June 2, 2009

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This morning, I woke up and heard a bird singing in the tree outside my balcony.  I stepped out to listen to it.   It’s shrill discords echoed in the quiet of the morning.   I listened for a while, then picked up a small a log and threw it in the general location of the singing little prick.    Today is not for joyous song; today is for dirges.

You see, there is a funeral to attend.    

There’s been a death in my family.  It wasn’t an accidental death; it was due to self-inflicted belief in something intangible…an ideal.    Laurie Kendrick  was someone I knew, but admittedly not that well.  From what I understand, she was kind and tried to make a difference… in her world, at least.  She was smart and funny. Well educated; the pride of some part of Karnes City, Texas.   She made people laugh and when she walked in a room people noticed.  Heads turned.  But oddly, they never noticed when she left.

Today, we bury what’s left of her innocence and her ability to trust.

In other words, we bury her.     

Laurie Kendrick  was 50.  She had no children and she never married, but  a few months ago, she  felt she had one shot left at finding that elusive brass round thing we all hope to grab  hold of.     The ring turned out to be zinc and her grip was never secure enough.

There will be no funeral service and no internment.    Unhappy endings have no start or finish. 

They just end.

She is survived by a cat and a blog.

♦

Actually, band and pep squad, this is my last blog post.  I am retiring.    I’ve been contemplating quitting  for several months now and a recent event has convinced me it was time to go.    It won’t be easy, because I loved this little blog,  it suddenly stopped being relevant in my life.  In fact, I had to come to terms with the fact that it had become a hindrance and ultimately it’s ended up bringing  me more heartache than joy.    Blogging  took over my soul for a while, but not any longer.  Sometimes, spinning your wheels and looking at a menu from which you are forbidden to order,  just leaves you exhausted and empty.   Very, very empty.   Yes, I did indeed loved my blog, but it’s also leavning me feeling rather empty.   That’s why I find it rather odd now that my one time reason for living is now my reason for leaving.

Heartache was the reason it began; defiance is the reason it is ending.   But it won’t kill me.   In fact, it’s the reason why I won’t go quietly into the goodnightof post relationship malaise.   Business relationships, personal relationships, friendship….all of efforts of human contact.  I can talk big now and try to convince us both that I’m fine and in a way, I am.  And in a way, I’m angry as hell, but then again, arrears of faith always hurt. 

My God, life is so strange.   Ifyou listen, Change is audible.  It has a crescendo.   It gets louder as it approaches and then once it’s made its presence known—-deafening silence.    You open your eyes and listen.    Reality is harsh.   It always sounds like pain.

But enough of that drivel.   I’m going out into the world to apply salve all over my life and then, once my wounds have healed, I will endeavor to seek self-actualization and maybe in the process, I’ll discover why my life has been this ridiculous lightning rod for emotional chaos and the intgrusion of goddamned soul crushers hell bent on spreading it.

Then, once I realize my actualized self (the new and improved Teflon coated La Kendrick),  perhaps  I’ll do a little fishing, learn how to knit, tinker in my workroom, become a Joe Biden groupie.  Maybe, I’ll start a one-woman show about the life and times of  TV’s Screech from “Saved By The Bell”.  Perhaps, I’ll do a little restorative stand-up around the Houston area while searing those in my past who I once thought would be in my future.   And the audience will think….”Oh yes, Laurie Kendrick.  I remember her. She’s still pissed.???  Wasn’t she once a man???”  

Maybe I’ll take some classes at Berkeley and try to grasp the concept of doing nothing for something.  Maybe I’ll determine how to find the problem to the answer.   Maybe I’ll head east and sit in on Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing and make fart sounds every time someone stands up or bends over.    

There’s a chance I might start writing critiques of  fine wines and then in a fit of whimzy, I’ll crank e-mail several Napa area vintners and tell them that Mondavi is Italian for swill. 

Hopefully, I’ll learn to stop forcing so many issues and trusting so easily.  Love is so important to me.  But finding it is alot like searching for those intrepid little Lady Bugs.   Look for them and you’ll never a single one of them.   Forget about them…relax, do something else and they’ll be all over you.

Life’s like that and I guess I’ve been forcing the issue.

Perhpas, this self-imposed blogging free zone will result in my writing a book  or two. 

God help him, if I do….

So, thank you all for your support. You’ve been great. I think a few of you have been with me from almost the beginning and I am indebted.  

You have helped make this one of the most memorable two years of my life.   Color me jaded, yes, but educated, too.    I will emerge ash covered from this unwitting Phoenician lair, a much stronger woman.   

So, onward kiddies.  Move forward.   Proceed through the blinding dissonance of  words, while learning the real, inarguable definition of what hopeful is and what heartache isn’t.    Never confuse the two.  Never toy with someone’s heart.   If you needsomething in your life; to quell boredom or to put  texture in your life,, do it by adding kindness, respect and charity.

And remember what I’ve always said about endings:   never, ever look back.   It will only turn you into a pillar of Mrs. Dash.   Hurt feelings yes, but  even in the midst of ruined Maybelline, we must always watch our salt intake.

LK

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Gullibility

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Should we  assume  when a nationally known pet food manufacturer insists that it’s new, improved product now  has a new and improved taste, they’re telling the truth?    Does the phrase,  “four out of five dogs prefer the flavor of new and improved  Beasty Chunks”, actually make a difference to you and your shopping list?

When the ad proclaims, “Hey kids, tell your mom you want Chunk o’Chocolate, now with 25% more Brazil nuts!”     Do your kids hear the commercial and then jump up and spell out “Hurrah” in semafore?     Or are most kids up and dictionary bound to find out what they heck a Brazil nut is?

Or…

“OxyWash now has Freindium Paranoidathol cystals.   Just don’t get none onya”., says the announcer. Mr. Big Voice.    Then you think you yourself,  “It’ll kill my family, but By God, my clothes with be cleaner and brighter than ever!!”

We are all humans, I think.  That being the case, why is there a part of our consciousness that believes a good part of everything we’re told?  Why do we beleive a great deal of everything we hear?  

Because when it’s new and improved and promises love and hopes and dreams, we desperately want to believe it’s true.

Or is there another part of us that’s just  the opposite?  We doubt the sincerity of any and every thing  that we’re fed?   We’ve become just that jaded??  

I’ve often thought about cops and detectives, who deal with liars on a hourly basis..   They develop a sixth sense about the truth and the people attempting to extol it.    Suddenly, lies become palpable.   They can hear a lie being told from a mile away and in a way, seasoned cops can almost feel them.  They have texture.

There are those who can lie at the drop of a hat.  But the world consists of smart people who are stupid liars. The bad liars, you’re embarassed for them, but the good liars…they”re impressive.   To watch them at work is something to behold.   They don’t need to preface everything they say with a very pregnant, “Uh………….” at the beginning of every lie- filled sentence.    They’re smart enough to pull from their mental quivers one of a million different scenarios they have their disposal.  And this brilliant recall happens in less than a fraction of a second.  Amazing, really.

One more thing:   never lie to a liar who’s smarter than you.   You’ll lose every time.

Some men will turn on the romantic charm  and promise the moon for a crotch conqeust.  Anything to seal the deal, while many women, play the fairer sex, femme fatale bit to the hilt.  We know when and how to become completely obsequious and allow our men to engorge their egos,  as we allow them to think that they, the rulers of the roost, are smart and wise and the fixer of all things broken and/malaligned.   

Women.  We’re a brilliant species, really.   Far more advanced in many, many ways and I don’t say that just because I am one.

We have to be manipulative and able to cajole, gear and steer at the drop of a hat.   Men , now you can snipe  all you want, but I firmly believe that  you’re  happier men as a result of this.   Your egos need our bolstering.    And it’s really not all that one-sided.  Actually, we’re all aware,  at least subconsciously so,  of what we’re doing to each other.   It’s in our genetic coding for men to woo and women to wow.   You know, quid pro quo.  Ultimately, a woman’s intrusion supports the man’s intrustion.   It was all part of the divine plan.

Then, there’s that old adage that we’ve heard forever.  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.   That’s even more of a reality for people.    If a woman is a steadfast liar at say…age 45 and has been for decades, unless a dramatic life  altering event occurs forcing her to change,  she’ll  always remain a lying, scheming bag of nag.  

If a middle aged man is and always has been a sociopath, completely devoid of empathy, sympathy and concern; a compulsive liar, delusional, selfish,  lives all alone and presents agoraphobic tendencies because he has the social skills and personality of a traffic cone, and therefore, frightened to death of intimacy and ONLY allows his self involvment in his “work”  to be his only consort, well, he isn’t going to change either.

Gee, that was oddly specific …

I’d like to hear from you.   Tell me your horror stories.  I want to learn about the strangest, weirdest, most mentally fractured whack job, Hitlerian thinking, virulent jerk you’ve ever  dated, ever were engaged to, married to or paired with at work.  And tell me how you  broke it off, ended it, got out of it, etc.  The demented partner can be male, female, gender debatable, I really don’t care.  

Basically, I just don’t want to feel all alone and that stupid.

Thanks for your input.

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