ok, so.....

So last night I lay awake, limbs entangled and entwined and resting on my love, breathing shallow and eyes closed, while my mind buzzed with everything I wanted to say and write today to the world on my new blog. I can’t even explain how exciting this is to me…there’s really no reason for the elation that over takes me when I remember that I finally went through with it and WROTE something. Because this isn’t my first blog. I started one before but couldn’t write a word, I couldn’t think of anything to say, I think because I was initially befuddled as my seemingly clever title and punch line had already been taken. Guess I’m not so clever after all! But I suppose it just took the wind out of me and I felt deflated, I lost the confidence to say anything and so I didn’t. I let the world beat me. Which happens more than I’d like to admit, unfortunately, but I’m trying to be better about getting back up. That’s what winners are made of, right? You reinforce the faith you have in yourself when you act in ways you don’t believe possible. And for me, rising again and getting back into whatever it was I was doing when I was knocked down, was something that I wasn’t prepared to do.

My new plan is to have a ’song of the day,’ some new song I’ve recently fallen head over heels for, or a familiar one that’s reignited my original love for it but that I routinely pass over as I’m browsing for songs on my ipod. To be fair, I think yesterday’s song would have to be Good Woman by Cat Power, which is not an old song, although I’ve had it on my beloved ipod for years now! You can listen to it here. Sooo damn beautiful. Simple. Like most beautiful things, I think. Pure love, love in its most basic form, like watching people reunite or say goodbye at the airport, seeing children hug one another, witnessing a grandmother kiss her granddaughter’s forehead. Or daffodils, which are my most favoritist flower in the world. They rest peacefully, smiling out at the world with their big beaks, saying hello and swaying with the wind.

But I digress. Back to my point, the song of the day. I know I’m cheating, but I think I’ll have to have two songs for yesterday, because one of my good friends brought to my intention the genius of John Butler and his Trio, and I listened to his solo work and the band’s music yesterday, all day, while at work (luckily we’re allowed to wear headphones and listen to whatever, or else I quite possibly might have gone insane and denounced lawyering altogether). Because I think I’ll be listening to this song ad nauseum when I’m abroad, away from my partner and my best friend, John Butler’s song of the day will be…you know what. No. There are three songs of his/theirs that must be mentioned. Oh my gosh, just unbelievable. Doesn’t music make life worth living? Maybe that’s why I love my person so much: (among other reasons) he is an extraordinary musician. I should link to his music; pending, when I figure out how to do it!

So, John Butler:

Far away/What you want (about missing your partner): here

Peaches and Cream (about his wife and baby girl): here

Daniella (about his ‘queen of a wife’): here

Seeing a theme? Yep, I’m a sucker for lyrics. Because I want that! I want someone to write lyrics for me that say, clearly or covertly, I loveyouloveyouloveyou there’s nothing betterthanyouandme and wherewouldIbewhatwouldIdo without youme? I challenge anyone to name something better in this world than unconditional love and recognition of your being, genuine acceptance. Also, I think that’s the way people should be loved. We all deserve that kind of love, we all deserve someone to call us their king or queen, to say we make their lives worth living, to tell us things just aren’t as good without us. If all people received that kind of love, that acknowledgment of their worth and dignity as humans, the world wouldn’t be as violent or mean or sick as it is. Things would be better, people would be happier, money would mean less, there would be less suffering.

I know that’s four songs of the day. But really, it’s my blog! If I want to post four songs, I damn well can. Plus, I want to share music, I love sharing music because, as I’ve mentioned and will continue to point out, music is one of my great loves and absolutely makes life worth it.

On a completely separate note, I’ve been thinking a lot about something my mom says, quite often actually. Which will seem strange to anyone who knows my mom because she’s basically the nicest human alive. To quiet my sister and I when we’re feeling wronged, or violated, she says, “If you wait long enough, you’ll see the bodies of you enemies float by.” And I know that’s not her saying; clearly it’s a cultural idiom, but still. In my life, she’s pretty much appropriated it and I will forever think of my mom when I hear the phrase, which, again, is odd. When your parents give you advice, though, it’s easy to just brush it off, let it pass through the air without really acknowledging the wisdom of their words, because for most of your life they’ve been talking at you. And so I tend to do this. I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, though, that I see my parents more as equals, as human beings, rather than as these ethereal beings who exist for the sole purpose of being my parents, and have no history or life outside of their relation to me, and as a corollary of that, I’ve started listening to them. And I’ve noticed that she’s right. She’s right!

Two very recent situations have suddenly resolved themselves, without provocation, when my ‘enemies’ (although not enemies at all, but for purposes of the saying, people who were causing me grief) admitted, to themselves and to me (one to me through another friend) that they were wrong. Which is, sometimes, all that one needs to put the matter to rest. And there it is. One in the form of an apology, a comprehensive apology that admittedly took self-reflection and a good deal of honesty with herself; another in a simple statement that he made the wrong choice. In my mind’s eye, I see it this way: I’m sitting in the jungle (for anyone who is an avid Simpsons fan like myself, I’m actually picturing the jungle in Africa when Homer wins a trip there after he snaps himself in the eye with the cord from an animal crackers box: “Africa?! There’s bound to be food there!”) and they are all Sleeping Beauty-ish, kind of in a trance, floating down this river on a bed of bamboo, about to go over the waterfall. The girl, the one who apologized, wakes up as she is about to pass me, she stands up on the bamboo raft and hops onto the river bank next to me, and we walk off together into the jungle talking and laughing, arms around one another’s waist. The other, the fellow who has found himself in an unfortunate position now after he sort of betrayed me, saves himself from falling over the waterfall but instead gets off on the other bank and walks in the opposite direction. Which is what I would prefer he do. It’s a strange but good feeling when someone has wronged you and, acknowledging their humanness and imperfections, you can release the situation and the person without holding a grudge, but still wishing they would just disappear. What baffles and amazes me, I suppose, is how quickly these enemies floated by, how little I had to wait. In the grand scheme of things, sure, neither situation was that dire or emotionally exhausting, and there are certainly other enemies, real enemies whose corpses I would like to see topple over the edge, who have yet to make an appearance on the other side. But I’ll take what I can get, and I see too that my mom is right, she is wise, and sometimes all you can do is wait it out. So try it maybe. Be patient. Take an extended breath and see what falls out when you remove yourself and shed the baggage of the past. (Sorry for the long paragraph! I always have trouble splitting them; the words give each other meaning, so how to part them?)

Another thing on my nighttime mental list: I need to make a shoutout to my friend, a new friend, a pseudo-mentor in the legal world; but really less there, more of a life coach, although I’m sure she doesn’t see it that way. I’ll call her K. First, a mini-explanation: because I didn’t have any older siblings, I’ve always kind of attached myself to older people, upperclassmen in high school, older siblings of my boyfriends, and generally those older than me in work and school situations, because I like the feeling of being taken under someone’s wing. I never had that, so I guess I go about creating it in my life whenever the possibility arises. In any case, K gave me a much needed boost of confidence, without even trying, just filling me in on her philosophy of life, her work ethic, her approach to assignments and legal writing (which happens to be my nemesis) and things in general. What amuses me too, looking back on that conversation, is her nonchalance about it all. Our conversation went something like this:

K (and I’m paraphrasing): I do things, everything, 100%. I always know I tried my best and then I leave it. If I fail, so what? I’ll try again. Me failing doesn’t mean that I am a failure, or that I’m unworthy, or that I’m bad at what I do. It just means I have to try again. But I always walk away knowing that tried as much as I could. And I’ll keep trying as much as I can, at everything I do, and then I’ll leave it there.

Me: But, if you fail at something, doesn’t that mean, by definition, you’re not worth it? You’re not good enough?

K: No, it just means you have to get back up and try again. It means that you’re learning, it means that you didn’t start out knowing everything. But if you try your best, how can you be a failure?

Me: I guess I just feel like, if you give something everything you’ve got, and you’re still not good enough, you still fail, then that is a signal that you are not worthy.

K: When I try 100% and give something my absolute best effort, which I do with everything I do, than how can I be a failure? Failure is only when you don’t try again, when you let it beat you and you stop trying.

Me: Hmmmm. Interesting.

And I realize to other people this conversation may not seem so enlightening or striking or meaningful, I’m sure to many it’s common sensical and so blatantly obvious you would wonder why I would repeat it, but to me, it was everything. It was a complete paradigm shift from my normal, which is, I always try a little (or a lot) less than 100% because I never want to give something everything, everything I’ve got, only to come up short. I always want to have the fallback of, well, I didn’t try my best, so I really don’t know if I truly failed, because I didn’t test out my full abilities. But I’ve been trying to incorporate K’s philosophy into my life and, goddamn, it seems to be paying off. Honestly, that might have been the push I needed to start my blog; it has certainly contributed to the peacefulness that comes over me when I’m resting (i.e., not doing homework) because I know that, when I was studying, I did everything I could, and so now I can rest. Really rest. Not rest while stressing about everything I didn’t get done (because I was fucking off on the internet or talking on the phone or washing dishes – really any distraction will do while I’m supposed to be studying), but truly sink into the feeling of “ok” about doing and being whatever I’m doing and am at that moment. Peace. Maybe we only get short bursts of it, but man, are they nice. Anyway, I’d recommend it, K’s strategy. Probably many people already do that, or think they do. Maybe I’m in the minority. But it sure has made me feel better, trying to do things fully, completely, with everything behind it.

To conclude, people mean a lot. People mean everything. Which is why, when we look back on our lives, we seem moments punctuated by our people, the ones who were there, the ones who told the hilarious stories, the ones that said hurtful things that took us aback, the ones who loved us or failed to love us the way we needed. It’s all about people, life is people. People at work, people at home, family and friends, enemies and strangers. Everything is people. Oddly, it seems like we all forget that a lot of the time. We get locked in our minds and our viewpoints and our egos and let our feelings of being solo vessels in the world take hostage of our behavior. And we treat people shittily. We hurt people. We take advantage or act passive aggressively or purposely make others feel small. So, I want to say, even to no one, to the universe, to this whirl-winding topsy flopsy complicated techy hole, that I love and appreciate my people. My family, my love, my good friends, my old friends, my passing friends and my recurring friends, work friends and school friends. I love you all, you have helped me grow and thrive, even the worst of you, even on your worst days, even when you did crappy things. I thank you, and you, universe, for bringing them to me and me to them. It’s hard.

The problem is, they can be mean, people. They can abuse you because they were hurt or stepped on or belittled. And they pass that poison onto you. It happens, every day; it’s hard to stay positive and confident and loving and open. Mostly open. The challenge is, for me, to burst through their negativity and emerge even more open, in the face of their abuse (and I use abuse loosely, meaning meanness, or sniping, or cutting words, words that cut, looks that hurt, because they’re intended to). Again, it’s hard. I haven’t found a way to transition between the two, between feeling free and light and loving and open, and then being belittled, or not included, or fractured by someone’s hurtful words. They haven’t a right to, but they do it regardless. It’s learning to give it back, let it slide off, deflect and stay yourself, without succumbing to their negativity. People are mean because people are mean to them. It’s difficult to be strong without being rude or pushy or demeaning to others.

I’m sorry, this entry got a little muddled. It’s too long and convoluted and I’m not happy with it as it is. I let other people get to me and what’s resulted is this, nonsense. Grrrrr! I have to remember that nothing is personal, that people are mean because of their own shit, and that it has nothing to do with me. But, again, it’s hard. See? I always forget: whenever life gets easy, it gets hard.