2000-12-12

One time, when I was in my teenage bleak stage, my father bought me a book for Christmas. I was known as Darlene within the house, like the middle child on Roseanne who, after a sunny childhood of playing basketball, turned into a dismal teen. I guess they thought I just needed to be cheered up.

The book was 14,000 Things To Be Happy About. And I actually read them all. And I actually ticked off the ones I agreed with. I bothered to take things that were nice more seriously than things that pissed me off. And I guess, although I didn't become the cheery faced perfect teenaged girl, it made me happy.

I can handle dopey pop-pysch, and since it's in no way righteous or over bearing, I bother to listen to it a bit. I don't take life with too much seriousness so these bunk poppy books fit right up my alley.

When I was hated my first college, I made friends with my first-year English seminar Professor. I don't want to sound all snotty, but besides the fact that I am, I was too smart for this class. I believe if I didn't have to sit for an entire semester with such completely dumb people I might have had a little more faith in that school and given it a chance.

But this lady was great. She was one of those scary English people that don't want to shove the cannon up your ass. We were studying "disturbing" books, the grotesque. One of our assignments was to disturb the class. My plan was to set of this lil chick I had that made a freaky electronic chirp. But it died the day I tried to do it.

I never did one, but they thought I did when a piece of fluff distracted me. One of those lil nothings that float through circulated classroom air floated around my head for a good while until I wanted to catch it to make it stop. So I sat there staring at the apparent nothing to most people, grabbing at the air. But I was honest and told her that wasn't a "disturbance", it was my natural state of being inherently disturbing.

I began talking to her, visiting her in the spring after our contract of professor/student had expired. And one day, from her canvas teacher's bag, she pulled out a book that she said was embarrassing for her to admit to having read. It was How to Be an Assertive (Not Aggressive Woman in Life, in Love, and on the Job) and she took five minutes diligently scratching out all that she had written in the book.

And I read it, just to see what it had to offer. It was pokey, and stupid, and full of things that I could criticize as being totally wrong. But amongst it, it taught me that I could talk to people without them calling me a bitch. It taught me the fine difference between Mademoiselle type manipulation and how to tell people what's on your mind. I returned it to her on the very last day of school and she said when she told me I could keep it for as long as I wanted, she didn't mean for the entire semester. I said, I am sorry for upsetting you but I misinterpreted your words. And we laughed at out application of pokey pop-theory.

And among all this feel good stuff, I realized there are no books, no pop pysch I have encountered, about how to be pissed off. How to talk about the things that irk the hell out of you. So I decided to put them right here.

Things I hate (CHECK BACK, I’M RUNNING A LIST HERE):

The P on the PUCK BUILDING in New York fell off. All the letters, which now are just UCK BUIDLING, are this brassy color that shines in the light. And when the P was still there, in the right light at the right angle at the right time of day made it looked like, for a second, FUCK BUILDING and this brought excessive immature glee to me.

That, although we get to watch 2 old episodes of the Soprano's in a row on Sundays now, it still is obviously a poorly contrived diversion tactic to make us forget there still won't be new episodes until March.

The smell of piss on the subways doesn't go away in the winter. Other smells like dirty bodies, garbage and other olfactory delights that cause a retched reaction generally are subdued in the cold. Piss is stronger than the temperature.

No one will ever be able to explain the rules of football or why photons have no mass well enough for me to remember long enough to never have to ask for them to be explained again.

My beautiful big bouncy boobies will one day become, due to the inevitable gravity factor, saggy wrinkly tired mammary glands.

Barnard convinced me that living on the ninth floor on a Pre-War building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with parquet floors, southern exposure, a window with floor-to-ceiling wood detail and a nightly view of the sun setting over New Jersey is actually the type of housing I deserve. Many apartment viewings later, I see that this is a lie and I will never be able to afford more than an apartment with heat, if I am lucky.

Few things in this world will ever be as beautiful as The Cloisters on a rainy day. For a while, you are transported in time and geography to the damp heights of uptwon Manhattan and, when it is rainy, you see nothing but fog and the cliff of the Palisades across the Hudson River. Why we can't have every place in our lives having the power to completely relax and change our mindset is beyond me.

I am not baptized, a registered voter, have gotten out of jury duty each and every time, and generally live my life completely autonomously from government and religion. But I believe in maintaining a strong spirituality and relationship with the government. I am a contradiction.

I can never be as angry with the world as I would like to be. I can never take the time to write 14,000 things to hate, 14,000 things to love or 14,000 things. I can only look at what is important to me at any one time and cherish or frown. I can only love as much as I can love and only hate enough that my love is not effected. I can only try to be human in this way and wonder if this is being human or just being Tara.