or cccp) hockey jersey. ive gone with a brother, cousins, friends, and my child……
in 2004, the ‘baby’ i mentioned turned 16. two days after her 16th birthday, we piled into the car with some friends and drove to the tweeter center in camden, nj, to see the cure. and 7 other bands on the ‘curiosa’ tour. it was all she wanted for her birthday.
my thirteen-year-old daughter has already asked me to take her to see the cure this december. sadly, my older daughter is unable to accompany us. the brain injury she suffered 8 months after our cure experience makes her unable to tolerate anything too loud or too visually stimulating. ive seen the cure every few years across the past 22, 8 or 9 times since i was 16. ive never been to 2 cure concerts with the same person, though.
what threads hold your life together?
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Author
i had a little trouble putting the scope and flavor of what was proposed into words. that’s probably because the scope and flavor will develop over time. so feel free to ignore the opening. im hoping to improve it if (big IF) i continue these as a series.
the body is a very scaled-back version of the tip of the iceberg that is the overriding and overwhelming emotional crisis i continue to inflict on myself. so feel free to ignore the body. im hoping to improve.
as if to convince me to post this, the car i mentioned above…a car that has been sitting idle in front of my house since my daughter came home from the hospital in a wheelchair that wouldnt fit in it….left me tonight. someone else’s need to get somewhere overrode my need to keep it. so i spent today cleaning the contents of my daughter’s hospital room from the back of the car, which has been sitting idle for 2 years. cleaned out. uh-huh. yep. i get it.
nothing to add that the cure cant say better than i:
and now reading… so i’ll be back
i don’t know what holds my life together right now
i am a bit overwhelmed by this right now and maybe if it is okay, i’ll just be quiet tonight
i’d like to see how others react
today… what a day… for you
Debacle
End
Now
No
Funding
Is this a fish dish?
I am still absorbing the gift of perspective…
the unique gift of each human truth…
beautiful essay….
I will join from time to time….
three threads which hold life together for me are:
my joys…..
my loves….
and my curiosities….
Iraq
Baghdad
Al Anbar
Al Taq
So hot
114 degrees in the day and in the night, 90F.
My oldest has moved in with me for the last few months. She was with her inlaws ten miles away, and that was a bad thing. It’s not so good a thing that she is here with us, in this too small apartment with too many dogs, cats, people, failures, waiting, wanting, fear, anger, hope, laughter, so much laughter, fatigue, youth and age.
She’s here now, moved in, the dress uniforms still hanging in the closet ten miles away; the single plastic crate of dishware, the bedding, the clothes here in my closet. She brought the pug and the remaining puppies. She steals her sister’s make-up and a fight erupts. The last time she shared a room with one of her younger sister’s, they fought so often, physically at times, that she knocked one out when she threw a cell phone at her. And that was in defense.
So for now, she sleeps in my bedroom, because I have nothing she wants to steal or fight over. I’m just the mom.
He calls each morning at 6 AM; I go to bed around 2 AM or 3 AM, even on weeknights when I need to work at 9 AM the next day. I don’t know how to sleep, you see.
He calls at 6 AM, and I hear the conversation start between them and it’s usually stress and anger. How do you start the day that way? I ask her.
She sleeps with me in the queen-size because we have limited room and not enough space, really, for four adults. They talk for what seems an hour; the conversation usually, not always, but usually segues to laughter and love between them. But I hear his need for control over what is happening here, and I know how out of control they both are and how this situation is and how we all are out of control, and there is no steering wheel and no brakes, and fuck it all, why doesn’t this just stop?
He calls at 6 AM and it’s 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
He calls her, and the phone rings and I roll out of bed and leave the room and make coffee, sometimes from day-old grounds from the day before if I’m low on money. It’s like watering down a fine pale ale with ice – you shouldn’t do it that way, not in the morning when the need for caffeinated fuel in the carburetor of the brain is a requirement for facing the day, when it was the day you left when you went to sleep. How do you start the day that way, I ask myself.
6 AM, Seattle, Iraq, old stale coffee grounds made new again in the French Press, which I sometimes refrigerate the night before because near-boiling point water into a cold carafe onto fine and robust beans, Sumatra, maybe Ethiopian…well, nothing’s finer. I ignore the conundrum. I take the time to watch the water almost boil, because you see, it shouldn’t completely boil, because if it boils, and you pour it on the grounds, the acid has time to mutate into poison into the crema of the pressed liquid.
I’m so stupid. I mark the same habits with early morning tired patience, but it doesn’t really matter anymore if the grounds have already been used, does it? I work at being a fool, I think – take one element, one essential element away from a process – like new beans – and does it really destroy the intent?
I’ll be examining that thought for awhile.
114 degrees and probably in the shade.
The puppies are old enough to bark now.
How do you start the day this way?
Iraq
Defund
Come home
Let’s stop this shit.
I need to learn to sleep.
I think I’ll put on my old Cure t-shirt Sunday in honor of your
great post tonight, Ms. virgin. The rough stuff happening
right now in my own life keeps me from diving in here
rather than easier posting in my old familiars.
This place seems to rock. 😉 & ♥ to all.
Author
i had truly meant to share this story in a much less emotional fashion….and then got a big ‘yeah, right’ from the universe today that loosened some of my scabs.
Perhaps it is as easy as saying my stubbornness…my refusal to disassemble. Perhaps it is more than that.
I’ll have to dwell on this.
Robyn