Well, if anyone read last night's post before 9:30 am, pacific time, this morning then they will see that I've done just a wee bit of editing since then.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this blog is really turning out to be quite a project. I'm learning a lot. In the last couple of days, particularly, I've learned that I actually can't write anything I feel like writing...that is unless I'm willing to deal with the consequences. I've written publicly before, I've published articles, that have been edited and distributed but I've never actually made the very thoughts in my head all that public. The internet seems deceptively anonymous most of the time...that is, until your site comes up on random google searches on random high-powered editors that you've spoken badly about. Well, I'm certainly not the first to publicly bash Vanity Fair and I doubt I'll be the last.

It was really interesting to read Rich's synopsis of my blog: "I find her writing to be a degage of perspicuous and unexpurgated  rant of a "life's not fair" actualization on a theme of "this can happen to any of us" - at least those of us who care about our parents. Another "Archy" with a foul mouth cared to "comment" on this young woman who is apparently caring for her bedridden father who has a nasty cancer." Hate to admit it, but I had to look up a couple of words there, just to clarify that this is actually a compliment, which it is. I didn't have any specific intentions when I began writing here, but clearly there's a theme and a subject that I've been sticking true to since Day One.

I hope that I won't be always writing about how difficult it is to take care of my father. I hope that he won't always need to be taken care of. I hope that one day there will be a lull of at least 2 years before someone else I care deeply about gets sick and dies. It's kind of been a running pattern since I was eighteen. First my mother, then my Aunt, then my best friend, now my father. 6 years, 4 people. That lull will probably come by the time I'm 30, seeing as everyone that I love will probably be dead by then.

Sometimes I think that it's me. That I actually give people cancer. Like I'm radioactive or something. When I was 12 both of my parents found out they had cancer, within months of each other...and so the story goes. Aren't you fucking sick of it?! Cancer everywhere. There's no escaping it. I bet every single person in the world has someone in their family that has had cancer. Sometimes it just seems to get so big in my head (like when I try to really fathom the depths of the universe) that I start to think that maybe it's not real at all. Maybe there is no cancer. Maybe we are the cancer.

Oh god. I should definitely stop now.
1:26:24 PM     comment []

Escaping the Orange Curtain

I did it! I actually left Orange County for about four hours this evening. I went home, to Hollywood. At no other time, since I've moved here, has Hollywood, a place I never really thought I'd live, actually felt more like home. I zipped into my little neighborhood Seven-Eleven to grab a pack of cigarettes and then up the hill to our apartment. I let my luscious Lily-cat out into the backyard while I tended to my morning glories and refilled my hummingbird feeder. I took off my bra, kicked off my shoes and sat on the couch with Mike, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching The Simpsons. It was glorious.

Then I came back. I sped through the night-time curves of the LA freeways, downtown receding in my rearview, back to the urinals and the breathing treatments and the overflowing baskets of wadded tissue. My Dad's urine smells weird. Is that horrible to write about? It really does. It smells warm and sharp and I have to hold my breath when I empty it and then hold it again while I rinse the container out.

It's almost one in the morning and I'm drinking a luke-warm Amstel Light and craving yet another cigarette, even though I've already had 8-too many today. This blog is addictive and obsessive. I can't stay away from it. I love checking for comments and I've loved finding out that amazing and random strangers have linked me to their sites.
12:59:34 AM     comment []