a correction

The Pearl Jam album I've been talking about isn't self-titled, as the cover would suggest. It is called Vs. As in "versus." I remember that from my youth, now.

I posted this on a message board on facebook last night

This is my second day smoke free... I've joined an on-line Nic-Anon group... I ordered the book (I love to read anyway)... I'm on the full-strength patch... I've enlisted my 95-year-old great aunt (who successfully quit at 39... I'm 32) to ...be my personal cheerleader (that woman has a lot of life and energy left in her!)...everything's happening so fast, it doesn't seem possible that two days ago I was smoking... but I have this visceral feeling that a layer of smoke and ash has been lifted from my vision, and especially my senses of smell and taste

I was so dumb

i was fifteen years old. i was so dumb. the protaganist of the book girl, interrupted smoked (this was in 1994, before angelina jolie was a glimmer in the media's eye). franny glass smoked. courtney love smoked. but, most importantly, my friends smoked. flash forward to 17 years later: WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING!!!?

i know there are other points in my life when i may have started smoking if i hadn't at 15. like at college.

i hate the person i was becoming when i started smoking. the person who didn't believe in herself. the person who gave up on herself. the person who needed a boyfriend to feel valuable. the person who did drugs even though part of her was afraid of them. the person who found redemption, or thought she found redemption, in being "a bad girl." the person who let her boyfriend convince her to become an atheist. i hate that person. i hate that that person is in my past. maybe, somehow, i can exorcise that ghost of the girl i used to be by stopping smoking. because it was her who started smoking, it wasn't me. the real me was underground, letting this fake version of me be my avatar to the world.

quitting smoking

I'm quitting smoking (again.) It's only been my first day smoke-free and I'm already at my wit's end, but I just keep thinking of all the people I see who are hooked up to respirators. I don't think I'm a lost cause at 32, I just think the time to quit is now. I really can't afford to wait a few more years anymore. Now I am going to the American Cancer Society website to arm myself with information.

more about Pearl Jam

That Pearl Jam album I bought at the rummage sale that I talked about in my previous post, their self-titled album, is actually pretty good... except that when I was driving home, for a minute there, since I live in the same town that I did when I was 15, I had this weird moment that if I used suspension of disbelief it almost seemed as though I was 15 again, wandering around my my town, although of course I couldn't drive when I was 15. Sometimes I wonder if the ghosts of this town really haunt me, or if I am one of them, haunting this town... or if there is really an appreciable difference between the two.

critique of bridget jones

cigarettes: too many
calories: who cares, f**k the establishment for telling us we have to be thin
alcohol: none but i probably need it


currently listening to: "wish" by the cure

bought another old pearl jam cd at a rummage sale last night... the only pearl jam album i actually liked in the '90's was "ten"... think i may be having mid-life crisis

go-to albums of 2012, so far:

"scarlet's walk" by tori amos
"amrita... all these and the japanese soup warriors" by loop guru

still waiting for the end of the world...   (and f**k the mayan calendar and hugh grant, too)

What Hairy Armpits Mean

Standing up for what I believe in. Standing up for what's right. Doing what I have to do. Putting myself first. Not thinking in "binary code" (ie, if I shave my armpits but still pluck my eyebrows and shave my legs, I can be free to be contradictory in other things.) Standing up for myself. Taking care of myself. Eating right. Exercising. Not worrying about what other people think of me. Not worrying about whether something I want to do or how I accomplish something "makes sense." Rejecting that because I am a married woman in my thirties, that means I have to act or be a certain way. Not defining "sex" as vaginal intercourse. Rejecting the idea that if I teach myself to do something a certain way and it's different than how other people do it, I'm "doing it wrong." Embracing the dark cunt. Embracing the dark faerie fissure in the woods. Embracing the dark swarthy sweaty hairy armpit. Embracing that life is messy. Embracing that people die for no reason and there's nothing you can do to stop it and pictures fall down from off  the shelf for no reason and the glass shatters everywhere and this can happen twice in one week but through all that not getting lost in the tangled woods and keeping track of the light, even if it is from a waning moon…