Take a deep breath

After my freakout dream last week, and the subsequent slump I fell into later in the week, I was, according to my loving spouse, intolerable. Greeaaat. Luckily, a weekend of rehearsals and dinner with friends proved a good salve, I think. I'm still stressed out about work and life and balancing the two, but I suspect I'm back to being tolerable. Until I'm delightful again, I'll take tolerable.

So, this week, I've been trying to keep my eyes open to little blessings and inspirations. Always in the spirit of Clare. Here are some that I found that have made me smile, and feel good, in no particular order.

Honey, spotted a postcard from last week's Post Secret. It said "Nutella turns me on." He looked over at me. "Did you send this in?" I didn't. But we both know I may as well have.

Hearing The Beatles' Revolution this morning on the drive in to work. I almost changed the channel. I know this song. Frakkin' Nike used it to hawk overpriced shoes. Why hear it again for the umpteenth time on a station aimed at my parents? But I listened anyway with newer ears. It gave me a charge to keep on keepin' on ("Don't you know it's gonna be alright?"). And for some reason it seemed fitting today, the 45th anniversary of my childhood hero's seminal speech, the same day that Barack Obama, heir to that dream (though, I suppose we're all heirs), accepts his nomination as the Democratic candidate for President. My God, I'm ready for this revolution. Please let it work.

Walking to grab lunch after a morning rain, today. Seeing droplets clinging to the leaves of trees and their soggy blossoms. Feeling content in the saturated colors around me, in the soppy creation.

What's Molly Dreaming Now? Edition 8

I slept harder last night than I had done in relatively recent memory. Here is the journey I took through the sandman's world:

I had dinner with Tina Fey. She and I were eating massive sandwiches and I was talking to her about my recent health issues and how I'm still trying to cope with those, physically and emotionally. The ear she lent me was completely sympathetic. Poor thing was basically my therapist over hoagies.

Then I dreamt that I was at home with Honey, but we were in an apartment from which we would be moving soon. Our apartment looked like a larger version of one of my childhood bedrooms. I ventured into our kitchen and discovered we were hosting a sorority reunion (Kappa something or other), which was particularly interesting since I was never in a sorority and Honey scorns collegiate social fraternities. I didn't mind so much except that they had brought all these fantastic cream puffs, vegetable platters and liquor and it was all off-limits to me. In my own kitchen! They weren't even going to leave any leftovers with us! Ugh. One of the sorority sisters was a girl I went to high school with, Leah. Leah looked fantastic and had a great job and a little daughter and was happy. ... I still just wanted some puff pastries.

Then I was at work. What my job was was not entirely clear, but it did involve rolled fondant and it took for-e-ver! I was chugging along and chugging along and chugging along and when I finally looked at the clock, it was 4AM. I had been at work for 19 hours! The sun was beginning to paint the black sky periwinkle. I decided it was time to go home and sleep for a few hours ... because there would still be work to do in the morning. More fondant to roll, or whatever. And the staff I was working with was still plugging along. No one was quite sure when to leave.

Normally, when I post a dream, I'm a bit befuddled by my dream and want to hear if any readers have any thoughts as to what the dream "means." This time, I have no doubt.

Tuesday night, I had dinner with my best friend from high school, who was in town on business for a few days. She mentioned that some of my quirks reminded her of Liz Lemon, Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock. She agreed with Honey's assessment of me, in an imagined alternate choice-path, living as Liz Lemon. Why the apartment and why the sorority reunion in my kitchen, I still don't know. Why the denial of food? Still unclear to me, but I LOVE food, so maybe I'm feeling deprived of something and it's manifesting itself in my dreams as happy, sweet, puffy food. But I know exactly why I dreamt the third part of my dream: I am working lots of long hours, lately.

We've got a massive project at work, which will churn on for at least another 6 weeks, for which my average day has become 10 to 10.5 hours long, frequently longer. Yesterday was about 11 and a quarter hours, about 11 and 3/4 if you include the time I left my front door to the time I returned. This has been going on since about mid-June and will continue till early October, if I'm lucky. I'm feeling very stressed out; I'm not getting paid any extra and though I've finally been given responsibilities commensurate to my experience and capabilities, as well as delegation authority, my title still languishes in the dusty entry level.

I'm a zombie. I haven't been reading half of the blogs I normally keep up with - not because I'm not interested, but because I'm exhausted. I have to make appointments to leave at a decent hour (6PM) just so I can have a life or get home to feed my dog on time. And even then, it raises the eyebrows of my superiors, like I'm a slacker. I really like what I do but I detest that I can't have dinner with my husband every night, or that if friends want to meet at 7 for drinks I can't promise I can make it.

I'm feeling really stuck. Family is vital to me. I want to have dinner (preferably before 7) each night with my husband, just like we used to, just like my family did when I was growing up. Outside interests are vital to me. If I have a rehearsal at 7:30, I don't want to have to feel like an asshole for leaving at 7, or 6:30 or 6 or 5:30! Or even if I just want to go to a play or a movie. But, it's not just my office, it's like this anywhere in my line of work. In fact, my office is probably on the better side of work/life management for my industry, so I'm not sure looking elsewhere would improve the balance. I really love my line of work, though. Even though this particular project has a terminus, the time-stress will continue. Maybe not 11 and 12 hour days - though, why should I complain when everyone in this area works those hours in every industry, because we are all hyper-acheivers - but the stress of feeling like an asshole for leaving on time or at a reasonable hour.

I'm between a rock and hard place, I think. I love what I do. I hate that it impedes my real life. I despised my last long-running office. It was an insult to my intelligence and my creativity. It accounted for 70% of the reason I went to grad school - anything to keep the synapses firing. But I was out by 5PM, sharp. This job insults neither (though I'm not a fan of our products, per se), but the dinner hour is ruined.

So sorry to be dour. So sorry I haven't checked your blogs in a long, long time. Maybe in October?

Wow! I can never watch that fantastic piece of cinema again!

This evening I was driving home, listening to a Pandora "quick mix" on my phone. "Hoppipolla" came on. It was the music played behind the Children of Men trailer a few years ago and it set my mind on a cinematic drift. Specifically, trying to recall what movies do I never want to see again? I do want to see Children of Men again sometime, but Honey tells me I shouldn't.

Allow me to explain, briefly. Honey saw Children of Men sometime last year. He highly recommended it. Said it was really stirring and urged me to see it so we could talk about it. So, a few months later, when he was out of town, I rented it and watched. With the company of a few beers (and a playful dog). "So what did you think?" he asked eagerly when he got home. I told him I liked it, but I wanted to see it again to really soak it in. Then I told him I was kinda buzzy when I watched it. "You were drunk?! You need to watch it again sober. If you were sober, you would never want to see that movie again! Watch it again - no beer! - and then we can talk!" It's been probably 9 months since that conversation. I have yet to sit down and try again. But that conversation - and the idea of a negative visceral reaction to a film - was brought back by the simple piano plunks of Sigur Ros.

So what movies can I never watch again, because my reaction was so visceral?

In no particular order, here are a few that come to mind:

1. A Clockwork Orange. A guy I was "messing around with" when I was freshman in college had this movie. We started the evening with several wine coolers (shut up, I was 18) and a viewing of Pink Floyd's The Wall and moved onto this classic later in the night. I have never had a stomach for cruelty in film or on the page. When Malcolm and his thugs invaded the home of the couple and rape the wife in front of the husband, I felt violated, myself. I felt like something had been taken from me. Not my innocence, but a part of my soul, maybe. Maybe my disgust at the scene was partly because I was watching this movie as the only woman in a room full of boys - all of us drunk - who just raved about how great this movie is. Seriously? Doesn't make me feel particularly great - or safe. I know, I know. Clockwork Orange is supposed to be about the relationship between violence and entertainment and moral authority and corruption and yadda, yadda, yadda ... Fine. I got that. Doesn't mean I can ever stomach it again. Rape in cinema? Hurtful. Rape while disabling the victim's partner? Wrenching.

2. Pan's Labyrinth. I really loved this movie. I can't ever watch it again, but I loved it. The fantasy. The beauty in the grotesque. The personal mythology. The Spanish language. Extraordinary soundtrack. (Couldn't shake the lullabye for months.) Yea!! I actually tried watching this again. Honey had rented it. I went downstairs while he had it on, caught about 3 minutes of it and had to go back upstairs. Again: the cruelty. And the cruelty in this film was particularly brutal. A son killed in front of his father - not shot, or anything simple and clean; bludgeoned. Routine torture. Self-surgery. Probably more rape; I blocked a lot of it from my memory. Icky and tragic stuff. And the world that the little girl creates for herself (or maybe really exists) is only marginally better than the hell in which she lives outside her imagination. Technically beautiful film. Eats your heart. Honey agrees that it's a movie he can never watch again. To be honest, I haven't found anyone who's said they can, or have.

3. Schindler's List. Confession. I have actually seen this movie more than once. Twice. But can you take a wild guess as to why I don't want to see it again? Cruelty! The second and last time I saw it was over a decade ago. It was on broadcast TV, no commercials, and maybe no editing. (I'm blanking on that, to be honest.) I guess this is one of those that I don't necessarily want to see again, but it's so gripping and frankly, culturally and historically important, that I would again. Like when we have kids, I won't hesitate to show them this when they're mature enough to grasp it all. [Sidebar: Growing up, my parents were fairly strict about rated-R films. We weren't allowed to see them before age 17. Schindler's List was one of the few exceptions. I was 16, my brother was 12. My folks sensed that this was bigger than the MPAA. I remember it being important for them that we saw it. Like when Dad took me to see Ghandi when I was six. Sub sidebar: That same year, The Secret of NIMH, an animated - though dark - flick about mice. NIMH terrified me. Dad had to take me about 3 times before I could handle it. In the end, I loved it. Ghandi, a 4-hour ouevre stuffed with strife and violence, was apparently just right for my 6-year-old movie palate. That one, I dragged Dad to thrice! What kind of mind is that?]

... okay, I've totally digressed at this point. I can't think of any other films, at this point, that I'd rather not see again, based on a negative visceral reaction. Anything turn your tummy?

Homeward Bound

... I wish I was/ homeward bound ... home! where my thoughts escape me ... those lyrics were stuck in my head all during the last two weeks of July. Why?

I returned to the place of my birth, after an eleven-year absence, last weekend. I lived in the Texas panhandle until I was 12. It was kind of weird to me that I'd been gone from my native town for almost as long as I'd lived there to begin with.

We went for the wedding of a dear cousin and it was a much-needed escape. Frankly, I think I could've used an additional 2 or 3 days there. Going back home it felt like a favored sweater: safe and familiar. I remembered the streets and routes, for the most part. There's Grandpa's old church; there's our old church; there's my grade school; there's my favorite donut place in the world; that's where we saw a tornado in the early 80s (a field now populated by houses); there's the odor of the feed lots 60 miles away on the wind; there's where Honey and I spent an afternoon making out when we were young lovers and he came to visit me when I spent a summer here in college. It's a town that I relished revisiting and look forward to revisiting. After we moved, when I was in junior high (the wrongest time to ever uproot a child, by the way) to a very, very small town in Southwest Texas so amazingly far from anywhere that you had drive 3 hours just to do anything, my native town was even more dear to me. We returned several times a year during the 90s to visit friends and family. And my parents still trek there at least once a year.

But I also feel like my relationship with my native city has changed. I've grown and developed my own life. And as much as I love my native town, as much as it'll always be home to me, and feel safe, familiar and happy, my relationship with it is almost similar now to my relationship with my parents. I love my parents endlessly. I appreciate everything they've ever done and still do for me, but I wouldn't want to live with them again, if I could avoid it.

It's the same with the native town. It'll always be home and I want to keep revisiting it, because I love it, but I wouldn't want to live there again. There are definitely worse places to live, and if it came up that we needed to move there, I could easily do it; I just wouldn't seek it out.

However, visiting got me thinking about what kind of lifestyle I want. I think about that occasionally, but the last two or three weeks, it's really been on my mind. Going to home to a place where there is NO SUCH THING as rush hour, where family hews together and people are home by 5:15 at the latest, surged the question the front of my mind. Honey and I have always said we'll move west again, seeking a slower pace of life, and I suspect we'll do it at some point - probably after we have kids. But where west? And frankly, after a couple of years when I was aching to move west again, I'm really enjoying where we are right now, I simply want a break from the hyper-acheivement and suffocating time-crunch of this area. I typically get to work between 8:30 and 9, often earlier (though today, I'm allowing myself 9) and don't get home till well after 6, sometimes well after 7. It's often the same for Honey - worse even, seeing as how he goes in earlier than I do. It's been particularly hectic for the last two months and only promises to get worse into the fall. (That's why I've been posting and commenting so infrequently, lately.)

Calvin Trillin, in an interview with Diane Rehm, or maybe Terri Gross, once said he wanted his kids, though raised in Brooklyn, to think they were being raised in Kansas, where he grew up. I think that's what I want, not just that my kids think they're in West Texas, but I want some West Texas here, on the East Coast amidst the 70% humidity, the over-acheivers and the road rage. I really like where I live; I just want to like my life more. I want to breathe.

Oh, and as for the mixtape above. Just a sampling of the soundtrack for the weekend.
1. At the Zoo - Simon and Garfunkel. Every morning, we had a home-cooked breakfast at my aunt and uncle's house. They made sure to have music playing at meal times. One morning the selection was Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel. This was one of them. I simply included it, because I love this song and hadn't heard it in years.

2. The Dress Looks Nice on You - Sufjan Stevens. My dear, dear cousin used this as her processional. She's 22. She's one of the few youngsters who I think is mature enough to make this leap. The ceremony was really low-key (literally a backyard event) and though religious, they chose not to use any religious music. I think their recessional was from The Beatles. I'm ambivalent about the choice of song, but I love that she loved it, and that she bucked panhandle norms: a wreath of flowers and ivy on her head, little make-up, eastern-inspired jewelery, barefoot under her gown, walking herself down the aisle ... she, like me for my wedding, wanted to do henna tattoos on her hands, but didn't know anyone who could do it. (Had I known, I'd've offered Virginia Gal's talents!)

3. Our Town - Iris Dement. As we drove around town one afternoon, Mom was lamenting the changes that have occurred in our old stomping grounds. (Though I was also struck by how little had changed in decade.) This song happened to be on my iPod and popped up on our connecting flight from DFW. It just felt fitting.

4. Viva la Vida - Coldplay. Another one that popped up on my iPod, on the return flight. I'd heard it a time or two, but it hadn't really grabbed me yet. I think it ciezed me this weekend - and I've been unable to shake it since - because going home to the far slower pace of life, to sunrises unimpeded by mountains and hills and skyscrapers, to the constant 10 or 15 mph breeze and the negligible humidity, was nothing short of reviving. My happiest self is a sprite who soars among clouds and stars and skims close to the ground. This weekend tickled her again for the first time in years. I was weightless. And for some reason, this song, at this moment, found that chink in my armor to sing to that weightlessness.