posted on Friday, Nov. 02, 2007 @ 21:13
i'm terrible about anthropomorphizing. when i say my car is a piece of shit while in earshot of her, i go to great lengths to explain to evie i didn't mean it. i'm simply upset at the situation and wrongly taking it out on her. my previous car, travis, and the one before him, chiquita, were such a part of my active life. even though i only had chiquita for a few months, it meant a lot to me. even the name, i wonder if leah even remembers the significance to "chiquita" and my silly obsession. chiquita and travis had character, and their weaknesses were amusing to me. when travis would begin to fall apart, making a frightening noise or not responding well on slippery roads in the middle of the night, it was funny. i joked with my passengers about the odds of us dying.
now, though, my car is important. i have a job that i must go to every day, and i don't joy ride. the only passenger i ever have is owen, and its only real function is allowing me to generate income. i've never had an emotional connection to evie, and it must come from my personal life. when i got her, it was right before owen moved down here. it was after the great schism of 2004 that left me without my best friend. all i had was two kitties, a one-bedroom apartment, and coworkers who were equally as eager as i to drink their problems into oblivion. the summer of 2004, i was drunk more nights than not. i was having a fantastic time. owen moved down here, and my life couldn't get sweeter. at that point my social life passed away. i got a full-time job, a new car, and a domestic partner. i had a nice apartment that i could take care of and set rules for without consulting with someone else. i was one step closer to being an adult.
then i moved to this apartment, complete with spare bedroom and guest bathroom (despite the lack of guests), high-efficiency front-loading washer and dryer, respectable neighborhood a block from the country club. there are old people who wave at me when they walk down the street, a school bus that comes by every morning around 7:15. i'm only two miles away from elementary, middle, and high schools. you should see the middle school. it's beautiful. canyon vista, actually in the little valley on spicewood springs. my middle school did not look that nice.
now, when my car makes a funny noise, it's an annoyance. i end up cursing her existence then pleading for forgiveness.
i was looking through old journal entries and found the following one. it is the most perfect insight into how my brain works, and further proof no one will ever understand me. including myself.
i kicked a rock, and it landed in a puddle, completely submerged. at first i thought, oh no, it'll drown. but then i thought, oh, but what if it's aquatic, and i saved it? i thought, maybe i'll put it half in and half out. but what if i put its breathing apparatus in the air? i just can't win.
in the next entry, the next day, i wrote:
i tried to get a spider out of the can that collects tickets inside the exit machine, but my finger slipped and i think my fingernail broke one of his legs. i felt so terrible. i just fuck so much shit up. that rock was probably terrestrial. goddamn.
i don't understand why these thoughts occur to me. i finally finished popco tonight, and in it a character was discussing cognitive dissonance. it never really occurred to me because, as she said, some things we are just raised to accept. but she mentioned how a father in leather shoes will point to a picture of a cow and teach his young child it's a moo cow. this moo cow is completely separate from the cow hide on his feet, and the cow in their happy meal. it allows us to both sell a tortured animal and a cute little toy at the same time.
another example i liked was with stuffed animals. a child can have a stuffed rabbit and stake his life on this rabbit. in a dangerous situation, such as a house fire, he'll run back in for the rabbit because it has a logo on a tag sewn to its ass. but when his father is driving, he wouldn't so much as brake to avoid hitting a real rabbit.
i'm wondering if my anthropomorphizing has something to do with my lack of cognitive dissonance. i have always�and continue to this day�talked to my stuffed animals. they're a part of me, and my blue hippo has been with me through a lot of bad shit. my parisian monkey, so named because my father's french friend sent him to me par avion when i was born, is like a child to me. he has always had the best seat in the house, where he won't be disturbed. when i move, i make sure he's taken care of. it's for your own good if you just stay away from my parisian monkey.
i have stuffed animals that i cuddle with and rely on, so when i see the real thing i can't help but attach those emotions to them. the other day i saw a squirrel nearly get hit by an suv in front of me. most people would think, it's only a squirrel, but my heart skipped a beat during that split second i saw him dodge the rear driver side tire. i'm sure somewhere in these annals of my perplexing existence, i've mentioned the squirrels i found in my longview neighborhood. one i hit with my car, and i sobbed as i picked him up by his intact body only to see one of his eyes dangling by the occipital nerve. i buried him in the road-side monkey grass of the nearest home, hoping he would give back to the soil and create a beautiful nutrient-rich patch of earth. another time i buried an already-dead squirrel i just happen to pass. i took him to the woods in a nearby park.
this has strayed quite far from my original point. i read the following passage from popco, and thinking about this scene from the perspective of her deceased grandfather's possessions was particularly heart-breaking:
i remember sitting in his armchair, looking at his notes and his magnifying glass and everything and wondering why these items hadn't realised that something in their world had changed, that they didn't belong to anyone any more. i wished that they could have just tidied themselves away so i didn't have to do it; so i didn't have to be the one to admit that it was all over and i didn't know what came next.
those items are going to be put in a drawer somewhere and never used. they'll be wondering what they did wrong to deserve that. the worst part is they won't understand.