The Hyperreality of Home

My father moved around a lot when I was growing up. I lose track when counting all of the homes that we lived in, but there must have been at least 12 that I can remember before the age of 12 when I went to live with my mom; the house in Lake Havasu, the house on Terrace, the house on Brown... Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, Missouri, back to Arizona, back to Missouri, and back to Arizona again. It was all very exhausting and annoying for a pre-teen.

Whenever we found ourselves in Phoenix, my dad would drive by our old house on Terrace. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe because my sisters and I pleaded with him to do so, because it seemed like our home that never was. I don't know what was so special to us about that house. When we moved I must have been just six years old, but I always wanted to drive by it.

This was my first experience with the disemboweling feeling of nostalgia and the useless grasping at a fleeting sense of home.

I inherited both habits from my father, the aimless moving around and the drive-by nostalgic self-torturing. I've lived in fourteen homes since I left my parents house at 18, the average time spent at each place being one year.

It turns out there is one house, my current house, that I moved into accepting its status of infra-home, with the intention of staying just until our lease was up and moving somewhere else. It was a temporary move, a stepping stone. This just so happens to be the house I've lived in the longest (3.5 years) second only to the house I graduated from high school in (6 years).

This is as home as home gets.

But it isn't.

The most authentic, vivid feeling of home that is able to tug at my heartstrings is only present in its residual form. It only really happens once I have left a place.

Yes, I know home should be wherever Luigi and kitty are. In theory it is. But inside I'm in some sort of home-purgatory. It isn't that home is unreal. It's hyperreal. My own misrepresentational memories of it have filtered and recreated an unrealistic expectation in my mind of what home is supposed to feel like.

I'm the idiot tourist described by Baudrillard walking through Disneyland nostalgic for the Main Street America depicted there that was never real to begin with.



Do you know what this means?



It only means that I'm horribly, pathetically ungrateful. Believe me, I realize this. No need to point it out.

I can see myself though, in the future, driving or walking passed my street, and not being able to turn my head away from looking down it, thinking about the people that are occupying the ossuary of my home, sleeping in my room and larcenously taking a shit in my toilet. The nerve.

- Bluestreak

Tea with the Mad Hatter by fd from Flickr.

Welcome to Disneyland and Main Street, USA by andy castro from Flickr

Goodbye Karey

I don't have much to say today because I think you all know my words don't come out in my way right now. Or maybe it is in my way but they don't come with ease anymore.

I feel a strain.

Heavy paperweight on heart.

There's some kind of muzzle but I don't know why. Or I do but I don't know how to say what the muzzle is made of. Because the muzzle is a little muzzling when trying to describe the muzzle. See?

Oh, it's not just about muzzles.

When I was in grad school and was attempting to read more than was humanly possible in a single day, I would go to sleep at night and have strange dreams of misplaced and sometimes invented words floating around in my brain, nonsensical sentences, ornamental paragraphs of pure jabberwocky monologue.

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe."

- "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

This is what my voice feels like right now; recursive nonsense, my mind a think tank of anti-thoughts.

Life feels a little like that too, and looks a little too much like Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and I feel kinda like I'm the one bent over with the flower growing out of my ass, when I'd really like to be standing up, clothed, with the flower in my hand, maybe giving it to you, which I'm much more comfortable with.

On top of a jibberish voice, I have some sort of rhetorical laryngitis. I try to speak but it's just an inaudible, bleached out and faded whisper.

So today I'm just here to whisper.

I'm here to whisper a goodbye to Karey. I don't want to say she's a blogger, because she's so much more than a blogger. She is someone I love as a writer, but mostly as a person. And I'm just happy I get to share the earth with her and somewhere far away she's giving people huge smiles ear to ear.

It's strange how blogging friends come and go. I guess like how real friends come in and out of your life, probably because they are real friends.

The departure is just a little more abrupt I suppose.

So, Karey, if you're still out there, this is as good a whispered goodbye as it gets on the internets:







-Bluestreak

P.S. Pare, if you're out there, I miss you somethin awful too.

Old Wire Dog Muzzles by Feltbug from flickr.

Bye. by Nathan from flickr.

Resolutions of the teeth (and self) improving variety

Well, that’s it. Another year has come and gone.

Happy belated birthday, world (or I should say, Happy Birthday de facto international standard Gregorian calendar).

I’m not about to post my new year's resolutions here and jinx myself, like I’ve done before.

I will tell you that one of these undeclared resolutions concerns quitting a certain disgusting habit in the hopes that my teeth will stop resembling those of some poor chap that was born on the lower end of the feudal scale during the Elizabethan era and that my lungs will be in slightly better condition than those of an unlucky coal miner.

Ahem.

Those Elizabethan serfs had an excuse for the unseemly state their teeth were in; they were busy worrying about more pressing matters such as rotting garbage in the streets and no structured sewage system and oh, you know, stressful things like the bubonic plague. I have no excuse other than wanting to inhale poison for some reason because I guess my life is just too damn easy. My teeth have been unsuspecting casualties.

In light of my rediscovered love of my own teeth (and lungs), I’ve scheduled a visit to the dentist.

The Spanish dentist.

Don’t freak people, this is a first world country. I promise Bluestreak will not end up with gold caps. Although that would kind of rule.

Sometimes I think we Americans might obsess a little too much about our teeth compared to other people. Our teeth do generally kick ass. Well, mine are starting to look as if I’ve been munching ass as opposed to kicking it, but I’m generalizing here.

As an American I know what a dental visit should consist of.

When I go to the dentist I don’t want it to only last ten minutes and to basically just have my mouth rinsed out with a little white hose and then get pat on the back and be told to keep up the good work with the dental hygiene.

No.

I want my teeth to have the living shit scraped off of them and for my bleeding gums to be mercilessly poked at. I want to have to grip the handles on the chair in fear and I want to experience some mild pain. I want the procedure to seemingly go on for eternity. Then I want to be scolded and slightly humiliated for not flossing as much as I should. That would be a normal visit to the dentist.

But this isn’t a normal place, this place I’m in.

This is a place where fucked up things occur, like when a few days after my last dental appointment I went back to the medical center for my gynecologist appointment and the woman that assisted the doctor with my pap smear (i.e. "the nurse") was also the woman that had assisted my dentist with my cleaning days earlier (i.e. previously known as "the dental hygienist").

Um, am I dreaming, is this hell, or am I perpetually living in a Dali painting?



Ok, ok, one of my other resolutions (fuck it, I’m now declaring them) is that I’m gonna try to quit being such an ungrateful bitch and as you can see, that leaves me without a whole helluvalot to blog about. So in that vein, I think I should mention in my most grateful tone that my healthcare is free here and for mere convenience, I’ve felt the need to sign up for private health care at about eighty bucks a month which covers anything that could possibly go wrong with my body or mind, including my beloved grinders and biters. But apparently the nurses under my plan are jack-of-all-trades or jack-of-all-orifices.

Wish me luck on my next visit to the dentist. Oh and on my inadvertently mentioned new years resolutions.

-Bluestreak

"Mouth 4" by ysin from Flickr.

"Bailarina" by Salvador Dali

Warning: Consuming Raw or Undercooked Thoughts May Results in Half-Assed Blogging

Hi.

I've been silent because I'm...percolating. I'm out of a job and I don't quite know how I feel about that just yet.

I'm also "home" now. You know, the home that's not really my home (i.e., my parent's house that has never been my home). I fucking HATE the light switches in this joint, I have no idea where they are and the silverware drawer is in the darndest spot.

So, I'm in my country, sans Luigi. And it's a damn shame that you have to be separated from someone to really realize what they mean to you. Humans are ungrateful fucks like that.

Basically my time at home has consisted of me driving around my city, at times letting my memories spill over me. It can be pathetic.

It's amazing how urban organization can effect how you experience home and homesickness. I've seen the sunset for the first time in ages. The beautiful Arizona winter sunsets where the air is so thin you can see for miles and miles. I've gone from sprawl to density. Open, visible horizons to claustrophobic shaded cobblestone streets. Lonely, buffered, car interaction to get-off-of-me-and-quit-bumping-into-my-ass-human-interaction.

Oh, and car time = music time. And music time = I might cry at any given moment. I never drive in Spain. I walk everywhere, which means even if I have my ipod, I listen to whatever crap I have on it that I thought was cool at one time but has turned into a broken record. But in the car I get little treats (or little torments depending on my mood) here and there of songs I haven't heard in forEVAH. Today I sped down the freeway listening to Snoop Dog and, well, I rocked the eff out, cause I roll like that sometimes, yo.

So there's my little update. I'm silent because I don't know how I feel about job, Home I, Home II, life. I'm a crock pot of emotions and the stuff inside needs to reach at least medium rare so I can make sense of some of it.

Miss your blogs big time.

xoxo
Bluestreak

Don´t expect a thematic post, I´m just rambling

I’ve been a bit busy lately.

I made a ginormous Thanksgiving feast for 20 some of my unsuspecting Spanish in-laws FROM SCRATCH.

No, I’m not insane.

If Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart could spawn, I would kill myself and be reincarnated as their gifted organism. No, scratch that. My husband would be. God or whoever is responsible for reincarnation might allow me to be a mole on his freakishly culinarily prodigious ass.

Luigi usually gets all the credit for the gourmet cookery around this place, but my cranberry sauce makes you want to rub it all over yourself and lick it off while a turkey gobbles circles around you and my blueberry pie makes you want to quit your job and become homeless and hang around outside my building in hopes that I might one day invite you in for piece of it.

I know I said food was for pussies and all, but seriously, I make a mean spread. And plus I’m getting tired of that stupid fucking diet recipe that is beginning to taste like soggy arseholes.

As exhausting as this panoply of traditional American food is to make in this crazy place where basic necessities of life such as Crisco and brown sugar are impossible to find, if I didn’t at least try to pull this off, I would be miserable on Thanksgiving. I NEED Thanksgiving.

But now it is finally over and Christmas is nearing and...I’m going back on the chute-the-chute again.

Back to the BIG.

Big houses with big cars and big boats parked outside. Big people wearing big clothes walking big dogs. Big plates of food on big tables in big restaurants.

Back to the world where you can do the following without fear of becoming a social pariah:
-eat an apple while walking down the street.
-go grocery shopping in your pyjamas.
-write a check for $2.00.
-speak English, loudly.

Back to the world where suddenly everything makes sense, where an American hairdresser can earn more than a Spanish doctor, lawyer, and engineer put together and enjoy a lower cost of living.

Back to the world where I listen to fucktards having stupid conversations and I know they are fucktards. Here they are all just Spanish people speaking Spanish. I can’t discriminate against fucktards here because I can barely recognize them. My prejudices here have never fully developed because I communicate on a subnormal level. I can’t wait to be able to cast my judgement again over idiots deserving of my scornful gaze.

Back to the world where nobody cares where I’m from or laughs at my funny accent or how guiri I look.

My only hope is that it doesn’t feel too good, that the obnoxious machinery of the American dream doesn’t reel me into its rusty wheels and try to spin me round again scraping me with loose spokes and screws and other false promises of grass-is-greenery.

But chances are, it will.

It will be too short a visit to make me want to get the hell out like I did before.

But it will be short enough for all of the nuances of "home" to bolster my idealization of it and for it to nag at my bifurcated sense of self and grab hold of the half that corresponds to it with its monster claws, and scream, "This is where you really belong".

No. It's not.

Ahhh, let the roller coaster ride begin again.

-Bluestreak.

Blues is Back

I should have known that swearing off blogging would suddenly bring me something to blog about.

This week my ass has been Rasslefied, big time. She still has rights to my blog, and could attack at any time still, declaring a coup over my header or posting Japanese dwarf porn, like she did over at Praying to Darwin.

But since thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I know some of you eat your weight in deviled eggs and green bean casserole, I felt the need to post and to give you advice as your diet guru so you can keep those pesky holiday pounds from adding up.

I am on a roll here, dropping serious poundage.

Unfortunately, my weight loss is not the Oh-Cool-I´m-So-Glad-My-Arms-Arent-Goliath-Satisfying-Salamis-Anymore weight loss, but rather the Holy-Fuck-What-Happened-To-My-Tits-And-Why-Are-My-Eyes-All-Sunken-Into-My-Head-N-Shit weight loss.

But for you more proportional types, you may benefit from knowing all about my new diet, guaranteed to drop pounds like "Galileo dropped the orange."

It´s really quite simple. You don´t have to keep an extensive diet journal, or measure proportions or even step on the scale, because frankly, you don´t give rat´s ass when you´re on this diet.

You just follow this simple recipe. The trick is, you have to eat this meal every day for every meal. But don´t worry, you won´t even want to eat anything else.

Bluestreak Delight

½ lb. Self-centered Materialism
¼ cup Unemployment
¼ cup Homesickness
2 cups Self-Loathing
2 ¼ tbsp. Disappointment extract
½ cup minced Guilt
1 Bad Auspice, peeled (alright, I admit I threw this in cause it sounds like allspice)
½ tsp. Existential Instability

To make:

Put the ½ lb of Self-Centered Materialism into a non-microwave safe dish, wrap in tin foil, and microwave on high until the whole mess explodes and turns into the Realization That You Have Become A Shallow MuthaFucka Who Doesn´t Contribute Dick To Society. If it didn´t electrocute you and you are still standing there, excoriate that shit out of the microwave with an ice scraper and slop it all into a blender. Add the ¼ cup Unemployment, the ¼ cup Homesickness, the 2 cups Self-Loathing, and the 2 ¼ tbsp Disappointment extract. Blend on high until thoroughly mixed. Add the ½ cup minced Guilt and the peeled Bad Auspice and blend for another 2 minutes or until it reaches a ripe, shit-brown color. Sprinkle with Existential Instability.

Drink the whole slimey Bluestreak Delight in one gulp, and choke on it too. Enjoy with Salty Tears of Self-Pity, and perhaps a Jack Daniels and Ginger Ale if you´re feeling antsy, and a pack of Marlboro Lights.

The duration of the diet is until you wake the fuck up and become a balanced human being again or until you completely emaciate.

Everyone will be all, "Dude, you´re so skinny".

It rocks.

Happy Thanksgiving Ya´ll. Food is for pussies.

-Bluestreak

It's Not Sexist if You Say it in a Song

It's Rassles again. Of course.

It's Blues' fault. She said I could do what I want.