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Three Stems of Red Amaryllis
Dec. 15th, 2007 10:02 amSad, sad, sad, sad, sad.
Eye fu made me very self-conscious at yesterday's job interview and when I'm self-conscious I tend to babble and stammer and make idiotic assertions in a bright, overly cheerful voice. So who knows how that one will play out.
Then when I got home, Max called. Apparently there is some kind of b-day celebration for my cousin Alicia tonight which Rik came down for. Rik issued an imperial proclamation announcing his desire to see Max. Did not express a similar interest in seeing me.
My feelings were dreadfully, dreadfully hurt.
Notwithstanding the fact that I never particularly enjoy get-togethers at Alicia's. At the last one – Christmas just past – the entertainment was endless video loops of eight year old Haley starring as a Lost Boy in some kind of Santa Cruz Children's Theater musical production of Peter Pan while Rik lay wan and disinterested reading on the couch, from time to time issuing an edict – "I need some KaoPectate. You don't have any? Then somebody will have to go out and buy some" – or rousing himself to make rude personal remarks – "You're looking tense. I suppose single parenting is too much for you."
He thinks you're a failure, I thought to myself.
This opened Pandora's box. Nobody in my family has ever liked me very much. I was always either excess baggage or an embarrassment to them. There's some huge lack of something – even Annie dithering in the car on the way home from Palo Alto the other night, bright, cheerful, brittle.
Anyway, of course I started to cry and I couldn't stop, and it was awful. Ben and Robin went about their usual routines ignoring me – I don't blame them – and I kept working on a website graphic, a rollover: "The hot, the saucy, the combustophiles." When you mouse over, it catches on fire! Except I couldn't get it to catch on fire, my fire graphics were lousy – hell, my entire life was lousy. Failure! Failure! Failure! Failure! Failure! I told myself.
Finally I gave up for the night. Snuck off to bed with a glass of wine and Ruth Rendell's The Water Is Lovely.
Ruth Rendell is an extraordinary writer. A kind of psychological water-colorist. Her prose is very simple, but as she applies it to the simple events of her characters' lives, her characterizations and descriptions become something quite complex. Of course there's always one event that isn't simple, usually a grotesque murder of some kind – in The Water is Lovely, 12-year-old Heather drowns the stepfather who molested her.
The book comforted me for a bit. This is my real self, I thought. The person who reads. The person who imagines. Not the person who helms a struggling business, who flubbed a job interview, who is not important enough to get invited to family get-togethers.
The real me lives in a room with white walls and a view of the ocean. There is a black onyx vase with three stems of red amaryllis on her table.
Eye fu made me very self-conscious at yesterday's job interview and when I'm self-conscious I tend to babble and stammer and make idiotic assertions in a bright, overly cheerful voice. So who knows how that one will play out.
Then when I got home, Max called. Apparently there is some kind of b-day celebration for my cousin Alicia tonight which Rik came down for. Rik issued an imperial proclamation announcing his desire to see Max. Did not express a similar interest in seeing me.
My feelings were dreadfully, dreadfully hurt.
Notwithstanding the fact that I never particularly enjoy get-togethers at Alicia's. At the last one – Christmas just past – the entertainment was endless video loops of eight year old Haley starring as a Lost Boy in some kind of Santa Cruz Children's Theater musical production of Peter Pan while Rik lay wan and disinterested reading on the couch, from time to time issuing an edict – "I need some KaoPectate. You don't have any? Then somebody will have to go out and buy some" – or rousing himself to make rude personal remarks – "You're looking tense. I suppose single parenting is too much for you."
He thinks you're a failure, I thought to myself.
This opened Pandora's box. Nobody in my family has ever liked me very much. I was always either excess baggage or an embarrassment to them. There's some huge lack of something – even Annie dithering in the car on the way home from Palo Alto the other night, bright, cheerful, brittle.
Anyway, of course I started to cry and I couldn't stop, and it was awful. Ben and Robin went about their usual routines ignoring me – I don't blame them – and I kept working on a website graphic, a rollover: "The hot, the saucy, the combustophiles." When you mouse over, it catches on fire! Except I couldn't get it to catch on fire, my fire graphics were lousy – hell, my entire life was lousy. Failure! Failure! Failure! Failure! Failure! I told myself.
Finally I gave up for the night. Snuck off to bed with a glass of wine and Ruth Rendell's The Water Is Lovely.
Ruth Rendell is an extraordinary writer. A kind of psychological water-colorist. Her prose is very simple, but as she applies it to the simple events of her characters' lives, her characterizations and descriptions become something quite complex. Of course there's always one event that isn't simple, usually a grotesque murder of some kind – in The Water is Lovely, 12-year-old Heather drowns the stepfather who molested her.
The book comforted me for a bit. This is my real self, I thought. The person who reads. The person who imagines. Not the person who helms a struggling business, who flubbed a job interview, who is not important enough to get invited to family get-togethers.
The real me lives in a room with white walls and a view of the ocean. There is a black onyx vase with three stems of red amaryllis on her table.
