bethofalltrades

A year ago, I got my heart broken.

I ran away to Provincetown. I rented a bike.

I was surprised to see that entry, because I'd omitted something important. But its significance comes clear only in hindsight, I suppose.

I'd started to write about it back in January, in a post titled "Four Meetings with the Dresden Dolls". I had an image in my head of tying my three major encounters with their music into a post about the first meeting I had with Amanda (and eventually Brian) in January.

This was meeting number three:
I fled to Provincetown. I rented a bike, I ate dessert every night and I answered the phone every time my ex called.

I still have the mix I played on an endless loop that week, anytime I had solitude. The usual suspects-- Wake Me Up When September Ends (Green Day), If I Didn't Believe in You (The Last Five Years), and Hallelujah (covered by The Dresden Dolls).

I locked the bike and climbed to the top of a dune. I could see the rolling hills of Provincetown all around me. The ocean was close enough to smother me. I sat down and dumped the grit out of my shoes and wailed, sobbed, pounded my fists into the scrubby grass. I had an epic fucking breakdown where no one could see or hear me. The wrenching began and I laid on the ground, shuddering until everything in me dried up and went cold. My breathing stilled and I realized the music was still playing in my ear.

I took a deep breath and I started to feel better.

A year ago the sad, pathetic, doormat of a girl I'd become evaporated on a hilltop in Provincetown. I fell down one person and got up another.

This life is not all fun and laughter, but it is more fun and laughter (and love) than the life I left.

Tonight I am very grateful.

---

Dear Universe,

I am letting go. Send love, please?

Love,
Beth

I believe in anniversaries. That a mood can be repeated, even if the event that caused it is trivial or forgotten. In this case it's neither.
--Crave, Sarah Kane

I still imagine that someday we will find Don.

Tomato Nation does it to me every year. I think that it doesn't matter anymore, that seven years is a very long time, and then Sars writes about believing in angels (or not) and the tears can't be stopped.

I got into a deep discussion with Amanda about fate and the Universe. I believe that everything that happens is supposed to happen. I fight to believe it, even when things are going wrong. I believe it with no evidence.

That's faith. Believing when there's no reason to. I tried to explain to her that there are just things that I know in my heart. There's a reason that my hands can find the sore spots in a friend's body, and a reason that I call for no reason because I have a feeling that someone is sad, and a reason that I am here, now, doing what I do.

It wasn't a very compelling conversation, I fear. I am not the most articulate person in the world, and it is hard to articulate something that is only proved by "I feel it to be so."

I have met angels. The old Orthodox man who helped me up when I fell two years ago and told me that everything would be fine. He didn't mean my skinned knee. The punk girl on the bus who hugged me unbidden, without words, when I was crying.

I got to be an angel once, for a woman who fell down the stairs in the subway.

...

The only thing I want to say, I've said already.

(and it's a bit fucking tedious to say it again, no matter how true it is, no matter that it's the one unifying thought humanity has.)

Love,
Beth

I went to London.

There are 23,346 things I should be doing that are not writing this blog, but my brain is friend and I can't hold a pen in my right hand. It's the tendonitis, definitely, a side-effect from yesterday's 18 hour day at the computer.

Funny, how the body learns to compensate. I can type almost as fast with just my left hand and right pointer finger as I can with both hands in top form.

Once the album drops I will have to tend to this wrist. It was better for a while but has gotten worse again. The veins in my hand show like an old woman's.

I thought last night about what I would do if I lost my hands... my career as a photographer/graphic designer/personal assistant who emails constantly would be over. I could manage if I lost my hearing, maybe even if I lost my sight, but I need my hands. So of course my hands are the things that start to go.

--

I went to London. I went to London because I can't stand to be left behind, and because a psychic told me I would go to London in August and I would learn about love there. I went to London because Amanda was sad.

I went to London because I was sad and because Steven said, "Well, then why don't you just come to London?"

The question seemed so ridiculous, yet so obvious.

So I went to London.

--

I surprised Amanda at the football game she was hosting in Shepard's Bush. When I touched her arm, she turned and looked at me with mild annoyance, then confusion, and then mad, loud squealing.

I hung at the sidelines with a camera and a bottle of vile white wine, for which I still owe enchanting Robin four pounds, I think. I laughed with Steven and Becca the Merch Girl (who was visiting) and Max with the moustache who cannot stand the word "vagina."


(Max, Robin, Steven, Olga, and Becca)

A kid named Nima challenged Amanda and the 50 or so Dolls fans she was paying football (soccer!) with... he was a trip and a half. He's the one in the orange in this team portrait:



--

I went to London. I picked up a free newspaper and read my horoscope. It said, "You need to be there, somehow."



I went into a little astrology shop to buy another Spiral deck. They didn't have it, but the man behind the counter told me that he had something new that I would love.

He handed me the Tarot of the 78 Doors


I pulled up my sleeve and showed him my key. He smiled. We were both unnerved.

I gave Amanda privacy one night to make Important Calls. I sat just outside the door with my new deck. I laid the cards out in a calendar pattern before falling asleep, right there in the hallway.

--

I met a compatriot in London, a woman who led me through Chinatown at night and taught me about art. And myself.

She is magical.

She has a beautiful tattoo.



--

I went to London. I spent much of my time there looking around saying, "But... I'm in LONDON!"

It was worth the debt, the stress, the hours of travel, the sleeping-not-sleeping in Heathrow airport, the cold I got on the plane, the exhaustion, the sushi I won't be eating for the next two months as I try to fix my finances. It was all worth it, because I went to London.

Love,
Beth

So sometimes I wallow in self-pity and then the universe says, "Okay, feel better. Here's something."

Txt From: Dad
I'm sitting here in my office with your picture in front of me and just wanted to tell you "I love you."

Love,
Beth

I pulled the bright orange greeting card out of my purse at the diner last night, four drinks into what was an evening of immense relief. Found a pen in the depths of my cluttered purse and tried to write something to a kid I used to know on the occasion of his sixth birthday. The card was, of course, already late, even though I bought it with plenty of time to spare.

It is now back in my purse, still blank.

--

On the train, bitching loudly on the phone to my mother about how much I hate my job. The train starts to go underground and I say, "I love you, Momma." The fortyish woman across from me smiles. She's wearing a long fur coat and she says, "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation... I think we're a lot alike."

"You hate your job?"

"No. I call my mom every day."

And so we talked about mothers and how she lived away from hers for two years and hated it and since then they split their time between New York and Paris.

"My mother," she says, "Is the smartest person I know. Today I was telling her about-- well, you know, everyone has problems. And she said, 'Jeannie, you have to take it one step at a time towards happiness.'"

Again, curse the universe for sending me what I need to hear. "Your mother is very wise," I say, and Jeannie squeezes my hand and wishes me a lovely day as she dashes off the train at Canal. My day is instantly better.

--

I made it through my last workday without the Princess. I hadn't realize how much better she makes the office seem. Last week was really, really shitty, but next week is sure to be better, if only because she'll be stopping by my desk ten times a day.

My weekend is so infinitely boring. Today, grocery shopping and the hardware store (to buy supplies for mouse-proofing.) Tomorrow, laundry. This is probably all a good thing, though.

Love,
Beth