Temper, temper

Posted 10:28 AM by sean
I love Bill Bryson, I think because I love the English language. The strongest bond I have with my friend is one of language, which doesn't really separate us from most of the rest of the world, but we all value a turn of phrase so highly that comments from years in the past have lingered like remembered touchdown passes or choir competitions. We re-tell the same linguistic pirouettes the way some other people might watch Sportscenter highlights, and some of the better quips have lasted decades.

Sometimes I'll get a word stuck in my craw, something that I think Ian does as well, and it just stays in there getting chewed. I remember we had a long conversation, Ian and I, about words like nevertheless and wherewithal, these words that just drip with age. When they're sprinkled in a sentence, it's like biting into an au gratin and finding aged parmesan melted in the middle.

The word "temper" is sitting with me now. I lost my temper last night a little bit, and the realization of that gave me, more than anything, a little word to chew on.

More often than not, and this is just for me, "temper" is used for eggs, which is strange as that is the first definition in the dictionary. "To modify by the addition of an agent or quality, to moderate" You temper eggs so they won't scramble, you temper steel to make it harder by heating it and cooling it, you can temper your wisdom, your judgements, your actions.

But if I were forced to think about the word, the meaning that resonates with me most (pardon the pun) is musical. Most of our instruments are tempered now, they have been built on 12 tone scales and have been assigned pitches. The frets on a guitar, the keys on a piano, are reflections of tempering.

Temper, if you were to ask most people, probably has more to do with anger and rage. If someone were to rant and rave, you would say they were in a foul temper, or that they simply had a "temper". My "rants" as they are called now, were called "temper-tantrums" when I was child.

There's a hell of a piece of language. "Temper-tantrums". If I didn't love my family as much as I already do, I'd fall in love all over again.

So, this is a word that has to do with making food, making music, and screaming about the iniquities of life. It's like they made a word for me and my family. All we do is make food, make music, or bitch.

But as I read the meanings in the dictionary, at the bottom there is the archaic meaning. "A compromise between extremes. A middle course." There was a time when you spoke of a temper as the action which is most in tune with your surroundings, the one that won't scramble anyone's eggs, the one that requires no screaming banshee middle-of-the-night cell phone harrangues from your older brother.

It is the meaning that isn't used anymore, way at the bottom, a meaning that is buried under all the other contractions and shifts in pronunciation. It's the opposite of the way the word has been working all these years, and it feels strange and wrong and hard. So, I promise, I won't try to convince anyone to use it that way more than once in a great, great while.

Please, if that mystical middle ground is found, let's go right back to the cooking and the music and, most importantly, the talking about where it hurts as quickly as possible. I'm along for the ride no matter what happens.

God

Posted 8:57 AM by sean
I was in the shower two days ago, and (for those of you who know me, this will come as no shock) not since, and I was thinking about the upcoming Law & Order auditions that Jordana and I were asked to attend. I think I said, out loud, "If only one of us can get it, let Jordana get it." I didn't say it to write it in this blog, and I didn't say it so that she would hear, I was just hoping for a piece of awesomeness to happen to her, and I realized that I was willing to forego a piece of awesomeness for myself.

In 1997, I had just moved to Los Angeles for WhoTheFuckKnowsWhy, and I had an audition for Rent. I had tried praying when I was 15 or 16, one of those times that an evangelical had grabbed hold of me and asked me to read and seek and all that crap. When I prayed, by myself without anyone's interference, I heard that icy chill of nothingness in response, that dead hollow open-door-on-Tundra sound that comes from movies.

But in 1997, after giving up the beginnings of promising momentum in New York, I decided to pray about the Rent audition. I don't know how I did it, but I took it very seriously. The next day, during my audition, it was the only time I have had a casting director roll his eyes while I was performing. At the end as I was leaving he was actually *not* stifling a yawn. He was yawning as I said thank you and he actually handed my headshot and resume back to me. He didn't even want to throw it away.

For the last few years, I've done various wardrobe changes during basketball games to improve the luck of the team I'm rooting for, it's done nothing. When I sent out resumes, I did a little deep breathing as I mailed them, trying to send positive energy with them, and for the last 16 months it's done nothing. I used to have a little thrill by muttering "Macbeth" in the theater during or before shows, but I've actually forgotten to do it lately. I didn't do it during the last show, which didn't change the outcome at all.

Look, I know God isn't about answering your prayers. I know that God is an omnipotent whatever that works in mysterious ways and that asking for anything from the cosmos when you've given nothing to it is missing the point. I don't need your cards and letters telling me I don't understand what God is for, I do.

But I can't feel it. I have never felt any sort of metaphysical power come over me at any time or for any reason. I know that when I said out loud "Let Jordana have this one" that it was for my own pathetic edification, the fact that she did get cast and I didn't had nothing to do with me, or at least it was only because she was what they were looking for and, for this one instance, I wasn't.

I have a basketball in my house. I don't have two. It isn't a belief that I don't have two, I don't actually have two, I have only one. If someone walked in to my house and said, "I believe you have two basketballs, but the second one can't be seen, smelled, heard or touched. It functions as a basketball, in fact is a basketball that will go where you want it to go as long as you believe in it. No-one else can see it either, but you will know when it has gone through the hoop, you will know when your crossover breaks ankles, because your faith will guide you." then I would look at that someone and say, "I don't have to offer proof that there is no basketball, you have to offer proof that there is. When you do, I'll play with your magic ball, but until then, all there is is the real ball and me."

I'm willing to go one step further. "You only say there is a basketball because you can't deal with a world where athletic talent is uneven. You can't accept a world where trying to succeed doesn't guarantee success. You are so afraid of living in a world where the only basketball there is is the real basketball that you have to invent a pretend magic ball that will give the world some order.

"But, the fact is, people die from falling ice, people don't love the people who love them, dogs get hit by cars and monkeys fall out of trees. The world is breath-staggeringly random, there is no order, there's not even the remotest possibility of order. A certain number of people die every year when they fall in a parking lot, just slip and smash their brains open. And it is horrible to live in the actual world, I know. It's lonely and inconsequential, and in your life, your brief stretches of joy and happiness are going to be mathematically corrected by periods of suffering and pain, though most of it will be filled by eating, sleeping, shitting, fucking and ennui. It's horrible, but that's the truth."

So, if anyone's got God's number, have him give me a call, okay? I don't know what it would change in me, but I'd love a little burning bush to give me some direction.

Espirit

Posted 7:59 AM by sean
Michelle, this must be killing you or you'd have written a blog or called me by now.

Here's the thing; I'm worried about why you want to do this. I'm worried about what'll happen to you. I'm worried that you will be lonely or hurt. I'm worried that you will die. I'm worried that you want to do it partly because we all hate ourselves so damn much and the only thing you've ever done that makes those screaming voices silent is to do for others.

But you've been called, and so you need to think about going. I can't really address it, because a call to service is a metaphysical thing, and my mind doesn't wrap around the metaphysical well. You have a calling, you've heard that voice telling you that it's time to serve. I've never heard a voice, ever, in my life. So, when that happens, I step back and respect that something religious, for lack of a better word, has happened and that I have no say now.

Michelle, you know what you've been called to, I don't. I want to say that a call to serve is not a call to serve in Most-Fucked-Up-Ville, Africa, that there is a lot of work to do in America, in New York. When you were working for the Red Cross, the infuriating thing was the bullshit and the lack of money for your time, if you had a good job and more free time then part of that would be taken care of, and if you hate the bullshit red tape, I'm fairly certain that the Corps has as much or more.

You said to me on the phone, "I've been called" and I said, "then nothing else matters, you can't worry about what anyone else says ever, this decision is entirely up to you. Fuck Dad, fuck Mom, fuck all your brothers, none of us has this call and so none of us has to make the decision." I stand by that. I can't help you.

No-one can, you awesome fucking girl. No-one can do anything for you in this decision. You're the smartest and the most spiritual of any of us, the fact that you ask is flattering but retarded. There isn't a single person alive in our family who has a handle on their lives enough to advise you, and the ones who I knew who are dead now weren't any better.

This is one woman show and as much as I want to feed you lines from the audience, I don't know the script. You're the one writing it, you decide what to say.

On Temperment

Posted 10:46 AM by sean
I now know what it is like to be a woman.

Oh man, you just can't wait for this, can you?

My personal trainer (PT from now on) put me on the schedule for 8 am on Mondays, and the middle of last week I told her that I wouldn't be coming in at 8 am. It's not a physical impossibility, but that would mean leaving the house before Jordana wakes up, and I really love the half hour we get in the morning.

She said she could try to fit me in at nine. I reminded her Friday that I wouldn't be there at 8 and she said again she would leave me an email about any changes. I got no email.

So, I showed up today at 9 and she was with a client. A very polite conversation then passed between us. "I thought..." "no, no, my mistake..." "I should have been better about..." and then the clincher, "I sent you an email..."

Y'see, I don't mean to get all I Never Promised You A Rose Garden about this, but she didn't send me an email. She then modified the claim to "I sent it late last night because I forgot", and I'm just saying, she forgot until 8:11 this morning when I still wasn't there, which is why she didn't call my cellphone.

I have problems with authority figures anyway, teachers especially, and I hate the gym and everyone in gyms. When I'm there I have fantasies about my ancestors watching me on a machine that is designed to fatigue me and grabbing me by my tee-shirt and saying "plant a field! Walk to Missouri! If you want to burn calories, you shouldn't ask a machine to make you do it in one place! You can burn calories in the act of creation!!!!"

So, when my PT gives me some crap and then doesn't train me, my reaction to it is beyond hostile. Those of you who know me personally know that this relationship just took a *HUGE* swinging back step. I mean, she said, "You do have some cardio you can do this morning" and I stared at her for a second before saying, "...um, yeah..."

But I went and did it, like an obedient child. You know why? Because I am stiff broke and I've already invested thousands of dollars of mine and, soon, my fiance's money in getting my health put together.

So, why didn't I tell her how pissed I was? Why did I just sit there and grumble for an hour, pissed off, ignoring her glances while she worked with another client? Because I shouldn't have to tell her that I'm psychotic. This isn't *logical*, she didn't actually do anything wrong. I just need to be handled, I actually need that, and she doesn't know that, and telling her will force me to admit that it's actually me that's retarded.

Wait for it.

See, I could just solve these problems by saying, "this is what I need, and it might not make sense, and I can work on my end to make the need less, but right now I need you to recognize that the work I am doing here is more than just the work, I'm bringing in all kinds of my own bullshit."

(I can't believe I'm about to say this. My fiance reads this, and she's actually guilty of *none* of this behavior, but she'll think I'm describing her. Holy shit, this is BAD.)

"I need you to realize that my emotional connection with this endeavor is beyond the limits of reason, but I also need you to know that without me ever telling you. And the fact that you don't know what I haven't told you makes me actually not trust you at all, makes me think of you as the enemy."

"I need my irrational emotional reaction to perfectly common stimuli to be guessed at, understood and I need you to come up with a nonsensical reaction to what I'm feeling that matches what I secretly think, or I won't be able to trust you any more."

So now, finally, I understand where women are coming from.

Queer

Posted 10:40 AM by sean
I have to say, I respectfully disagree with Michelle's blog and Anastacia.

The reason that we call gay guys "queens" isn't because it's a derogatory term, it is a description of a particular set of gay behaviors. When gay men act in a way that assumes that they are royalty and that the rest of the world is shit, then we call them queens. When a person is being "queenie", they're acting like a gay ass.

Being gay doesn't give you license to claim some sort of protection from language that describes your behavior. When I dance, people call me white, when I can't get out of a chair, people make fat jokes, when I speak Spanish with a lisp, guys call me maricon. And when you prance around a room with limp wristed arrogant disregard for the people you are supposed to be serving, you're a queen.