What’s the point of a Rube Goldberg contraption? Children get science-class assignments to build things, learning about different “laws” I suppose. But why should grown-ups invest hours!!! in building such things?

Well, because they are things of beauty.

I love the fern frond in this one.

And this one is just crazy amazing. Love the sounds of the contraption becoming part of  the song.

Pinball is in my DNA. My father was a gangsta pinpall player, back in the days when pinball machines paid out cash winnings. He’d cheat, frankly, on top of being an ace player, and he’d travel from one small Montana town to another playing pinball, and getting running out of town now and again.

Later, I ran a video game arcade–the largest in Seattle at the time–and our array of hot games included six or eight pinball games, electro-mechanical among them.

Funny, I never played much pinball, maybe it was the way that I had to turn my back to the rest of the arcade in order to play, and that’s obviously a lousy way to run a business, with your back turned on it.

Last night was the first time in ages that I have played a game. Dominique Johns built a new one, from scratch. She’s called Galactic Girl, she’s beautiful, and she had her debut at the Tiger Lounge–with a tournament and everything. Dominique’s parents came in from Illinois, even, to check out their new “grandchild.”

It’s kind of a big deal this building of a machine. Schematics and stencils and lights and sounds. Bugs galore to be squashed. Nuances to be nudged.

The tournament was winding up by the time I arrived, and Dominique dropped in a quarter for me to play. I racked up a grand total of 14 points; I was the new low score!

Later, he opened the game’s cash box and drew out a big handful of quarters, spilling them onto the glass top and setting me up to play ball after ball after ball.

It was by many appearances another instance of cute boy amusing himself watching cute girl play pinball. In truth, after the first minutes he stood and focused his attention on how the game was behaving, watching as it gave me points it wasn’t really supposed to, and puzzling through the possible causes and solutions. Funny, I actually find that kind of thing sexy.

I am ready for this pain to leave. I want to stop hating. I want to return to writing here about beauty.

But the hurt continues. I sit and look out the window at the glorious pink of the blooming cherry trees, and tears stream down my face–I am sad and angry and confused. And I worry a little that this deep emotion will never let up.

My dear friend, Carmi, checks in on me nearly every day, saying, “Good morning. How are you today, my love?” This morning I replied, “I hate my ex. I don’t enjoy being a hater. It hurts. I can’t believe how much I still hurt.”

And Carmi says, “You still love him, that’s why it hurts. You can’t say you hate something you don’t love in some way.”

Oh.

Earlier I made a snarly post on Facebook, my attitude getting the better of me. “I am stunned by how much I still hurt, and am thinking some phenobarbital would be perfect right about now.”

In their comments my friends say all the right things, and I love them for it, but it fails to assuage the pain in my heart, even their encouragement to pursue the Zipless Fuck.

I’ve had that actually (well, not exactly but nearly, and a little inadvertently, but nevertheless). It was great in the moment, but later he gave me the “I want to be your friend speech” which really is a candy-coated rejection.

And rejection is the last thing I need these days, seeings as I am still reeling from this most recent–ultimate–rejection. So I am better off I think, staying away from anything that might include any semblance of a brush-off. So, no Zipless Fucks. No dating, either.

But back to the hate. And the pain.

I am reading a book my friend, Elke, wrote a long time ago. It includes a chapter about healing, and it suggests that I ask my heart, mind, soul, and body what they have to say about this situation. And then, ask them what they need in this moment.

So I ask.

My heart says that she feels cheated and short-changed. And I understand that my heart means cheated out of an opportunity, short-changed of something that was beautiful.

Then my heart pipes up that she wants things to go back to the way they were, when they were good.

I tell my heart gently that that is not possible. We cannot go back. Then she says, “I want him to be happy.”

I sit quietly (with tears still rolling down) and I let this soak in. It is true, I want him to be happy and my sense (my belief) that unraveling our marriage was no particular key to his happiness, well, I wallow in that. (It’s pathetic, I know.) But mostly it makes me sad.

My friends give me (unsolicited) reports of bumping into him at parties and events around our city, and they say, “He looks like hell.” At first–from my hurt and angry place–I gloat at this news. But I realize now that those reports break my heart.

I cannot change the past. I cannot change someone else. We all know that. But these new understandings of my feelings about what was and what no longer is … well, the understanding helps me diffuse or re-purpose the pain. Right now, that’s golden.

Photo: I Hate How Much I Love You by Nawal Al Mashouq and used with Creative Commons License

Something beautiful which my new friend, Kymberlee della Luce built.

This morning I am thinking that so long as I still feel this depth of pain at the demise of my marriage, and so long as I continue to hate on my (ex) husband, there is probably a whole lot left for me to learn from my marriage and its failure.

You did not not get a valentine from me this year.

No one got a valentine from me this year. It wasn’t just you.

I know. I know. I ALWAYS send valentines.

But this year I did not. And I am probably more saddened by that than you are. Not to keep the focus on me or anything.

It’s really not because I wasn’t feeling it. In spite of all the reasons I have to be anti-Valentine’s this year, I did want and intend to mail my annual, hand-made valentines. Especially because I feel so grateful for all the love and support that has been focused on me these past few months.

Nope. I am not feeling particularly anti-Valentine’s. I even convinced one naysayer to switch to pro-Valentine’s.

But it is true that I am broken-hearted, and it’s true that that has me moving a little slow sometimes, especially in the expression-of-love department. And I just didn’t get my valentines designed and made in time to get them mailed to you.

So, it’s not that I don’t love you, and it’s not that I didn’t mail you a beautiful paper message of affection, it’s just that I didn’t create valentines at all this year.

But I promise I love you. And I suspect I will make it up to you somehow in the year to come.

Photo: Broken Heart by John Koetsier and used with Creative Commons license.

My (ex) husband was born February 10, 1960, which means that today he is 50 years old.

I am having very mixed feelings about this day. On the one hand, I find myself all mean about it, gloating in the fact that I am not hosting a small dinner party to mark the occasion. The dinner party that I began planning over a year ago. No dinner party for this birthday boy.

On the other hand, I am very, very sad that there is no party for him. More than very sad.

This is the kind of thing that I never anticipated while steeling myself for the divorce.

Odd stuff.

I went to my ex-husband’s house tonight to retrieve a garment that I need on Saturday. He wasn’t home; he has been quite generous with coordinating our schedules so that I could be there alone (which is hard enough) and not have to interact with him in person.

Anyway. I needed my catsuit to wear for a performance at the Go Back To Bed party and I thought it was there in his house somewhere with my dregs that I haven’t completely dealt with yet.

So I am there at his house, and it is impossible to not notice the changes. I have written before about the trapeze. And there’s the big new computer. And an entire wardrobe revision. And the calendar on the wall marked with the classes he is taking.

Why did all that have to wait until I was gone?

I mean, really. Because we can look at me, too.

Since the break up I have written my novel (yes, first rough draft, yet still). I have built a cozy little nest that suits me. I am taking classes every week or more. I have lost almost twenty pounds, and tomorrow I start a course of Pilates. I started Little Black Dress Project. And I have discovered a ton of things about myself that had previously escaped my attention or understanding.

Why did all that have to wait until the marriage disintegrated?

I really do not understand.

The divorce was finalized just about 48 hours ago, and the grief is rolling in.

I do not know really, why the marriage ended. The man who was my husband (I am not prepared to use the prefix, “ex”) might be flabbergasted to hear me say that–that I don’t know really why he had to divorce me–but I don’t. We didn’t talk about it much.

And what I do know of his reasons, I think they are dumb. Stupid. And why end a marriage over stupid reasons? And that makes me sad.

But I understand that they are his reasons, and he will feel what he will feel; there is nothing I can do about it. And it is this kind of rationalizing “acceptance” that I am relying upon to keep me making one step in front of the last, to keep me moving along.

I am not doing so well at this moment with the making one step and then another. I would really rather go slip into that bath that I have running, and slip under the surface of the water, and remain there. And be done with it.

Probably it disturbs people to hear that. But right now, it is how I feel. So why not say so?

That’ll change, sure. It has already. My feelings are pure roller coaster–swoop up, swoop down, click click click creep up to a height replete with vista, and whoooosh . . . along down to depths. Again. Again.

The violent hate that possessed me scant weeks ago is dissipating. Hallelujah. And I strive to keep a sweet perspective, to frame circumstances and my feelings in a positive way, even to extracting the good messages from my nightmares.

But. I hurt. All up and down my being, from the tip of my big toenail to the end of those wild, silver hairs on my head, I hurt. I am sad.

I wanted my marriage. I wanted my husband. I wanted our lives together. I still do. In spite of my intellectual understanding that it’s not to be.

photo: widdowquinn and used with Creative Commons licensing

I had a rough night last night, did not get much sleep, and so I ended up napping about 4 o’clock. My last dream of the nap was vivid. It was nighttime and a woman (my mother I think) had thrown a baby into the lake. A friend and I stood there on the dock in shock. Then we realized that he would go find assistance and I would go into the dark water.

First, we stood and looked for the rings left from the baby’s plunge into the water, and I aimed in that direction. I opened my eyes underwater, but of course there was nothing to be seen in the dark. I still, however, immediately found the baby, sort of floating near the surface.

And then I began rescue. I pounded heartily on the baby’s back to cause vomiting of lake waters (all over me). And then some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Cold baby.

And then I woke.

Looking back of course my first-aid technique was all wrong (I may have sensed that even in my sleep), but what a marvel that I had plunged right in the cold, dark waters, and then actually found the infant and started revival efforts.

Weird, and interesting.

∞ ∞ ∞

On another note entirely, a little bit ago a friend sent me a link to a poem. It is pretty heavy, but some messages are.

The Dream

I dreamed that you had ceased to love me—
not that you had come from other beds
back to mine, or gone from mine to others,
just that something in your heart had stopped.

I willed myself awake to find you still
beside me. It was just a dream, I thought,
yet when I turned to kiss you, in your eyes
I saw that you had ceased to love me.

I willed myself awake a second time
to find myself alone, as I have been
these many months, but did not know if it
was terror or relief I felt, and whether

dreams unfold the past or make the future
plain. I dreamed that you had ceased to love me,
and know when I see nothing in your eyes
I can’t dream myself awake a third time.

—David Solway