anywhere but here

Hello? Yes, I'd like to inquire about an application for employment...

Oh, hi. Actually, we're really overstaffed at the moment, but we'll keep your application on file until we're hiring again. Good luck!

Hello. No we're not hiring at the moment. You could try our store on Broadway.

What's your name? Oh, yes, I remember seeing your application. No, we're not hiring, but if we were, you would certainly not be a candidate. No, I can tell just from your voice that you are cut from a cloth of inferior moral and intellectual fibre. No, you're not eligible. Good luck. Oh, no, I wasn't serious, I was being sarcastic. Goodbye.

******

There has never been a place as cold as where I am right now. Never in the history of the universe. I am absolutely certain of this. Any comments to the contrary will be flagged and commentator will be hunted down by the blog-police (a lesser-known branch of the Culturally Hip-ish/Almost Cutely Nerdy Policing branch of the United Colonies of the Internet, also the organization trying to change the structure of the haiku from 5-7-5 to 6-7-8. Something about logical crescendos and whatnot). This is what they will do to you.

I'm so glad to be back in my new home. It's great. I have no more bottom due to the fact that it has been frozen off, but that's not much of a change- just ask anyone. It would be like if my ability to spell correctly was frozen off, i.e. I would not be able to spell. Still. Also, I had a phenomenal dream in which all of my teeth started falling out. One of the two beaver ones up top, and about every other on on the bottom right side. And then they just kept falling out, or breaking off in shards. I kept having to spit out the chalky paste of saliva mixed with tooth bits. It was wretched.*

But I awoke, teeth in tact, and proceeded to go through my list of things to consider:
Employment
Unemployment
Hypothermia self-rescue tactics
Dead babies
New babies
Flu and head colds
Unemployment
Rent
Grey market tactics for making money that wouldn't technically be legal
Morals and where the outer limits of mine might lie
Dead babies
Unemployment

I am so cold. And was so looking forward to being back. And, truthfully, found my trip back to be quite enjoyable. Walking through the San Francisco airport with time to spare, I stopped to look at an art project consisting of seals designed for each of San Francisco's sister cities, projected onto the floor of the airport. Kind of cool, heartening that there still is some money going into the arts in California. Though I suppose it's telling that it is being displayed in the airport, to make sure that visitors know that we support our artists; the rest of us, well, we know better.

I read the description of the project: "Each crest is designed with a background of the topographical map of the city's airport.." and my eyes welled up.

Wait, what? What is happening? Maps? Topography? Cities in Asia with which I have very little connection? Which of these was the element which was causing me to take this unexpected detour into the land of the deeply-unbalanced, leaving me teary-eyed and dangerously close to tear-stained, staring at some artist's representation of Manila and Shanghai? This is inappropriate madness for which I will not stand. Dazed, I walked away from the informational board. Maybe time for a snack or some tastefully designed San Francisco merchandise. Yes, I think so.



*I suppose I'd be in good company though, that of other phenomenally-excellent twenty-somethings endowed somewhat meagerly in the tooth-department.

What to Do when You End up on Someone's Celebrity Dinner Party List when You're Living out of a Cardbord Box

I'm sorry, I'm sick. And it's OK, really, it's just that when I'm sick, my tolerance for...stuff... goes from here (tolerably high) to here (down low-low).

And the thing is, this qualification for your wookie-like sociability might get you off the hook if you weren't sick, like, all the frickin' time.
Yeah, we know, why don't you get over it already? sounds in echoing harmony from inside your head, and outside your head, but the echoes from outside probably come from inside but who cares because it doesn't matter what they say because you know what a horrid beast you are. You're with yourself all the time, for crying out loud.

It's that moment of wondering when anything at all will work at all, or if you might not be better served to call it a day and head for Antarctica because, while it might be uncomfortably cold there, you could live out your wretched days (may they be short) in peace and solitude without disturbing anybody or -thing due to the miraculous sound-proofing qualities of ice caves.

And then you turn to some soothing activity, and find it inexplicably transformed into "the next calculus" and your mind goes blank with rage and you find yourself standing over the splintered remains of a tenor ukulele. This is what The Who must've felt like; I totally understand. Except that their smashing guitars-thing was related to being bad-asses, golden gods of the world of rock n' roll, not screw-ups. Oh, just...dammit.

++++++

I'm in Seattle now, and there are waves of ohmygodthisissoexcitingicoulddoANYTHING. Often though, those moments are overshadowed by the more sustained feelings of whatthef*&#amiDOINGhere which send me the bathroom holding back my hair, coming out 10 minutes later looking sheepish and hoping that the TV was on a little louder than I know it really was.

Maybe I should just go for it. Do art, make prints and journals and sell them and play with kids and use my extra time to intern teaching creative writing to under-served urban communities. And become a vegan.

But I really like real ice cream. And brie. And doesn't the success of any artist ride first and foremost on the artist's ability to let go of their art, and in that release risk the implication that their art is good enough?

So maybe just switch from milk to soy milk. Mostly. And veggie-sausages seem an all-too-easy option, especially given my current employment status of...not. But what about that? The employment part? More than that employment part, the doinglivingbeing part?

There's this thing that happens to me sometimes, where I go to do something, but can't. It's not that I can't, rather it's that I can't decide the order in which to complete that activities or actions surrounding the thing I want to do. So I just end up standing there frozen, going over scenarios in which I complete the tasks in different orders, weighing the merits of, for example, putting the tea water on before going pee, because then the will start to heat up while I'm in the bathroom, but before I put the water on I need to wash the tea pot, which means that I wouldn't be going pee until after I've scrubbed out tea pot, filled it up, and put it on the stove, and I really have to go pee... And all the time, I'm standing there in the hall between the kitchen and the bathroom until someone comes up to me and asks if everything is OK, and when I try to explain the predicament it crumbles in my mouth and I end up spewing sawdust all over the hallway. Then there's a mess, but before I clean it up I have to go to the bathroom, so the decision's made.

And that's where I am, standing in the hall, trying to decide whether to pee first or put on the water. Friends seem to have gotten used to my camping out there in the hallway and greet me cheerily on their way to work and school and bowling and grocery shopping. There's a shadow of doubt that clouds my equating temporarily which seems to suggest that all this is in preparation for that and shouldn't I be doing things like grocery shopping?

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TEA?!?

++++++

If life is inherently risky, there are certain risks that feel bigger, more do-or-die. And what is it that we're so very frightened of? A broken heart? The prospect of returning in shambles? (Again?) That's all fair. But what of the notion that nothing worth having comes without struggle and risk? Are we looking down the barrel of a life lived without risk at the expense of all joy? What does it mean to find yourself in a moment of little faith, when everything fades to shades of gray?

Thank god and goodness for the things we can, with unabashed joy, pride, and assurance, declare to be ours and our loves.

City Love

Have you been writing? No. Why not? I don't know. I guess nothing has felt important enough to write about... (Reader peruses previous posts. Essays? Monster bathrooms? Really??)

So, yeah. Seems silly. I suppose my life has been as full of essays and monster bathrooms (or the post-collegiate equivalents) as it was. So what's the difference? Sharing my thoughts suddenly feels so self-indulgent. I wonder why. How would I know though, really?

++++++

This has been a summer full of new things: new friends, living in tipis, living with 14-year-old girls, living without internet, singing and playing, square-dancing, peanut butter eating, double-layering of long-underwear (well, to be honest, that one's not new), paddling, planning on moving north.

So now I'm home, drinking coffee, going through cigar boxes full of detritus my once-younger self determined to be worthy of saving; a letter "From the desk of Sir Chloe and Sir Alex" which we must've written when we were about 8 years old, among other things. I saved that one, but a lot of things got the boot. Not unlovingly, thoughtfully certainly, but they were booted all the same. Movie stubs and photos- most of them didn't make the cut. As I've been pal-ing around, living a life appropriate to my newly adopted title, "Lady of Leisure", I've been looking around Oakland, loving it.

There's something about this city that makes me feel like I'm standing smack in the middle of a torrential downpour of rain. Stuck without a raincoat, I'm soaked to the bone in seconds. What can you do but embrace the flood and remember when you were younger how you used to take the long way back from the bathroom it was raining so that you could be in the rain for as long as possible? In a way, I am hesitant to call it mine because I feel like there's so much of it that I don't know. But then again, I've lived here my entire life, and what more license I possibly need? Except, maybe, owning the Oakland Raiders.

There's this thing about Oakland- it gets a bad rap. This summer, a new acquaintance of mine asked me if Oakland is totally "ghetto". I kicked him in the shins and asked if he always gets kicked in the shins. A city is so much more than we give it credit for, has so much more life to it than of often consider. It lives through us, and we live through it, so how could we think for one second that where we live doesn't matter? Or that our lives and our selves are separate from the cities where we live and make ourselves? What arrogance.

++++++

Last night I found myself on the streets of San Francisco for the first time since I became this version of myself, after spending the summer outdoors under sun and stars, spending really good time with my best friend from high school, playing music, regrouping and reorienting and redirecting. I was there to hear the author Jonathan Safran Foer, speak. Genius.

Afterward, I stepped into the nighttime and was enveloped in cool, living, air. I was struck with a sense of freshness and electricity, and it occurred to me that I will miss this air, and this city. I wonder if I will find this elsewhere, this air and feeling and home.

Unfurling Sounds too Noble

Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?

Maybe it's all of the goodbyes I've had to say recently. To people, and to the bits and pieces that have made up my life for the past two years or so. Or the rush of anticipation, the explosion of celebration, and the uncertainty left in its wake.

Or maybe it's all of the thank you letters I've been writing to people I could never really thank enough, so all I can offer are a few flimsy words which I hope they can look beyond to see what I really mean.

Then again, maybe it's because I'm at a juncture in my life where I have the opportunity to take the biggest risks of my life. Or not. Though risks are inherent to living, so to say that we choose to live without risk is something of a contradiction.

Or maybe it's something as simple as the fact that I found a gnarly bug crawling on my face in my sleep last night, which initially worked itself into my dream, and then I woke up. When I turned on the light and saw my bedfellow, an exclamation of immense impropriety rang through the house and I briefly considered cutting off my face. Still not off the table. (Pause for 5th shower of the morning)

Let's change the subject now, shall we? (Kind of like a dentist asking questions to someone whose mouth she's got jacked open. Don't you think?) I'm reading a book, although I'm afraid to pick it up again, because it pulls me towards an unknown that I'm scared of. It's called Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck. In the very first pages, he writes about the people who come to see him and his truck before he sets off across the country.

I saw in their eyes something I had to see over and over in every part of the nation-a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something...Nearly every American hungers to move.

I wonder if that's an American thing. I certainly feel it- it's the reason that this book scares me. I wonder, though, if it's a human thing. Or maybe not. It might just be a certain-type-of-human thing. If you've got it, I don't think it ever goes away. Steinbeck writes about a young boy who asks to join him on his journey;

He had the dream I've had all my life, and there is no cure.

This "thing" makes us very fragile. Because setting off into the unknown is terrifying. People are meant to be with people, to love and communicate and keep each other warm at night. It's the only way we can live, it literally keeps our brains alive. But it brings us to the point where deep sadness and irrepressible joy meet. It's not an easy place to be, an exquisite place.

It's terrifying, but in a good way. It's a place of possibility, of floating, of joyous desperation and reaching out for something, anything, but not just anything, to hang on to, to attach to, to love and be loved by. A feeling that might be characterized by the desperate need to love someone or something new, with the reciprocation of love being the only prerequisite.

Love in the Time of the Internet Cellular Phone

P: Are you finished with your essay yet?
A: No.
P: How much more do you have to do?
A: 10 pages.
P: You haven't done anything?
(Eyes go wide, eyebrows settle themselves in deep furrows just above, as though settling in before a storm, green and red sparks fly from the corners of eyelids because complimentary colors are always more catchy, majestic curls of smoke creep out of nostrils and diffuse into the air)
A: NO. I've done a lot. I just haven't written anything yet.
(Ninja stars are produced with rapid speed and hurled with breathtaking accuracy leaving the offender pinned to the wall with the knowledge that the students might have ended an all-too-irreverent life with the flick of her wrist. Lesson learned.)

++++++

When it's my turn at the counter, I fumble over words which should be so straight-forward.
Um, here, uh...I checked out these books, and I would just stick them in the slot, but this one is disintegrating, and I'm afraid it would fall apart in the bin...um, but, the other ones are fine. I can just...or maybe it would be easier...oh, you want my ID? OK, um, one...OK, here it is...
She takes my ID, and my disintegrating book. She smiles and says:
It's ironic that the title of this book is "Structuralism".
HA! I laugh in a voice too loud for the library, Yeah! Funny. Haha. Yeah...

I step out of the library into the cool, dark, soft night. Squatting on her haunches, her back is lit from the lights inside, leaving her face in shadow. Phone pressed to her ear, book in her hand, she declaims in a hushed voice:

...the past flashes like lightening over the gloomy abyss of the future and everything around me collapses...

God I'm going to miss this place.

GOODBYE! MUAH! I LOVE YOU!

Parting words from Ms. D. What more need be said?

*In Other News*

(strains neck to keep head above a torrent of what appear to be...fish with human heads?!?)
Just wanted to drop you a line, and fill you in on the really big happenings of my life leading up to what I'm promised will be my eventual graduation with a Bachelor's degree in sociology...

Spending so much time at home recently has been enlightening. I'll share some of my new-found wisdom with you:

Graham: Who do you think would win at catching pop fly balls at a baseball game, Luke Skywalker, or Gangsta Gollum?

Dad: Obviously Luke Skywalker. He's got the Force.

Graham: I say Gangsta Gollum. Because when Luke Skywalker gets within ten inches of the ball, Gangsta Gollum jumps up with a gun and says, "Back up, foo! My precious!"

Alex: With a gun?

Graham: He's a GANGSTA!

Furthermore, if you've got a few minutes to spare, take a look at this video. It has made me cry every time I've watched it. Try to look beyond the radiant early-nineties apparel if you can.

(Wait, is that a photo of a bathroom? A bathroom for monsters?!)

A Letter to My Favorite Story Book Characters

Here's a reminder to slip in the back pocket of your mind, to be rediscovered when you think you've got nothing left:

You are the most exquisite you there has ever been- don't deny yourself to the world.

All your foibles will end in beauty. I've read the end. Take respite in that. Enjoy your every sunkissed-or-shreakingly-cold breath knowing that everything will be as it should be.

You will find love. I promise. You will love and be loved, and you will feel it in the pit of your belly. It will make you feel sick sometimes, but sometimes it will be in a good way.

You are lost now. You will be found and lost again many times. Your confused and tear-streaked wanderings will lead you places you never would have sought out, had things gone according to plan.

Unutterably Soft

Moments of clarity often come at times when you don't expect them. Not only that, they come about things which you don't expect to take notice of until a curtain is drawn and you look up and say, "Oh."

In a time when breathing seems a chore and focusing is something that I used to do, Sandeep gave me a flower. It smells so sweet. A rose sent from the editors of this story who, looking down, think, "Hey, this girl might lose it. Let's sweeten the deal. " Over the past few weeks, Sandeep has been one of the main contributing factors to my continued tolerance of the confusion that has reigned supreme. And she gave me this rose. It smelled so good. And it was so soft. I walked around with it for the rest of the day; I couldn't very well just leave it somewhere. Maybe part of the attraction of flowers is that they are so fleeting. If you are overly-amorous with a flower, it's stem breaks or it's petals bruise. And even if you're ever-so-careful, it doesn't last for long. And you can only smell it when you inhale. You're denied that pleasure when exhaling. Or when you forget to breathe.

So there I was, walking around holding this rose, smelling it and better, feeling it. Flowers smell good, this we know. But they feel like velvet and butter and cinnamon and sugar. How do we forget this? Drifting from class to class, petting myself with my rose, I realized why women in those old portraits always hold the flowers right up to their faces; it's because they're so soft. I'll bet that when you're sitting for days on end for a portrait, you need a reminder of life and sweetness and light. And John Berger and I thought all along that these ladies were just positioning themselves in the most alluring and demure position for the male viewer. Shame on us.

++++++

Cracked open, wind-burned, anxiously beating in the hopes of finding some thing some end. That’s not what’s meant to be, but still it beats with ravenous desperation. But under the covers in the darkness, the drum continues, magnified in an amphitheater where you are the giantess, your nose brushing the velvety sky, your eyes the stars. For all your grandness, you quiver. Beating becomes a hum, rousing sleeping birds from their nests to stare blearily at the sky and snuggling down deeper to thwart the cool and loneliness from which you have no shelter. Warm or cold hardly matters, because fear lights the night on fire and all that is seen exists behind eyes, between the hum.

++++++

There are times when I think to myself, 'My heart hurts.' The grownup in my mind looks at the 4-year-old in my mind, right into her eyes, and asks, 'What do you mean?' I can't answer. Not in terms I'm accustomed to using. 'I feel it in my heart, and in my belly. They're all twisted up and sad.' What advice does the grownup give the kid?Hmmm.

'I know how you feel, I feel that way sometimes too.'

'Try breathing really deeply, and letting it all go.'

'Do you want some hot chocolate?'

Lay Me Down

Come to me.

++++++

5:50am
6:16am
4:45am
6:11am

Times I've woken up in the last 4 days. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON? Our bodies tell us so much if we choose to listen. If we don't, we just think we're loosing it. The two scenarios may not be mutually exclusive. Grind your teeth at nigh- stress? What's that about? Wake up at quarter-to-five- anxiety? Legs twitching and tingling after a day of lying in bed- is this what it feels like when muscles die?

To use the age old phrase, I feel like a college-student with its head cut off. Running around, bumping into things, watching a movie, saying every five minutes "I have to go do homework." BORING. Be original, won't you Alex? Nobody wants to listen to a stressed-out co-ed. Not even you.

So true. I'm going to go read someone else's blog.

++++++

(sips wine out of coffee mug)

9:22pmKate

hello!

9:22pmJessica

hi

i'm doing homework

not looking at pics of my crush

just so you know

9:23pmKate

I politely suggest you GET OFF FACEBOOK then

btw I'm clearly studying

please stop bothering me

++++++

Alexandra Stokes
Sociology of Immigration- SOC 180
Report on Oakland Chinatown

Oakland Chinatown established itself simultaneously with the city of Oakland itself. It is currently home to many people who participate in numerous and diverse activities. It's quite close, you know. I can't do this right now...
++++++

Don't Give In

++++++

First day of bright, breath-taking, lay-out-in-it-till-you-have-to-go sun. I forgot what it's like, this sun. Or maybe it's not the sun I've forgotten, but the soaking-in of it. In any case, I've clearly forgotten proper sun-etiquette, as is evidenced by my sadly-screaming, red-like-a-cherry-otter-pop back. I'm all about sunscreen, normally. I just forgot. I wasn't prepared. I didn't know it was time for the sun yet, and I can't quite figure out how it sneaked up on me, don't remember this ever happening before. I wonder where I've been that I haven't seenfelt the sun. I don't think I'll go back there, if I can help it.

search out stories

Gal writes*,

Here’s the story: life is a dream.

Sometimes something I read just opens up my mind. Cracks it wide open, and in streams sunlight and fresh air. This is one of those times. A moment of epiphany, often one that I've had before, that I hope I'll never stop having. I don't exactly think that there is an end to life, but more a means to living. Not a revolutionary concept, I know. But what would it mean if I lived that way? What if I sought out stories in the life I'm living, not the one that I wishfearpredictregret tolivelivinglivedwilllive? Find the story and hold it up for everyone to see, they won't be able to look away. Maybe when they do look away, their sight will be forever changed. Or maybe just changed for a minute. It was worth it though, wasn't it? See the dream that you're living and the colors glow with intensity and potential. buzzzzzzz. How could I not have seen them before?

++++++

Abortion. It's a difficult topicconversationexperience. I don't quite know how I feel about it. Well, that's not true. I believe that it should be easily accessible. Not taken lightly. Surrounded by conversation and support for those whose lives it brushes and screams through. Maybe I feel differently since Tikva came into my life, came and went from the life I can touch. It's possible that what has changed is my certainty in what I would choose for myself. Not something that I need to consider, have had to consider, in earnest. But it came up last night. In conversation with a friend, I got a glimpse of the brilliant lifelove that has so drawn me to her;

When my sister got pregnant, when I could finally put together a coherent sentence, I asked her if she was going to keep 'it'. 'It,' as if 'it' was a thing. Now 'it' is my nephew, and I can't imagine my life, my family, the world, without him. I couldn't imagine denying him the right to the world and life, and denying the world the right to him.

So inclined to embrace her wisdom, it occurs to me that this could be bigger. I could make a choice, see the world with more kindness and empathy, hear other people, what they say or mean to say or communicate without saying. Listen to the part of me that says, this person is brilliant and in need of love, instead of the part that says, oh shut up, will you? Write a story, own your authorship, make it into something to be proud of, feel love for.

Colored flags fluttering in the breeze, light like butterflies and bright in their singing.

Look at me, I am the life you are living. You have to see me first though, and I am yours.


* Quoted from The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon by Tom Spanbauer

Rain and Train

I woke up to my alarm this morning, which is no surprise as I'd set it for early. It wasn't so bad though. This, coming from a not-morning person. My roommate at Bard told me that I was, in fact, "the least morning person she had ever met." I wasn't surprised. Morning is not my thing. Sleep is. I didn't leave the window open, so I woke up warm, not shivery and shakey. Good, way to go Alex. It was raining too, and I could hear a train. It sounded close, like it had changed its mind, taken the tracks for what they are, a suggestion of the way in which the average train might like to go, and gone another direction. I imagine there was a creak, a bump, a groan, and all the riders on the train, sleeping unlike me, murmur in their sleep and shift positions. Over the track, the train eases into a track it has chosen for itself, rumbling on earth, sinking in slightly to the moist ground, padded by dewy grass and fallen leaves. I imagine that it prefers this kind of a trip, the kind that's softer and smells like the woods, has a bounce and give. I would choose that way too.

This morning, it was almost OK getting up early. Especially in contrast with yesterday. Text message from Alex, cerca 10 AM yesterday:
worst morning ever

Why? I think I know. It's the rain. It always is.

shiver deep-down

I woke up this morning early (e-gads!) with a shiver in my belly and sad oozing out all sticky from my dreams. I remember waking up feeling this way sometimes when I was younger, and describing it as feeling like I need some hot chocolate, or a friend. The clarity and hit-the-nail-on-the-head accuracy of kids is alarming sometimes, isn't it?

Yesterday, my 5 year old friend Beatrice asked me to write this for her: Anybody I pass, I like. She wanted to write it on a big heart that she had cut out of tissue paper. I think she planned to tape the heart to her shirt so that people passing by her as she walked would see it. What a brilliant idea! Why not give light to as many people as possible? Why not tell everybody you love them? Just now, the shiver in my belly feels a little less lonely, honey-and-milk-Beatrice warming me up from the inside.

After writing this post, I switched over to homework and came across this report. Brian Welch says, "I always felt, as a kid, that I didn't need anybody trying to entice me into believing that the world was interesting." Cosmic.

Today my motto will be that of the curious campers- I promise to be awesome.

...creeeeeak...

This post will include none of the following things: perspective, generosity, benevolence, gratitude, selflessness, discretion, logical development. (Well, maybe a little, but I don't want you to get your hopes up.)

I'm having a hard time connecting the dots- getting from point A to point B. Is my life now anything more or less than it has been for the past six months? It's not simple, is it? Time, emotions, trauma, love, inspiration, they don't move from A to B. They go from Hindi to English to color to black and white to imagination and full circle back to roti which goes to autumn and who knows what next. Maybe uncertainty is what runs through it all, or maybe it's hope. Or moisture or combustion or fairies who creep out after consciousness fades into dusk.

And then there's this song that makes a whole lot of sense to me:
When you run make sure you run to something and not away from...

After the campfire dies down, all that's left are the smouldering remains of the logs collected hastily in the last smokey minutes of twilight. Frantically located, they are arranged in a formation most appealing to the stars, whose gratitude is expressed in the spark that lights the tinder, ensuring instant mashed potatoes and Swiss Miss. The logs are transformed into lumps of charcoal, rounded and grooved into monster's bones, glowing sparkly orange from the inside.

Sometimes it doesn't all fit. Some of those times, you end up sitting in bed, propped up with pillows looking at your room like a princess surveying her very tiny kingdom, slippers peaking out behind the laptop sitting on your lap. It warms your legs, glowing in the semidarkness, light pulsing from bright to almost-gone so that when you squint your eyes, you can almost see a heart beating.

so far

Impulse, need, desire to write, express, lash out and cut without mercy. But who will be watching? Can I choose? Oblivion is preferable when distance and space to fling and explode are necessities. I am so angry, and so much exploding with fire, and so far from everything I want to touch. So shaken up and spun around that I've no idea which way is up, and can't for the life of me motivate myself to throw water on the flames and watch them go out with a hiss and a plume of steam.

"You are the you you have been waiting for."

It brings tears to my eyes and I can't reach that place while I feel it so acutely in the space right between imagination and stomach, acid and storm-clouds. Turn lime green and let out a roar of earth-shattering and eye-watering intensity. Pull down your hood, elastic around your face tightening. Wait out the storm, blinking drops from your eyelashes, honoring the thunder as it hollers.

To Haiti with Love

Hi folks! This is a service announcement, rather a departure from the usual musings of a befuddled and bedazzled, almost-bachelor-degree-wearin'-twenty-something. Please check out this website, created with spectacular magic and common sense by René and Kate. As you will see, they have collected offerings from artists and imaginers from all sides of the globe to auction off. All proceeds of the auction will go to St. Joseph's family of homes for children in Port au Prince, Haiti. Check it out, and bask in the glory of what being a person is all about. These ladies have the right idea. You might even see some offerings from a certain blogger/coed who you find to be disarmingly persuasive...

P.S. And hurry up, will you? The auction ends Monday!

Post. Script.

Then again, maybe we have all the things we want here already. Maybe all we have to do is open our eyes to them.

Shivering at the Feet of Letting Go

The notion of "culture shock" has never made sense to me. I'm beginning to think though, that it's just misnamed. It's not the culture that you feel doesn't fit, it's you. And I don't think it only applies to travel. We are always changing, having new experiences that transform us in ways we can't fathom, only we feel the effects of the changes, hear their echoes and see their shadows.

Something tugs on the corner of our shirt, just out of eyesight. When we look down and slightly backwards, and we realize that we are changed. A wet tissue with a drop of dye in the corner, we realize that our color is utterly transformed, flushed with a color we hardly recognize but intuitively understand or identify with. Only the very farthest corner bears any trace of the color that was before.

I'm exhausted. Maybe it's jetlag. If it is, then I'm still the person I've been for the past 5 months. If it isn't, if I'm just tired, then who am I? Just another person, a person with no physical connection to close to half a year in India, with only photos and stories which seem less real with every day. Who is it real for if it's not real for me?

++++++

I remember my mom telling me about Buddhism when I was very young. She told me that one of the main ideas is that you accept everything as it is, without wishing it were something or some way else. It gave me pause- how could that be? And what would be the point, to anything, if we just accepted what is as what is? What if I wanted a toy? Did that mean that I just wouldn't want the toy? That I would give up that wanting? But I didn't want to give up the wanting! I liked it- no, maybe not liked it, but...I didn't want to stop wanting.

But maybe there was something to this acceptance. Wanting wasn't exactly fun, didn't exactly make me happy. But ooh! Look at the two pages in this catalogue where everything is white and pink and has frills and lace on it- I'm going to go show it to my parents!

And it's still hard to process, the thought of not wanting...

Lament

I'm up early, still sewn with some combination of jetlag, anxiety, and exhaustion. I expect that eventually it will fade into other things, or maybe the buzz will be redirected, focused on something else; another task, hurdle, irrelevant issue.

It's raining outside, not inside, for which I'm thankful. I am reminded of a conversation which took place in Mussoorie, one to which I was privy only in the retelling. It took place between my friend and the manager of our temporary home.

There's rain pouring down my wall in my room.
Oh, is it coming down over here?
No, on the other side.
Are you sure?
Yes. Wait...does it sometimes come down on that side?
Um...well, yes. It does. But don't worry. I'll help you move all your things to this side of the room.
...

In my room here in Oakland, the rain stays, for the most part, outside. But the sound comes through, just about the softest thing you can imagine. It's almost like the sound of typing, mixed up with heaps of aloe vera lotion and a mug of steaming peppermint tea with honey. That's kind of what it sounds like.

I've got a doctor's appointment today, one with a doctor who diagnosed me with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome just before I left for Ecuador, right after my breakup. Extraordinarily bad timing. I remember being heart-broken, feeling lonely and pissed off and utterly isolated in a sea of calm, no land in sight. How could the waves lap so softly, with such deliberate mindfulness and contentedness, while I screamed with everything that was just the opposite?

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is very common. It means that you have a higher risk of developing diabetes. It also means that you will have trouble having children. It won't be impossible, you'll just need help when you're ready. Plenty of women with PCOS have children.

I went to get an ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis. I had never gotten an ultrasound before, and it was incredible. I saw myself, on the inside. It was calming, inspiring; I had so much inside that I had never seen, never imagined, didn't even recognize.

That is me.

The ultrasound technician told me everything looked normal, and I left seeing the sun for the first time in a week. I was fine. I got a letter from my doctor a few days later saying that the ultrasound had confirmed her diagnosis of PCOS, and that we should meet again when I returned from India. It was strange though- I didn't feel myself crumble into sand. I didn't feel fazed at all. It was all OK, but I couldn't tell you why, exactly.

I dreamt last night that I went to my doctor's appointment and my PCOS had miraculously disappeared. I was really happy. So was my doctor. Now I'm awake, and I couldn't tell you how I feel about it all.

++++++

Just now, I'm wondering what exactly it is that we lament. Is it change? If so, is it the change itself, or what we've lost? Would we love a flower as much as we do if we knew that it would last forever? It's hard to say; I don't think it's ever happened before. A flower lasting forever, I mean.

I'm a little sick of the whole "I'm back!" business. I am, and every time I say "India was great!" I feel like I'm losing a little piece of what it really was to me, what it still is. I'm somewhat tired of considering loss and gain and moving on and being here. It all sounds so melodramatic, trite. Enough already with the angst! And that's how I feel, about what I say, when these words come out of my mouth and present themselves as what-it-should-be or what-it-was. My experience in India wasn't any what-it-should-be, and I realize that I don't have anybody to convince but myself. Even that is taking some doing...

I guess it's the same as how I feel about calling myself a feminist. On some level, I think I am. I've got a problem with the label though. (Among readers can be heard a sharp and simultaneous intake of breath. If she's not a feminist, then what the *&%# does she think she is?) Speaking of trite, let's lay it out; let's acknowledge that I'm not the first person to consider the meaning of the word "feminist." I, however, have an allegedly new angle. Just listen. When you call someone a "feminist", or say something was "great," it is flattened out into a poorly-taken photograph. The photo displays just enough so that you can draw in the rest with your imagination. You guess at the distance between the trees, the heat of the day, the moisture in the air, the glare of the sun. Or better, you don't consider any of these things. You look at the photo and think, 'Oh, trees.'

Suddenly, the photo is a picture of trees, rather than all those things that the photographer sought to capture that day on the trail, the things that made the photo worth taking. The feeling that there must be magic in these woods, the smell and softness of decaying leaves on the trail, those things are lost in memory. And when memory gets too bleached by the sun of life and living, overwritten by new experiences or the shadow of something bigger, then these things are simply lost.I guess that's how it's supposed to be, though. Experiences, memories, things, never stay with us forever. And if they do, they don't stay the same for us, there's no way they could. We change to much.

And here I didn't want to talk about being here and leaving there.

Once again, I'm inspired by Kate. Inspired to create, express, explore.

On Pirates, Book Reviews, and Intimate Irony

OOH! Kate is publishing her book about PIRATES! I'll get it for Graham who, at 12 years of age is about one skipped brushing away from transforming his hair into one large, seaworthy dread...

My heart stopped, and I looked away before I was spotted, before my attention brought any sort of self-consciousness to the scene upon which I had stumbled. I had gotten this book for Graham. He had said, upon receiving it 'Oh, cool,' and redirected what small part of his attention he had used to respond to me back to whatever he was doing- much more interesting. Obviously. But here he was, sitting at the kitchen table with his usual shades-of-tan dinner and...wait, what's that in his hand? OH NO! It's the DREAD CREW! There he sat, happily smacking his lips, eating his pizza with ketchup or chicken nuggets or similarly kid-approved meal item, patently unaware of anything but the grubby, swarthy, gnarly, brazen adventures unfolding on the projector-screen just behind his eyes.

Look Mom, he's reading the pirate book!

I know, he hasn't put it down. He loves it.

(Beams with victory and delight)

++++++

Hey Alex!

Hey Graham.

Do you know what my favorite part of "The Pirates of the Backwoods" was?

(Oh no, he's already finished it, and I'm not even half way done! He's going to spoil it! Make him STOP!!) Errr...what? (holds breath)

The "honey lessons." Like, "the undiscovered joys of occasional bathing." Huh huh huh.

(Whew! Already read that part. The irony, however, is not lost on me. Maybe you could take a lesson or two from Joe yourself; Eh, Mr My-Hair-Only-Looks-Cool-If-It-Hasn't-Been-Washed-For-A-Week? Undiscovered joys of bathing indeed!)

Blown out of the water with a SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I turned on my computer with the intention of writing something very different. But these things happen, life get's in the way. My blogger dashboard (oh yes, that is blog-lingo, and yes, I am that cool. You knew it, I knew it, let's not pretend any longer...) opened and Gal had made a post just 19 minutes ago. Guess what? Dahlia is 6 today! I hardly need give any background, as anybody whose talked to me for 5 minutes knows who Dahlia is.

It was so funny, the other day, my friend Dahlia and I went to the park...
You went to the park?
Yeah, with my friend Dahlia.
(look of confusion, searching, reevaluating friendship with conversation partner)
She's 5.
5 years old?
Yeah.
What do you mean, she's your friend.
Uh...well...she's...my friend.

Gal, Dave, and Dahlia recently moved to Ohio. Away. We here on Mather Street have missed them all desperately, and today is no exception. Because look what they're doing! Look what Dahlia's becoming! How did that happen? At what point do the family members and acquaintances you see only sporadically stop saying "Look how tall you are!" and do you start noticing all the little people around you transforming into butterflies? Really tall butterflies...

I'm back home, whatever that means, and having an acute sensation of having wasted time. In India, in Iceland, time that's gone by leaving my hands just a little more weather-worn. Seeing Dahlia, thinking of her as a SIX-YEAR-OLD, gives me pause.

We met when she was 1 1/2, when I was...18? And nobody who knows Dahlia will be surprised to know that, after a few months of babysitting her part time, it occured to me for the first time in my life that I might not want to have kids. A fading violet Dahlia is not. She's a real princess, the kind that says 'No thanks I'd rather go play with my friends, and by the way, 100 years is too long to wait in a magical sleep. Step up your game sir, or you're going to be passing on your crown to your royal hound and her regal puppies. Who are SO cute, by the way. Can I name them?'

So, here's to the regal, splendid, effervescent, and indomitably vivacious Dahlia. Happy birthday Love!

December´s Endless Summer, Part 2

It´s going to be legen...wait for it...DARY!

On the cusp of returning home, leaving Iceland, feeling slightly wind-tossed and worn-down, looking forward to coming home and concerned that the glow of homecoming will wear off leaving behind, just, you know...normal life. What if that happens? What if I have to go back to real life? That would be...well...normal?

It´s funny traveling with sister-like creatures because, well, they´re sisters. And that means a lot of things. Infinite comfort and ease. Safety in the assurance that you´ll get wrapped in a soft down-comforter and cozied up with those warm bodies no matter how much of a dragon you´ve been all day.

And we all have our days.

And then there are those days. The days when you are your most wretched self because you´re exhausted with yourself, exhausted with the destructive rhythms which reappear over and over again between people you´ve known and loved and fought with over and over again. Those days though, don´t end with tears. And if they do, night pours ambrosia in your ear which mixes with your dreams, of memories of marco polo in California and buttered toast with jam and cheese in Iceland. You wake up, and it´s ok. It´s her, after all.

H: So, are you guys going back tomorrow?
S: Wait, what?!
H: Back to the pool...
S: Oh! I thought you meant back to California.
A: Yeah, jeeze, it wasn´t that bad of a day...

So I´ll be sad to leave. And glad to return, home and back to Iceland. No question.