sound and fury (signifying nothing)

I think I do a 4 July post every year, and every year it has only the vaguest of ties to Independence Day and its meaning.

I think a running theme is my annual flat tire. Like a present from our Founding Fathers themselves, I’ve gotten a flat tire on this day at least three years out of the past five.

This year, I’m really living it up. Today’s itinerary includes such activities as:

• giving my apartment a much-needed cleaning
• cranking it up to eleven and dancing around while I do aforementioned cleaning
• getting together boxes (I’ve graduated from “piles”) of stuff to get the hell out of here: one of trash, one for Goodwill
• attempting to pare down some other extraneous shit in my life, including all these notes on top of my scanner (otherwise known as the Repository of Malnourished Ideas), either developing them into something to write about or setting them on fire. Perhaps setting them on fire then writing about it
• massaging my scalp in a weak effort to make my hair grow faster
• updating my blog in the weak and grasping assumption that anyone but me gives a shit

Music: Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words

I was terrified the other day.

It was after day 2 of the Fort Smith Police drive. Penny and the rest of the crew decided to do a lunch-after at Furr’s. I happen to hold a Kightlingerian view of buffets (if people could be slaughtered for food, that’s where they’d go to bulk up), so I was on the bus, internetting* on my phone.

About 40 minutes after they left, the bus door opened up, and someone came in and told me, “You have a visitor.” My mind raced with possibilities. Who out there would want to see me, only me? Who the hell do I even know in this city?

My first instinct was that it was Jeramy. It was about the time of day he’d be off work, and I figured maybe he saw the bus parked in back and stopped by to say hello. But that kind of initiative isn’t really his thing; if it were, maybe we’d still be together.

And then, another thought, this one far more frightening: maybe it was his mother.

I haven’t been avoiding her, specifically. Just not returning her calls and not going to the mall and feeling a slight twinge of fear every time I walk down AR 59. It’s not that I think she’d be mad, because she supported my decision to leave him. After all, who better than me to know what an obnoxious bastard her son had the propensity to be?

I dunno. I guess it’s just one less tie I have to worry about. Something else to sever, because I am not a maintainer. Just the opposite, which is why it’s so easy for me to leave.

Anyway, my “visitor” wasn’t her, either. It was Brandy’s daughter, whose name I cannot even begin to spell.

Get this: this kid, who can’t be any older than maybe eight, thinks I am unconditionally awesome. For no reason I can discern - I met her a couple days ago while Brandy and I were talking after work, and now she asks about me all the time. The closest I could figure, using that logic thing we grown-ups do, is it’s an unusual-name kinship. I’m not one of those people who relates well to kids.

I dunno, I guess I just think it’s completely awesome to have someone in my life who unabashedly thinks I’m great. I think everyone should have someone like that.

Music: Bruce Springsteen - Paradise

*yes, it’s a word. One I made up just now.

I wish I were pretty.

There’s really no way to say that without looking like I’m either hanging streamers for a pity party or buying some night crawlers for a fishing trip, but I know that neither is the case, and that’s good enough, I suppose.

What I’d like is to have the power to break hearts. To have someone need me and just treat them with utter disregard. Instead of it being the other way around, which is usually how it works out for me.

Just to see what it ’s like.

But I’m never going to have something like that. It’s probably good, because I can be sort of an asshole, and asshole + power isn’t really ever a good combination. Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t fuck with other people like that. I’m too much of a pushover, and I have this thing called empathy.

Still, though. No matter how much weight I lose, no matter how good a hair day I have, no matter what kind of cosmetic nonsense I partake in, I will always see the linebacker’s shoulders, the dull eyes complete with matching handbags, the sickly-pale legs and abnormally-large feet.

Even when I can overlook these things and focus on what I like about myself - the strong arms and skilled hands, the well-shaped and wonderfully expressive eyebrows, a decent rear without a hint of sag - then I’m sure I’m getting the visual write-off from others. Even though, intellectually, I know better, that most everyone’s too wrapped up in their own shit to worry about mine.

Still, you can’t deny the truth of this, inspired by a conversation I had with John on Friday: I’m never going to be the kind of girl you call on when you want to get a piece of ass. Even if I were petite and adorable, I think there’s just something about me, something rotten in my core, that would prevent that. No, I’m the kind of girl you call when you need help moving a heavy piece of furniture.

Then again, I suppose I value being helpful over being hot. I guess I’d have to, since I’ve been that way pretty much my whole life, and I don’t see it changing anytime, well, ever.

Music: Aimee Mann - Wise Up

It could always be worse. Even though WalMart drives usually suck, when they’re an escape hatch from working center, they suddenly start to not look so bad. Is that a sign that you’ve hit a low point, or one that everything has a worse alternative? I’m feeling good, and hoping maybe I can apply this principle to other areas of my life. Nothing’s as bad as it could be.

Actually, I’m feeling fantastic, and here is a big reason why: I saw an IPTAY tag. It was on the front of a truck sitting on 59, waiting to turn onto the I-40 West ramp.

Speaking of relativity. Three years ago, those things meant nothing to me, noteworthy for little except their ubiquity. Now they’re a sort of link home. Of course, I know that belonging to IPTAY isn’t exclusive to the Upstate or even to South Carolina, although I had to have a look back to see, and there it was: another home plate.

I was an optimist before, and by gum, I can do it again.

I am having another one of those nights where I feel pulled. Oh, there’s the word I’m looking for: homesick.

I love music, and this is a problem. I usually keep something playing while I’m on the computer, and I keep it on shuffle. Some days this works out strangely to my favor: every song that comes up is somehow prophetic, or something I love.

Tonight, it’s been nothing but songs that take me back to Carolina in my mind. And not even overtly, as in Carolina In My Mind.

Alabama - Dixieland Delight: reminds me of the time Alicja and Ralph took me to the Wild Wing Café. Random tangent: I got pretty tipsy, and when I went into the bathroom, I ran into the pint-sized pixie who’d previously been singing Tori Amos karaoke. I told her I liked her singing, and she asked for my number. Then she proceeded to bug the shit out of me with some sort of pyramid scheme.

Coldplay - Easy to Please: I’m driving aimlessly between Hendersonville and Asheville, North Carolina. I don’t know why, which is par for the course whenever I’m driving around WNC. It’s nighttime and foggy. Gas is probably somewhere around $1.30 a gallon. Free and easy down the road I go, and life is sweet. Coldplay doesn’t suck yet.

SheDaisy - What Child is This: yes, I know it’s Christmas music. It’s one of the only three Christmas albums I can stand (this one, Bing Crosby, and the Oak Ridge Boys, with an honorable mention for a Hanson song). Now I’m in the back of Mom’s car, riding through the dark on US 29 towards Spartanburg. We’re going to Hollywild. Cheesy as it is, it’s one of those things that makes me not hate what Christmas has become so much.

Fiona Apple - O Sailor: nothing specific this time, but when I bought this album I was living in the apartment on Haywood Road. I really enjoyed living there. Except for getting my license plate stolen, that was the suck.

Bush - Straight No Chaser: camping with Troop 74 at King’s Mountain. Listening to Meredith’s copy of Sixteen Stone. Freezing my ass off.

And on it goes.

When I was in elementary school - well, one of them, I attended four - I was told that I sighed too much. I must have been practicing. Trying life on for sighs, as it were.

Music: Foo Fighers - All My Life, strangely not bringing up any sludge from the old well in my brain, possibly because it’s not mine and I’ve never heard it before. Streaming Internet radio FTW.

I got a bright pink letter in the mail yesterday.

A bit of backstory: in October, I got a steaming case of MRSA in a skin abscess. At the time, I was about a week shy of my insurance being in effect; however, if I’d waited that long, there was a good chance I’d have been extremely sick with a systemic infection. So I went to the clinic where I used to work to get it taken care of, knowing that they didn’t verify insurance. I figured either the Heart Fund would cover it or I could work on paying it down later.

Heart covered my prescriptions, but not the office visit and labwork, so I’ve been paying down that balance since I got the first bill in December. And now this, notification that, unless I pay the bill in full, I will be turned over to a collection agency. I’m pretty sure I’m going to send this letter up to Lowell on Monday, if only to amuse myself. It’s not like I have a whole lot to lose.

Dear Maria,

This letter is in regards to my account, #******, and a notice I received in the mail regarding my balance.

I have not “ignored” previous reminders. I have been making regular payments on this balance. Since December, I have paid as much as I could and brought my balance from $343 to its current amount of $75 (as I see from my online bank statement that my most recent check, #242, has just been cleared). Unless your company decides to make any more arbitrary “adjustments”, I should have this balance paid within a month or two.

I do not appreciate being treated like a deadbeat, although I am seeing the side of Northwest Physicians that, as an employee, I used to receive the most complaints about. I can definitely better understand the patients’ perspective*, although this is an object lesson I’d prefer to have skipped.

Of course, you could say that, had I paid my balance in full this wouldn’t be a problem, and you’d be right. I should have had the foresight to avoid getting an unpreventable and potentially life-threatening infection, and I also should have had enough money saved up to cover such potential problems. If we’re going to go down that avenue, however, I probably should also have had the sense to marry a man whose financial status was the most attractive thing about him; better yet, if I had any sense at all, I’d have finished my education and never set foot in this miserable state in the first place, but that’s another story and a couple glasses of wine.

I cannot pay my balance in full at this time. If you feel four to six weeks is too long to wait for $75 (although I understand that this amount may be inflated based on any particular whim and my only recourse in this situation would be to bend over and lube up), and that missing this amount of money would be so detrimental to the company that it be absolutely necessary to turn my account over to a collection agency, well, who am I to question your judgment?

I’m not a stupid woman, and I know that, by turning my account over, your company is not “using another means to collect on a debt after all other options have been exhausted.” All other options have not been exhausted, as I continue to receive bills and continue to make payments. I have a feeling that, by selling my debt to a collection agency, you are seeking merely to punish me for being delinquent, to damage me for not living up to your standards. This is understandable. I myself would probably have reservations about taking actions that equated to such value judgments on people’s lives, but I know it takes different strokes to move the world.

In other words, Northwest Physicians doesn’t need my money now. It just wants me to get a slap on the hand for being such a naughty girl. It may not be the official company line, but I heard variations on it enough times during my tenure at the Rogers clinic to know that treating people like that was not what I wanted to do with my life.

In conclusion, I will continue sending you checks until the balance has been satisfied. I have a feeling (call it a hunch) that your company will continue to cash them.

Sincerely,

Danaë Suhovich

*I’m sure you’re thinking, “of course those deadbeats complain when we try to collect, they’re scummy, debt-dodging deviants”. However, I’d have to say that a good deal of the people who had problems with your office were people whose only offense was not having a vast and intricate knowledge of the ins and outs of Medicare, the insurance industry, and the bureaucracy of Northwest.

I need to get either my eyes or my ego checked.

I’ve made a couple notable mistakes this week due to seeing things incorrectly, most notably when I checked and pulled up the wrong damn bus (partly, though, it was relying on my common sense for that one, and we all know what happens when I do that). Just a few moments ago I glanced at a piece of paper that fell out of one of my credit card statments. It says “Your Thank-You Award Is Expiring.” I originally read this as “Thank You for Being Awe-Inspiring.”

I had to laugh. I mean, I can’t even coerce myself to write anything more than this drivel. What hope is there for anyone else? Lord knows I’m not the type of girl who can just pull these types of things effortlessly.

Then again, after today, I’m starting to wonder a little bit.

Music: Velvet Revolver - Fall to Pieces

… in my time of need?

When you’re young and on your own and out of your element (check, check, and check), people think you’re ballsy, insane, or both.

Honestly, I’m fine with either classification. I know the usual responses from the peanut gallery - you’re a fool, you’ve done this before with negligible results, you’re getting scammed, you’re desperate, you’re whatever.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t think being alone is everything I built it up to be.

Then again, I ponder as I scribble incoherently by candlelight, what is?

I don’t know anymore. I don’t have any more insight than anyone else. What I do know is that when you find yourself in the midst of another deadly storm and you’re a lone, it would be nice to have someone there, anyone really, to reassure you. Even if the words, ephemeral in their own right, are issued from one no more substantial than smoke.

“He may drive me bonkers, and I may go through a lot of trouble and unreciprocated effort to be with him, but he gets me, and that’s not something I can say for many people at all. If you get it once in your love life, you’re lucky.”

Old words about the last chapter in my life, words I’m marveling at now. That book’s closed, and now I’m standing at the edge of this precipice, on the verge of something great.

How great is “great”? How about not being driven bonkers, reciprocated effort, and being “gotten”? I never thought I had any more to give.

How about lightning striking twice? Except the first time fried your brain, and the second time it illuminated your soul.

This is odd: all my books fit into one box. With all my DVDs.

Granted, I did give away or sell four boxes of stuff already. And before you do that, you have to go through the pages and pull out the random stuff you’ve put in them. Well, I do, because, well, I do.

Here’s a list of the things I’ve found, because some of this shit is pretty hilarious. To me, anyway, and isn’t that why I do this? To amuse myself?

• ticket stub from Knocked Up, which I never saw in a theater
• liner notes from Ixnay on the Hombre, by The Offspring, which I’ve never owned or even listened to
• Georgia lottery ticket, which I’ve never played because I’m too dumb to figure out how to play… or too smart to play it, depending on how charitable I’m feeling towards myself
• Uno card with a Coca-Cola bear on it. It’s a green five, FWIW
• a recipe for Faux-tatoes in what looks like Jenni’s handwriting. Never made them, though, because one really only needs so much cauliflower in one’s life
• receipt from Sonic in Rogers, not to be confused with the Sonic on Rogers, because there isn’t one
• a small square of paper upon which is written “Rappelerator/Adrian is something you could name a pile of pudding - it’s androgynous. I didn’t know pudding came in pile form. Anything comes in pile form if you drop it on the ground. Then again, if you desregarded it enough to be dropping it, why bother naming it? It’s very contradictory.” It’s my handwriting, but no time or date, which is unusual for anything I write. Plus, I have no idea what any of it means, which makes me wonder if I was perhaps under the influence of spirits or narcotic painkillers
• a laminated strip of paper showing the route of the Blue Ridge Parkway in its entirety, which I have yet to complete
• a time detail from 12/24/07
• a list of what to get people for Christmas
• a subscription card for Maxim and Blender magazines, which I’ve never read (although an old tenant in our place in Fayetteville never forwarded his subscription to Stuff, so I got to partake in pretty much all the superficial guy bullshit I could ever need in my life)
• patient notes from when Dr. Tubb diagnosed me with sciatica
• a past-due credit card bill of Jeramy’s from August 2006. I wonder if he was reading my books
• a pay stub from 4/2007 from Northwest. A pitiful reminder of just how little my time is worth
• another “you haven’t even attempted to repay us” notice from Jeramy’s student loans
• an exhortative notice to acquire a copy of the 2008 Writer’s Market for free. Because the 2007 one worked out real well. Possibly because I use phrases like “real well” in my writing
• a take-out menu from Art’s BBQ
• a take-out menu from Penguin Ed’s BBQ
• an envelope on which columns of figures are written. I do arithmetic by hand
• a receipt from the 24 hour Walgreens in Fayetteville. My cashier was Kyle
• a pharmacy bag and label for Clobex shampoo, which cost two hundred fragging dollars. Did the trick, though
• an Omacor sticky note with nothing on it, unless I had access to invisible ink at some point in my stint as a receptionist at Rogers Family Practice
• a reduced-ratio photocopy of my left palm. I can tell it’s the left because I have on a ring, and I can’t wear rings on my right hand. I wonder whatever happened to that ring
• a receipt from Target in Fayetteville from 6/2007. Nothing of note
• a note reminding me of my appointment with Dr. Hull, which I later cancelled
• a note reminding me of job interviews last summer with a staffing agency and Dr. Remerscheid’s office. Neither of which are my current job
• a letter that came inside my copy of In Defense of Hypocrisy, yammering on about how it’s okay when liberals call conservatives hypocrites (such as in the case of Rush Limbaugh’s prescription drug abuse), because those leveling the charges have no standards and therefore no ground to stand on. Mmm, literary fellatio. That note actually turned me off of reading the book, sad to say
• a voided check to the City of Barling
• a receipt for Motel 6 in Jonesboroo, 12/2004, which is odd because I’m pretty sure I only stayed in that miserable place once, when Jeramy graduated in May of 2006
• a phone number, although I don’t know whose. It’s an 843, so I know it’s coastal SC
• a poem, written in my handwriting: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. I really enjoy this one, which is rare. One misconception about me that people seem to have is that I’m a poet, or a poetry fan, when neither is true. Sadly, three years on the staff of my high school’s literary magazine pretty much turned me off of poetry for life, fraught as most of the submissions were with horrible clichés, melodramatic bullshit, and forced rhymes
• two pay stubs from St. Franny’s, one from 12/2005 that’s just pitiful, and one from three days before my 24th birthday, which was considerably better. I remember being at stupid Biomat, reading Epiphany by Ferrol Sams, coming across that, and crying with homesickness. On this pay stub is written “If you want justice, go to a whorehouse. If you want to get fucked, go to court.” - Ferrol Sams
• a parking receipt from McLaurin Parking Company on 12 October 2003. I remember that day quite well, actually. I watched either Lost in Translation or Bowling for Columbine at the Fine Arts Theatre, and sat at the Mellow Mushroom mooning over Dave in my notebook. God, I was such a tool
• a small green envelope with my name on the front. On the back is written the following: “Bureaucratic inefficiency @ its finest: drive 2 hrs to sit 1 hr to pee in a g.d. cup. More stupid is the fact that: - I work in a dr’s office w/a lab - near a hosp. affiliated w/the one I’m drug-testing for - I’m drug-testing for a g.d. hospital. Why not cut out the middleman & the expense & inefficiency & just, @ the very least, have prospective employees go to the hospital to drug test? NM that the entire purpose is to degrade you & let you know who’s in charge.” Pretty well sums up my feelings on drugs, anyway. Even though I don’t partake, I don’t appreciate being fucking humiliated and severely inconvenienced (especially for a fucking receptionist job) because heaven forfend anyone have any g.d. fun
• a flier listing HBO’s offerings for October 2005 with Curb Your Enthusiasm on the front. I’ve never had HBO or watched Curb Your Enthusiasm

When you think of it, a lot of this stuff represents the misbegotten in my life, things I didn’t do or wasn’t a part of. I guess it’s sort of ironic/symbolic/interesting/none of the above that I’m discarding these things (except the Blue Ridge Parkway thing and the poem). I’m tired of not going after the things I want, and I think that part of my life is over.

Music: Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad

Protip: while laundry fresh out of the dryer might feel good on a chilly morning, dumping it out of the basket onto an air mattress probably isn’t the wisest move.

I am awake at 5:30 in the morning, and I don’t have to be at work. I’m not quite sure what to do, and I can’t go back to sleep because my sleeping surface was pretty well destroyed. There was a huge, speedbump-like protrusion in the middle of it, I guess because one of the internal seams melted and gave way. I went to bed at 6 last night but slept pretty fitfully, because I felt like I kept rolling off to the edge of the mattress. So I deflated it and trashed the damn thing.

But I’ve released about a half-dozen potato bugs into the wild in the past week, and sent two arachnids to their wretched graves, so I’m not entirely sure I want to sleep on the floor.

Perhaps I will just sit here, blinking stupidly at random things on the internet. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Never am I one to let pass an opportunity to learn a lesson, and I’ve learned one recently. As in, within the past five minutes.

It’s no secret that a lot of people thought I could do better than my previous relationship… that he wasn’t good enough for me. I’m not entirely sure I agree, that I’m at some stratospheric level that everyone should strive for. Quite the opposite, actually, and that might have been the problem. I have a pretty low opinion of myself, and have for a long time.

And I never understood why my insistence on putting myself down would bother anyone. Until last night, until someone who means the world to me told me that I could do much better.

Because he’s the first thing I think about when I wake up, I was reflecting on the conversation this morning. And I came to the realization that it’s pretty upsetting when someone you have such strong feelings for doesn’t think as highly of themselves as you think of them.

So clearly, I have some ways I must change.