One, Two, Three...

...gasp...

Freefalling, my hands feel the need to waive wildly, trying to balance my body in the middle of...

...thudpsssshhhhaaaa silence...

The silence, though, isn't quite silence. It's the sound of fullness, groaning, creaking, but more than that, of suspension- the hisssss and gurgle of this alternate universe. Seeing is transformed, and all just...

...floats...

++++++

Are you packed yet?
I'm getting there?

Are you bringing much?
No, but it's still more than I'd like to bring.

How long will you be away?
About four and a half months.

What's the weather like there?
It'll be hot when I get there and cool when I leave.

Are you excited?
Oh yeah...

Also, terrified.

++++++

A: You're going to jump?
S: Yeah.
A: Well, then, I have to jump.
S: I'm just going to jump from up there.
A: I have to go way up there.
S: Why?
A: I don't know...

One, two, three...

(JUMP!)

Home

These girls are my home. There home has been my home many times in my life, will always be my home. On more than one occasion, I have walked in and burst into tears, letting the guard I've built up during the day crumble in the glow of them. My sisters, my best friends. I can't imagine life without them, and don't have to because they are always will be there. A soft feather bed to fall into when I need to curl up and hide, letting tears fall and dry of their own accord, being replaced by crackling smiles, halting laughter, hot chocolate, impulsive adventures into the unknown. Life is good with these girls, even when it is not good. Thank goodness for them.

Insert Foot Here -->

A: I wonder if he's into me...We've been dancing together a lot, but he hasn't put the moves on. What's he waiting for?!? You know what, I don't have time for this! If he likes me, I want to know. If he doesn't, I should probably stop harassing him. DO IT! Hey, I've got a question for you.
D: What?
A: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (quietly) Do you have any interest in kissing me?
D: What?
A: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH cont. (louder) Do you have any interest in kissing me?
D: Um (crazed look in eyes), well, I'm leaving tomorrow... ( 'A' expects more) The thought had crossed my mind, but, you know...I'm leaving tomorrow...
A: Oh, yeah, I know. No worries. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHH (awkwardness ensues)



There's this funny thing about communication- it doesn't exist unless you make it so. There is no mind-reading, no intuitive certainty. Words unspoken remain imaginary.

Toasty-toast

Mmmm. I have recently been taking solace in breakfast. Not that I really have much to take solace...from? What I mean is, it's all relative, as I was so gently reminded today at Shutter Sisters. In any case, it has been my experience in recent weeks that a sweet little breakfast often brings me back from "I'm not OK", to "I might be OK" (inspiration for this taken from Glow in the Woods). Here's how it goes.

(dreaming strange dreams in which a customer from the yarn store where I used to work who is a chemist of some sort calls me to tell me that the results from my blood test are ready, and are being sent to my doctor)
Ouch! My ear...wrong side...gurgle...blink...groan...what time is it? My thesis should've been finished last week. And I don't have a boyfriend. F#$@! Can I just skip it today? The living thing? No? Fine! But I'm not going to be happy about it!

In Ecuador, we were spoiled rotten everywhere we stayed. It's easy for an American to live like royalty in Ecuador, as everything there is so cheap (because everyone there is so poor...another discussion for another time). A tourist in a country literally on the equator, you have all the riches of the aforementioned equitorial zone at your fingertips. Actually, they're in the kitchen of the hotel, and you just press 33#, fumble through the conversational equivalent of a stray dog with a limp in which the person on the other end of the line gets fed up and eventually starts speaking english to you (as spanish doesn't seem to be getting you anywhere), and fifteen minutes later, it's at your door.

What riches! Papaya, cantelope, tamatillo de arbol, eggs fresher than you've had since you went to that pioneer camp and had to clean out the cow stalls, coffee fresher than you've ever had it before (that is, from the plant)... It's glorious. If you're on vacation, that is. If you're the person trying to realize the mantra "the customer's always right" with a half-sleeping gringa on the other end of the line, I'd imagine it's not so plesant.

So, I'm back, changed, missing Ecuador and looking towards what's to come. Feeling slightly in-between. And almost every morning, and sometimes even as I'm falling asleep at night, I eagerly anticipate the breakfast that I've already planned out- the breakfast that I had yesterday, and probably the day before. If I'm lucky (and let's face it, I usually am), it includes papaya, toast with butter and jam (whoever invented that combination is my favorite person. Like if there was flickr for people instead of pictures, I would totally "fave" that person), and coffee with either soymilk or cowsmilk and a little sugar. Mmmmm. Then I take it outside and sit on the couch my mom put on our back porch (my second favorite person on the flickr for people would be my mom for this ingenious idea), and justify putting off my thesis for another hour or so because everybody needs some time to warm up, right? And honestly, it's the best time of day. Who could argue, with a view like this?

Glow Worm

What is the thesis of this post? What is the point? Around what story, incident, experience, will I stretch the skin of this idea or inspiration or hope or fear so that it becomes a thing to look at and say, huh?

Don't have one. No story which brought me to a place of clarity, or even a place of confusion which led me to the clarity of holding a question that I could not answer. I mean, except for the time when I was walking in downtown SF, in a dress and leggings, my habitually and brazenly hairy lower calves hanging out and a guy with an accent I couldn't quite place says

Hey. You know what? Your legs are really driving me crazy. It is great that you do that.
Yeah, I responded, and went to take a shower. Twice.

That's not the story though. Because I don't have one. Not really.

But there is this thing. It's not an image exactly, but what if we, we humans, are all glowing? What if we are all little glowing beings, sometimes little worms who wrap ourselves up in our cocoons, but even then our glow shows though, very soft. What if we all emanate light, all walking around passing each other, maybe sharing the obligatory smile or averting our eyes towards the ground. What if we are all just little glowing beings, glowing together in our solitude and in our smallness, all of us glowing.

If I was that cool

So, yeah. I went to Marc 49 the other day. Oh, you don't know it? I go there all the time- the wine bar on Telegraph and 51st? Yeah. I was there, and reading Bourdieu, listening to the Mountain Goats. Yeah, and of course I had on my converse, skinny jeans, flannel shirt, black eyeliner. I had ridden my fixed-gear over from home, so my sock was rolled up over my right pant leg, but I just left it there. No, I didn't wear a helmet because it would mess up my bangs. So I was reading, and this guy came up to me and asked me if I was reading Pierre Bourdieu, the sociologist who wrote about Doxa, and I said yeah. So he sat down and we had an in-depth conversation about the illusions that we take to be common sense, the norm, that are imposed upon us, into which we are indoctrinated from birth. Yeah, it was deep. Then he asked me about what I had been listening to, and that got us started talking about indie rock groups, our favorite small venues, etc. Then, he told me (his name is Holden, by the way) about this show he was going to see tomorrow, a band his friend is in. He invited me to come along (we could ride our fixies), and I said sure. I gave him my number, and he said he'd call me tomorrow morning. What did you do today?

Fear

Do you ever just feel terrified?

Is it faux pas to write about things that aren't happyinspiringexciting on a blog? I just don't have anything else to give right now. What's more, this thing is big. It's not like the only (potentially tiny) thing in an empty room, more like the obelisk from "Space Odyssey 2001"... in a room. I.e., very big.

It's scary to be alone. Or rather, to feel alone. I guess that we're never really alone.

What do you do when you're not in control, and all you can do is wait for the next thing to happen and hope that when it does, it keeps you warm and cozy and safe, and doesn't drop you off a cliff? At least, not the bad kind of cliff. Um...

It's not really so easy dividing things into scary/bad and friendly/good. When you show me a person who didn't feel literally nauseous for an entire two weeks when she/he was just beginning to fall in love, I will introduce you to my best friend the "insert gross bug here." She/he sleeps at the foot of my bed.

Still, it's lonely being lonely. Hence the name. You know, "lonely."

Note to Self...

A hole-in-the-ear does not heal a hole-in-the-heart.

In fact, it produces an effect which may be closely likened to the aforementioned hole-in-the-heart (barring, of course, the fact that the whole-in-the-heart is a metaphorical hole, and not a hole as such.)

Thus, a hole-in-the-ear may in fact produce a result close to the opposite of that desired, in terms of hole-filling and pain-alleviating.

It does, however, fulfill the purpose of angsty-ascetic-tragedy-dom which may be desirable under certain hipster-aspiring circumstances.