blogged-down_5.0: You're Gettin' Even While I'm Gettin' Odd

10:57 am - Continue here:

http://silentrex.wordpress.com/

That is all.

11:47 am

I really hate people.

Anyone who wants me can find me in Facebook Scrabble.

And I move in two weeks.  Finally.

11:22 pm

Slept away most of the day, which I imagine I must have needed to finish kicking that cold's ass.
Can't wait to get into the new place.  Feel like I've been staying in a motel all summer.  Wanna go home.

Other than that, been spending almost all my free time playing Scrabble on Facebook and waiting for the school term to start.

05:02 pm

Welp, provided nothing goes wrong with inspection or funding -- neither of which I expect -- the Triple-Double Odd House will be mine. :)

...And there was great rejoicing...

P.S.:  The cat's name is Bhikku.

10:27 am

In the Payback's A Bitch Dept. (or maybe the Backfired/Ricocheting Prayers Dept.):  I wasn't able to secure House Manifestation #2 because apparently Soon-To-Be-Ex-Wife was a raging twat and Soon-To-Be-Ex-Husband was either supremely flaky or avoiding STBEW completely, so no one from their corner was able to respond to me.  The RE agency representing them has cut the happy couple loose for being impossible to work with, and the place is off the market.  But it's okay.

HM#3, the Triple-Double Odd House, is a Rexi-sized and completely quirky abode with a fabulous basement for band practice built in, which is just what the current owner has been using it for these last 16 years with evidently no squawking from the neighbors.  I have a *very* good feeling about this one.

The seller would also like me to keep his cat with the house.  Somehow this feels entirely in line with the kind of life I always wind up leading despite my best intentions.  I'll talk to him about it.

06:05 pm

Okay, fine.  Life goes on.  Whatever.

01:39 pm

I need to learn to be specific in my supplications to The Gods™: I would like my offer to be available for use by the sellers as a vehicle for payback that benefits me.  Based on deduction from second-hand reports, it seems as if one of the feuding spouses is withholding a response as a way of getting back at the other one.

Whatever.  If they can't play even a little bit nice, then I will have to move on if this goes on more than another day.  The bar has been raised significantly, though, on what houses I will consider acceptable.

07:17 am

Re: 9/14/08, 3rd entry:  Forty lashes for me for overwriting.  I could have just said: "When I'm sad I want to leave everything and run away from here, but maybe there's an amazing new life waiting for me wherever I run to, but maybe I'd be running from an amazing life here that's just going through a bad patch, and why would I want to throw away everything I've achieved here anyhow, but really it's probably mostly about attitude no matter where I wind up."  Considerably less freaky and more straightforward. 

This morning I'll skip the overwrought poetics and just record the fact that I'm sad, with a sentimental song stuck in my head, but eager to see what the day brings as far as business dealings go. 

ETA after receiving an email from my agent:  So far the day brings a big fat goose egg.  The sellers' agent has apparently had it with these people for not playing well with others and for generally impeding progress.  It now becomes all the more apparent why this place has been on the market for a while.

07:06 pm

House Manifestation #2 update:  The sellers are engaged in complete war with one another and apparently cannot converse civilly or frequently enough to figure out what to do about me.  And so another deadline has passed.  Even if they try to negotiate, I suspect they are (or at least one of them is) going to try to get greedy about it, so this might not work for me -- but I'll hang on for now and see what happens.

A friend from a few years ago resurfaced back in town and randomly at my front door today.  I'd just been asking Maj the other day if she knew what happened to this friend, so she's been on my mind anyhow.  This is somebody who at the time seemed to be getting close enough to pose a bit of a threat to my relationship with Girl, and we both wound up cutting her off -- I remember running into her not long afterward at Maj's moving party and she didn't say anything, but registered deep hurt in her eyes that I can still feel.  So today she shows up at my place while I'm working, says she's back and tard-farming at the Zombie House two doors down, surveys my de facto studio-apartment-inside-a-house setup with half the rooms sealed off and a workbench with my power tools set up in the middle of the kitchen, gets the quick rundown on my life over the past few years and especially this summer, says she's out of partying and is looking for mellow folks to hang with that aren't all caught up in the scene, and we agree to hang out very soon. 

All of this promises to be an excellent distraction, I suspect.  On the other hand, I was kind of searching her eyes and aura to see if there could be anything else there at this point, and that just made me long really badly for The One Who Got Away.  As much pain has passed between me and TOWGA recently, as hurtful as the words have been on both sides and as much as I've done to try to numb myself just so I can get out of bed in the morning and sleep at night and try to formulate a working plan for this stage of my life in between, and as sure as I've been that if she (entirely improbably) came around again now I'd find myself irreversibly driven to destroy things just because of the depth of my bitterness at both the world and the specific situation, today I was left with a feeling that what I'd actually do is drop everything to be with her.  It so rarely happens that I get close to someone who simultaneously inspires me to be the best I can be and inspires me to worship the ground they walk on.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the souls in this world who have brought me so high and so low, who have sent my ploddingly stable little low-key world spinning so wildly out of its orbit and yet whose very existence seemed to promise a depth and a groundedness unparalleled even in my own experience so far.  But that's neither here nor there, really, as far as the formulation of my working plan goes.  It would probably be better if nothing like that happened right now.

This relationship arouses energies in the two of you that will not allow matters to stay as they are. What you have to learn is that the changes you seek must come about through natural evolution, not through your urging. Even if you do not consciously work at it, the Pluto energies will operate, but they will work out better if your ego is not so heavily involved.

*ETA: ...worship the ground they walk on realistically, even.  One of those rare situations where you realize how profoundly incredible someone has turned out to be while at the same time squarely facing some of their more obvious bullshit with equanimity and going, Yes, this is perfectly OK with me, nothing here I can't handle.  All the more reason to keep falling back into mourning.

08:28 am - Rules for Alleviating Suffering, #2

(Religion under construction - pardon our dust)

2.  Whenever taking something apart that has a lot of small pieces, put the pieces all together in a container of some sort.

05:26 am

Gahhhh.  Nearly a month later and I'm still waking up at 4am every day.  Some days I can pummel myself back into unconsciousness.  Not today.

The day's prayer goes something like this:

Dear Gods and Goddesses (here I somehow always picture the Justice League, specifically the SuperFriends),

With regard to the house offer, please help bring about whatever outcome you think will be best for me.  In any case, please block other buyers from submitting any offers better than mine before 5pm today, which is the deadline on my extension.

Also, if one or both of the sellers are assholes, please allow my offer either to calm their afflictions or serve as a vehicle for payback, whichever is more fitting.

If you can also make my chest stop hurting from allergies or whatever the hell I've got, that would be awesome.

Smooches,
-SR

09:28 pm - Uplifting Thought of the Day

There are simple things you can do to alleviate some of your own suffering.  One of those is to brush your teeth.

08:10 pm

By day, I've been feeling like I'm coming out of a sickness.  Then, as each night falls, I feel I'm still in the throes of sickness. 

If that latest house works out, I can overwinter in my cave and do my best to be gentle with myself, striving to create conditions from which new life might emerge in the spring.

If it doesn't, anything still goes, up to and including taking the hell off for parts and adventures unknown, which is what I want to do when my grief is strongest.  I'll come across a picture or something she wrote and feel it all over again, as I did tonight.  But the difference between me and the ones I fall hardest for is that they never pause to look back.  The fork in the road that would send me wandering the earth with just the pack on my back represents not just self-imposed exile, but also a pathway to things I have not yet dreamed of.  The conflict here is between (1) using my accumulated power to continue manifesting that which I have already set in motion for myself in service of my happiness -- that is, I can own that path as mine alone, with or without companions to share the journey, and determine to let it nourish me as I nourish it, trusting that Nature and I are in touch and that's all I need to know -- or (2) just burning it all down to the foundation, leaving it there to smolder, and walking away to try some other thing entirely, or simply throwing myself into the current and letting it take me where it will, which I guess you could say is another version of trusting that Nature and I are in touch and that's all I need to know.  There are so many roads branching off at every step that they practically leave me immobile as I pause to second-guess each direction not taken, or as I start down one, turn back, start down another, and so on and so forth.  Much energy expended with little progress to show.

Looking at it another way, the song in the air this year is about the transitory nature of life and all that's in it.  There is no escaping that song.  It's being piped to me through little speakers embedded in every life form on the whole damned planet.  All that's left to decide is whether it's more of a paean or more of an elegy, or some of both.  Even then, the answer by itself doesn't determine the path I will follow.  Only I can determine that path.  What it does go a long way toward determining is whether I will be open on that path, or whether I will be closed -- and the answer to that question does make a difference in deciding which course of action is most attractive, although I still couldn't tell you exactly what the difference is.

I prodded the agent.  The deadline for the sellers to respond has come and gone.  Intuitively I felt them arguing over the offer (they are divorcing).  I just confirmed that is in fact the case.  I feel I should meditate, but having just set off an emotional mini-tornado in my head, my powers of elemental persuasion are weaker than they should be for this particular meditation.  In plain English, I'm not sure I can send sufficient force out into the universe to secure that place as my home when my resolve to have a home here is compromised, when I feel as shredded and conflicted as I do at the moment.  I need to let it alone.  My stomach is bothering me, but I'm going to have a beer, which signals the end of my productive day and the prelude to my falling over fully clothed on the bed with the doors open and the lights on.

05:45 pm - The embodiment of Pentacle Energy

I thought of this today. This feels like me right now:

01:31 am

Vacation week is about to draw to a close.  Luckily I'm not back in school quite yet, since I have a ton more patching and touching up to do around here.

Cross fingers and toes, I might have found a new and more perfect place to go live.  It's not a downsize really, and it won't let me quit my job, but it's awesome.  I should know more within the coming day or two. 

This is the first night in recent memory when I've actually gotten undressed and made a plan to go to bed, as opposed to simply falling over fully clothed on the bed wherever I can fit with whatever sheets I can steal out from under the dogs, with the back door still open and half the lights still on.  Still, "going to bed" means crawling into the bed set up frameless in the living room next to nearly everything else I haven't sold, given away or put in storage, which is a hell of a way to be a newly minted 40-year-old, but I guess it means my life is still a little bit interesting.

I decided a good goal would be to not bring self-pity with me to my new place.  Solitude, yes, and frequent disappointment on days like today where the only human contact I have is with an assortment of service professionals, but no pity.  That's especially true if I score this new house and come out of it more or less as solvent as I started after the old one sells.  Then all these ex-loves who shat on me and dumped me in the trash can have their lives, and they can even keep what shreds remain of my sexual dignity.  I'll have my sanctuary and the means to keep it.

11:51 pm

Oh, yeah, so.  The deal on House Manifestation #1 has, for all intents and purposes, gone south.  Inspection and subsequent second opinions and estimates turned up some true ugliness, including but by no means limited to a problem with the big, majestic trees on the lot -- which my favorite tree care guy says not only need to be trimmed back, but actually need to come entirely down, since the ivy has just about choked the life out of them and they're dangerous now.  Add to that a whole host of major issues not only with the lot and its vegetation, but with the house itself, and I have become significantly less enthusiastic about the situation.  I wrote to the agent tonight to tell him I want to disapprove the deal based on the results.  It sucks because it probably means the ultimate owner will be another developer paying cash who will simply raze the lot and put in some kind of huge grass patch and ticky-tacky house -- but I can't take this on.  It doesn't match my objectives anymore, and I'm not as rich as I wish I were.

So the house hunt is back on, and I might be able to take a little more time readying this place for sale, which is fine with me.

11:37 pm - I didn't even have to use my AK...

Got kidnapped for birthday and taken to beautiful place anyway, which was beautiful.  If you've gotta grieve, there are worse places and ways to do it than in a peaceful meadow up on a mountain after being plied with top-notch microbrew and free pie.

Then Maj (the kidnapper) and I went to G&K's house, where G&K had made vegetarian Indian food and cheesecake for us.  They also gave me a basket with coffee and tea and hot cocoa and a mug and stuff, and their foster kid gave me a box of Pop-Pop snappers.  After the kid went to bed, they gave me this leather bracelet:



Me:  "That's exceptionally cruel."
K:  "What?  We're helping you manifest sex."
Me:  "I'm gonna manifest an apostrophe."
G:  "Virgo."

08:26 pm

Changed mind.  No beautiful place for birthday.  Have solitary date with basement, alcohol, and personal demons.  It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

House finally starting to look and feel empty.  Traded bed to some couple for smaller bed.  Sold and gave away more bulky stuff.  Storage locker getting full... not even sure how many of those things I will want back later.

Signed paperwork to have house listed.  Still waiting for data to try to negotiate on other place, but losing steam.  Acutely aware of unused Qantas credit, tempted to quit job and put school on hold after house sells and go for an indeterminate length of time.

04:30 pm

Dear Universe,

You continue to open to me at a nearly alarming rate, and for that I should probably be thankful, except that simultaneously my own grip on matters is rapidly slipping.  All I can see in front of me right now is the phenomenal depth and breadth of what I have lost.

It's true that I have been focusing on a particular place to go to.  Today I have seen, though, that it would be just as easy -- perhaps easier -- to just go.  Many of the preparations look exactly the same. 

 

07:11 am

The epic trip will be rescheduled for next year.  This year's epic will take place closer to home, wherever home may be.

Probably 70% of the stuff here has either been sold, given away, or put in storage, with more to go.

The old house is being painted today, which is driving the dogs absolutely batty.

I have this coming week off, and except on my birthday, I will be painting and patching the old house.  On my birthday, I will be wherever I'm taken.  I asked a friend to take me somewhere out of town: doesn't much matter where, as long as it's beautiful and isn't the beach.

The other house is at that "how much will it cost to fix this jacked-up thing they did and will the seller shave anything off to compensate for the expense" stage. 

Once again, the birds are trying to tell me something.  Or, rather, this time random people are appearing to tell me something about the birds.  The crows haven't spoken with me directly lately, at least that I've noticed.

Exhibit A:  Woman from Craigslist comes to buy compost tumbler.  While checking it out, she looks around and says, in response to nothing in particular, "At least the crows are at bay."  (Which, as previously noted, they are.)

Exhibit B:  Over at potential new place, gate is open and two neighborhood kids -- a Hispanic girl in a pink dress, probably around 10 years old with dark pigtails and two missing front teeth, and her little 7- or 8-year-old brother, who sports a crew cut and whose English isn't quite as advanced as the girl's -- park their bikes and let themselves in to hunt crickets (what they had looked more like grasshoppers, but whatever).  They beckon me over to check them out.  During the conversation that ensues, they tell me a little about the old guy who lived and died on the property.  They don't know what his name was, but they remember he had an eagle.  An eagle.  Remember this is in the inner city.  They say the eagle died, and show me the area on the land where it's buried.  They say they think the house is haunted by the old man.  (I respond I hope I treat the place well enough that he won't haunt me; of course he's welcome to stay.)

Exhibit C:  At storage units, a hippie-looking couple probably around my age, looking like they're living out of their camper van along with a small dog, are going through the stuff in their unit. The man is down on one knee presiding over the pile, handling a TV, trying to determine its condition.  I can't find a free cart; the woman unloads hers and gives it to me.  She tells me they had an apartment but got "bombed out... it's hard to rent anymore."  I ask them about living in the van.  She looks sad.  Evidently this apartment they had was a while ago:  "Yeah, but nine months is a long time.  I know, I know, I should be grateful.  Well, Great Sparrow will provide."  (I agree, then go back home and Google "Great Sparrow" -- which, unless they were talking about the South African breed, isn't from any established tradition I can find.)

If at the end of all this I find myself situated in the new place, there is, I think, going to have to be a small altar.  On it, for one thing, will need to be the Nine of Pentacles (probably Rider deck or some variation thereon, although we'll see).  And now also the trio of crow, eagle, sparrow.  I've been reading and asking certain people what they think it all means.