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5Feb

Q & A

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

A: To remember.
To validate.
To appreciate.
To inspire.

I suck at talking, really. Just ask my husband, who usually has to pry my head open with a crowbar to find out what’s on my mind. I could quote someone eloquent and witty, like C.S. Lewis or House, M.D., and the words would still sound ridiculous coming out of my mouth. (Imagine a kindergartener who’s just swallowed a bottle of vodka and six helium balloons. Classy.)

When I write my thoughts down, though, I feel like they matter. I can actually convey my meaning without all the squeaking and the slurring and the drunken-five-year-old stammering. Often, I’m not even sure what I think until it slips out the ends of my fingers onto a page, and only once it’s written can I see its etchings on my personality… and then I feel a million kinds of validated. Maybe even a kazillion.

Writing does all sorts of lovely, warm, hot-chocolatey things to my emotional center as well. It makes me slow down enough to see the beauty in everyday life and scrapes calluses off my heart until I’m madly in love with everyone I should be madly in love with. I suppose it’s a way to both preserve and cultivate the precious pieces of my life. This might make me certifiably insane (that is, if I weren’t already, ::cough::), but I would take a day on a comfy couch with my laptop over a day at the spa. Or a day wearing plaid atrocities and hitting little white balls with sticks. Or whatever else real people do to relax.

I don’t really try to inspire–you should know by now that I consider myself as inspiring as Cream of Wilted Lettuce–but every once in a while, a bit of my heart on a page connects with a bit of someone else’s heart. Those tiny moments of relational electricity keep me buzzing for days. I’m learning to loosen up, to take personal honesty a little more public, and I love that it matters to others. Even at my most lettucesoupy, I want my words to matter to others.

Q: Why do you write?

4Feb

The Graveyard Shift

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

“People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children.” ~ Calvin, to Hobbes

An idea has been rattling around in my mind for a while now. It sounds simple enough and maybe even fun: write down some happy childhood memories to share with my family, past, present, and future. But it’s not so simple. Every time I think about it, seriously consider starting, I find myself waist-deep in an emotional briar patch.

I’m sure everyone has things that he or she doesn’t like to think about, but I’ve made repression a way of life. It’s a twisted art form, learning to cope with trauma by shoveling six feet of dirt onto memories. Unfortunately, the good often gets buried along with bad, so I find myself in my twenties barely remembering my teens, much less earlier times.

I stare at this photograph

and remember my cat–his name (Hudson Taylor), his affiliations (Mimi the PMS-y wifecat), and his hobbies (poetry, cross stitch, world travel)–but I can’t remember my interaction with him. I can’t remember rocking him or wearing yellow overalls or being six years old.

I find this photo

and can’t remember my first ballet class, my first year of ballet classes even. I don’t know if I enjoyed it or if I liked my teacher or if I was any good. I wonder how long it took for my knobby-kneed legs to learn French. (And plié, and up, and pas de bourrée, jeté battu…)

I come across this one (I’m the third from the left)

and remember the way the girls laughed, my first batch of genuine friends since first grade. I remember the pranks we pulled and the atrocious poetry we wrote and the boys we used to giggle about, but I don’t recall who I was in junior high. I’m told I was the one who suggested we smoke birthday candles, but was I really that silly? When did I start pulling my hair up? What was my life like at home, away from my friends?

The answer to that last question is the reason I used to cry and shake and write “fuck” in my journal and think about the afterlife in very near terms. Then I went the therapeutic route, talking to close friends, writing everything down, turning my brain inside-out so the pain could float away on the breeze. At least, I hoped it would float away, and when it didn’t, I started shoveling.

I’m now realizing that I’ll have to dig around in the graveyard for even the happiest memories, and let me tell you, it’s a mess. Fragments of memory are scattered like misplaced bones. Unmarked graves hold mental snapshots, many of them moldy and disintegrating. The dirt clings to me for hours afterward, even when I don’t manage to find anything.

I’m so, so reluctant to dig deeper, down to where the whole memories and undiluted hurt lie intertwined. At the same time, I know how much the happy moments of my childhood will matter to my daughters, to my parents, and probably to me. I haven’t found the necessary strength yet; I’m still clinging pretty tightly to the idea that my childhood was 100% bad. But I know there were times of laughter and imagination and closeness, and I owe it to many to rediscover those moments. I owe it to myself.

If at first you don’t succeed…

31Jan

Voodoo vs. Violence

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

This has been a weird week. I’ve woken up most mornings feeling like someone mixed together liver and onions in my soul and not even the largest tub of orange sherbet could alleviate the horror. (Not like we can actually get orange sherbet here… Excuse me while I weep.) I’ve tried blogging, but the High Voodoo Witchpriest of Blogger keeps sticking pins into a little model of my brain, particularly the part that controls EVERYTHING. Last night, some monkeys infected with rage escaped their lab and zombified everyone in England. Then this morning over breakfast, Natalie calmly said, “Mom, I don’t appreciate your singing.” (Weird, I know. I’m a wonderful singer! Which is why I don’t even sing in front of The Hubby, for fear of overwhelming him with my wonderfulness. Ahem.)

However, no matter how liverandoniony the last several days have been, they have been periodically jolted with a kind of happiness that voodoo can’t touch: Sophie grinning and kicking and exploding into little pieces of glittery happiness while she tells me all about her day (met a new boyfriend, learned the Riverdance, ate milk). Natalie spinning in clumsy, delighted circles, singing at the tip-top of her lungs about robots and slimy snails and how the writer’s strike should be over already and how she loves us. Dan walking in the door from work, smelling scrumptiously like his red leather coat, rain, and aftershave, his arms instantly open to wrap me up. That moment just before I crawl into bed when I peek into the girls’ room and hear them breathing in harmony, their precious little faces serene and dream-dappled. That moment just after I crawl into bed when I finally relax from the day, melting into my husband and knowing we’ll be tangled together in the quiet until tomorrow.

So. Glasses are up there in our leprous credenza. Champagne is in the fridge. We’ll give away the furniture so that more than 2.5 of you can fit in our kitchen and invite someone who knows how to make a touching speech, and we’ll all share a toast to happiness. Then we’ll infect ourselves with rage and take it out on the world’s liver and onions, because everyone knows gratuitous violence is the secret to happiness. Who’s with me?

28Jan

Focaccia

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Pearl Jam is exactly the right music with which to have a religious crisis. You just know that Eddie Vedder is singing from the depths of his own dreadful, gravelly crises and that he would understand if you suddenly shouted a very bad word into the angsty void. (I like Catherine Newman’s use of “focaccia” without the last two syllables.)

I am writing this knowing full-well that it is not socially acceptable to have a religious crisis, at least not in the Christian world. I imagine most other religions are the same way though, too convinced of their own rightness to allow wiggle-room. Admitting weakness to churchgoers inevitably spawns a feeding frenzy, and you haven’t met sharks until you’ve ticked off a Southern Baptist. I know. I used to be a Southern Baptist poster child, a preacher’s kid with curled bangs reaching up to heaven and more righteous indignation than the Bible. Yes, I would very much like to smack my former self too.

I managed to survive the “God loves my parents and thus hates me” crisis when I was thirteen, and then the “God might not exist” crisis prompted by my Christian apologetics class at age fifteen (Feel free to bask a moment in the irony. Are your pores opening yet?), and then the “God doesn’t listen to me,” “God doesn’t talk to me,” and “God is a misogynist” crises in college–all without telling a soul. The idea is to get over your shameful lapse of faith quickly and quietly and then tell everyone your “testimony” of how God brought you through.

If you’ve ever hit a rough patch in your spiritual journey, you know just how much it sucks. You feel like you’ve done something horribly wrong. You feel embarrassed for not having it all together. You feel like a hypocrite for not understanding the system you’re supposed to promote. Most of all, you feel a bottomless, inky-black loneliness. If you can’t talk to God, who’s left?

If I were to name my current state of loneliness, it would be “God exists, but I don’t like him.” What does one do with that, not liking God? Everything triggers it–mealtime prayers, bedtime stories with Natalie, news reports, movies, that sharp doorway that deliberately gets in the way of my elbow. When we eat, I think about all the people starving across the world. How can he say he cares more for humans than for birds? When I hear news about the Middle East, I think about the endless violence and terrorism. How can he say the government is on his shoulders? When I cuddle my precious Sophie, I think about the baby he sent to be tortured, murdered. How can he call this the “good news?” When I read the Bible, I can’t see past the God-sanctioned warmongering, the murdering, the animal-sacrificing, the salt-pillaring, the earth-swallowing, the flooding, the exiling. How can he call himself good?

You have no idea how much I feel like the first un-closeted gay right now. I mean, am I normal? Do any others exist? How do they… uh, do this? Will acceptance possibly outweigh the judgment aimed in my direction? Will anyone be able to help me without just trying to cure my “condition?” Where is the backspace button for my mouth?

It doesn’t matter; I’ve said it. I don’t like God, at least not right now, and hopefully that’s not as scary in his mind as it is in mine. I also hope he’s not offended if I take this opportunity to say exactly what’s on my mind, that being FOCACCIA. (Imagine that being growl-screamed, Eddie Vedder style, please.)

25Jan

More Fun With Metaphors

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Hindsight needs a good punch in the nose for being so irritatingly smug.

To everyone who knew I should quit The Horrible Job, you are officially smarter than I. There were about forty-six reasons why I should have quit before and only a third of a reason I should stick it out, and that third of a reason may have just been a wad of used gum that looked like a third of a reason, but it still had to be pried out of my hands this morning. And then, once the gum was safely in the trash? I found out that this taxidermy organization secretly specializes in babies.

Shall we have more metaphor fun? Well, since you insist… This job was a free vacation to Heavenville, Bahamas that turned out to be a 298-hour mandatory timeshare symposium. This job was a banana with a sunshiney peel hiding an inner core of soggy, putrid iniquity. This job was a cute little friend who promised to share her Barbies but then didn’t on account of being BEELZEBUB.

In other words, it was a scam.

Once I finish scraping my jaw off the floor, I’ll have some pressing questions to ask. Like Internet, why didn’t you tell me my job was a scam until after it sucked out my brains and I quit on my own? And Self, how did you think putting almost three years of work into a profession you didn’t really like for an anticipted payoff of 30¢ was a good idea? And Ex-Boss, do you get special discounts for channeling the Prince of Darkness?

I feel profoundly idiotic. This is right up there with all those other moments I’m not telling you about in an effort to protect my imaginary dignity. Sigh, sigh, and, well, sigh. Let this be a lesson to those of you who are ever offered a job that 1) doesn’t pay, 2) provides no company address, 3) has no employee support system, and/or 4) is endorsed by the legions of hell: YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN’T TAKE IT.

24Jan

Why NOT to Become a Taxidermist

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

When my eulogy comes out in the papers next week, it will say this: “Bethany Bassett was found alone in her studio, crushed to death by her part-time job. It took a team of paramedics, an industrial-sized crane, and Arnold Schwarzenegger over five hours to lift the job-induced anxiety off of Ms. Bassett, but it was already too late. When asked to comment, her husband smiled sadly and said, ‘At least she’s with Heath Ledger now.'”

Yes, I have a part-time job. This is because I am afflicted with chronic stupidity on many, many levels. It’s not just that I have my hands and my lap and my arms and my hair full of offspring who require my fulltime attention, though that does contribute to the general not-doing of my job. It’s not just that the job doesn’t pay, though about that, uh, ::bashes head into desk repeatedly::. Oh, no.

The problem is the job itself, which, for sake of an example that won’t get me dooced, we’ll call taxidermy. I had a mother who saw taxidermy as a very important ability and made sure I practiced every day of my childhood. All that time defiling squirrels and cute little birdies left me with a finely-honed set of skills; by the time I graduated college, I could have stuffed THE HECK out of someone’s grandma in 20 seconds flat. After Natalie came into our lives and we were living on Dan’s stipend of approximately $4 a year, I took the only part-time taxidermy job I could find. Nevermind that the not-getting-paid-thing negated my main reason for taking the job. It was work! That I was good at! And anyway, I would get a percentage of all donations to the Taxidermy Museum of Dead Art once my exhibit was up. Plus, after a few years, my résumé would be impressive enough for me to land ANOTHER taxidermy job! Career, here I come.

All was well until I was given my first assignment: a Great Horned Outer-Mongolian Double-Pustuled Octopus. No one whose name is not Jesus could make that thing look tolerable. I tried anyway and had various epiphanies along the way: No one whose name is not Jesus would ever pay money to see this monstrosity on display. I am volunteering for this, voluntarily. And OH, how I STRONGLY DISLIKE pustules. And octopuses. And, come to think of it, all creatures who have ever had the audacity to die. In fact, just thinking about taxidermy makes me want to bypass existence altogether, this existence which I am STRONGLY DISLIKING right now.

Two-and-a-half years later, I’m still working on the damn octopus, except that I’m not working on it because my children like to eat occasionally, and my new socks just vomited all over our living room rug, and the oven is still glued shut with the overflow from last week’s Lemon Disasterbars, and the dirty laundry is staging a coup d’état, and the plants on our balcony are screaming obscenities at my neglectful self, and I have a blogging addiction that is sure to give me cancer by 2010 but I still can’t quit. See? Chronic stupidity.

I don’t know how to wrap this up because I am exhausted x 10⁴⁸, and that pretty much makes this on par with drunk blogging. I’m inclined to forget about wrapping this up altogether and start rambling about how maybe this actually is drunk blogging because maybe Dan’s been infusing me with vodka while I sleep, or maybe one can get drunk on laundry, or maybe that blood orange martini from two nights ago was stronger than I thought, and then I’ll start mixing metaphors like telling you how blood oranges are the Godiva of citrus, and at some point you’ll stop reading, and I will have successfully shirked my duty of ending this post in an intelligent manner. ::Sigh:: I have a job that I cannot manage to do adequately at this stage in my life, and I don’t enjoy it, and we’re making closer to $6 a year now so extra income is no longer essential, yet I feel a horribly guilty obligation to finish this project already. That is why I’m holed up in my studio this morning with my computer.

Blogging.

18Jan

Revenge of the All-Nighter

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

The Universe left me to find out a few things about life utterly on my own. For instance (stop me if you’ve heard this before), the “s” word is not “stupid.” And the “f” word is not “fart.” And the “b” word is not “butt.” And speaking of the “b” word, the phrase “That bitch has an ass-face” has much less to do with animals than I once knew.

But this post isn’t actually about the deflowering of my virgin ears. This post is about how the Universe neglected to tell me that I would PAY, years later, for those all-nighters I pulled in college. I rarely needed sleep back then. Once I fought through the brain-pummeling exhaustion to the pleasant zombie buzz, I was great. Mobile, even (though balance sometimes presented a problem). Staying up was easier for me than waking up, and I was at least 15% functional on no sleep; what more could an over-booked over-extended over-achiever want?

Flash forward to this morning. After a respectable eight-hour sleep*, I pried my rusty eyelids open, as ready as I ever am for a big day of grocery shopping with the girls, ~GROCERY SHOPPING WITH THE GIRLS~, and returning home with few casualties. Did I mention grocery shopping with the girls? Unfortunately, before my feet even hit the floor, I fell over dead courtesy of karmic retribution from College All-Nighter #54.

All I’ve been able to think about today is how the sky looks like soot-trampled gum and how snails have far too much energy and how my bed is just right over there and how that’s convenient with me being literally dead and all. Contestants on American Gladiator who have just finished the Obstacle Course of Near Demise and Certain Life-Sucking Extreme-to-the-Max Fatigue? Are barely one-fifth as tired as I am today. There is, of course, no explanation for this other than the folly of my sleepless youth catching up to me.

Darn** Universe.

*Yes, I have a newborn. No, you can’t have her.

**(Not the “d” word. Just thought you should know.)

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