Satisfiction, Unemployment, Bizarre-iocity of Family; Fabulous-ity of Niece/Nephew Situation

I am unemployed. I am also a depressive who has to stay on her meds., or life will deja vu itself in a cumbersome way.

Why I would share this with whomever in the world wide web chances on my little blog, is beyond me, but there is something oddly, perhaps merely momentarily, healing in writing here. Is "healing" is the correct word? It could be that I derive "satisfaction" from blogging about the personal. Healing and Satisfaction are not the same.

Sidebar: Poor typing led me to "Satisfiction." Hah!

I had lunch with relatives last week. My niece was in town to help my great-niece dehydrate and store belongings for the summer. When college starts up in Fall, there will be rehydration.

There Will Be Rehydration, starring Five Suitcases, Much Vintage Clothing, Textbooks, Some Velvet with a guest appearance from The Shag Rug.

We met in Bronxville, oddly. Oddly because that is where my grad. school is located, sort of (as with all colleges, it isn't part of the town), and I didn't much enjoy grad. school. But it was quite convenient for a family sit down. We found an Italian restaurant, apropos of sit downs. (No, my great-niece is not going to SLC.)

Let me summarize relevant comments: My parents and sisters are bizarre--no one is being critical. We are. The reasons are genetic, nurture, clash of the titans-y, astrologically induced, and so on.

I know people who come from childhoods of satanic ritual. I know people who've had the mob after them. In spite of the fact that my sisters and I weren't beaten, and interference with our person wasn't global or constant, as was the case with many people I know, we exhibit singularly freaky, asocial, intense behavior. Four daughters. One had kids. That's just for starters.

My ivy league, full-scholarship sister couldn't work in an office and so did a highly routine and low-paying job in her apartment. Routine and low-paying describes Harvey Pekar's job as a hospital file clerk--and he's a deservedly well-known writer and personality. There is honor in all work, yes. She wasn't happy, however. Just coping.

My nieces and nephews had the good grace and sense to mix up the gene pool. Their father is African American from the South. The mix cut right through the Swedish-Russian-Polish dark and paranoid neuroses. Am I racist?

As a family, we are all witty, open minded and big hearted. All of us. But my oldest sister and myself can cut people out of our lives as if all that separated each member of the human race was jello and our discomfort a hot knife.

My next oldest sister, now deceased, the mother of my niece and nephew, though a great mother and business woman, was insanely frantic in various paranoias. Discretion restrains me, here.

The sister closest to me is an artist (composer) though for her, as for me, it took decades for the art--always present and witnessed by others--to fully declare itself. She's the one who got me selling m.j. when I was in high school. That's not so bad. I realize I don't want to critize or explicate more.

I'm not beginning to demonstrate how odd we are and so be it. Talking with my niece and great-niece--just about the only people who know the whole family (since I live 3,000 miles away from childhood geography) was comforting. Yes, I am crazy but I'm not the only one. And sometimes this or that niece or nephew acts like my mother or father or sisters. They know where the rabid intensity comes from.

I have been sinking into a moroseness over the past few months. I haven't wanted to write about that here; haven't written much of anything here. Some of the moroseness comes from being unemployed and absolutely despairing of getting work. (I have white hair. I am pudgy. I am hyper-verbal. I am an odd woman.) Some from the flirtation with depression. (And my trendy Vitamin D deficiency.)

Change a mood move a muscle, as they say. They are not wrong. Right now the muscles being moved are in my hands and fingers.

Anyway, I'm tired of myself (for now). So I'm ending this entry without making an effort at tying things up. Writing, poetry, sunlight, all weather, jokes with my friends at the various bodegas near my apartment, friends, art, the occasional success (like getting a poem or story accepted and subsequently published) cheers me.

Knowing I am connected to these wonderful nieces and nephews cheers me but more, it is a privilege.