I Am So Popular: When You Wanna Come
A friend of mine sometimes has what she calls the temporary suicide fantasy. Along the lines of the Jesus/Easter thing, this fantasy involves offing yourself for a few days but then getting to come back, all refreshed, and start again. I like this notion—it ranks up there with the recurring escape fantasy I was mentioning last week, the one that most recently revisited me when my hard drive crashed. In essence: I ditch everything, head West with the dogs, and nobody ever hears from me again, at least not until I can quiet my mind and empty my calendar which is always so full that I actually think it’s heavier than when I bought it, courtesy of all those inked in appointments.
Mercury is in Retrograde right now, which, if you’re superstitious like me, you buy into the notion that for three weeks your best bet is to just stop talking. To everyone. Because MR means, among other things, that communication goes haywire. In my own life, call it self-fulfilling prophecy, but of late I unintentionally (but nonetheless very seriously) upset a beloved friend, got into it big time with my kid (on Mother’s Day!), and almost got into a fistfight with one of my Dick Monologues’ cast mates.
That last one happened the other night when said friend and I were heading out to see RENT at the Bass Concert Hall. I’ll skip the details of the argument and focus on the message of RENT which is—this just in from the nothing-new-under-the-sun department—basically about the importance of living in the moment, living life to the fullest, not running away from love, and sticking to your guns instead of selling out. Okay, I don’t know about the rest of you, but the catch-22 for me, whenever I see/read/hear a play/book/song about this theme, is that I wind up beating the crap out of myself for not being able to better apply the seemingly simple premise of carpe diem to my life.
Oh yeah ONE day I will do daily yoga and truly, really quit smoking and only eat healthy and give up arguing with Warren and my son and my friends and the ghosts of ex-friends lingering in my grudge-riddled mind. And ONE day I will really, truly, on a cellular level appreciate all that I have. But for now, the knowledge that I should be doing these things, and that I’m not, is just one more thing to heap on the Stack-o-Worry that comprises the very core of my being.
Yes, people, I am and always have been as nervous as a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. Do I walk and meditate daily to combat this? I do. Do I take my medication, like a good girl, when anxiety gives way to full on panic attack? Absolutely. Do I try to remember to indulge in blessing counting? Check. And do I try to do this without feeling overwhelmed with guilt when, say, I find myself cruising the aisles of Whole Paycheck, indulging myself in organic vegan faux-penguin liver pate while I know, in my heart, little girls in Pakistan risk murder for wanting to attend school? Okay, that one I still struggle with.
My current struggle is that I have some work right now, and that’s nothing to sneeze at in this economy, and yet every morning I wake up and, as I surface, I remember this work I have and it’s like a male seal elephant has just collapsed and died on my chest. I don’t exactly hate the work. But while it is challenging in an incredibly tedious way, and while the deadline is impossible, there is a glaring lack of creativity required on my part and that is bringing me down. Waaaaaaay down. Oh, poor Spike, stuck in her house with her dogs all day, writing a book, just like she always dreamed of doing, but now she’s not happy with it.
Sigh.
And moments like these—when the work is heavy and daunting and the friends and family are not seeing things my way and I am failing to appreciate the beauty of my kooky life—then the escape fantasy gets stuck on a loop. In a curious way, this can actually be a helpful thing. How’s that?
Well let’s say you allow yourself to indulge in the fantasy— whether it’s a vision of you and Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon careening off a cliff, wind in your hair, or something simpler like you give away all your possessions and decide to walk to the Pacific Ocean, taking your time. If you’re as retentive as I am about to-do lists, then you’re not going to be able to just step off or out. You’re going to have to politely leave a detailed list for others so they can finish up certain tasks, which, though you can’t bear to finish them yourself, you can’t bear to let others down. So it’s a sort of forced delegation, a suspending of disbelief in which you allow yourself to know your friends will carry on for you, keep your various appointments, finish up the work you left behind, and miraculously not be pissed off at you in the process.
When I was making my list, it was so long and so detailed (and included things like, “Also, please contact so-and-so and tell them I do NOT forgive them and they really ARE stupidheads…”) that it was a good reality check. Not only were there so many things I have to do, there are so many things I want to do. And, getting back to my friend’s three-day-off-yourself-plan, I’m pretty sure that I’d get settled in in Marfa for about four days, max, before feeling a desperate ache to be back home in the chaos.
And last week, Warren and I had the bizarre opportunity to stay overnight at a spa, part of a little trade-for-work I lucked into. Not the first time for me, but even knowing what I know about the spa—you will relax, no two ways about it—the whole drive out I kept thinking there’s no way I’m going to relax. I am so far behind in my work, I don’t have time for this, I…
So here’s my cliché message—now, in these hard times, is not the time to avoid frivolous spa treatments or calling in sick to work to catch a matinee in frigid air conditioning or allowing logic to convince you now is the wrong time to get the hell out of Dodge for a weekend. No, now is the time to do whatever it takes to indulge yourself. If that means a $3 bag of Epsom salts shoplifted from Walgreens and seasoned with rosemary and lavender you “borrow” from your neighbors’ yard, by all means, do it. Swap houses with a friend for a weekend. Go to Barton Springs for a night swim. But by all means, carpe diem, baby because not everybody remembers the second half of the statement “Eat, Drink and Be Merry” but here it is: “for tomorrow we die.”
Spike Gillespie will do it, when she wants to get to it. She blogs at www.knitbuzz.blogspot.com and www.spikeg.com. Tix for the last Dick Monologues on July 2nd are going fast. Email spike@spikeg.com to reserve seats.
