Gorax

The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles.

Last week I found myself at an informal high school buddy reunion in Clinton, Utah. I held their babies, laughed behind the back of my hand at a poor 4-year-old boy who hated everything and everyone and showed it, and let two toddlers hand-feed me trail mix like I was a baby doe at the zoo. I discussed morning commutes with the husbands and let my long lost girlfriends tell me my "time will come" and someone is bound to come along and discover the hidden marriageable gems within my prickly and childish skin. I have to say I enjoyed my time with the babies most of all. I like having my hair petted and food jammed between my teeth.

Most of you that frequent this page are already wedded and bedded and babied. So really, no, you cannot relate to this post. Let me be defensive here (grin, wink). More so than even fantasizing about a husband (I've long since swept those old dreams from my mind....I'm sure I'll be married eventually, but I'm afraid my standards aren't as lofty as I once envisioned. I wanted to marry Gilbert Grape, Laurie Laurence, Teddy Kent, Dr. Raymond Stantz, Jack Kelly, Dickon Sowerby. These people aren't real), I've begun to be haunted by unborn children.

Gross, right? I know. But what can I do? It's just happening! Whenever I take long drives or bike rides or walks, whenever I can't go back to sleep or I'm in the house by myself, I'm visited by dark, shaggy-haired little kids who are pretty good-natured for the most part and clever for their ages. Yeah, okay? I'm jealous. Envious. GREENLY envious. I secretly despise as much as admire all of you married and procreated blood brothers out there. I'm sorry! I'm apologizing! It is what it is. This is this. I feel as barren and desolate as the desert I came from. I am overwhelmed by the chain of events that must inevitably come before I have my son, my daughter. The time seems without boundaries--as vast and unpredictable as gray-clouded mornings that seem always just on the verge of breaking up or downpouring. Well.

I find myself protective of my teenage girls at school. They know me pretty well now, and I am instilled with a confidence and gentle reproving that have led many girls to trust me with their stories and respect me for the expectations I hold with them. I adore them, and love several. I am proud of my girls who arrived a month ago, ornery and bristly as any catclaw I ever hiked through bare-armed, who come to class smiling now, joking with me and pelting me with bags of flour after I got them good in our Steal the Flag Flour War last Friday. I go home and weep for the tally marks they have cut into the fleshy sides of their forearms and biceps, their upper thighs. I cry for the bastards who took advantage, who pressured them into so many addictions and depressions, for the parents who stocked their homes with alcohol, pot, pornography. I want to make a home for my girls. I want to be a home-builder. I want to mother and nurture and nest and beat off adversaries with beak and claw. I love going to work where everyone is working so hard at taking off masks, bearing what they strived for so long to hide away, secret into corners. Maybe that's why I'm unveiling my biological clock today, maybe I just want attention. Who knows where thoughts come from? They just do.

Well, ghost kids really aren't that bad to have around. I promise I won't bring them along on any first dates. For my friends who have people to go home to tonight and dinners to make for all your hungry mouths, hug them extra tight tonight. I'm just saying, you can't be too grateful for what you have. I'll try to remember that myself. Over and out.

Identity Crisis

I'm living in Provo now and surprisingly loving it. Truly. I live south enough to avoid most college freshmen, and I am within walking distance of an Asian marketplace, a historic city library, a cemetery, and a lonely gazebo I can watch lightning storms in with the company of old smoking men. I met my roommate, a 28-year-old successful artist girl avec very large dog, on Craigslist, but I'm adamant it was fate that brought us together. We get along brilliantly...she even loves What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Wipeout! Truly a match made by the angels. Last night was really the first chance we had to successfully beef up our connection by sharing dirt on former educational pursuits, failed relationships, hopes, and dreams. I even found out that my collection of primitive living almanacs and how-to books rival her own library. Shock!

Anyway, midnight came and we were still story-swapping last evening. I lay against the extremely large and comfortable couch in our front room, staring at the ceiling and playing with my hair when she says, "Has anyone ever told you you look just like Winnie Cooper?"


Well, I have. So, this selfish post is dedicated to the characters I've been told consistently and by multiple people throughout my life that I look just like. Winnie Cooper definitely takes number one. I've been told that since I was 12. My secret crush was the first to make the connection and I wanted so much for him to be my Kevin Arnold. Didn't happen.

I've also been told by later crushes that I looked just like Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth. If only. She is beautiful. I would love to have a friend do my hair huge and brilliant like her's in that snow globe dancing ball scene with super hot David Bowie. My friend Russ claims that Mary Poppins was his sexual awakening movie. Mine was the snow globe scene from Labyrinth.


Recently I've had people suggest I remind them of Kiera Knightley dressed as a boy in the Pirates movies. I think "dressed as a boy" is the key element....I don't see it, personally, but again, consistently and repeatedly this is what I've been told.


I also apparently look like Pixar characters (I know what's that like...my arch nemesis from 2001, Chris Bailey, looks JUST like the boy in Toy Story II that sings "You've Got a Friend in Me to his Woody puppet doll and hugs him all happily. Spitting image, man). The girl from The Incredibles and the tiny girl from Monsters, Inc. are supposedly what I would look like computer animated.



Finally, I took one of those lame "Who do you look like?" online celebrity programs where you upload a picture of yourself and they tell you who you look like? Well, the computer thinks I look like Kiera Knightley, Sandra Bullock, Liv Tyler, and no other than Danny Devito himself.

McCarthy's The Road

I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road in 48 hours. Books have been making me cry lately, I'm not sure if it's hormones or what, but I wept like a child when I finished this last night at midnight. I am haunted, again. I've always had a fascination and "a thing" for apocalyptic novels, but I have never read anything as realistic and rational and absolutely sickeningly terrifying as this read. There is no hope and all hope. It is empty, blank, dry, lifeless, dark, and cold. Yet it stands as one of the bravest and most wrenchingly poignant stories of love I have ever experienced. Don't read this book if you like apocalyptic novels to end with the tiny sprout of green poking through the dead earth at the end of the story. McCarthy does not sugarcoat, and he does not soften his blows and risk kitsch endings. However, he gleams more light from dead cold ashes than I thought possible. This book has forced me to realign my priorities, reconsider my loved ones and my life, and spend fifty more bucks on food storage (salt will be the new gold, people!).
Anyway, if you haven't read it, read it. I'm considering teaching it to my high school girls during 4th term but I'm worried it will only increase their suicidal tendencies (I was close to giving up halfway through the novel, it was so bleak and so terribly hopeless). If any of you have thoughts, I'd like to consider them.

Oh, and hopefully the movie will be as incredible as No Country For Old Men. As I was reading The Road, I was trying to decide who would make a good actor for the father and I am pleased that Viggo Mortensen has taken the role. The movie comes out in November, an appropriate time to revisit the novel of so many chilled nights and snowy mornings.