giving ground

I can't believe that the year is almost half over.  I have a bad habit of tallying up the Goods and Bads of the year at hand, and measuring them against those of years past.  This tends to have a disastrous impact on my self-esteem, but I do it anyway.  Truth be told, I've only ever had one year of Kicking Ass year on paper, and it's long gone.  And anyway, it was the kind of ass-kicking that makes your aunts proud.  Boring.

So far, this year has been a terrific snarl of good intentions and life lessons.  Just when you think you've graduated from What Not To Do 101, you're right back in the first day of class.  In the Intentions column, we have (a.) The completion and release of Family Album, and (b.) An attempt to collaborate on artistic ventures with real (not imaginary) folks.  Conversely, in the Lessons column, we have (a.) The family and friends estrangement project (please see item a. of previous list), and (b.) The realization that "collaborate" means "control" to some people, and those very people walk around looking normal like everyone else, making them almost impossible to detect at first glance.  I fall into these traps and have only my non-super-power tools with which to dig myself out.  This mostly results in me feeling tired and bruised most of the time.  All I have are words and truth.  Sucks.

I don't drink Red Bull.  I don't go to parties and get louder with every passing hour, operating under the assumption that everyone will surely benefit from what I have to say.  I don't flirt.  I don't punish people by taking love, objects or communication away from them.
I'm not saying that I've never done any of those things, but I am saying that I don't do them today.  I've learned that those behaviors don't suit who I am, and more importantly, who I want to be.
I want to be an adult who respects themselves and those around them.  I choose not to have friendships or relationships that trade in bullshit.  I'm shy.  I have a partner that I adore, so flirting is moot.  And lastly, I spent what felt like an eternity in a "creative situation" with a person who was drinking Red Bull like all the water on Earth had evaporated for good, and it was a nightmare.  Have a juice and be quiet, already.

That said, I have sadness about What Could Have Been, had I only needed less at different points in my life.  If only I hadn't valued sleep, health of both the physical and emotional variety, dignity or honesty... Then I could have really made some shit happen.  But what?  Fame and fortune?  Family harmony?  World peace?  It hardly seems likely that in advocating for my basic requirements as a human, I've managed to dismantle as many as twelve of my relationships within the past three years, right?  Likely it is not.  But, true it is.  There have been times when it has felt almost Biblical in nature, like an Exodus of some kind.  I half expect frogs to fall from the sky any day now.  I wish that I were the kind of sunny person who was able to just march ahead, unscathed by it all, rattling off things that they're otherwise grateful for, but I'm not.  I spent far too much of my youth in my bedroom with Smiths and Cure records to have turned out that way.  Sure, Robert wrote some deceptively cheerful tunes about it being a lovely Friday, and how he and some lucky other were tea-drinking cats.  Fine.  But he also wrote 'Letter To Elise' and 'How Beautiful You Are', and I imagine he spent a fair amount of time in the cold bathwater after the composition of each of those heartbreak horrors.
And Morrissey, forget it.  From unrequited love to general human disappointment, the man has said his piece on the razor blade that loving someone else can be.  Anyone who tracks a chainsaw in the middle of their song has been burned a time or two.  I am a dutiful student of both of their work, and have to agree: most days do feel like Sunday around here.

So, now what?  Just songs about murder and hate and blood?  Perhaps.  Or, I could pretend to be like everyone else I see in this Music City I live in...  Hungry for attention and the first prize in a mysterious, never-ending contest.  (Now the murder music looks even more appealing.)  No, neither will do for today.  Today I get to chew on the bitter root of forgiveness.  Whenever I hear people talk about forgiveness, two things immediately spring to mind:
1. That people are arrogant lunatics who think they're setting one another free by way of "forgiving" them.
2. That Don Henley's song on the subject must be a true musical masterpiece, because it literally plays in my mind every time I hear the word.  That's a powerful hook, right there.
But seriously, forgiveness is what I struggle with today.  Yes, I've been wronged in a myriad of ways that range from very real abuses to unknowing carelessness.  I've suffered with all of them, and still do, to some extent.  But, I'm not sitting here with a wand that will bounce over each person's name and "forgive" them.  No.  The name I need to look at is my own.  Guess how I know?  Because they're all gone now.
All of those relationships that hurt me, or let me down... They're gone.  But, I still carry them around and let the weight of it all be bigger than the good I have today.
My brother recently told me that I'm an angry person, which only made me angrier.  It did so, because I have felt justified in my anger for all of these years.  These things really happened to me.  And so they did.  But they're not happening today.

Truth is, I don't now what's happening today.  People ask me about it all the time.
"What's happening with the album?  The video?"
"What's going on with your brother these days?"
"What happened with that record you were making with ___________?"
"When are you moving to L.A.?  What's the plan?"
Man, I ain't got answers to all that.  Shoot.  And the answers I do have aren't very glamorous.  See, that's the problem with kicking ass.  Do it once, and people think that's your standard for living.  Like you're just going to wake up every morning and conquer life.  You'll make hit records, design for celebrities, manage perfect personal affairs, give fantastic advice, have a clean house and look AMAZING all day long.  Well, gang, I hate to disappoint you, but my big victories this month have been making Indian food from scratch and deciding to write a book about a New Jack Swing album from the '80's.  Not exactly award-winning accomplishments.  But, they make me smile, and I take note of that these days.  In a time of such massive transistion in all areas, smiles are a valuable commodity.  I'll take 'em where I can get 'em, if you know what I mean.

No, 2011 might not be the year I impress the World with my artistic genius and intellectual prowess.  It might not be the year I mend my severed family ties, or cure Autism.  It may not be the year I finally solve the Zodiac murders (although, it also may be the year for that. The theories are strong)...  But I'd love for it to be the year that I give myself a break and learn to forgive myself for being human.  The wise people say , "Forgiveness is letting go of the hope for a better yesterday".  It always stops my heart when I hear it, because I realize that I'm still in that cycle of holding out for a different outcome of the past.
I'm not perfect.  I can't undo my nuts fifteen-year-old behavior.  I can't change who I was at twenty-one, or even thirty-one.  And you know what?  I also can't apologize for it for the rest of my life.  Anyone who thinks I need to is not a friend.  And I can let them go.

All of this self-realization has wiped me out, but first thing tomorrow, I'm making wand to bounce over my own name... Perfect people have wand-making supplies, right?  RIGHT?

Thanks for listening,
buick audra