Halloween, The Opening of the Candy Season!

Happy Halloween, my pretties!

Oooooh! Scary!

Sick and disgusting!

That is what a carved pumpkin looks like a week after the Pumpkin Carving party. I thought it appropriate to keep it around, fly-infested and decaying, for Halloween.

Of course, the real meaning of Halloween is the opening of the Candy Season (for which I have been training all year).

The High Holy Days of Candy Season are, of course, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter. Other days can be snuck in there with "harvest" colored candy kisses for Thanksgiving, and the creep of Peeps into every other holiday. In fact, I think that having a Peep shape for a holiday officially inaugurates it into the Candy Season.

Here is a page from the liturgy of the First High Holy Day of Candy Season, courtesy of Jerry Seinfeld:

Have happy, spooky tricks and treats!

ETA: My favorite scene from "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," in which the World War I Flying Ace must bail out of his Sopwith Camel after being shot down by the Red Baron. Stealthily, he escapes through the French countryside, finding his way to a Halloween Party. There, he touches his lips to a Bossy Girl's lips, then rejoices to piano tunes. Alas, his true nature outs when his grief over his lost comrades leads him to howl at the moon.

More Weekend Kitsch, National Cathedral Edition

The National Cathedral has its own, if limited, brand of kitsch.

The Cathedral itself is Episcopal, and not governmentally funded, but they like to pretend that they are -- what's the word for "open to all other religious faiths." In evidence, they point to such things as visits by the Dalai Lama as the use of the cathedral by two Jewish congregations (do Jewish congregations actually refer to themselves as "congregations"? I'm horribly ignorant on some of these finer points -- some of the larger ones, too). This is "openness" is also reflected at points in the gift shop. Of course, I'm interested in some of the near comical ways. Comical to me, the insensitive atheist, anyway.

For instance, they sell all sorts of distinctly Catholic religious items, such as medals, prayer cards, and rosaries, including rosary rings. I may be wrong in identifying these items as strictly Catholic, because I am uncertain as to how many Catholic practices were retained by the Anglican, then Episcopal, churches. Still, let's face it, that's not my point.

My point is this, the Mother of All Rosaries:

The rosary beads are the size of a child's fist, and the crucifix and image of Mary and Jesus were both larger than my hand. You see it draped in half over the corner of a baker's rack display. I held it up and the thing was about as tall as I was. It must be for some sort of decoration or display or theatricality in a service. Otherwise, all I could think was that you must have done some damn big sinning to need a rosary that large.

Maybe it was meant for people like me?

I didn't find too many Jewish items in the adult section. I failed to take a picture of the Menorah Christmas tree ornament (falling down on the job, I know!). Never fear, I do want to go back with binoculars to see more of the gargoyles. I'll take it then.

In the children's section, they had a nice, little display for Jewish youngsters which might also be purchased for Christian youngsters so that they could learn a bit about the Hebrew faith. My favorite, of course, was The Matzah Man, there on the right. I might also like that Hebrew letters kit, too:
Although they had items related to Buddhism in the adult section, they had none for children. They also had absolutely nothing in the tchotchke category having anything to do with Islam or Hinduism.

This being a Christian organization, of course, that shouldn't surprise me, especially since they only singled out the Dalai Lama and the use of the building by Jewish congregations. Including all religions, especially those that were not connected to anything that occured in the cathedral, might not fulfill the mission of the shop nor be cost-effective.

Meanwhile, Christian children could play Bible games, both by answering questions about the Old Testament and by - I don't know - playing Jesus and the Money Changers with the "coins of the New Testament":
Actually, Jesus and the Money Changers would be a cool game. That was Bad Ass Jesus acting like a Dirty Anti-Capitalist and preventing the desecration of the Temple.

In fact, when I was a little girl in New Orleans among all of those Catholic kids going through confirmation and such, we used to play similar games in the backyard. Jesus was always imaginary, and we girls were always much more militant apostles than those in the Bible. Then, we discovered Little House on the Prairie and we were all about building those little houses.

Speaking of little girls, yours could be Jesus's princess:
That, or she's being stalked by Pedophile Jesus, which I don't think was in the Bible or apocrypha.

I'm going to Hell for "Pedophile Jesus." Probably for "Bad Ass Jesus," too. I should go back and get that Mother of All Rosaries. Or perhaps I should just get this:
That's a tiny little Bible, printed out on a small, square piece of plastic, much like microfiche. You can keep it with you at all times. I'm not sure what good it does if you need a microfiche reader to find any helpful passages; but, it's still kinda cool, just the same, and people like my grandmother would probably just like to have it for the comfort they get from the idea.

Actually, my grandmother would have liked it because she would have felt morally superior to those who were around her who didn't have it; but that's just her.

While I must admit that would have liked a "Heroes and Heroines of the Bible" action figure series. (I've seen them. I swear!) The cathedral gift shop, overall, refrained from such potential blasphemies as bobble-headed Jesus or Jesus action figures, or even "Buddy Christ." (O.k., maybe not with the "Secret Admirer" t-shirt.) It maintained a level of taste, education, and respect appropriate to a shop located inside of a religious building and run by a religious foundation.

Of course, I wonder what Jesus would have thought about a gift shop in a church?

On another note, as I continue this Kitsch series, I'm finding that I want a more precise definition of "kitsch" and philosophies about kitsch. The first time that I recall encountering the word was in The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera -- book, not movie. Kundera positioned kitsch as the opposite of art, mass-produced and meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I've been conflating adult kitsch with children's toys. I'm also interested in this kitsch and its depiction of historical subjects. I'm wondering more and more at those connections. That perhaps should be another post for another time.

OMG! Gargoylz!!!!11!!Eleven!!Eleventy-one!!!

Last Sunday, when my parents were visiting, my mother requested to see the National Cathedral. I confess that this had never been high on my "to visit" list, mostly because it made me nervous. I like the Gothic architecture and the stained glass and the craftsmanship and artistry and all, but when it starts becoming too explicitly Christian, I get uncomfortable. I'm not really up to unpacking that, so let's leave it for another time.

My parents themselves aren't particularly religious. As I've written before, the main tenant of their spiritual philosophy is, "we generally believe in a Christian God, but we don't get up before noon on weekends." So, this visit to the National Cathedral stemmed more from my mother's desire to see the art. My father, on the other hand, would have been happy to skip this site; but, since my mother had sat through the Air & Space Museum the previous day (literally, after a while, she found a seat and played Tetris and some sort of sheep-flinging game on her iPod), it was his turn to endure her choice. I've noticed that this is how many marriages endure.

Meanwhile, I suspected that the Cathedral would have gargoyles. I also figured that they might have a good gift shop. So, I went for the gargoyles and the gift shop.

The problem with gargoyles and grotesques, however, is that they live so high up on the building:
I tired to zoom in with my camera to see them better:

I tried to think of how one might satisfactorily see the gargoyles and could only come up with some sort of jet pack or, more reasonably, rappelling down the side of the cathedral. Both would be cool. Most people, however, go for binoculars. In fact, even inside of the cathedral, a pair of binoculars would help to see much of the artistry in the details.

The gift shop did not disappoint. They had the exact book that I had hope they would have, Guide to Gargoyles and other Grotesques, which includes close-ups of the gargoyles on the cathedral.

They also had something approximating the tchotchke that I had hoped they would have: Miniature versions of some of the gargoyles, except they were repositioned to look like grotesques. I purchased the second one from the far left on the bottom row. He -- and this one is, for some reason, a "he" to me -- looks like this:

He is supposed to represent "Evil closing its ears to good." To me, however, he represents the gargoyle in my head that shuts my ears to all of the bad voices. He seems to be saying "fuck you all of you bad ideas!" That's why he sits on the window sill above my desk.

This being a gift shop, and me being me, I had to scope out other gargoyle items that ranged into the kitsch category. Indeed, I didn't so much have to "scope" as to just look around.

I really wanted this one:

That's a gargoyle hand puppet. He, however, fell outside of my rules for purchasing tchotchkes: must fit into my hand, and must be no more than $10 (I admit to fudging a little on that last requirement by a few dollars from time to time).

The puppet was in the adult section. In the children's section, they had plush gargoyles that, frankly, were downright frightening. Here's a red one from the side: Here is a flock of green and blue ones:
I must confess, that green one on top in particular (he's the one at the very top on the right, for those of you who are color blind) reminded me of the Flukeman from that X-Files episode. (Between that and the Blair Witch Project, all of my Girl Scout camping nightmares were fully imagined on screen.)

Then, there were these:

Gargoyle pencil tips -- or whatever you would call these rubbery things that aren't erasers but that you can stick on the ends of your pencil. Pencil-puppets? In any case, at 50 cents each, my nephews are now in possession of one each.

By the way, one of those nephews can make a face that should be reproduced on a grotesque. I'd show you, but he's getting old enough that I don't want to put him on display that way.

I now have another mission should I ever actually get to Europe: to see more gargoyles in their natural habitat!

One last thing: for the record, since my parents qualify as physically disabled, I had the experience of learning that the National Cathedral has ADA issues due to the very pre-ADA design.

Sexist Much?

While wandering around Target last night, I came across this:

Yes, boys should be great and girls should be glamorous. Boys should be "Best at Everything" and girls should be "A Goddess." A Goddess, admittedly, is a step up from "princess" since goddesses presumably have power; but when this goddess is supposed to use her patriarchally approved beauty to gain power and very little else, well, that's not much of a change. From anything.

Fortunately, all was not lost for girls in the Target book section. Amid all of the stalker-fantasy vampire books -- or at least those packaged as stalker-fantasies since I must admit that I went through my vampire stage with Anne Rice, who was more about questions of power, immortality, and morality -- I found a book of hope. Look close, there in the center:Emily the Strange: Here is the description:

The transcription of the description: "13 years old. Able to leap tall building, probably, if she felt like it. More likely to be napping with her four black cats; or cobbling together a particle accelerator out of lint, lentils, and safety pins; or rocking out on drums/guitar/saxophone/zither; or painting a swirling feral sewer mural; or forcing someone to say 'swirling feral sewer mural' 13 times fast...and pointing and laughing."

Dark and grumpy in the way only a 13 year old girl can be, Emily does stuff other than try to look pretty and control people with her prettiness. Please please let more little girls drift to this rather than to the "Glamour" book!

Then, I heard someone from an aisle or two over shout, "hey, Mom! They have Glenn Beck books here!" He was not being ironic.

I needed solace. In the candy section. Where I found this:

Candy skeleton fingers for your martini!

Actually, what first caught my eye about these was that, when you turned them on their side, they looked like this: A row of skeletal birds. That's pretty much how I felt at that moment.

Then, I got some candy and felt much better.

Art History Kitsch

We will, of course, return to the Online Therapeutic Ramblings shortly. Meanwhile, last weekend -- that would be the weekend before the Parental Unit Visit -- I had gone to visit the Gentleman Caller. I was the Caller on this occasion! At one point, we decided to go visit an art museum and to see a particular statue that was of interest to us both.

In the art museum gift shop, I found this wonderful item, a Plush Vincent VanGogh:When I first saw it across the room, I thought, "That will be so much better if it doesn't have an ear." Sure enough, if you will notice, the ear comes off. The only way that could be better would be if they had used red Velcro to attach the ear, and maybe if they had a little box in which he could deliver it to the prostitute. Of course, I find it rather sad that he doesn't hold a paintbrush and a palette. He did do something other than sever his ear, after all!

After the gift shop -- and the museum -- we drove down to the statue, which depicts a certain fugitive slave incident. You know that the statue depicts a fugitive slave because the fugitive is wearing torn pants.:

Just so you know: all fugitive slaves wore pants torn up to their thighs, even when they had been gainfully employed in the city for several years past. The text also make the incident sound like the whole city was involved in rescuing this particular fugitive when, in fact, the rescuers were mostly attendees at a national abolitionist meeting being held in the city. The city residents' attitudes were more along the lines of "we won't tell if you don't get uppity."

This tweaking of the facts in favor of the city is much like the frequent claims that every other house north of the Mason-Dixon was a stop on the Underground Railroad: everyone in the north -- or at least in the locale -- was an abolitionist. Abolitionists themselves would tell you that most of the north wasn't too happy to see them come to town because abolitionists disrupted too many status quo notions about race and property and just caused trouble, dammit! That was the reason that the abolitionists had to fight so hard for so long.

Still, I can't get too worked up about these flaws in the statue. You see, that second leg that you see in the picture belongs to the black abolitionist Jermain Loguen and the event actually does address a mass, somewhat non-violent action of abolition. You don't often see that as far as I know (and I may not know that far, but I will certainly be looking more).

By the way, the Gentleman Caller assisted me greatly in the second part of this post. By "assisted" I mean that he pointed out the telltale torn pants leg, the fact that the fugitive had been in the city for a while, and the fact that the city wasn't exactly happy to have that particular fugitive in town. In other words, I really should just credit him with this second part of this post since I took it all from him. He's pretty smart. He also made the whole weekend fantastic in ways that would bore you to nauseated tears but give me twitterpated butterflies.

ETA: On closer (and embiggened) examination, I see that Plush VanGogh does, in fact, have a very fuzzy paintbrush in his hand. It looks a bit like a lion's tail. The ear must have preoccupied me to the exclusion of that detail.

Parental Unit Visit: Days 2-4

The continuation of my parents' visit has turned out surprisingly well. Much of the better cheer stemmed from some of the places that we visited and my new found ability to steer the conversation onto subjects on which we can all vociferously agree.

On Friday, my mother wanted to see fall foliage, so they decided to drive north west. I had suggested Harpers Ferry, and I must confess that I fell down on the job by not realizing that Friday was the big anniversary celebration. They also went to Antietam. So, that evening, I made sure not to let the conversation get further than, "Oh, the pretty fall leaves. That was a very nice battlefield. There was a big celebration at Harpers Ferry." Really, you don't want to engage a couple of Confederate apologists in conversation on either Harpers Ferry or the battle that led to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Instead, Friday night at dinner, I managed to keep the topics of discussion confined to:

1) How cute are my nephews? Please show me the pictures again. How cute is that? Aren't they adorable. Let me see the pictures again!

2) Some managers and administrators (like the fellowship coordinator) prove the Peter Principle. This one can get tricky because my father was a government bureaucrat and the topic can become political very quickly.

3) My grandmother has a narcissist personality disorder. My mother's iPhone came in handy on this one since we could look up a semi-clinical definition. I think my grandmother's picture was next to one.

4) How cute are my nephews? Let me see the pictures again!

That seemed to work. Nothing terrible happened.

On Saturday, we went to the air and space museum out by one of the big airports. They have the HUGE birds out there, such as a Space Shuttle, the Concord, and the Enola Gay. I'll have to write on the museum in another post (with pictures!). Suffice to say for now that they convey tons and tons of technical information with very little historical context or awareness of what some of these planes actually did.

My dad has always loved airplanes. I get my love of flying from him. He has studied planes and the history of planes for his whole life. I don't mean his adult life. I mean since he was a small boy. That meant that he could tell me everything about every plane: How the construction of one evolved into the construction of another, how this particular bi-plane led to the creation of that particular airline, how that reconstruction there was built by former employees of that airline, how those two planes were misused in that war, how that plane over there was designed specifically for fighting another type of plane, how these planes were used for tactical air power, and on and on.

Many of you may think, "oh. My. God. How tedious!" I didn't. I loved hearing about the evolution of air travel and power. I loved seeing how some of these planes essentially started as some wild-assed, what-the-hell idea and either took off or became "what the hell were they thinking?"

Mostly, I loved being with this version of my dad. This is the dad that I love and like. This is the knowledgeable dad who purely and deeply loves something, and the love, not the thing itself, is important. This is the dad who wants my company as a junior comrade, interested in what he is interested in. I loved feeling like he was being the father I wanted and I was being the grown child -regardless of gender - that he wanted. In those several hours, we were.

I also had a vision of what my father's life should have been. As I wrote, he was a government bureaucrat for 25 or 30 years, and he hated his job. Worse: he hated his job, but cared too much about doing a good job in it that he would neither disengage emotionally from it nor find another job. He had an irrational terror of "running away."

Before he was a bureaucrat, he worked as a civilian for one branch of the armed forces. Before that, he was in the Air Force. He left the service because his next assignment was Saigon, after Tet, as chief of Air Force police. That is the second point in his life where I wish he had made a different decision (the first being when he married my mother -- really, that fucked up both of their lives, and their three children's in the process).

At that point, I wish he had gone to graduate school and become a historian. Sure, he would have been one of those old school military historians, but he would have been much happier and my brothers and I would have had a less abusive childhood.

Better yet, I wish that he had found a path that led him to the restoration hangar of this or a similar museum. The manual labor, the almost religious calling of restoration, and the historical and technical knowledge for such work would have made my father a much happier and more satisfied human than he ever was. We may not have had much of the class privilege that we had growing up, but we also probably wouldn't have been beaten as much nor have had to tiptoe around rages (at least in regard to one parent). Heck, maybe he might have been happy enough to have realized that divorce would have been a superior solution to the unholy nightmare that was my parents' marriage.

I know he has found a certain peace in his life now (just keep him away from Fox News!), with his post-retirement work, with my mother, and as a grandparent to two grandsons. I'm happy for that. I also like being around him the way he was at the museum and on Sunday when we went to the National Cathedral (gargoyles!) and this shockingly kitschy German restaurant (complete with polkas and lederhosen-wearing dancers). This is my Good Father, not my Other Mother Father. After he dies, I hope that this is what I remember of him. I wish it were all that I could remember of him now.

Meanwhile, I have to keep politics out of our interactions, and I have to recognized and clean up after the damage that was done to me during those 20-25 years in which both of my parents were miserable, small minded, narcissistic, and taking all of their rage out on their children.

One of the steps in accomplishing that is to draw a line in my memory. On one side of the line is "that was then," and the other side is "this is now." On the "then" side, I was a child with no power, and was warped. On the "this" side, I am an adult, and in charge. That second part helps me stop any continuity of the warping from the "then" side. That second part also helps me appreciate the good parts of my parents while reducing the guilt that I feel over my powerful reactions to the bad and the past bad parts.

At least, I hope that this is a good approach.

Parental Unit Visit: Day 1

My parents are in town. They tell everyone that they are visiting me; but, really, they are touring the museums and only have dinner with me. For this, I am grateful. About an hour or two may be all that I can take if last night was any example.

We went to dinner. Within the course of the meal, I learned several things about my father that really appall me.

They had gone to the Holocaust Museum earlier in the day. Moving, tragic, important. I figured that was a safe topic of conversation because you have to be a complete asshole to say something offensive about it. How could I be so very naive? I learned that, in the museum that day, my dad had said, "you know, Germany wanted 'change,' too."

Yes, that's right. My own father compared the Obama administration to the Third Reich. While standing in the Holocaust Museum.

At least my mother, who is a Democrat if a Lieberman-esque sort of Democrat, had the grace to be embarrassed. "You aren't in Texas anymore," she told him.

Our conversation then shifted to flying. We can all agree that it is a pain in the ass, that the seats are too small, that people who tilt their seats back are inconsiderate, and that the security process is getting too ridiculous. I should have steered the conversation away from security immediately.

"It would go a lot faster if they would just let security profile," my dad said. He meant profile brown-skinned people, not white-skinned domestic terrorist people. When I pointed this out, my dad said, "well they aren't a problem right now." Yeah, because right-wing whites aren't bringing guns to presidential rallies these days.

Finally, we finished dinner and went out to their rental car. Who knew that could be a minefield, too? "I can't believe I'm driving around in a car with New York plates," he said, with much disgust. Understand that the man has seen nothing of the state of New York other than a short stretch of interstate. He's never set foot in New York City.

"Provincialism is unattractive," I told him. "Don't be like those Yankees." By which I meant the nasty people whom I encountered in That Place. Then I launched into an overly detailed explanation of the best route back to my place.

Fortunately, they did not want to come up and see my apartment.

Fortunately, also, they did not refer to any non-Anglo ethnic food with derogatory racial slurs.

We are scheduled to have dinner tonight. They are supposed to go up to Harpers Ferry today, or perhaps Antietam, although they may end up seeing the bones exhibit at the natural history museum. I hope they have done the last because I really don't want to hear about how the Civil War was not about slavery. Because they would do that. They would tell a PhD-carrying historian who writes about Frederick Douglass that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War.

Pray for me.

Blank and Wobbly, but Good

I should write something, but I feel strangely blank. Blank isn't necessarily bad. In fact, the blank feels a bit like the eye of a hurricane. Not exactly peaceful, nor permanent, not even creative, but somewhat calm.

Being in love creates this bubble of delirium. Experience has taught me that this bubble, like all bubbles, is short-lived so I must enjoy it. I don't want to ruin it by diving into the muck. At the same time, given the nature of my muck, I have to dive into it from time to time in order to keep the person with whom I'm in love.

I have tended to mistrust anyone genuinely kind who cares for me. I think, "I am so obviously a terrible person. I am so obviously a fraud, and cruel, and cold, and lazy, and stupid, and gullible," and anything else negative. I think that, if I am that horrible, then anyone who cares for me is either stupid and not worthy of my respect, or working some sort of angle. I confess, that pattern of thought makes a person pretty damn lonely and miserable in their own skin. It's such a cliche', too; but I am nothing if not a cliche'!

So far, I haven't fallen into that trap with this person; but I'm afraid that I could. That means that I have to keep going back into the muck to take apart the devices that make me believe the Bad Ideas about myself. I have to excavate the bad ideas, and analyze them to the point that they no longer have any meaning -- like when you say a word over and over and over until it becomes just sound.

At the moment, on the verge of going to visit this Gentleman Caller, I don't want to do that. I want to bask in the glow of being in love. Basking has not yet become the raw material for anything creative. I can only express it in the words and the music of other creative people, like a 16-year-old making mix-tapes. Which is fun, but has its embarrassing limits. I must become more confident in this feeling, give it strength, learn its complexities, trust it, before I can allow myself to let it infuse the other parts of my creative life.

I'm delirious about visiting my Gentleman Caller, about being the caller myself. The following weekend, however, my parents will be visiting me. Not me, per se, but the city; during which time they will visit me. I love them and sympathize with them, but the love and sympathy are so tied up with the abuse and conditions of their love that I dread the repercussions of any contact with them. I have to psyche myself up.

They don't know about the Gentleman Caller, and I wonder why I haven't shared it with them. Of course, the thought suddenly occurred to me that he isn't really their business. My whole life I've felt as if I must tell them everything, which has led to my completely indiscreet personality and my inability to keep a secret. I've had very few secrets from them; but those that I've had, I've kept because I know that they are powerful in some way. They make me an adult, not their little girl.

I think that has been one of my most recent epiphanies, making complete sense out of a particular period of my life in my late teens and early twenties. That was the stalled period, when I sold myself short, stunted my own growth, and simply could not move forward. I jokingly refer to that as my "breakdown" because whatever system of belief or fear or motivation that kept me going through each step of life to that point had broken down and no longer worked. I couldn't take the next step in becoming an autonomous adult, and I was completely miserable.

I have realized that I had grown up in a house that hated women. Little girls were fine, but fully formed women were incomprehensible to the dominant powers in the house. Grown women were harridans and viragoes, like my grandmother, and therefore hateful; or they were weak, incapable of taking care of themselves, and therefore should be resented, like my mother (whose own mother never really let her grow up).

Women were also like shoes.

To be a little girl, pink and cute and non-threatening, like a live doll, was good. To be a grown woman, full of power and opinions and capable of taking care of herself was dangerous and bad. To be a little girl growing into a woman was treacherous. I grew from the furious beatings of my frustrated mother into the berserk beatings of my misogynist father. Both out of control until their rage subsided. I had to be a grown woman in order to get myself out of that environment; but to survive in that environment, I had to try to stay a little girl. I have not yet fully understood how I mustered the resources to get out; but I know that they too involved abuse. I simply chose the devil that I didn't know over the one that I did.

In the past two or three years, especially this last one in analysis, I've actually found a place in my head in which I feel safe. It's not a big place, just a little corner, guarded by gargoyles. I have started to feel that all of that abuse, compounded by more abuse, inflicted by Other Mothers of all genders and types, has actually passed. It may have shaped me, but I don't have to live with it, I don't have to let it reproduce itself in the disastrous personal or professional relationships that have plagued me forever. I can trust the kindness of strangers. By "strangers," I mean those genuinely kind people.

This realization leaves me light-headed and wobbly. When you try to rise above your experience and ignore it, you take a risk. You have to hope and trust, rather than defend and disappear. You have to reprogram yourself (which was my whole goal in seeking analysis). This job, this Gentleman Caller, this next book, this life here -- I keep thinking, "I've finally found the starting line. My real life has begun. Make it bigger and better! Don't fuck it up!" I think this blankness is my effort to keep upright and not swoon or wobble over.

This blankness is me holding my breath, waiting for the moment when I know that I can trust myself not to fuck it up.