Facebook, Love Marriage, draft in progress

I hate facebook. If you're one of the three people left in the world with internet access actually reading this (the remaining x billion people fb lost-weekending), you're probably thinking, Thanks, dani. we can always count on you to state the obvious. That's why we're your three constant readers.
For a change, you've got it all wrong. My intent is not to announce gleefully "It's raining outside!" or "I was just thinking about [my long-dead dog] Hank. This time, it's a bonafide epiphany.
The great thing about facebook is that you find your long-lost friends, right? This morning, I got stabbed by the double-edged sword of the cursed blessing as I unwittingly flipped over to the other side of the coin. I mean, it was harsh enough that I'm tempted to get redundant.
Ah. I digress.
In the wee small hours of the morning, while the whole wide world is fast asleep, I romanticize the shit out of every long-lost love that got away before we knew each other well enough to wreck the train...then I cyberstalk The One. The One varies, of course, but my monogamous heart only allows me to fixate on one at a time. I think it's a seasonal disorder.
Lately I've been Hardcore Girl Scout. Irish won't do; Pasty in Seattle won't do; not even the illustrious give to me your leather, take from me my lace tie-dyed junior-high Nietszche reading mountain man The First, aka Shane Zieche won't do tonight. And I was googling Shane Zieche before googling yourself was in.To briefly summarize, it's a long 'if you're not from the Subcontinent, you need not apply' phase for me.
There is one other. I don't think about him, ever. I'm surrounded by a near-sufficient percentage of Brown people 40ish hours a week, though, so I did think of him once before this morning. ....*
One afternoon last semester, walking in to the building I work in, I thought I saw him. I blame my horselike peripheral vision; I was not Scouting for Cookies on this particular day. Not horny, not daydreamy, not thinking a poem while driving to work or even paying attention to what I was listening to. Totally in work mode.
But for an entire second, the guy I saw was A___. My heart did the same thing it did for the very first time in my whole life the summer after 7th grade (see The Annotated Complete Shane Zieche Works of Dani Linn, not yet in print).
You know this feeling if you've ever had so much as a crush. Or an almost car accident or panic attack, for that matter. (They're all quite similar, really.)
Your legs stop moving, but you don't notice, because the center of your chest implodes, and it hurts. Bad, and worse when your heart and stomach get involved and try to switch places.
Of course, by the third second, the guy who wasn't A___ was...not A___. Not someone I'd bother checking out. After those endless three seconds and the much too fast 30 seconds spent in near-collapse against the back wall of the elevator, I found my breath again, went back into work mode. Later I told my sister, but only because I was so surprised by my reaction. I didn't know until that first long second that A___ was one of The Ones.
Okay, so remember when I said I hated facebook?
The wee small hours have passed, I know, and now it's almost dewy sunrise time, but think back if you can to....*
I found A___. Only 14 fb users with his name, damnit. Worse yet, he was the first web result. I clicked on that one first. Either I have sudden-onset H1-N5 [ck-MA], or it was the picture of him. I learn from my mistakes almost as quickly as your average closed-head injury victim, so I decided to see if he'd married his sweet betrothed near-stranger who was back on the Subcontinent when I knew him. Yep. And she's beautiful, while he's looking a little like he should hit the gym at his earliest convenience. (I remember that I had so hoped she was at least just pretty.)
It didn't matter. I remembered the dress I wore one clandestine night. It was my favorite dress, and I was beautiful because of the way he looked at me. More important, I thought he was beautiful. We never ran out of words when we were together. I realize now that I was close enough to falling in love with him that I lost my balance. It felt like he was, too. It was the summer after 9-11. [ck year-TLS]
-->fox&hound incident w/the white guy glares; parking lot lingering, lingering in his car (kissing--good (sloppy) passionate kisses or was it only one long kiss?)-->liberal Muslims<-- span="">mention her hair--Denny's parking lot lingering (kissing--good (sloppy) passionate kisses or was it only one long kiss?)--dialogue Did he really say "I'm sure I'll learn to love her."
"My children will marry who they want to marry."back to hair--was mine really long and what color was it? (summer of GD Family Reunion?)



It's happening again.

see private, Jon-unfinished. Call me Kafka.

my favorite new friend Jon suggested that facebook messages aren't much different than email, as far as privacy goes. i told him that facebook felt like a private conversation in a crowded bar, while email was more like...ooh, i can't remember what i said, as it was more than twelve hours ago, so how about more like sitting on the ground with just one person, in a forest preserve in the middle of a weekday before school's out? 
actually, the government creeps on us on fb and myspace, now. while what i do these days probably holds about the same amount of interest for The Man as does your average X-File...
yeah, no, social networking sites just don't feel the same, dearheart.

a few years ago, or maybe fifteen years ago, my sister was explaining to one of her friends who didn't know me that i was late meeting her because i had to stop and buy a notebook.
why, he asked, does she need a notebook if you're meeting her at a restaurant? can't she just write on a napkin?
my sister laughed (the way some ladies do).
no. i could write on a napkin, and so could you. she probably even HAS a notebook. it isn't the right one, though.
some things can be written on napkins, because that is why the napkin existed in the first place. poetry can rarely be written in anything besides a poetry notebook. (they're smaller than the ones for freewriting, prose, prosepoems, and accidental letters.)
professional writing and (shudder) anything resembling academic writing don't need to be written. typing uses a different part of your brain. mine, anyway. i can't speak for your brain.
blogs are nearly as quiet as email. it's the save as draft option. better than word processing for some things. microsoft word has always made me feel like i'm talking to myself.
the color of the notebook is a factor, as is its history. the green notebook i had people put their phone numbers into on st. patrick's day told me to buy it the sunday before when i went to walgreen's on break from work. it stared at me. i said i didn't need another notebook, that i don't use or even carry the ones i have.
the office supply aisle asked me why, then, it was so damned important that i have those old-school purple flexgrips tucked within reach everywhere except my desk at work.
(this is not a superstition, nothing like my refusal to bring my tarot cards to the little "Catholic" campus that's known as the most haunted place in illinois. it's simply impractical to risk the wandering off of pens that cost twenty bucks a box and take six weeks to ship. and, of course, i would never write anything work-related with a purple flexgrip. they're far too personal. i might wear one of my Baby Firefly mugshot t-shirts under one of my aunt's sweaters, but my very favorite pair of underwear are reserved for days off. usually vacations days or snow days, in fact. ah. i digress, even in what began as a facebook message.)
what goes on in that poetry notebook is between me and the woodman's parking lot; let anyone else who wonders why i spend so much time in a grocery store after midnight be damned. i tried to look away from all that white space. blank pages, new drawing pads, the fresh white expanse of canvases--these things get me where i live. fresh paint on a wall calls to me. i get lost in these places that wait for negative space. the back of the garage door is spared only by the variations in the shadows of the too-symmetrical rectangular grooves. the back of the garage door is redeemed by smudges of sticky dirt, dried wood glue and greasy fingermarks. i revel in these. the undoing of man's watery attempt at order, God and Nature and the proof of the existence of South Dakota Diamond Willow all triumphing over concrete in this cluttered little Midwestern garage. 
back at walgreens, the green one looked at me again.
i don't want another notebook that i won't fill up. i don't even try to fill up the ones i already have, not anymore. it stings a little to think of that last yellow one. (sometime i'll tell you about the red notebook--that's a story i've already told, so it isn't a secret, not like this.)
the pens and pencils smirked at me. especially the pencils. then why don't you need any more of us, they asked in a taunting tone. (there's that awful alliteration addiction again.)
for reasons i can neither explain here nor in an incredibly private message, not now, maybe not even later, the pencils jabbed lower and sharper than i consider fair. i squeezed Boo, who had not yet mentioned that he was named Boo, and was not yet legally my new purse dog. fortunately, Boo was made by Ty, not by other dogs, and he was unharmed.
it had to be a green notebook. the sunday before st. patricks day, just to annoy me even more.
my obstinacy only goes so far when i'm alone, though, and the walgreens by work is about as close to alone as i get on work nights, at least when my building is still open.

a few disorganized words on self-injury (but that's CUTTER to you)

My mother says that i was born scared, but i'm not so sure that i was born crazy. without a doubt, i got there early, though. picture a summer day in the late 1970s. i am somewhere between three and four years old. the empty lots across the street from the little goldenrod house we live in are anything but barren, rather an explosion of flowering violets (ck) and mustard and daisies. i think of this as the meadow. my big sister and i each have a tree in our yard, both facing the meadow side of the house, that we have claimed as our own. not much later, maybe in second grade, i will sit under her tree and begin to Seriously Write in My Diary, but on this day, i can only read a few words, courtesy of Archie Comics and a family of voracious readers. my first library card is still a year or so off, as writing my name presents the challenge of going against my instinct to write from right to left and bottom to top.
it is late afternoon, i think. Mom is mad at me, some sleight in putting away toys or a refusal to eat one of the carefully prepared special foods i insist on--nothing on my plate can touch any other food, or it is tainted and inedible. for this, concessions are made. for tantrums and general holy terror behavior, concessions are not made. summer, the very rooftree of perfect summer (i sort of stole that from Stephen King). my world is green and in bloom, and i go outside. (did mom tell me to go outside and play? was she even angry with me, or did she merely need a few moments of peace from juggling her job and kids and drunk-ass husband. i cannot ask her, as she remains unaware that this day holds one of the moments that defines who i will become in all of the worst ways. let's keep it that way.)
rosebushes on either side of the front porch, and pink peonies. the roses are mom to me, thorny and sweet and beautiful. tiger lilies will come later, with heat and vicious painful passion. the side yard, where tiff's tree is, is not strictly off-limits. the Dossetts are our next-door neighbors and someone is always around, creepy dad, Xian mom, or any of their four children with whom friendship and crushes fluctuate from week to week.
on this afternoon, no one was in sight. (was i looking for brian, who was older and mean, but whom i adored, or for younger david, who was sweet and gentle and adored me?)
i know what i am looking for when i see the sidewalk. every grain of concrete comes clear, and i know what i must do. the Dossett's driveway is as far as i can go alone, but i need to go no farther, only further. i do not want to step on cracks and hope to break my mother's back, only to feel guilty later, and worry that it will come to pass.
my first few steps are tentative as i am realizing that i have found a solution. (it's hard to picture now that i was not grown, that i was two feet tall and tiny-legged this was always me this was always the best the only solution and i am finding it so i must be grown.) i am three squares of sidewalk from the Dossett's driveway, and i stop. look around again, carefully, in every direction. possibly my first truly secretive move. no one is outside, no one is watching, not even neighbors houses away. mom is mad, and it hurts. she won't be mad anymore. so i fall forward onto the bright concrete, land on my knees. it doesn't hurt so much, and i've fallen carefully. no blood, only a little pinkness and soreness. not good enough. i brace my tiny body against the thought, and drag my knees across the rough sidewalk. 
for this day, that is all that i can muster, and i am scraped if not properly skinned. the tears start easily; i don't have to fake it. (and this is relief the pain is relief don't ever forget that and no one can hurt you again)
in a minute, my scraped knees and i are on mom's lap, and her strife is forgotten as she comforts me. all is right with my little world, and this will fall into the black void where i keep the memories of my childhood that aren't pretty. most of them have stayed there, and stories relayed to me by my sister sound skewed and unrealistic (but you know it happened you just weren't there didn't you go in your closet become dorothy and go off to see the wizard it never happened if you were on your way to Oz)
more than twenty years later, one night over coffee, this one, unlike the others, will come back. we're talking about being kids, and i say, do you remember the way it felt when you skinned your knees, how cool that was? 
and i will realize as i look into Jess and Jake's baffled, concerned faces, that they did not relish the pain. that the scabbed-over tightness of skinned knees that i came to delight in was for them, for much of the world, a pain without relief or joy. only then will i remember my contrived accident, that first of many secretive moments.

Damn my family, in brief.

My sister, Tiffany Sanders, whom I think we can all safely blame for getting me into this nasty, addictive writing habit, came with an innate cool which I totally lack. She remains utterly calm when faced with not only the famous, but the great. We were born this way, I'm pretty sure. My mother can point to the facial expression on an otherwise interchangeable baby picture of either of us, and it becomes all too clear which baby was Tiffany and which was little Danielle. In the first professional photograph taken of my sister, she is gazing disdainfully into the camera, as if she can't believe the fool photographer would actually use baby talk on someone of her stature. I think she was maybe six months old at the time. Then there's me: If the kid on Santa's lap is sobbing frantically, that's little dani. Covered from head to toe in my very first Oreo, I show an almost Born-Again look of glee. It doesn't even take a Santa or an Oreo, really--early photographs suggest a baby well on her way to rapid-cycling manic depression. "No, you were SWEET, a little ray of sunshine" our mother will say, "You were just...born scared."

The Garden

Just to be clear, this is not a warning sign. I had a bad week, but I also have a terminal cousin, an inability to stop writing poetry of late, and a deep understanding both clinically and personally of WHY people commit suicide. If I may borrow from the brilliant young Anna Nalick to explain what would take me paragraphs, "Here I am still awake writing my song/if I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside me/threatening the life it belongs to...." (Breathe (2 a.m.)
This is not my typical subject matter. I write poems about love, scenic moments, and feminine rage for the most part. Occaisionally about pharmaceuticals, too, but that's for another day. This being said, my dad really does have a garden just like this, sans the dead dog.

The Garden

i am going to my father's garden
in the far west corner of the backyard
early on an august morning waking
walking barefoot through
the dew and dandelions before anyone awakens

you would try to stop me if you knew
how cold it feels on the way
but i am leaving here
it's the only way to stop the bleeding
mortally wounded anyway from
smashing through your glass and stone
and hiding the cuts and the bruises

i am going to my father's garden
it is not the garden of your Father

a muddy dog has been waiting for me
without patience, digging at the roots
while i've been pulling out my own

nibbling fresh broccoli
while i've been bandaging myself in business casual
and wishing only for the smell of homegrown tomatoes
so ripe they split open when the sun comes up

i am leaving here before dawn
while you are all sleeping
and i do not want your Father's forgiveness
to me he's a shoddy creator at best
i only want my father's understanding
he who can plant and nurture his fruits to perfection
want him to know that i wasn't made right
that i was born to rot on the vine,
to toss aside for the rabbits

i am leaving my tracks in the dew
and the sun will burn them away
by the time you begin your day
tossing aside an unwanted gift

to find the afternoon hot and sleepy
sweet orange juice dripping down my chin
lying in the mud with a satisfied dog
before the harvest, to eternal august
i am going home.

3.13.08

sister issues

I had the sudden epiphany that it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep posting lengthy, odd notes on facebook and myspace when I remembered that I, too, have a blog. See, my sister is the one who has the thing about blogging, which in my mind automatically suggests that I do something else.
If I write creative, she writes curriculum.
If she writes fiction, I write nonfiction.
If I write poetry, she writes prose.
If she writes poetry...well, that works as well as me writing LSAT prep material.
She loves Hemingway and I love Fitzgerald.
We never have long hair at the same time, only one of us is Mom's best friend at any given time, and I reverted to Paganism from Christianity shortly after she returned to the Catholic Church.
From this anyone can easily deduct that we're pretty much the same. When we had dogs, they matched. (Hers was evil and mine was nice, though.)
We disagree on politics currently: she says the Consitutional damage is done and the election doesn't matter, while I'm planning for Hillary to take her place on the Supreme Court if she doesn't win.
And I always voted for Hastert after I knew the family and found out that Denny's environmental politics were not like the rest of the kids in his party. Of course, I wouldn't have met them had she not schooled me on the evils of Right-Wingers around the time I was refusing to learn division. I saw his son Josh one day between classes. Being that he was a friend of friends, I thought it quite appropriate to point at him and yell, "YOUR DAD IS A BAD MAN!" When he came out from hiding behind the tree and apologized, it turned out he was an anarchist. Then we were best friends for some years.
She's a mom, and I'm that horrible prodigal aunt who brings presents because I'm not around much.
Only about half of the presents are age appropriate, since my niece is being raised as a regular kid. She's 12, and I think she still likes Harry Potter. I think I was a year past Updike at her age. (Nice to have a practice kid, eh, Tiff? Did Mom really know you were preparing me for the People's Revolution when I was in high school? Yeah, I guess she probably thought it would keep me away from the "druggies.")
But damnit, why can't I use my blog, too? I'm going to, and that is not negotiable, Blog Queen. Maybe Jackie Mitchard's sister will join me. Hmmph.
I wonder how it went down for the Bronte sisters.

FIVE YEAR JACKET NEW FRONTMAN MATT MCCAIN!

It's about damned time McCain's voice took center stage! Five Year Jacket had only been playing for about that long when I first introduced guitarist/singer/songwriter Matt McCain to their music. At the time, he went mohawked and kicking and screaming, but soon fell for the band as hard as many in the Chicago suburbs have.

I may have been one of their first three fans, but Matt soon surpassed me, going as far as to list frontman and songwriter Kevin Trudo among his favorite lyricists, including Ani DiFranco and Elvis Costello. Matt joined the band as lead guitarist about two years ago, bringing with him a new energy and a much-needed fresh sound akin to the new life Bruce Hornsby brought to the Grateful Dead and later to The Other Ones.

After Kevin Trudo's unfortunate resignation recently, Matt took over as frontman. As sorry as all of the fans are to see Kevin go, Matt's energy is already drawing new fans. The band will still be playing the songs you already love, and Matt is tearing it up on those quirky covers like everyone's favorite "Sweet Caroline." Earlier this morning, he said he intended to cover the Pixie's "Head On" at an upcoming show, another high-energy tune every crowd seems to love.

Tonight they'll be in Hanover Park, so plan on calling in late to work Monday morning. You can get the address, directions, and Five Year Jacket's full list of show dates at www.fiveyearjacket.com. CDs and t-shirts are available at most shows if you can't order online.

There's no word yet on when they'll be back in the studio, so make sure you get out to every show you can to hear the new sound and more of Matt's lyrics! Oh, and girls--that McCain boy is pretty easy on the eyes, too.