Intersections

When I started this blog, more than a year ago, I started it with a couple of separate intentions.

I wanted to find a voice that sounded like me, that felt like me. I had been quiet for a long time, and was on the verge of screaming.

I also wanted to find a conversation that I might have some room in which to participate. With someone, with anyone, who had something to say in return. A connection to something bigger, more, other than myself.

As it turns out, I got both my wishes.

I’ve found a voice that is real, that is mine, that speaks of who I am, who I have been, who I am learning to be.

If you’ve never been a position to lose your voice, to speak and remain unheard, you can’t begin to understand the value of that. If that’s you, then for your sake, I hope it stays that way.

I also found that connection I was looking for – to a small group of people who, though I hadvery limited offline contact with them, made me feel welcome, and invited me in, and offered to pull me up a chair in their circle.

About the time that was really picking up and getting going, that I was really starting to reach out and interact online, my life, my “real” life, got big and messy and ugly and scary and more than a little out of control. (Are we shocked that Jolie is a control freak? Really?)

I started this blog to keep the two separate, to find room for me in the overcrowding of my personal environment. For a while, there was only one intersection between my “real” life and this space.

For a while.

And then came a second intersection. And a third, and so on.

And then one of those intersections had a four-car pile up. One thing too many, one place where my online life and my “real” life met, collided, nearly went up in flames. And I checked out.

Shut. It. Down.

Stepped one long step back from all the interactions, all the potential, all the introductory push-pull, and let it go.

Looking back is one thing. Easy to say you saw it coming, easy to say you knew where it would lead.

I didn’t. I didn’t see it.

So that moment has led to this one.

In this one, crystal clear moment, I can see all the intersections between this life and that one, between “real” and online and tangible and imaginary.

I can see, where I couldn’t really imagine before, the potential disasters inherent in the fact that some people who know me at work, and at home, and at school, read this writing and have insight that they may or may not normally get.

I can also see how easy it would be for those people, who know me in the physical world I inhabit, to assume that because they know me in both places, they somehow know me better for reading me here.

That’s the “real” side.

From your perspective, my lovely readers (all three of you!), I wonder sometimes who I am in your eyes. Do you believe in the stories I tell? Do you read for curiosity? For voyeurism? For something else that I can’t even begin to guess at, because I’ve never been in your shoes and couldn’t possibly know?

Who do you think you see, when you hit the link to This Side of Changed and check out the sometimes-daily updates on the Life and Times of Jolie?

Because neither one, at the heart of it all, is the whole picture.

It’s just not. This is a two-dimensional medium in every way possible. Words on a screen. My thoughts translated through your eyes to conclusions that may or may not have anything at all to do with me.

I’m a three dimensional creature. So are you. You read this, and you assume, and you identify with my experiences through the lenses of your own. That’s okay. Better than okay, it’s kind of the fucking point of blogging.

So that moment has led to this one.

From where I stand now, at the biggest crossroads of online and “real” to date, it’s just about fucking time.

This is a good moment for me, a good moment to be in.

I am, for once, completely at peace in this moment.

Someone wise said to me recently, “Sometimes it’s just about being still enough to hear what you’re being told.”

It is that moment for me, now. I have really, finally, started to let go of the things I cannot control. I have stepped outside of it as far as I am able. I have accepted the choices of others, and gotten okay with those choices as much as I can get.

Which all means that yeah, I really am okay. With where I’m at. With knowing that some of you know the “real” me, and some of you know me online, and some of you try with varying levels of success to reconcile the two.

Because no matter how many words I pour out on to the page, I can’t give you my whole picture in a two-dimensional medium. And no matter how many times we sit down and have coffee, I may not every really be able to articulate what’s in my head to you like I can write it out here.

It’s all part of me. Each facet, each moment, each thought, all part of me. What I choose to withhold is just as much me as what I choose to share.

And that moment leads to this one.

Where, with my hand out and my eyes open, I can stand on my own two feet, and let these two pieces of my life intersect in ways that I never imagined possible. Where I can breathe through this moment into the next, and trust in both moments, and treasure the experience.

Because I came here to find myself, and to start a conversation. And I did.

You’ll have to figure out why you’re here, all on your own.

Trust me, it’s worth asking the question.

Types

I’ve been talking and writing and thinking about where I’m at, on this journey of mine, a lot lately.

Where I’m at seems to be directly linked in my head with where I’m from.

So this isn’t about all the rest of it. This is more about where I’m from, and why I’m standing at this moment.

See, New Mexico is the last living vestige of the real Wild West. I don’t mean gunslingers and shootouts and that stupid tourist shit that’s more popular than turquoise jewelry in Santa Fe. I mean, it’s the last place in the continental United States where you can kill your spouse (with premeditation, mind) for cheating on you, and still be out of jail in five years or less because it’s considered a crime of passion.

Only very specific types of people survive out there, much less thrive.

The women defy explanation; I’m living proof. ‘Nuff said.

The men, though, are pretty easily classified.

Three types: the cowboy, the good ol’ boy, and the redneck.

And yes, there’s a difference between a cowboy and a good ol’ boy. The rednecks aren’t worth wasting words on, so for the purposes of this blog, we’ll just skip to the good stuff.

Back home, there are two dominant societies, both agricultural in makeup. There are ranchers, and there are farmers.

Full stop. That’s it.

The ranchers tend to produce more cowboys, the farmers more good ol’ boys. Not an absolute – they have some cross-pollination going on, but generally speaking, that’s how it divvies up.

The two have some fundamental similarities. Both hold the door, pull out the chair, pick up the check, take off their hat in the house, won’t set that hat on a bed, and won’t swear in front of a lady.

My brother, John? Total cowboy. He has a line for every occasion, and is successful often enough to baffle me. He’s charming. Sweep a girl off her feet charming. For about three days. Then he’s kind of an ass. There is no taming or housebreaking a damned old cowboy. They track mud through the door, disappear at will for stretches of time, and are generally hard on the heart and on the peace of mind. The translation for ya’ll out there in more mainstream society? The cowboys are the frat boys of the high plains. Burn hot, and high, and then they’re out.

Then there’s Tim, who was as close as I ever got to a childhood sweetheart, who is and will always be a good ol’ boy. Good ol’ boys have clay feet, and are married to their tractors. They will be late for dates sometimes because it took longer than they thought to get the grease out under their fingernails, but they will scrub like hell anyway. They tend to be hard workers, and steady as a rock. Which can translate into feeling like you’re arguing with a brick fucking wall. This would be the voice of experience. But once that spark catches, the heat will surprise you.

So yes, there is indeed a difference between a cowboy and a good ol’ boy. Both have their loveable moments. You get good ones, bad ones, bad boys with a heart of gold, and good boys with a mean streak. Any and all combinations are possible.

Cowboys fight with their girlfriends in the parking lot. Good ol’ boys fight with their girlfriends in the car on the way home. The cowboys think the good ol’ boys are boring. The good ol’ boys think the cowboys are reckless and irresponsible.

I ran with both kinds, at different times. The cowboys were fun: go out to the bar, dance all night, eat breakfast at 3:00 AM fun. The good ol’ boys were fun, too, and did their fair share of hellraising along the way, but there was always that underlying knowledge that there was less chaos about them.

And yeah. Being the sweetheart of a cowboy had its moments. But there’s a lot to be said for being a good ol’ boy’s girl.

First

My Gran taught me everything i needed to know about life.

I say that a lot. It never gets less true.

I remember very specific details of her. I remember how she taught me to work the clasp of a necklace when I got so frustrated with my young, clumsy hands that I asked for help.

She was a hairdresser by trade. Not just any hairdresser. She was the first woman in her little town to have a business license. My Pops was her employee. In the 1950s.

So not just any woman, no she was not.

She was also divorced. I’ve always gotten a kick out of that.

Gran got a divorce. In 1942. In Texas.

Who did shit like that?

My Gran, that’s who.

She taught me to cook. She taught me how to season a cast-iron skillet. She taught me how to plant a tiny little salad garden, and how to can, and how to make jelly. From her, I learned to crochet, and needlepoint, and quilt.

Gran set a lot of examples for me, guided me home when I was lost. She saved me more than once.

I hate more than anything that she never met my Sharkman. She left us in 1998, four years before he made his grand entrance into my life. She would have loved him. He would have been crazy about her.

She loved Ginger Rogers. She loved to dance. She also loved to point out that Ginger did everything ol’Fred ever pulled off, and she did it backwards, in heels.

The original feminist, that’s my Gran.

I can’t think of one single situation in my life that I didn’t look inside for her voice when it was time to make a decision. Everything I know of family, parenting, manners, work, womanhood, and love, I learned from her.

I was damn lucky to have her. And someday, if I’m really lucky, I’m gonna be a Gran just like her.