2:48 p.m. - 2004-12-08
brief bio pt 1
OK Today I am going to attempt to make sense out of my life through the magic of cathartic writing. The problem is that it is all in a tangled mess inside my head and it�s going to be hard to: 1.untangle it all .2.pull it out. I want to untangle it first just because I don�t want a big mess on the floor.
Oh wait, this is a mind we�re talking here, not a junk drawer. It feels like a junk warehouse in there, though. I suppose the thing would be to just grab hold of some thread and pull. The handiest topics are the things that are happening now, which is that I am living with the boys here in Kingston after seven or so years of just bouncing around like a pinball. I am starting to feel better after maybe three years of basically just sleeping after my father died. I was hovering on the stoop of the other world, unable to decide whether to step through or not. There didn�t seem too much reason to stick around here. I was in love with someone who managed to simultaneously make me feel like I was a two-timing heartbreaker and a clinging whining dishrag. Why? Sometimes I think it was a big purgation to bring all my negative attitudes out in the open so I could deal with them. I am certainly thankful for the experience although it was the most confusing one I�ve ever had. I will always love him.. I certainly don�t want to be with anybody else. So what ought I be doing with the rest of my life? I enjoy living, even if I have been sleeping a lot for the past three years.. When I do get out and about I really enjoy it. There is so much to see and learn. I do spend an awful lot of time sitting at this computer. There is an infinity of interesting things.... games, movie clips, books, peoples diaries, old photographs, �the repertoire of human experience is at my fingertips! Bwoohahaha!!. A Whole Course in Everything.
Hey, if I lived forever I could learn to speak various languages, play various instruments, do mathematics, all the things I resisted so strongly as a child even though I went to good schools and had a good mind. Instead I wonder now if I wasted my energies on stupid stuff and that of course I should have listened to the grownups and paid attention in class, stayed away from sex, gotten into computers, bought a nice house, settled down and gotten good insurance. I still resist this path for some reason I mean my dad did these things (except the computer part), and, while he did provide well for us I would much rather he were alive and enjoying life with us now. I am weary if thinking that it is my fault he was/is suffering/dead because I am such a wrong headed-child. I used to come home and he�d be watching Jerry Springer or some such and he�d look at me and shake his head and say �Where did we go wrong with you�. I would not be feeling like there was anything wrong with me until he said that and then I�d start wondering myself.
A lot of the things I�ve done come out of a desire to not be wrong. Like, when I was a teenager my mom liked to take me to nice boutiques to buy clothes. She used to complain that I would always choose the most expensive thing in the store. I just went for what I liked, is all. What with them having six kids and all, after a while I stopped feeling good about buying expensive new stuff and got into going to the Salvation Army, which at the time had amazing �vintage� clothes although who knew what vintage was. To me they were old lady clothes and because I had grown up among old ladies, I thought they were cool.
When I was in my late teens and early twenties I wanted to be a grandmother, bake cookies, mend holes in peoples clothes, have a garden, chickens, wood stove. I loved reading the �Little House on the Prairie� and �Little Women� series. They were both sagas of domestic bliss, basically.
I was brought up on an estate in lower Putnam County where my father was the caretaker. The only people I was exposed to were educated, well to do people. My grandparents lived in a rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. I thought they were wealthy as well due to my grandmother�s prowess in dressmaking, cooking, homemaking, etc. I thought all rich people were organic gardeners because that�s what the people around me did. Although my mother was raised in an orphanage and didn�t graduate from high school until she was sixty years old, she is one of the most avid readers I�ve ever met.
By the time I started Kindergarten I was able to read articles out of the New York Times, etc. (Not bragging, but it�s true.) My dad taught me how to swim before I could even walk. He was a wonderful athlete and I particularly enjoyed doing yard work with him. With such wonderful parents, I often do wonder where I went wrong.
(I generally just blithely trip off onto the very places I�ve been told to stay away from. I have no sense of danger, perhaps, and I seem to be lucky so everything turns out OK for me after a few hair-raising turns or so. Pee Wee�s Big Adventure.)
Since I could read before Kindergarten, by the time I got to first grade there wasn�t a whole lot to do. While the other kids learned their ABC�s, Miss Robinson set me up in front of the Wizard of Oz books and gave me free reign.
(Maybe that�s my problem, eh? Or maybe I don�t have one? I have gotten so used to people finding fault that I often do it before anyone else gets a chance.)
Also, I was an only child for almost five years, during which my parents had no detectable financial worries, so there was a minimum of angst.
My siblings seem to think that I resent them for being born. The truth is that I was delighted when my sister R. was born. After all I had been practicing nurturing with my dolls and stuffed animals and assorted pets and couldn�t wait to start. She was delightful and I eagerly awaited the birth of the next one, who turned out to be P. A no doubt well-meaning aunt came to help my mother after P. was born. She repulsed my eagerness to nurture this new baby and told my that I would �hurt the baby�, which was just silly, but I kinda soured on the whole idea after that.
The year M. was born, my beloved grandmother was dying of leukemia, so her birth was eclipsed by the tragedy.
My father never seemed happy after that. Then we moved from the only place I �d ever known, a paradise with a pond, rowboat, a gazebo on the hill, giant bushes of lilacs, blueberries and yellow roses, flower-lined paths, an orchard with a swing set in it and a long handled fruit picker -plus wonders too numerous to mention right now. We moved to a small town with lots of people in the neighborhood. And just when that became fun we moved again and again and again and I feel like I�ve been moving ever since.

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