Witness for the prosecution

So. Imagine that you have had a day where you went six sad hours between your first and second cups of coffee, managed to flash some thigh at the coffee shop because your new skirt is all stupid and static-y, spent the whole day wandering through the world on tall, wobbly shoes and then managed to get splashed with icky road-water on your walk home. In an alley. Which means it was really icky alley-water. Behind a frat house. Which makes it that much more icky.

And the car was going just under 800 miles an hour down this alley that I need to walk in because my sidewalk is currently blocked off due to construction of a 400-story-tall skyscraper apartment complex. It could be I've exaggerated some points of this paragraph.

As I got icky alley-water splashed all on me, I made hand gestures that implied things. Things like, "ARGH!" and "WHY ARE YOU DRIVING 800 MILES AN HOUR DOWN AN ALLEY? There are TWO perfectly good streets about 100 feet in either direction!" and "I'm precariously balanced on these tall, wobbly shoes or else I'd chuck my lunch bag at you, jerk!"

Having watched my share of Law & Order, I noted the car and its license plate number. So. If I find a black car with Colorado license plates, they'd better look out. Because it turns out I'm a real person with a short attention span and not someone who is a good witness after getting splashed. I remember the car is black and has Colorado license plates. Very helpful. I'm fine, my new skirt will be fine, and I should have totally chucked my squishy lunch bag at that car. That would have been awesome.

Moral of today's story: I could probably get free coffee with strategic skirt static. Or a lot more embarrassment. 

An Erinku (like hopscotch, but not):
My shoes
aren't that tall and wobbly.
That would be me,
still new to having feet.

Where I go off about Anna Karenina

Every few years, I re-read Anna Karenina because I read fast and I've read every book in my place at least twice. And each time I read this book by Tolstoy (warning: there are going to be spoilers because this book came out in 1877), I identify with a different character. Most of this is due to Tolstoy's writing, making most the characters act like real people, and some of it has to do with me being a human and growing and changing in between readings.

The one character I simply can't stand is Kitty. The first time I read this book, back in high school I think, she struck me as a spoiled, entitled little princess. Spoiler: everyone in Russia in the 1800's was either a prince or a princess of some place, so she really, truly was a princess. I have never once felt bad for her, while I do feel bad for the guy she eventually marries. Because she's spoiled, expects every man around to be madly in love with her all the time, and never seems to become more than a flat character...in spite of Tolstoy pretending that she's great, caring, and self-less in a sick room.

This most recent re-reading, I started with an open mind, knowing that Kitty bugged me in the past, and yet again I was irked by her within the first two pages of her introduction. There are characters you are supposed to not like and most of those are peripheral characters (hooray). Even if you don't like Mr. Karenin, you do feel sorry for him because he's in a tight spot and getting conflicting advice from everyone and is acting like an ass periodically. But Kitty is a major enough character that she just keeps showing up and pouting through various chapters.

All of this is just an early-morning rant because I haven't had coffee yet and I'm half-way through the book. I've known people in real life called Kitty and they are always awesome. And I like cats and kittens and kitties. It's just this Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya ("Kitty") who drives me up the wall.

Oh look! My coffee's ready!!!!

An Erinku (returning to the 21st century):

Today is a day

for running in sunshine

for getting new walking shoes

for an afternoon in a coffeeshop

Golden Glue

A few weeks ago, I was in a conversation where I mentioned that I find “broken” people to be more interesting and that I could relate to them better. In contrast, I said that people who were “whole” (often in their 20’s) were too blindingly radiant to talk to. That same night, I saw a few Facebook posts about Kintsugi. That’s the Japanese art of mending broken things with gold. The idea is that instead of hiding the cracks and brokenness, you celebrate and make it beautiful.

This stuck with me as I've been reflecting on my last few years. Yes, I've been full of whininess, but I’m also finally patched back together in a semblance of real person moving on with her 30’s. One thing that has been weighing on me is that my “dark side” or “shadow self” had broken along with the regular me, and the gluing-back-together process wasn't as clean as a regular puzzle.

It’s good, I guess, that parts of my darkest side are wandering the daylight hours with me, like a mosaic, but it sure is unsettling. I suppose that it’s ultimately healthier to be all of me at once, yet I've become more secluded since I’m not sure how this “new” composite me does in various situations. Shadow Erin doesn't trust easily (and never has), is overly cynical, and is also strong enough to say “no” to things that regular me would feel pressured to say “yes” to. So, the good is mixed with the bad, in the micro and macro sense.

Also, in the past few weeks, I've been told by a few people that I don’t dream big enough and don’t seem to have any forward momentum. I was offended for a few days, until this occurred to me: anyone stuck in a big storm at sea is wishing for solid land with all of their being. To the folks on land, this seems like a small, stupid dream. To the girl at sea, it’s a dream that glows with golden promise. Don’t diss other people’s dreams. You don’t know how out to sea they might be.

An Erinku:

For each

episode of terrible 90’s tv

I have to bounce, dance, or walk the whole time it’s on.

Goodness out of badness!

Forgiveness? Psh.

Today, I read an article about forgiveness. The author took the unusual stance that, sometimes, it’s just fine if you don’t want to forgive. His friend was murdered and he was startled that the person officiating the funeral (several days later) urged everyone to forgive and move on with their lives. The author, having less than a week to deal with the grief of losing someone, let alone making sense of the violence surrounding the death, essentially said, “no!”

He brought up the point that our culture seems to have the idea that everyone needs to forgive to be healthy. It’s something I've thought a lot about in the last few years, too. My dramas were much less violent than murder (while slightly involving death), but my drama-traumas were a big deal to me. I still haven’t forgiven. I've wrestled with the idea of forgiving everyone and have had a lot of pressure from a variety of sources to do so. But I find that forgiveness, much like growing taller, happens to everyone at different rates. And sometimes doesn't happen as much as you might have imagined.

Hmm. That actually isn't a great analogy. It’s not that people who don’t forgive are somehow stunted. It’s more like setting good boundaries. Sometimes people do horrible, ass-hat-like things to you, and you can still be an awesome person without forgiving the ass-hats. You can even unfriend them all on Facebook and still be an awesome person, in spite of what mutual friends might say.

Bah. All it comes down to is this: people deal with what they are dealing with as fast as they can. If you are holding your breath to be forgiven for acting like an ass-hat, you need to know that it’s about the other person, not about you. You might not ever be forgiven. And you need to learn to live with that and try not to be an ass-hat in the future. As for me, I have wrestled mightily with blame (of myself and of others) and of hate (also of self and of others) and I’m at peace with my choice to not forgive some people.

Here’s a link to the article, if you’re so inclined: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/2013/04/steubenville_rape_forgiveness_oscar_pistorius_forgiveness_let_s_stop_forgiving.html

An Erinku:

I know my last few blogs

have been blargy.

Soon I’ll be back to stories of

coffee, tipping over, and playing music.