I just read an article. Well, it was more of a short book, really. Actually, I am in the process of reading it so that first part is a lie. I'm not quite finished yet. I stopped because it put me in a very weird mood and made me want to write. As I have said before, I am inspired by all kinds of random things. This guy writes in an indefatigable way. (My 10th grade English teacher would be proud of me for that one.) I want to be a better writer after reading what I have read thus far.
The story is about a city. He describes the city as if it is a person. A long lost friend. He writes as if the story is about someone who used to be grand. Like it is a local celebrity, who is washed up and sits at the end of a bar, in some hole in the wall, with an empty shot glass in front of him. He writes about this city similarly to how John Berendt wrote about Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Except this one is a little more "ghosts of city's past."
I, like a city, have parts of me that are no longer alive. I also have a constant state of rebirth and renewal. Perseverance and resilience. If you have been lucky enough to know me personally, for a long time, you know what I mean. You are probably laughing right now at mental images of my severe awkwardness as a middle schooler. Or, perhaps, my "hippie phase." One of my best friends and I still joke about my cargo camo pants that I wore until they fell apart when I was 13 or so. I was tragically ugly growing up. As these small parts of me "die," I am blessed with the birth of my aging. Each day is a new way to make a decision, to make a right turn instead of left. To choose to smile instead of frown. I do thank God for every day that I am given. I am a pretty lucky girl.
It got me thinking, the story did, about what I want. After thinking about how things once were, versus what they have become, I think about where I fall into all of that. Though I am far from ladylike, I sometimes feel like I am an old soul. Like, I should have been born in a different era. Not necessarily the old western days full of petticoats and bloomers, but sometime perhaps in the 1920's. Or, even the 50's or 60's. Put me in a kitchen, married, barefoot, and pregnant. Though there are many women who cringe at this thought, it doesn't make me very unhappy. I know I want a family someday and I love to cook. What is so wrong with that? Women fought so hard for equal rights, but we are required to hold the same household duties. Is it so much better now that we work so much that we are physically and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day? ( I meant that more so in reference to my girlfriends, who work themselves to death and have a husband and children to tend to as well. It's tiresome to think about.)
Things I want in life:
I want to marry the man of my dreams. I want to have 3 (or so) children, and want to own a decent sized home somewhere over the rainbow. Okay, I'm kidding about that last part, obviously. But I do want the very normal dreams of a happy family, success, and to live to be wrinkly amounts of old with my husband. Now that I think about it, isn't that "The American Dream?" Is it still? Makes you wonder in this time of a poor economy, record amounts of divorce and crime.
I may not be the best with numbers, or the smartest kid in the class. I have so many things that I do not do well, but I have plenty in which I excel. Obviously, I write, (though don't judge my blogs as my writing portfolio.) I write songs as well. I sing. I paint, not well I may add. More like folk art. I'm no Van Gogh, that is for sure. I am relatively athletically inclined, when my asthma isn't trying to kill me. Also, I'm one crafty little lady. (Okay, "lady" was a stretch, huh?) Martha Stewart is still one of my idols. Very successful, and still showing women how they can be superstars of their household. Oh, and she served time and still came out on top. Just sayin...
I'll take the tools God gave me, and use them. I probably won't end up being the best writer in the world, or the best singer/songwriter, or painter. But, I will continue to do them and prove that it is something that I love and enjoy. I've been on a big kick lately with a quote I read recently. It was about working out, and getting your body in the best physical form you can, which I am also slowly working on at this point. Somehow it ties in here as well. Something to the extent of "you only live once. Why not make your body look as perfectly as God created it?" (Not verbatim, but you get the point.)
I know this: I don't want to be the old city at the end of the bar in some hole in the wall, with an empty shot glass in front of me. I want to be New York when the whole world wanted to be there. Give me LA and the delusions of grandeur. I'll take New Orleans when Jazz originated or Dallas during the oil boom. I could be D.C. after Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech or, well, you get the picture. I could keep going. I'll be the city singing, in the spotlight, on the main stage any day. Watch. I'll prove it.
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