2002-06-29 - 3:42 p.m.
The facts: I am an artist and erstwhile free-spirit who pays the bills by toiling in the bureaucracy of post-secondary education.
I live in an "inner city" neighborhood of a semi-large city, but I spent my early life in the isolated rural areas, and scary small towns of northeast Missouri.
I was an immature teenage mother and somehow managed to raise a wonderful son, almost totally by myself. (He's all grown up now... through college, married, financially and emotionally sound.) I don't even try to take all the credit for that.
After completing two marriages (note: I always liked that saying: Don't think of divorce as a failure, think of it as a marriage successfully completed.) and several other relationships, I fell in love with another woman. A much younger woman.(Skootie) And, against all odds, this is the relationship that is working, the only one I could imagine now. We are busy living happily ever after after. Seven years and counting.
I am the oldest of four children in my family. My brother and sister live in the same metropolitan area and we all like each other. Our other sister died of cancer almost ten years ago. The family has been through a whole breakdown and rebuild experience in the wake of that tragedy.
My mother is a writer. Also a highly creative, analytical, charming and slightly dark person. I always knew it was hard for her to do the wife and mother thing. But she did a good job on the Mother part, and she's a great friend. She likes nothing better than a long intellectual discussion over a couple of beers.
My father is a non-presence in my life at this juncture. For all of the part of my life to which he had any access, he took it as his personal goal to convince me that I was a worthless piece of shit, or to create situations in which I could not possibly please him. He is an alcoholic, on his fourth marriage, likes to shoot guns, and still lives back in Cornville.
Other Stuff:
I'm really an introvert, but I do have my moments.... streaks of bravery, occasional attacks of extroversion. But mostly I agree with Sartre: Hell is other people. (Or as Skootie says: Hell is other people in their cars.)
Meyers-Briggs Type: INTP
Zodiac sign: Scorpio
Besides the people I love, the most important things in my life are: ART and WRITING. To me, Art is not a profession or a hobby-- it is a way of life. It is a way of looking at and responding to the world. I earned a college degree in fine arts, years ago, which I've mostly tried to ignore. Because I don't really like the art world for which it prepared me. So I am involved in an ongoing process of discovering what I have to say and how to say it. And sometimes the best way is with words.
I collect: teeny-tiny things. postcards. antique children's books. books on Joseph Cornell. art books. (okay....books in general..... the house looks like a library). pens. rocks. buttons. antique lace.
I just bought a guitar and I am going to take lessons. I have no musical talent that I have yet identified, but I have this fantasy.....
I am not religious. And not only am I not religious, I think religion is scary.It is the scariest thing I can think of right now.
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