well, that passed

i am such a fucking embarrassment to myself sometimes. i cannot even relate to what i was prattling on about in posts prior.
just watched 'stop-loss.' i had lofty hopes, having been floored by 'boys don't cry', but i was decidedly unimpressed by this one. j was similarly disgruntled. we tend to be on the same page cinematically. for a proper war movie, 'jarhead' and 'coming home' are far better.
i visited my parents yesterday. it was all right. i love them but christ- the way my father berates my mother is so fucking difficult to be witness to. i have mentioned this to them before. i have said "i understand that this is your dynamic and that nothing is going to change- but it can be very hard to be around." and that is all i can do. my father is an odd duck. he is deprecatingly self-aware but gallingly oblivious to his actions as he actually performs them. or: his hindsight is 20/15 but his present is disablingly myopic. i can see how i resemble that. and it horrifies me.
my mom told me of her clearest memory of her grandmother, who died when she was about ten. she and her mother had taken her grandmother on an outing from her nursing home- "one of the only times i remember my mom being patient" she said- and the three of them went to wapato park in tacoma. my mother and her grandmother were watching the birds on the lake when her grandmother started laughing "and she had a great laugh" said my mom, "very rollicking." "look at the duck butts!" her grandmother exclaimed. she found the sight of multiple ducks with their heads underwater hysterical. my mother was laughing too, telling this story. "i always think of her when i see ducks in the water" she said. i have lived this long and never knew this about her. and from now on, whenever i see ducks, i will think of her telling me this, and how her expression was happy and sad at once. i adore my mother.
so on the drive back to seattle, in the dark with no cigarettes, trying to sing with gravelly gravitas, i was getting increasingly pissed off about how my father treats such a cool woman so crappily- and how she is not only fucking used to it, but amused and indulgent of it. perhaps i am just far more fucking intolerant of such things now. anyhow, they've been married for nearly 35 years and i have two divorces and... several cats. even as their daughter, i will never fully know their relationship. something about it works.
'american x' (track 12) by black rebel motorcycle club is a fucking fantastic song.