Back to the odd.

"There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep." --Homer

I think I wish I wrote in this more.

December was a hammer to the head, I finally reached my breaking point & began to come to grips with the fact that maybe I was all wrong. Maybe this little life I have here in the middle of northern California is just not going to cut it. I don't think I believe in "wrong decisions," mind you. What I do believe is that each change that we make, each step forward (or backward, as the case may be) is wholly worthwhile because it serves to point you in the right direction in the long run.

My problem? I am not sure why I am doing this, not at all. My initial reasons were honest & pure but I feel as though coming here has forced me to rip the wool from over my eyes & see, once & for all, that sometimes doing what appears to be the "right thing" is anything but. Going home for winter break only confirmed this for me. It's not that I have a desire to run right back to my old life in New York...it's not that at all (if anything, I wonder about Portland or archaeology). It's just that I'm not sure if I really listened to my gut feeling when I made the ultimate decision to come out here. Sometimes we need to shed these pressures & expectations & strange values & just pay an intense amount of attention to our hearts, our minds. I might have dropped the ball on that one this time around.

Can I do this? Absolutely. What is killing me, though, is that my motivation is close to gone & so doing the work is excruciating. It's not like this is that much harder than the work I was given at NYU, it's just that my passion has trickled right out of the holes in my pockets & now it is nowhere to be found. This is painful, more painful than I care to mention. I feel as if my heart has been stolen, lost along the way. & I do not blame this on anyone. If anything, this is my fault & I need to do anything & everything in my power to get my feeling back again.

Is this worthwhile? What isn't, right? I am learning a great deal about myself & how I function under this type of pressure. Maybe I need to learn this, maybe it is making my core stronger. Or maybe this isn't the right thing for me. Maybe I need to be working at a job where I feel challenged, maybe I think that success as defined within the world of academia is far too arbitrary (this is the case as of now) & I just don't want to be here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I am wasting my time. I am learning to deal with other people in an entirely new way. I have allowed myself to love someone new, someone so unique, even though I am scared. I have dropped everything that comforted me in order to further open my eyes & mind...to better myself. I am proud of myself for doing this. & right now, I have no choice but to trudge through these next few months & continue to hope that, little by little, my steps will get lighter & my smile will be fully real.

I am still just a little bird.

See in all directions at the same time...

Someone took a rolling pin to my heart & spread it over the entire country. I am preoccupied with these feelings of such honest love.

I have somethin' good going here. But jesus, I miss home today.

Election Day: 11/4/2008

I always believed in futures. I hope for better in November.
--Jimmy Eat World

The unreality.

Today I woke up early, showered, got dressed. Opened up my blinds, stepped onto my porch, scooped up the remnants of my old pumpkin (Scuffy) & watched the light dance through palm leaves in shadows above my doorway.

The sun finally reappeared & the air was brisk while Jen & I walked to the Church on the Esplanade to vote in this election. I love the mud prints that the leaves stamp on the sidewalks. I love the different colored houses & tiny porches. Voting in a small town reminds me of who we’re really talking about here.

Jen & I bought some shoes to get us through the rainy days. Then she took me to In & Out Burger for the first time. I couldn’t eat much there because it’s a whole lot of meat, but it was a nice break. Then I walked to work. Had a nice afternoon with Nikki in the lab, & I fit a fragmented cranium together almost completely by myself. Gained some respect, I believe. I love when tiny fragments fit like perfect puzzle pieces & slide into place. Clink.

I started walking back while talking to my mom about the ballots & the election. I decided to stop by Patrick’s & found him standing in the kitchen attempting to make pumpkin soup (which quickly turned into ‘pumpkin gruel’).

Kate called & biked over from Collier's. The three of us took Pat’s truck (wonderful music was on the radio tonight) to Ben & Jerry’s to get “free Election Day ice cream”. We sat outside on a bench & watched strange people & adorable children wander by. Something so refreshing about eating ice cream in the chilly night air.

Then we decided to go to Big Al’s Happy Burger & get some cheap, greasy (therefore great) drive-in food. While we were talking & eating Aubrey told me that Obama had won the presidency, but none of us thought anything of it because it was so early on (our polls just closed!). But while we were driving back we heard McCain’s speech on the radio. It was pretty shocking. Patrick took it like a champ. We sat in his parking lot for a while just listening. Then we went inside & sat around the radio listening to Obama’s speech. Both speeches sounded like they were straight out of a historical film. I constantly feel like I am living back in the 1960’s in this town.

I talked to Aubrey for a few minutes & wondered how it would be to be in New York City tonight. My dad called, half asleep, still slightly taken aback. We drove Kate & her bike home. Then Patrick took me home & I kissed him goodnight to a Bob Dylan song.

Now I’m back in my apartment, watching the news with Jen. Montages of the race for presidency flashing on the screen.

This was, to say the least, a good day. A historical day. But I have to admit that it is hard for me to have such a pleasant day without being able to share it with some of the people I love most in the world. So here is to them. Here is to the idea (& hope) that this decision is truly for the best & everything will even out, preferably to the point of tipping towards ideal.

So here I am with a stuffy nose & a warm mug of hot chocolate. Nothing in life is guaranteed & so today I feel lucky to be alive. Despite having no idea what’s real or what it is that I’m doing, & a broken hand.

On animism.

Is it something about October itself that makes me feel so snug? I watch the shadow of a leaf spin across the sidewalk until the leaf itself appears & somersaults in front of my feet. Seminar spills into the night & there is something about a lonely skull sitting in front of a window in the evening that makes my body ache. I wake up to these same types of tree-shadows bending in the wind, the rush of air rustling leaves, whirring past my room. The light angles left, right. I pull my sleeves over my chilly fingers. A car starts, hums, & a dog is yapping behind the fence.

I woke up this morning mildly confounded about where I stand. It is strange to have the upper hand but have no idea where that hand belongs. I am starting to think that maybe those times when I am close to sleep are the times when my mind is most honest. There is a blur between physical and mental realities as voices lift from the radio, the line between "me" & "you" fades...resting before me is the reality that we are all just souls, energies doing the best we can. Wafting garlic & rosemary towards our noses, trying to suppress a sneeze, comparing the lines on our palms.

Confused more because I can never quite tell if the strange way I miss home is actually what is keeping me from sorting it all out. But I think that feeling is okay, because I'm not sure if I will ever know for certain which is best. So I am trying my best to be here, now. & I will see how I feel when I am there, again.

Spicy Colors that Warm Your Home

Here I am:

wearing a long red skirt, legs crossed, damp hair slowly drying from the bottom up.

holding a warm New York mug filled with chai.

taking extensive notes on sharp force trauma, imagining what it might be like to die from pure shock.

floating back & forth between this reality & the streets of New York City, the roads of Philadelphia, the hallways of my house in the woods, the smiles of my favorite girls back home.

There is love in all of these places (maybe too much) & jeez, I long to be everywhere at once.

Great Minds on Torture & In Static

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
--Edgar Allan Poe

It is raining here for the first time since I moved. So reminiscent of the east coast...I am lying in the dim blue light, humming to A Perfect Circle, frizzed-hair half-conscious, curious. In my mind I am walking down a rainsoaked Broadway, fingertips buzzing electric.

Wednesday night, an intelligent discussion of torture & the most painful methods & why do we do these things to each other? The Stanford Prison Experiment, I think. Because we are wild. Because we are animals. Because without pain there would be no pleasure.

I just thought of this: maybe I cannot love you unless you are feeling this as spiritually as I am. The rain carries whispers, the boy who died on the train tracks last weekend is running free, reality is unreal. The leaves don't crack in half when they are wet, my hands hold these dots & your eyes are very blue. Do you feel this? I can't tell. If I knew for sure this gate might catch fire instead of just smoldering at the roots.

I was in so much pain at 4 a.m., running to cover my head with ice, surprised that I could breathe like that (the air did not freeze before it hit my nose). Yesterday a daze of friendly voices, hands, 3-D scenes of tiny houses on a hill, surrounded by larger-than-life sunflowers. The sky was electric, I placed a torn fallen feather onto a spider web & there it stayed. Snap the rubber band on my wrist, please. Wake me up! Grab me. Tell me exactly what is going on.

Tonight I will listen to Richard Leakey's take on conservation & I will wonder if being close to Turkana Boy, close to these "origins", close to death (a loss of limbs) makes him any more intouch than me. Does he know more about the nature of the universe? Does he really feel this down to the marrow the way I do? Or is he just alive & not living?

These sentiments are a loaded gun & I will settle for just feeling them instead of knowing what they mean.

a new list.

some things that i love:

• riding home from a friend's house with a bag of fresh berries swinging from my handlebars
• climbing up & down endless barren hills until finally one offers up an extraordinary view of a blue, blue lake
• a fork, a knife, a broken spoon & a tiny green fish
• my newly-discovered accents (especially australian outback tour guide)
• horsepeople & knowing glances
  
• guestbooks hidden in mailboxes in the middle of orchards
• visions of icees on the trail & then the real thing (+ alison krauss)
• dreams of a bluegrass weekend
• the idea of wind whipping tents into the air at the bottom of a canyon surrounded by mountains
• smiles & encouragement from professionals wearing autumn fleece
• trying to understand...
• "dessert" sushi (thanks to random care packages from the east coast)
• free rosemary bushes
• my cohort boys
  
• cats that sleep underneath air conditioners or who hide between curtains
• giant dust swirls carried up from the back of tractors
• nighttime smoke settling on electric wires & bottles of blush wine

some things i do not love:

• pretending that i care
• actually caring about things that probably shouldn't matter
• the idea that someone tried to cut my lock & steal my bike...
• being very far away from the people i love
• not being sure (but that is life)
• balancing my feelings
• the fact that i will probably miss my one chance to see robert plant & alison krauss!
• knowing people are gossiping about me
• remembering too much
• not being able to sleep
• my constant whispering desire to pick up & leave