I don't know what's going on lately; the universe that I've known seems to have shifted and what was once comprehensible is now something misshapen and somewhat distorted. I saw a photo of a Stop sign in a middle eastern country and it was red and octagon shaped so my brain understood that it signified Stop even though I didn't and can't read the language. That's how I'm seeing my life right now I guess. I recognize the shapes: people, places, events but the language and the intent and even the meanings are not always what I think they are. And this both confuses and irritates me. I'm highly irritable anyway, easily annoyed, often frustrated... I thought for a long time that I was just "moody," which I am, but I'm beginning to understand that it's much more than that. Terms like depressed, anxious, bipolar, attention deficit have come into the analysis that most likely will result in a diagnosis of some kind. But more than that, they are helping me to understand that I don't think the way that you or you or you do because my brain doesn't function like yours does. Until I come to grips with that and until you do too, there's no sense pursuing any kind of relationship. It's a lost cause.
I mention or ramble here because recently I had an encounter with a friend who has been a friend for most of my life, some 30 years and, we had a misunderstanding. And although I didn't see the situation in the way that she did and vice versa, I thought about both of our reactions and I apologized. At first I thought that I apologized because it was the "right" thing to do; you hurt someone's feelings, you say you're sorry. Very elementary school. But now, after the fact, I realize that it was more than that; it is more than that. It wasn't about hurt feelings. It was about my lack of understanding where she was coming from and her lack of understanding from where I spoke. Common enough I think. And our friendship, although lengthy, some 30 years has waned to more of a acquaintance type relationship. We see each other once in awhile and seemingly pick up where we left off and this is how it's been. We don't plan things, we don't vacation together, our children don't know each other. But there is a history there; a very important one, at least for me. She was a vital part of a time in my life when most of my ideas about life, love and friendship were formed. Her support and humor and drive helped me to often be better, to have more fun, to not take shit from anyone. Her zest to live in the moment has stayed with me through the years and, without consciously realizing it, has prompted me to take on things that I might never have considered before. And most of all, best of all, my teenage years are wrapped up in memories of experiences that we shared together. So, regardless of the years that have gone on since and all of the time that has passed, I always think of her as a friend and she would be there for me if I needed her to be. I still think that.
When this misunderstanding took place, I was surprised and shocked by her immediate response and her note made me think that something wasn't quite right with how she reacted. Maybe that was my interpretation, but maybe, not. If friends can support, then they should be able to criticize as well, equally. And, since I'm not one to mince words and I'm very "direct" I would think that those who know me best, accept that about me. But therin lies the dig... she doesn't understand and either she didn't then or she thought that I wasn't worth the effort and it was THAT reaction that saddened me, still does. That reaction makes me wonder if she even considers me a friend anymore and if she does, what will our next interaction be like...
It's ironic because I'm very much a people person; I like to be around people, I like to have conversations, I like to do things... but, I have to be in the right frame of mind, or mood as most people would say. If I'm not, if I'm in the "state" that I often am, people don't understand me and they often read my reactions as something other than what they are. The thing is, I can't mask it. It's like trying to tone down rage; not anger or frustration, but full on, body clenching rage. Call it what it is, react, try to do damage control. I don't intentionally try to hurt people's feelings, maybe that's the point I'm trying to make. I say things, I think things, I react, I'm impulsive, but I'm honest and, I know, that the people who are in my life are honest with me too. And sometimes it hurts and sometimes I lose friends, but I guess in the end, it's better to be honest with yourself than to put on some kind of pretentious bullshit show that makes you seem like you are more enlightened than everyone around you; that you are happier than everyone when really, on some level, you know that it's all a lie. Because no one is that happy all the time. And if they are, I want some of what they are taking.
I go to therapy now and I really like it. I exercise more and I like that too. I try to do things that feed the part of my brain that wants to be positive and when I don't, I subdue it with chocolate or alcohol. It's 5:00 somewhere...
It's tough not knowing exactly what makes you tick because if you did, it would be much easier to "fix." A stepford Yvette maybe; what might she be like? Complacent, obedient, complimentary... I can't stand her already. Less wrinkles; that I would take. Wax on philosophical, that' what a blog is for, bitch about the bad, praise the good and shy away from the ugly. Then again, what would be the point of all of it if everything was sugar coated, without stress, or pain or disappointment? What if I didn't say what I thought in order not to hurt anyone's feelings, intentional or not, ever? What would that life look like?
In the end I guess, friendship is a reward and a consequence for someone like me, really, with someone like me. If you understand where I'm coming from, then you get it and, if not, maybe because you deign that I'm not worth the effort, I can accept that too. I don't have to like it and it's not that it won't hurt, but at least, we'll have been honest with one another. And, I may be many things, good and bad, but gladly I can say, I am an honest person. Lesson learned; never post a comment on facebook that someone may misread or take the wrong way. Hmmm... I guess I'm never posting anything again...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Riding the roller coaster
I spent the day at Magic Mountain today with my family. We were there for 9 hours and we got on 3 rides. Now, I'm not one to hold back when it comes to giving my opinion, but I tried very hard to temper my annoyance and ill will toward the park and the people there, at least for part of the day. But, by the end, I was done and so were the kids.
There is something depraved and deeply upsetting about having to wait almost 2 hours to ride on a roller coaster. Most of the time, I'd say fuck it and walk out of the park. Actually, backtracking, I normally don't subject myself or my children to the kind of abuse that occurs in an amusement park in Southern California on a summer day. I usually avoid that scenario like the plague. But, this morning, it seemed like a good idea; pack up the kids, take along a friend, go for a few hours. Big, fat, wrong. When there is a line to get into the park that rivals the one packed in for the wait for Colossus, you know you're in trouble. But, like the gluttons we are, we go in anyway.
I love roller coasters. I love that feeling that makes your stomach feel like it's now in the toes of your shoes and I love it when your head whips around so much that you are close to blacking out... I love that and, sadly, I also know that sometime, maybe in the not so distant future, that I will have to give up this pasttime because my body and my brain will no longer be able to handle the G force or the 17 loops that will exist in the coasters of the future. So, I sigh and wait my turn to experience it while I can and, even at 41, I have yet to meet a coaster that can tame me. The scarier the better.
So, when Nick and I got in line for Goliath, one of my two favorites at Magic Mountain,I was more than excited. I was ready to let that coaster kick my ass and to love every second of it...
An hour and forty-five minutes later and we are about to get on the ride and some of my enthusiasm has waned... Oh, I still loved it and screamed like a little kid and laughed and held my hands up and thought, "I'm going to die" as the car plummeted in an almost vertical line toward the ground, but after all that time in line, I kind of lost interest in why I was there and instead tried to think of reasons why I should stay. After we got off the ride though, looking at Nick's face was enough to tell me that it was worth it. And besides, if Nick can wait that long in "kid time," I mean an hour, forty-five is like a lifetime to that guy, then I guess I can too. He smiled at me as we walked out and said, "That was great mom." Yes it was.
I ditched the other kids early on because the 13 year was acting like the jackass that he is these days, as most teenagers will at some point in their "Let's make mom's life a veritable hell" days. So, once that happened, things quieted down. That is until we got to my other favorite ride in the park, Tatsu.
Now, if you haven't ridden on Tatsu, I'm not sure that I could begin to do it justice to even describe it, but, of course, I'm going to try. The experience of riding on it, well, I liken it to flying in an airplane for the first time, well, the first time that you can remember it. That sensation of lift off and of heart palpitations and wonder and freedom, all wrapped into one experience. Riding Tatsu is like that; it's intense.
Nick and I waited over an hour for this monster and she is worth every second. To better illustrate the intensity; when the car in front of us came to a stop, the girl closest to where we stood, ready to board was weeping. She wasn't crying, she was weeping. You could literally see the tears falling from her face onto the ground and when they clicked open the harness so that she could get out, she yelled, "I am never going on that ride ever again" and she pointed at the machine, as if it could hear her and somehow be sorry for causing her emotional distress. Nick and I looked at each other and then we busted up laughing and I thought to myself, "Now that's the sign of a kick ass roller coaster. Let's go." And so we did and, let me pause for a second to say, I now understand why the girl was weeping. I still think her reaction was hilarious, but I understand it better now.
We get into our seats and we pull our harnesses down and we wait for someone to come over and strap in our feet and check the safety switch. While we wait, I notice that the woman to the left of Nick is rather large. I'm being kind here. I don't know her so I can't judge her based on anything other than she was not going to fit into the harness. Any two year old with a shape sorter and the various shapes could understand this concept. You might want that circle to fit into the star shaped hole, but no matter how hard you shove it in, it ain't going in. I'm watching as two workers, teenage kids, maybe early college years, come over and attempt to shove and I do not use that word lightly because as one pulled down the harness, the other one pushed and pulled like she was attempting to do chest compressions on someone who couldn't breathe. And while this is happening, everyone is staring and the woman is grunting as the harness is clearly cutting into her chest and stomach. The kids push and pull and she grunts as the riders begin to get impatient. But the most bizarre thing of all is that this goes on for a full 3 or 4 minutes and NO ONE stops it; not the workers and not the passenger, who by this time, is starting to look pekid from all of the action that her windpipe and lungs are getting. Finally, someone comes over, a supervisor, I guess and tells the woman that she is going to have to exit the ride. And, I have to admit, the woman takes it pretty well. She gets out of the seat and makes her way down the stairs while her friend stays on the ride. Another couple of minutes and we're off, but before I begin to show you the brilliance that is Tatsu, let me digress and just say this, politically incorrect or not, there are limits on what people can do. We all have them, I have them and denial is one's best friend in situations like that. But, whatever your ailment is, I don't judge you for that, I don't care really. I do care though about the insanity that centers on the kind of person who doesn't see themselves for who and what they are. If you're a fat person or obese or you are genetically pre-disposed to be a size beyond that of the average human being, then maybe going to Magic Mountain should wait until you can fit yourself into the seat without embarrassment or self induced humiliation because you just can't understand why they don't make seats "bigger" for riders like you. Reality check...
Tatsu; even the name is poetic, like origami paper or a cherry blossom tree, Tatsu: elegant, graceful, majestic.... will kick your fucking ass upside down and then bitch slap you on the way back! Just like any good roller coaster will.
So, after the harness clicks into place and they give each other the green light, the harness and the seat tilt you into another position; imagine that you are suspended on all fours and the harness is what holds you in place. You are HANGING THERE! Your face looking down at the ground while your body weight is suspended against the harness. It's a weird image and the first time that you see people hanging there, it looks like some kind of new age torture device and I think again of the weeping girl. Most people start laughing and hollering and screaming at this point as the excitement builds. And then... you're off. Because the intent of the ride is to make you feel like you're flying, the tilt of the harness is such that for the entire ride, you not only feel like you're flying, but you feel like at any second that you're going to fly right out of the fucking thing and plummet to your death. Particularly when you're doing an inverted loop backward at 85 miles per hour. This must have been the point when the weeping started. But frankly, it's not the loops that freak me out, it's the beginning, those first few moments when the coaster is slowly ascending the 300 feet or so before it plunges you into oblivion. Because this coaster is suspended and the track is above you, it literally looks and feels as if there is nothing separating you and the plunge to your death. As you creep up the incline, you feel like a skydiver, harnessed to someone else's chest only instead of falling, you are climbing. People are waving from below but you are too terrified to let go of the grab bars, as if this would save your from flying out and then, you're there and all of a sudden, you're backward, flying through the air, your heart in your chest and your stomach in your shoes and you're laughing and screaming and maybe even crying a little and you're 13 again, pissing off your parents and wishing that you could spend every day of your summer vacation waiting in lines for rides like Tatsu.
But, you can't. You have responsibilities and you have that bitch of a drive home on the 405 which aptly should be named "Highway to Hell" at this point in its existence.
So, you settle for knowing that you love all those rides and soon you'll be back to conquer them again and to enjoy for just a bit longer, the zealous charge that we get when we take on something that frightens or excites us, something that brings us back for a few minutes to a time in our lives when things were good, just because we were there. It didn't have to be perfect or go according to a plan, it just had to happen.
And so, I think about another day that I got to share something with my kids, even the pain in the ass 13 year old, I'm still pissed off at him right now, something that is generational and that binds us together. But, the next time that we find an activity that accomplishes that ideal "bonding," I swear, it better not involve an hour and forty five minute wait...
There is something depraved and deeply upsetting about having to wait almost 2 hours to ride on a roller coaster. Most of the time, I'd say fuck it and walk out of the park. Actually, backtracking, I normally don't subject myself or my children to the kind of abuse that occurs in an amusement park in Southern California on a summer day. I usually avoid that scenario like the plague. But, this morning, it seemed like a good idea; pack up the kids, take along a friend, go for a few hours. Big, fat, wrong. When there is a line to get into the park that rivals the one packed in for the wait for Colossus, you know you're in trouble. But, like the gluttons we are, we go in anyway.
I love roller coasters. I love that feeling that makes your stomach feel like it's now in the toes of your shoes and I love it when your head whips around so much that you are close to blacking out... I love that and, sadly, I also know that sometime, maybe in the not so distant future, that I will have to give up this pasttime because my body and my brain will no longer be able to handle the G force or the 17 loops that will exist in the coasters of the future. So, I sigh and wait my turn to experience it while I can and, even at 41, I have yet to meet a coaster that can tame me. The scarier the better.
So, when Nick and I got in line for Goliath, one of my two favorites at Magic Mountain,I was more than excited. I was ready to let that coaster kick my ass and to love every second of it...
An hour and forty-five minutes later and we are about to get on the ride and some of my enthusiasm has waned... Oh, I still loved it and screamed like a little kid and laughed and held my hands up and thought, "I'm going to die" as the car plummeted in an almost vertical line toward the ground, but after all that time in line, I kind of lost interest in why I was there and instead tried to think of reasons why I should stay. After we got off the ride though, looking at Nick's face was enough to tell me that it was worth it. And besides, if Nick can wait that long in "kid time," I mean an hour, forty-five is like a lifetime to that guy, then I guess I can too. He smiled at me as we walked out and said, "That was great mom." Yes it was.
I ditched the other kids early on because the 13 year was acting like the jackass that he is these days, as most teenagers will at some point in their "Let's make mom's life a veritable hell" days. So, once that happened, things quieted down. That is until we got to my other favorite ride in the park, Tatsu.
Now, if you haven't ridden on Tatsu, I'm not sure that I could begin to do it justice to even describe it, but, of course, I'm going to try. The experience of riding on it, well, I liken it to flying in an airplane for the first time, well, the first time that you can remember it. That sensation of lift off and of heart palpitations and wonder and freedom, all wrapped into one experience. Riding Tatsu is like that; it's intense.
Nick and I waited over an hour for this monster and she is worth every second. To better illustrate the intensity; when the car in front of us came to a stop, the girl closest to where we stood, ready to board was weeping. She wasn't crying, she was weeping. You could literally see the tears falling from her face onto the ground and when they clicked open the harness so that she could get out, she yelled, "I am never going on that ride ever again" and she pointed at the machine, as if it could hear her and somehow be sorry for causing her emotional distress. Nick and I looked at each other and then we busted up laughing and I thought to myself, "Now that's the sign of a kick ass roller coaster. Let's go." And so we did and, let me pause for a second to say, I now understand why the girl was weeping. I still think her reaction was hilarious, but I understand it better now.
We get into our seats and we pull our harnesses down and we wait for someone to come over and strap in our feet and check the safety switch. While we wait, I notice that the woman to the left of Nick is rather large. I'm being kind here. I don't know her so I can't judge her based on anything other than she was not going to fit into the harness. Any two year old with a shape sorter and the various shapes could understand this concept. You might want that circle to fit into the star shaped hole, but no matter how hard you shove it in, it ain't going in. I'm watching as two workers, teenage kids, maybe early college years, come over and attempt to shove and I do not use that word lightly because as one pulled down the harness, the other one pushed and pulled like she was attempting to do chest compressions on someone who couldn't breathe. And while this is happening, everyone is staring and the woman is grunting as the harness is clearly cutting into her chest and stomach. The kids push and pull and she grunts as the riders begin to get impatient. But the most bizarre thing of all is that this goes on for a full 3 or 4 minutes and NO ONE stops it; not the workers and not the passenger, who by this time, is starting to look pekid from all of the action that her windpipe and lungs are getting. Finally, someone comes over, a supervisor, I guess and tells the woman that she is going to have to exit the ride. And, I have to admit, the woman takes it pretty well. She gets out of the seat and makes her way down the stairs while her friend stays on the ride. Another couple of minutes and we're off, but before I begin to show you the brilliance that is Tatsu, let me digress and just say this, politically incorrect or not, there are limits on what people can do. We all have them, I have them and denial is one's best friend in situations like that. But, whatever your ailment is, I don't judge you for that, I don't care really. I do care though about the insanity that centers on the kind of person who doesn't see themselves for who and what they are. If you're a fat person or obese or you are genetically pre-disposed to be a size beyond that of the average human being, then maybe going to Magic Mountain should wait until you can fit yourself into the seat without embarrassment or self induced humiliation because you just can't understand why they don't make seats "bigger" for riders like you. Reality check...
Tatsu; even the name is poetic, like origami paper or a cherry blossom tree, Tatsu: elegant, graceful, majestic.... will kick your fucking ass upside down and then bitch slap you on the way back! Just like any good roller coaster will.
So, after the harness clicks into place and they give each other the green light, the harness and the seat tilt you into another position; imagine that you are suspended on all fours and the harness is what holds you in place. You are HANGING THERE! Your face looking down at the ground while your body weight is suspended against the harness. It's a weird image and the first time that you see people hanging there, it looks like some kind of new age torture device and I think again of the weeping girl. Most people start laughing and hollering and screaming at this point as the excitement builds. And then... you're off. Because the intent of the ride is to make you feel like you're flying, the tilt of the harness is such that for the entire ride, you not only feel like you're flying, but you feel like at any second that you're going to fly right out of the fucking thing and plummet to your death. Particularly when you're doing an inverted loop backward at 85 miles per hour. This must have been the point when the weeping started. But frankly, it's not the loops that freak me out, it's the beginning, those first few moments when the coaster is slowly ascending the 300 feet or so before it plunges you into oblivion. Because this coaster is suspended and the track is above you, it literally looks and feels as if there is nothing separating you and the plunge to your death. As you creep up the incline, you feel like a skydiver, harnessed to someone else's chest only instead of falling, you are climbing. People are waving from below but you are too terrified to let go of the grab bars, as if this would save your from flying out and then, you're there and all of a sudden, you're backward, flying through the air, your heart in your chest and your stomach in your shoes and you're laughing and screaming and maybe even crying a little and you're 13 again, pissing off your parents and wishing that you could spend every day of your summer vacation waiting in lines for rides like Tatsu.
But, you can't. You have responsibilities and you have that bitch of a drive home on the 405 which aptly should be named "Highway to Hell" at this point in its existence.
So, you settle for knowing that you love all those rides and soon you'll be back to conquer them again and to enjoy for just a bit longer, the zealous charge that we get when we take on something that frightens or excites us, something that brings us back for a few minutes to a time in our lives when things were good, just because we were there. It didn't have to be perfect or go according to a plan, it just had to happen.
And so, I think about another day that I got to share something with my kids, even the pain in the ass 13 year old, I'm still pissed off at him right now, something that is generational and that binds us together. But, the next time that we find an activity that accomplishes that ideal "bonding," I swear, it better not involve an hour and forty five minute wait...
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