Big Data – Kathy Nida

What am I going to do today? I’m not going to lesson plan. I’m not going to update my school webpage. I’m not going to desperately run over to school to prep a lab for tomorrow or to check supplies, and then run around to a bunch of stores to find materials and pay for them with my own money. I’m not going to spend two hours grading papers or inputting grades online. I’m not going to check parent or admin emails and try to figure out who can play what sport or how to manage that many meetings in one day AND have time to call student parents (my goal for next year…more phone calls, fewer useless meetings). Sundays are never days of rest for teachers. We run errands for the week, prepare for the week, often don’t sleep Sunday night because we’re worried about the week.

I don’t have to do any of that today. I still need to grocery shop. Still need to manage some stuff, bill paying, schedule for the week (which includes at least one hike, maybe two, plus some trips to the gym). Yeah, the car has to go in (again), I have a couple of doctor’s appointments, and I have to prepare a powerpoint for an art group I’m in, plus organize some long-ignored posts to the Facebook page for at least one of those groups. I can do all of that.

I did manage to get off my butt yesterday and go to the quilt store for bindings. I found two that I’m debating, although this afternoon, I am leaning towards the green.

This camera…those are all much darker than they are here. The two pieces on the left are vying for the position of background of the next quilt, which I will be starting soon. Hopefully I’ll get the binding machine-sewn on tonight, and then I can do hand-sewing whenever, and start tracing the next one…because it needs to be done in…four weeks, max. I can do that. Maybe. I certainly don’t have school in the way.

Yesterday afternoon and into the night, I was at a music festival, the Dirty Parts Festival put on by a radio station I don’t usually listen to, but that plays a lot of music that’s similar. So I knew three of the bands and a song of one of the other bands. It was nice to listen to music all day, and to people watch, because I do a lot of that…it was hot out there, so a fan made sense, and she wasn’t the only one who had one…

Although the lace kinda confused me for a moment, because we were on rodeo grounds and it just seemed incongruous.

There were lots of tattoos, and I would have taken many more pictures of those if it didn’t seem difficult to do so without people noticing that I wasn’t taking pictures of the BANDS, but of them…

This is Panic Is Perfect, which I’d never heard of, but they had some suitably hyper guys jumping around and making music.

Then In the Valley Below, which had some nice duets, belting it out. I was impressed by the female’s apparent lack of sweat.

Plus she used a bunch of chains as a musical instrument. Can’t argue with that.

On the right is Steve West, who has been a local radio DJ for a million years (since 1983)…I think he’s beaten cancer and is about a million years old, but did Resurrection Sunday, a radio show, for years, music from my childhood. Apparently, he does the same sort of thing on his current radio station. But yes, I took a photo of him because it made me smile to see him still standing…

This is Waters, a fun and bouncy band of young musicians who say they’re from San Francisco, but largely hail from Norway, hence the Eurowear.

So I stared at this tattoo for a long time. Was Brittany born on 2-4-91? Was Brittany the woman sitting next to him, with her own set of newer tattoos that I never got a clear photo of? Was Brittany dead? I will never know.

These guys were a little strange to have on a rodeo arena…Saint Motel…very big-bandy sound and kinda goofy.

And this lace vest…I was annoyed that the skull had no lower jaw…that’s probably why it looks so pissed off. Plus…lace.

So the guy on the left didn’t look 21 at all, but had the ID check bracelet. The dear young thing to the right? Stretch marks already on her lower back, plus the mom in me really wanted to either pull up the purple shirt to cover the bra because it looked so damn stupid, or to tell her to leave off the bra (which was a common refrain in my old-lady head all night…why all you people wear bras when you’re wearing such flimsy clothing? Your nips are covered. Who cares?). So yeah. And then he gave her half his beer. And his little brother was on the other side of her.

Proof that we’re old…all the really drunken kids with the ID check bracelets on? None of them looked 21.

Here’s the whole crowd for the Saint Motel set…two stages…and in the distance, a fire starting and getting put out within 90 minutes, no structures damaged. It is fire season here…way too hot and dry. We’ve had at least three in the area in the last 5 days.

We missed seeing the entire Big Data set for food (there’s something wrong if it takes 45 minutes to get food and 30 seconds to get beer)…but they sounded underwhelming. Then again, I only know one song. Lots of electronic though.

Then finally some of the music I came for…this is the Kongos…they are 4 brothers from South Africa and they had a lot of energy on stage, plus an accordion. I don’t know why there are 5 people on stage, but I’m gonna bet the really tall guy on the right is the Not-Kongos brother. Plus they brought a tiny rapping midget out for one song, which was fun…OK, he was probably my height…not really a midget.

The tattoo…wish I had a better picture, but the bra? Again…there are better ways to get that look (says fashion maven Nida…Not).

Kettle corn was very popular. Everyone had some but us. We had Wachos. No really. Nachos made with waffle fries. You can’t say no to that.

And New Politics, who were disappointing. Lots of tracks playing behind that no one was actually playing. Euro band…but they had lots of energy and noise and the crowd loved them. I could have done without the lights…they were just distracting.

Yes, I’m old, but lights shouldn’t annoy. They should add to the show.

Anyway, I had a good time. It was nice to go out and feel the weather change from really hot and sweaty to even coldish and people watch and listen to lots of music and move around to that. I didn’t even have a weird patch of sunburn where I forgot to put sunscreen, so such a success! No really.

It’s such a joy to feel all of work just slough off and plop onto the floor, a blob of gelatinous stress and overwork, just quivering there on the floor. This summer? Art, music, food, hikes, sleep, writing. Yes, I need to make money too. I’m not forgetting that. But I’m putting it mostly out of my head for a week. Really need a break people. I can breathe in deep right now and not feel work pressing up against my chest. That’s good. Need to hold on to that.

Tears, Santa Ana winds, headaches, heat, should have felt connected, weepy instead. I think that’s my Goodreads summary of the novel of Yesterday. Not in that order. It was a flummoxy day. It was a day of heat and dry and that pressure that the Santa Anas ride into my skull, whipping about and causing upset. These days, my hormones and the weather, the lack or addition of exercise, the time or not for meditation, these are the things that help me balance the teeter totter or fall to the ground, trip into a hole. I feel the wind catch and drop. The artist’s brain is fascinated, grabs the sketchbook, travels me here and there to the places on my schedule, puts me in the right places, but not the right moods. I talk, I pretend to be normal like you, try to chat and small talk.

Instead, I buy socks. I can’t listen to a talk on water filtration. I’m so far away from being able to be competent enough to hike far enough to need water filtration. What I need are socks. What I buy (with my 16% fucking discount) are socks. Socks for me. Socks for the boychild. And a doggie water bowl for Calli, so she doesn’t give me that sad-eyed look again when I try to persuade her to drink water from a plastic bag. Look, Calli…Jake does it. Jake is a desperate water slut. Yes, these are dogs of which I speak. Soon I will post the other two hikes from last Saturday. Maybe when the burying stops.

Last night was a clusterfuck. I did the normal social stuff. I did everything I was supposed to do. I am always doing the things I am supposed to do. I do them and they do no good, and I became unraveled on the way home. To be truthful, I was unraveling on the way out, and it was only the stifling presence of other people who kept all my brain parts from unwinding on the pavement in the wind. I waited until the drive home and then wept out all the pieces on Interstate 8, leaving them writhing on the asphalt between the lanes. Home was no better, and found girlchild sitting on the couch with me and the dog, trying to put me back together again.

I flailed. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I did what any normal depressoid would do…I crawled into bed with my pain and my tears and I let them whale upon themselves while I dreamed fitfully, while the wind continued to thrash the trees above my head, to drop eucalypt leaves all over my yard, more crap for me to clear. More for my neighbors to decry. My pool guy. Hey, I pulled the damn dead baby possum out. You can’t bitch me out now.

Morning comes and it’s bright and the wind is still here and did I mention bright? Mornings are sometimes a shock to my system. I prefer to live in the dark, in the cool whisper of night.

Tonight there is another meeting, but the winds have died down. The traffic pulls at me though, as I sit in it, inching along towards friends who don’t ask too many questions. It’s better that way. Questions tend to stab at my eyeballs and I shut down or burst into tears. Wow. What a choice. I cried from Santee, no maybe La Mesa…all the way to Mira Mesa. Stopped it in the parking lot. Made it stop before I went in. Dragged my mopped-up self in and bought tea. Sat with friends and dropped it all on the table: stupid financial aid forms, goddamned State Franchise Tax Board, fucking asexual hammerhead sharks, the pile of crap that is literally wrapped around my neck right now, squeezing tight as I try to figure out how to handle each thing, one chunk at a time. Lots of chunks.

I swear. There is no peace.

There must be peace. I’ve seen it in a mountain meadow, wind rushing through and lighting the grass with dusky noise. I’ve seen it on the top of a rounded-rock peak, standing up tall and feeling the sky support me and birds swoop below my feet. I’ve seen it in my sketchbook. I’ve seen it in a pile of fabric, random prints slammed together by my brain. I’ve seen it in a good book, words reach up and wrap around like an author’s warm hug, a reminder of where my head could be.

Sigh. Some days it is So Bad. I try. I really do. I joke around, I tell stories, I goof off with my students, I interact with my kids, I make people laugh, I even make myself laugh. It is not enough. I get into the quiet space that is alone and all that protection, that distraction, it just sloughs off and I stand there, wrinkled, old, and lost…and that is what I cannot escape. That is the reality that is always underneath…and on days like yesterday and today, it weighs on you. It does not matter how smart I am, how long I ruminate on causes and hope and the past and the present and the future and the very moment that is right now. The mood right now…it is deep down low and slimy and rusty and held down by heavy rocks and choking me with that bad sulfur smell.

It is not a good mood.

Tonight I resolve to do better than last night, because it’s OK to have a bad night and realize it and try to revise it, revoke it, revolt it. I eat, I exercise, I meditate. I iron…

I lay fabrics out for the flesh tones, as if that will save the world. As if that will save me. As if it is not like lining up the fucking chairs on a sinking Titanic deck. I iron the damn things because it is all I know how to do at the moment. It is my life vest, my survival plan, my way out…

I’d like to say that ironing for 12 hours so far, and being up into the 900s, more than halfway through, almost to 1000…that it was enough to pull me through, and maybe it is…because I am still getting out of bed in the morning and taking showers (thank you, I know) and eating and exercising and attempting to look like a normal person. But it doesn’t feel like enough.

The frustrating part is that I don’t know how much of the moody crap is depression and how much is thyroid or iron levels or goddamned fucking blood sugar. It feels like I am a puppet being controlled by someone else…I can’t exert enough control on my self to feel like I can hold on to some level of content or even sanity. Some days it is like my brain is floating in space like a balloon and I keep trying to grab onto that fucking string, to pull it down, to fasten it to my head so it can’t escape, can’t wander off.

Useless. Tilting at windmills.

Which brings me to the music video featured on today’s post (making it sound like I am always featuring music videos, which is absolute bullshit). If you have made it this far through my crazyass poetic turbulence, then you have to watch this video, Dangerous by Big Data…

Because it made me laugh. Now that might make you worry even more, but this thing is so out there, it reminds me of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill and the like. Yes, it’s an acquired taste, but sweetheart, I am a fucking acquired taste, so you should be able to deal. Plus you don’t have to like it.

Tag: Big Data

No Patches of Weird Sunburn…

Drained