Friday, April 30, 2010

on love, Love, and friends


This is the thing about things.


I don’t have an answer, and it doesn’t seem like anybody else does either. Today, I’m happy because I’m ridiculously in love. And my friends care. They’re there; I hope they’ll remain there. I hope everyone stays.


I feel more peaceful today. I feel happy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, besides that I feel so blessed and lucky. I found what so many of us spend our whole lives searching for. I found him. I met my soul mate. And he loves me back. He loves me back!


I was thinking yesterday, as we were walking arm-around-waist back from dinner, about how the person that you love morphs into a being that’s more than human when you love them so much. When your love for them reaches a certain level, it becomes more than love. It’s more than love! It’s not trite, it’s not immature, it’s not love as we know love. It’s something more, it’s deeper, it’s more important. It’s not an unhealthy or an obsessive or a codependent love. I’ve had that; I know what it feels like, I’ve lived the incessant ups and downs and ins and outs and back and forths. It’s a terrible and destructive way to love. I’ve worked hard, throughout my many caustic love affairs, and loves, and codependencies, to become a person who loves without needing to be encompassed by, or to control, the other person. You have to coexist; one of my prior people always used to say, we have to complement each other, not complete each other. So my person, my other, my mate, seems like this being beyond all other beings; even the things that might have bothered me before have a taint of cuteness. I feel like he’s a miracle, and every attendant thing about him likewise is as well.


I know he loves me too. I just hope he loves me enough. I hope he loves me that way. I hope he lovesmelovesmelovesme. You know what I mean.


It’s hard to be happy, though, you know? You feel feel like you don’t deserve it; or that the higher up you are, the further you fall, so why not stay low; or that it’s all an illusion anyway. It’s hard to know what’s real. Sometimes I wonder why I’m so lucky; why do I deserve this? Why don’t other people find it? Why can’t other people have it too? I wonder if I should hold back in case he decides to leave. I wonder if I could ever recover if he did. I wonder what my life would look like without him in it; he’s “the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life,” as Paul Child would say.


I'm really proud of the progress I've made in the context of friendships; I have learned so much about what it means to be a friend, what it means to have friends, what friends aren't. I've tried to shed the vestiges of the past, the memories of terrible and treacherous and vicious friendships. I've tried to unlearn, and am still in the process of uninstalling and rewiring the wiring of my past experiences that inform the present.


I love my friends; I've worked hard to start and maintain my friendships, because, as much as I love my love, he can't be everything. Friends are the glue. My love is the sun, my friends are the water. I need them both. I need them all. I was relating to one of my law school girlies the tremendous, and sometimes crippling, fears about being left behind this summer, or having everyone in Philly grow out of me during my absence, when she said to me :


"it'll be great. don't worry. i think you just gotta trust. you want to go on your trip with a total open mind and soul."


And of course she's right. Who could argue? Yes, I need to trust. But trust is hard. Because what happens when you trust and your expectations fall flat? What happens when you believe, and people just don't hold up their end? You're left looking like an asshole, and an idiot. A damn fool. I suppose, though, we're always taking that risk when we do much of anything in the way of hoping or counting on or expecting, especially when whatever it is is dependent upon other people.


All I wanted to do today was write and write and write and think about my love. I feel the need to be solidified in things before I leave, which I know is impractical, and unwise; unfortunately that doesn't mean the desire and the urge dissipates. Logic sometimes can't counteract our evolutionary instinct to tie things up neatly, to package everything and declare it known. Conquered. Perhaps it would be foolish because it would ultimately lead to our early demise, I just can't stop thinking about it. What is wrong with me? I can't stop! It's become an addiction, one I hope will naturally peter out as most of my momentary obsessions do. My prediction is that after I leave, I'll be happy things weren't wrapped up, no promises were made, but in the meantime everything feels like it's flailing around and I just want to know. I want to know for real. I'm real, the way I feel is real. I want to know that what I have is real too. I suppose in some ways we never really know; people are fickle, feelings and thoughts even moreso. Moments are fleeting. Life itself is a temporary condition, it's natural to think that everything within it would be just a microcosm of that brevity.


At the same time, I think the anticipation is really what I savor. In anything. Anticipation and remembering. Often living it isn't all it seems like it should be. I must relish the now, the lead-up, the almost. The time before. I will, this is my new goal. Heed the now. Heed the now. I don't want to be locked down, confirmed, or owned; I really just want to know that that love is there. That it will last. That it persists and won't burn out. I just don't want anyone to burn out on me. Especially him.


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

what it is

Is it me? Is it really impossible to believe anything anyone says? Once it's in their self-interest, they'll change and adapt their positions to suit whatever it is they want, regardless of principles, or past statements of allegiance to or repulsion by the thing they can magically now fit into their lives.

This is a chance, it's a test. To disengage. I have to remember to calm myself and not link-link-link this up with the past. To disembowel it before it grows into something more significant than it is. Because it's not. It wasn't aimed at me, and if it was, fuck 'em. I am a tall tree.

It would just be nice to be able to believe anything anyone said, to depend on it, without, somewhere down the line, having it unravel and slap you in the face unexpectedly. Everything makes sense in the context of self-interestedness. Everyone acts calculating to get a payoff.

But some parts of me are dinging and lighting up; the hypothesis planted and hibernating inside me has, once again, been confirmed: you can't ever really trust anyone.

It can be rewarding; it can polish up and smooth out and hydrate your life. It can be a welcome respite from drudgery, from strangers' scowls and bristly acquaintances. But it always has an edge. The more you care, the more open you are, the bigger the inevitable wound. Nothing is constant. Everyone is changing. The only consistent thing, the only person I can hold onto, is my love. He's steady and unwavering. "'Come in,'" he said, "'I'll give ya shelter from the storm.'"

Perhaps this is why people take refuge in their other, in their partner, in their person. It's not as if my babe doesn't, sometimes, put his needs above my own. Of course he does - this is central to self-sustenance, to survival. Friends seem never not to think of their effect on you though, that is the difference. It's always about what meets their needs, even at your (obvious) expense. I think I (must?) relate to people differently than the way most people do; I get attached, I weave threads between myself and the other, I link into him or her. The distaste comes when these ties are cut, by pointy words or thoughtless actions, on purpose or unintentionally. I missed some rudimentary developmental phase where we learn the ability to reattach and get over it, it would seem.
The Two Fridas, Frida Kahlo 1939

This is my internal nemesis. I'm flummoxed sometimes, when friends, and people in general, are unkind. When they treat you badly. It's impossible to know how to react properly to such an affront; my strongest urge, inclination, instinct is to recoil and renounce. To flout attachment. I know this reaction is unwarranted; I can see it, floating in my mind and taking up an undue amount of space. It's too big! It's burdensome and unjustified. Mantra mantra mantra: nothing is personal. It's not about my ego. They're acting this way because of them; it has nothing, fundamentally, to do with me. I'm just an object. A thing in the mix. Something to bounce their stuff off of. We're all just trying to do the best we can.

I wonder if anyone else has a similar inability to process friendly fire.

And a parting thought: we all grow out of people, sometimes.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

meh, or merp

It's probably going to be okay.

I think it is a snag that can be mended. I think it is a hole that can be stitched.

The problem is, when you depend on someone else to tie the two ends together, to fit the last pieces in place, the situation is perpetually unresolved. Until it isn't. Until that day my visa comes in the mail. Until I see my beloved and well-worn passport once again, sporting a most important piece of paper for my trip. Aside from my plane tickets, that is.

The time I have left before I leave, the time I have to wait and wait and think and stew about my upcoming adventure, is crushing. It's anxious and important and stifling and exciting. I feel pressured to horde bonding time with my guy and my friends and my biff; every moment I'm not spending with someone else seems like a waste, and a risk that when I return, things can't or won't be the same. And maybe they shouldn't be. But that's ignoring the fact that, as humans, we basically abhor most change. Especially a change in something that's functional, that's working, that serves its purpose and adds, even minutely, to our lives. Differences, though, changes and alterations in the usual, even if not completely welcomed or enjoyable, are memorable and, strangely, can even be fun. Fun simply because they're different. Fun because they're out of the ordinary, because our brains relished processing the new information.

This happened the other night when a group of us girls went out to dinner; we ate at a completely new restaurant for our posse, a place we'd never been to together. Aside from that, it was a trek far beyond our usual neighborhoods, and, although we've surely had objectively better times, and things between some people have been on better terms, it was still an experience I'd label 'fun'. Perhaps it's just something about my brain in particular; I have, I think due to being moved and uprooted throughout my childhood, developed a knack for adapting to new and varied situations, so much so that now, when I haven't moved or changed something rather significant in a while (like, within a year) I feel not me. I don't feel good, inexplicably. My soul begins to wither, I suppose. Change to me is like water to a plant.

I'm not sure if it bothers anyone that the titles of my posts seems to have little to no relation to their subject matter; of course, they make perfect sense to me, but from a perspective outside of my mind, I could imagine that being annoying. How can you pick out which to read if the title gives you no indication of what you'll be reading about? Other people's blogs have relevant titles; other people's blogs are and do a lot of things that mine isn't and doesn't.

Speaking of which, I spent two hours in class last night perusing a range of other blogs, surfing through them until something interesting popped up. There are so many talented bloggers out there! So many amazing writers, designers, photographers, and cooks or bakers. I was rendered extremely humble upon reading waves and waves of interesting or beautiful or creative blogs that seemed so much more multi-faceted and remarkable than mine. Ugh. I hate comparing myself to others, but it's so hard not to! Inevitably, truly without exception, the result is I feel completely paralyzed by incompetence. It's my fault, I know I have this problem. Eventually, the paralysis wears away and a little inspiration seeps through cracks in a wall of embarrassment I've erected to shade myself from view of these elusive others. The others among whom I'm discomfited to coexist; the people with whom I'm humiliated to share the blogosphere, taking the present example. That feeling has shaped my entire law school experience; taking one step forward in my confidence level, being destroyed by a professor's hypo in class, or a mediocre grade, or another rejection letter from a summer internship. It's hard to stand back up, but as I've learned, and as one of my good friends is learning presently, the only real option is to try your best to stand once again. Which is a subjective thing. One person's success is another's collapse, I suppose. It's all about our personal perspective on ourselves and on our lives. There's one person who always tells me, go easy on yourself; take care of yourself. Which is easy to say, and hard to do. Who even knows what that means? Again, subjective. One person's cigarettes is another's green tea.

Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of all this working soooo hard is. All this toil and anxiety and pressure. For what? What does it do for humanity? What benefit is it to you? A paycheck, of course, but beyond that? Is it worth a thing? People rushing around, consumed in self-importance and business and hurry and worry; it all seems so ultimately pointless. The girl who inspired me to take my trip to Thailand this year, who participated in the same summer internship in Cambodia last year, said to me yesterday, "I don't do much of anything unless it advances human rights. I ask myself, 'will this help sex trafficking victims?' If not, I don't do it." And that pretty much spans the course of her life, affecting romantic relationships, school, work and play. What a spectacular and refreshing point of view! Her words are swirling around my thoughts today, they're dripping into my sight and delectably framing my day. It didn't strike me so much at the time as it does now, but why don't more of us adopt that kind of approach, in the context of a cause about which we are fervent advocates? Surely most people can name one thing outside of their immediate lives that incites a passion in them to work for something better, something more, something beyond themselves. I would think that living without that spark would make for a futile waste of a life.

After really considering what she said, I realized that I too was familiar with that way of thinking, in my more youthful, idealistic, and passionate phases, but I had become so burnt and abused by the heavy feeling of not being able to have any meaningful impact on the problem, by my frustration at people's wilful ignorance or even disdain for causes that seem like no-brainers to me, such as protecting the environment, feminism (the simple yet complicated and somehow refuted notion that women are equal to men), or racism inherent in the application of the death penalty in the U.S., that I dulled it, I trimmed it back, I lost it in the hullabaloo. I'm looking forward to savoring the feel of this feeling again, of tasting the desire to be and do good, sometimes at the sacrifice of some of my comforts. That's life to me. It's troubling how easy it is to forget that.

Monday, April 26, 2010

prickles

I f*d up.

I hope I can still go.

Perhaps in my almost two full years of law school, I should have at some point prior to now internalized the lawyer's mantra: always-double-check-your-shit.

Especially the important shit.

Instead, I wholly relied on information from someone else, a non-native speaker working for the organization in Thailand with which I'm interning, a girl with whom I've already had substantial communication issues in the couple of months we've been corresponding, for information about a crucial step in my travel plans. But she's supposed to be a professional! This is her job, to guide us through the process and get us our damn visas. So, at the moment I am visa-less and have less then three weeks to fix this major problem before I depart for Chiang Mai. I'm too scared to tell the program directors my flub. I guess my fear is that they'll tell me I won't be able to get the visa in time and, thus, can't participate in the program.

What if I can't get it? What if it's too close?

Okay, so I wrote to her, the girl. I laid it all out. What I have to lose is my entire summer abroad, right? Only this trip I've been looking forward to, counting on, preparing for, for months and months. So why not be honest abigail at this point. I hope I'm not fucked. I hope it's just a soon-to-be-hilarious bump in the road. I hope to compare this story to other interns' similar situations, and chuckle at our collective incompetence. When I think about it, though, I just want to shake myself. Really? Really? Was I truly that lazy, I couldn't write a clarifying email, or check the Embassy website myself, to make sure I followed the directions? What's especially frustrating to me is that I had this strange but subtle feeling that it wasn't right. After all, how could the Embassy send the visa back to me if I included no information about myself in the packet? The problem was all the paperwork was in Thai, so I didn't know what was there and what wasn't. Regardless, though, it appears now that I should have included my passport in the collection of things I sent to the Royal Thai Embassy in D.C., which, of course, I neglected to learn until this morning. April 26. I leave on May 14. Sooo...I'm in a precarious position. Hopefully the Thai girl from the program gets back to me shortly. Hopefully she says, "no need to worry, I just pulled some strings and oiled some wheels at the Embassy. This is all just a silly misunderstanding; you'll get your visa in time."

I'm waiting.

In some ways, it's so much harder to forgive yourself for your own mishaps than to forgive someone else for theirs. For their trespasses against you. I mean, depending on the mistake, the person, and the offense. Some things simply can't be forgiven, i think. The grudges I've held the longest, with the exception of a select few that I consider to be 'war crimes' in my life, are mistakes I've made that I just won't let myself transcend. I can't forget them, and I relive the disappointment I felt in myself for committing such obvious errors over and over again. For lapsing in judgment. For not doing what I should have. And whenever I do another stupid thing, I have to stew on it.

I'm stewing now, I'm steeped in a pot of discontentment, distress, and prickles. Spiky lizards and snapping turtles and prickly pears. I can't sit still or relax; I'm gritting my teeth at all the horror stories I'm concocting about why this problem won't be fixed, about the ways I won't be able to finagle a visa in time. About everything I could have done to prevent this situation. About how it was all in my control and I let it slip. About how I let my inertia and angst hijack my common sense. About how I allowed myself to justify not doing everything I could to ensure this process went smoothly.

Yeah, I'm pretty pissed at myself.

"And I've been consistent to the fucking dream, and I've paid my dues, just to get them all back. I'm a simple man with simple desires." Skeleton, by Bloc Party.

Friday, April 23, 2010

snap a trap

You're right; you're all right. I have to snap out of it.

It's not that big of a deal.

It's going to be okay.

The things that don't end up okay were going to fall apart anyway; they just disintegrated faster than if I hadn't gone away.

Someone said to me today that "being left isn't a feeling." Which is extremely thought-provoking to me because, up until she said that, I had always considered it on par with feeling sad or being elated. As far as I'd always experienced it, it was a feeling of its own, with roots and personality and girth. It certainly felt like a feeling. I remember it as something distinct. Hopefully she's right and I'm simply projecting my insecurities on my friends and my love. There's no reason to believe everyone I care about here makes the exact same or sufficiently similar traumatic connections when a person they are close to departs for a time. She's right about one thing though: I'm not leaving; I'm going away for a while. Right? It's not even that long, in the grand scheme of things. How much changes in three months, she asks. Indubitably. How much indeed?

So I'm getting more excited again; I'm regaining or perhaps sprouting new bits of confidence and luster for my summer in Thailand. It seems like everyone has a connection in Southeast Asia! Which is spectacular for me (and my parents who seem to think it's basically inevitable I'll be kidnapped or assaulted or wind up in a violent political demonstration for which I'll accidentally be arrested and sent to Thai prison) because who doesn't appreciate an ever-expanding circle of people, especially in places like Southeast Asia? I'm doing it. The tickets are bought. A few more 2L exams and I'll be on my way to 3L year via my internship in Thailand. Wow. I'm so lucky!

In other recent news, I reconnected with an old college friend this week, through the miracle of facebook and spurred by pictures he'd posted of his recent (and coincidental) trip to Thailand. It's a relatively new feeling for me, as I've tended, until coming to law school in 2008, to be a rather hermetic and introverted person; rekindling old friendships was about as foreign to me as the glockenspiel. Assuming it's a joyous reunion, I'd recommend it (with some clear caveats). There's something different about your friendships with people who knew you 'before,' whenever you define that term to mean. I can't, in my current state of mind, elaborate very eloquently, but I think it's related to them catching glimpses (or more, depending on the relationship) of you when you were less developed than now. It follows, then, that once you move into a new situation from the one you're currently in, the friends of today will feel like that too. I wonder if at some middle point, then, we start devolving, so that we're actually our most developed during our 40s, or 50s, or even 30s. I suppose depending on what you're speaking of (physical, brain, emotions, memory, etc.) it's variable. Again, I always circle back to that faux-Vonnegut graduation speech; in particular, the part where the author says something along the lines of "youth is wasted on the young." Or maybe it's beauty. Either way, they're both true, aren't they? My main point, though, is that once you've moved on or out of prior situations, the people you knew from then seem to have a deep connection to you, if you happen to reconnect. Which in some ways angers me because it appears that that would mean that those who were familiar with, or close to, us in high school, are even more deeply interwoven in our stories, our fundamental frameworks, than those who come later but are perhaps more meaningful, and there exists no category of humans I'd like farther from me, or to be more dead to me, than the people I knew in high school. I wonder if an exorcism would work for ripping them from my blood vessels and aortas and
amygdala. It's not fair! They gained access before I learned how to put up walls, or even why you would need such things in the first place.

Quiet time is nice sometimes. When it comes, unexpectedly, it can be such a welcome respite. Who even knew you needed a break? But once in a while we can like ourselves enough to just hang. I heard today, in the context of a serious conversation, that it was good I could laugh at myself about this thing, this particular subject matter. I hope I can continue to bring that into my life and others', because sometimes there's just nothing else you can do. Life gets terribly ridiculous every now and then; it's important to nurture and maintain our ability to chuckle at its kinks and pitfalls. Oooh, and when you find one of those people whose laugh naturally incites hysterical and uninhibited laughter in others, around whom you can't not laugh, strive to keep her company.

One from my favorite band ever, a song I'd, regrettably, not heard until today. One more chance, by Bloc Party.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

the thing (or "it")

Space.
Space!
More Space.
Need Space.
Too much Space.
Not enough Space.
Please, no more Space.

I suppose today is a day that I feel it all.

Hmmm okay. I'm dealing with how to deal with other people's stuff. How much it can infiltrate and overwhelm you. How to balance others' expectations with your own needs and desires. Perhaps it is a product of your feelings for the person; or maybe it has more to do with you, your nature and the way you interact with others.

I realized yesterday though, in the midst of battling with myself over whether I should take a specific action in the context of a friend in need, that my fundamental fear, the apprehension that underlies and permeates the fabric of my life - the reality I was forced to acknowledge as an adolescent, that everyone will leave when it's most convenient for them, that people aren't to be trusted or relied upon, that we are all, in fact, islands, and that it would be prudent of me to operate under that presumption - was hiding behind my decision to abstain from being noble. What's so terrifying, though, is even after I identified the flaw in my thinking and realized all the legitimate reasons not to apply those rules to this person, I did anyway. I stayed away. I did as little as I could without completely avoiding her and the issue, so I could never be accused of being a bad friend. Thinking that I could rightfully be deemed a 'bad friend' sends me into hyperventilations and a feeling of panic one step below a full-blown attack. I think it's a precursor to feeling that, if I'm considered a bad friend, it's likely that friendship will soon disappear, which dredges up a toxic plethora of negative connotations and panicky, hyperbolic thinking.

A tribute to being strong.

It may appear as though I'm a little discombobulated. Which would be a correct assessment. Good advice seems to have come my way though. I'm trying. And sometimes I wonder why good things happen to me as opposed to other people. Sure, I've dealt with my share of shit, unwarranted and undeserved trifles, but haven't most people?

I wonder this because someone special to me seems to constantly be the butt of life's practical jokes, and I can't figure why. Is it all karmic? Something we can't understand with our conscious minds? That seems to be an easy way to explain it. In some ways, I hope it's true. That we are a product of our good deeds from past lives. That those who are cruel and arbitrary and murderous will be served in the next lifetime, will return as a cockroach or a tapeworm or a sewer rat. To be honest, when I'm feeling overwhelmed with anger and sadness at the plight of the environment, or the subjugation of women worldwide, or child prostitution, horrific dictators and greedy profiteers, I imagine that all of the perpetrators of these crimes will suffer for their deeds the next time around. Hopefully, with any luck, a Congolese warlord will be a cockroach in my home that I poison to death; Pinochet will come back as a slug that I crush underfoot (not that that's a regular practice of mine, but many people take pleasure in it, oddly); and all baby rapists become factory farmed cattle sent to the slaughter (as a sidebar, if that video doesn't make you go vegetarian, you have no heart).

The thing is, my friend is not a war criminal. She's not an oppressor or an egomaniac or a greedy corporation. She is a person, a real human being, who lives with her full heart, one who cares about others so much that all of her energies channel into her life's work of supporting and helping and hearing everyone else. I don't understand. Why is it so hard, then? What justifies the number and severity of wrongs that continue to befall her? It makes me feel sad and powerless, lucky yet guilty.

I wish I had some Stephen Hawking-like device where the words I'm thinking are automatically transcribed on my blog, because, naturally, I have the most enigmatic and philosophical and provocative thoughts when I'm not in front of the screen or pad and pen aren't handy. So here I am, lingering, with nothing to say. But really I have everything to say! Where did it go?

I do have to share this, though; it's fucking incredible.

Also, this is the coolest collection of pictures I've seen in a long time. In honor of Earth Day and all of the magnificent beings with whom we share this wonder: the 15 most bizarre sea creatures of the sea.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

the missing peace







I can't seem to find it.

Reading my past posts (stuck in the good, for instance) I sound like a person completely at peace with everything that's about to happen. Frankly, I sound high. Perhaps with the impending departure looming nearer and nearer I've finally lost my balance and my grip and won't regain it until I'm settled in Chiang Mai for my 90-day stay. That doesn't seem so long, does it? I've already devised an indirect way to measure how close I am to coming home (how backwards is that! I'm already looking forward to returning, and I haven't even left yet); rather than marking a calendar or counting down days, my plan is merely to look at, not too hard, but briefly, not long enough to count, but perhaps to guesstimate, how many malaria pills I have left. My prescription mandates one every day, starting two days before and continuing for two weeks after. So as the numbers start dwindling I'll know, deep deep deep, fundamentally, without even really 'knowing,' that I will be home then ("stems and bones and stone walls too/could keep me from you/skein of skin is all too few/to keep me from you"). I'll feel it (or perhaps by that time I'll simply be be delirious from Japanese encephalitis; either way). I hope my people will feel it, like a force. The force of our reunion, the force of our symbiotic love together once again.

In other news, onto my drug of choice: music. Most of the time when I first hear a song, even a song that ends up being a great love of mine, I don't immediately like it. Or it's just okay. In any case, I feel nowhere near about it at first the way I ultimately do - like my life would be missing a chunk had I not heard it. I'm having that experience today with a song that, although I was fond of it upon an initial listening due almost solely to its subject matter, I didn't really appreciate its depth, or the creativity and complexity of its lyrics, and, hence, its message. Or maybe it just resonates more with me because I feel this way about my person today:

"there you are right in front of me
a brand new day
sunrise over sea
no longer my cup half empty
cause there you are"

Because sometimes it's easier to give up than to try and fail. After all, we might lose it anyway. I'm fighting that urge. It's going to hurt! Lately I'm drowning in constant fear of everything I have going away. Last time I left for so long, I didn't have that much to lose, I was afraid of the unknown, yes, but I wasn't afraid to squander that which was left at home. There was so little to shed, and not much worry about losing it. Now there's everything.

I know I need to shake it, shake it out, and let it fall away from me, but it's clinging, it's embedded. I just can't concentrate on work until I unravel it, until I divorce it from my being and dissect it. What are you? And where are you hiding?

I suppose my challenge is to make room in my heart and mind and soul for this new experience, for the infiltrating of my self with unfamiliar people and smells and sights and thoughts, without pushing out what I know to be true from my prior life, from my baseline life. Without replacing or painting over them. As an aside, what would I ever do without youtube?

I'm just having a hard time with it today.

wave goodbye


I'm writing today because I haven't in too long, much too long, hours and hours too long, and I'm torn up about it. I feel incomplete.

Lately I've been worried about the ramifications of my leaving for over three months this summer, to a place where I likely won't be able to call my people, my guy and my biff, my family, and will rely heavily on email (hopefully gchat) and the fact that almost everyone can get to the internet via their cell phones.

Yesterday one of my friends said that leaving is better than being left, and although it seems to make good logical sense at first blush, in reality, I don't necessarily think it's automatically so. The last time I left the country for three months - to travel around Central America when I was 18 - it's true, I did feel a sense of power and detachment from the ones I left, especially a certain someone with whom my relationship was deteriorating. At the same time, and I think this phenomenon is rather common based on my conversations with others who have traveled for reasonably long periods of time: when you're the leaver, you tend to have someone, perhaps more than one, a person on whom you focus and rely on for your connection to your old life. In my previous experience, the person who became it for me wasn't prepared to handle that task; and to be honest, as someone who was recently this 'point person' for a friend who left for a while, it isn't easy. It can be begrudging, it can seem like a burden, because not only do you feel obligated to communicate with them whenever they make the time, but there's the added element of having to plug up their loneliness and sense of disconnection with your own emotional energy. Does that make sense? My point is, although it seems easy to think that the ones being left have a harder time of it, and in one sense that's very true, I think people don't appreciate the plight of the one who's left, the overwhelming feelings of sadness and guilt; fear about those they've left replacing them, or detaching from them, to handle their own sadness; being resented for seemingly abandoning the people at home, and their related realization that perhaps you weren't as close as they thought. After all, you did leave for three months! You can't care about us too much!

It's not true. I'm scared, and as the date of my departure from my city and my beau and my friends creeps closer, I feel more desperate to cement the attachments I have here. I feel on the verge of losing everything I've built, my close friendships and an absolutely stellar relationship with the person I want to spend all my life next to (near you always). It seems like I'm powerless to stop whatever distance will naturally result from my absence; I guess what I can't handle is thinking that it will never be surmountable, even after my return. I worry the feeling that lingers with those I've left can never fully dissipate; mistrust and a reluctance to be close will forever poison their feelings about me, like a residue on our interactions, or the slightest taste of onions on pancakes (oddly enough, this happened to me at a restaurant, and I thought for the longest time I was crazy until I lifted the stack up and found fresh, sliced onion underneath. Really gross.)

I know it will be worth it. I think it will. The thing is, that balance changes depending on what I lose back home. What if I don't return to my love? What if my biff has a new biff? That seems to change the calculation, and itself might condemn the memories of my trip, my hasty decision to apply and forego any other opportunities here, to my well-established and reinforced box of regret. Might it be a cleansing, though? Perhaps I'm doing nothing more than separating the wheat from the chaff, which would (with any good karma) happen, regardless, before commitments were made and years were wasted, opportunities were passed up and the regret box grew even larger. Perhaps in an even more difficult circumstance, after dependence and unhealthy attachment fester and rot the relationship.

All I have is maybes. And hopes. I hope they still love me when I'm gone, and when I return; I hope there's no resentment, or anger, for me leaving; I hope it fortifies our connection, rather than kinks it.

I miss you already, you and you and you, I miss our things and our talks and our bodies and nights and fun and you. I hope I don't get left as a product of my leaving. I'm just taking a temporary hiatus in order to pursue one of my great dreams; my wish is that there are no permanent rifts because of this. Note it! And I'm sorry. All I know is, all I know is that I love you, yes, I love you. You fill my half empty cup.

I want to feel like this, carefree, happy and light, sure both in my choice, and in my people at home. Things are going to be okay. Nothing that bad will happen.


Instead, I feel alone, waving goodbye to a home that I'm leaving, and which might soon leave me too in pursuit of its own great dreams.


So I must wave goodbye, wave goodbye, wave goodbye, wave goodbye. Manhattan Skyline, by Kings of Convenience.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Herb Veg & Queso Flatbread


Trader Joe's garlic and herb pizza dough is simply amazing. It's super easy to work with, tasty, and a lot of fun to experiment with different pizza, flatbread, and breadstick variations.

We roll our flatbread out thin so it bakes up crispy. There's a considerable amount of oil required, but very little cheese, so it balances out the richness. Depending on the fresh ingredients we have, we make a lot of different varieties; this one happened to stress dried herbs because we were out of basil.

We used bell pepper, black olive, 4 different kinds of cheese, fresh garlic and dried herbs.

Ingredients:

--TJ's garlic and herb pizza dough (1/4 per flatbread - 1/2 per recipe)
--4-6 tbsp. olive oil
--2 tsp. each thyme, oregano, and marjoram
--1/4 - 1/2 c. each chopped yellow and orange bell pepper
--1/4 c. sliced banana peppers (they give it just the slightest kick)
--10 black olives, sliced
--4 cloves garlic, chopped or diced (1/2 per flatbread)
--1/2 c. flour (for rolling the dough)
--cheese (we used a little of each: goat, provolone, swiss, and cheddar)

*if you have it, fresh basil does wonders
**sliced cherry tomatoes taste great too


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. With floured or oiled hands, divide the dough ball in half; refrigerate one half and roll the other half out with a rolling pin on a floured surface. For crisp perfection, roll it until it's about 1/8 inch thick (it's totally fine if it's thicker, it'll just be more like thin crust pizza than flatbread). Cut this rolled-out dough in half, placing each on an oiled cookie sheet or baking pan.

Next, drip 2-3 tbsp. of olive oil on each crust and spread with your fingers or a spoon. Sprinkle some herbs on the oil, leaving the rest to put on top of the cheese. Spread half of the chopped garlic, bell pepper, and olives on each crust. Lay cheese, grated or sliced, on top of the veggies. Sprinkle the remainder of the herbs on top of the cheese.

Bake for 8-12 mins. Watch them closely - they crisp up around the edges really fast. They come out perfectly imperfect, delicious and different every time.

flux

It comes in waves. I have so much to say and then so little. I think everything is perfectly beautiful, and then I can hardly look at a flower or happy couple or our dog without getting angry. I think everything has worked itself out, and then a situation blows up. Do we ever have anything figured out? Is everything always just in flux?

I'm wondering today about whether I should make a separate, but related and linked, travel blog for my time in Thailand. I originally started this blog solely for that purpose, but in just a week or two it has morphed into a (rather public) journal of sorts. Clearly there are many things I don't say here that I might say in a more private forum, but writing on here has helped me work out some things that otherwise might have remained nascent in my mind, but which I might not want everyone who would be interested in the travel portion reading and knowing about me. I'm normally a fiercely private person, and this blog, as much as I adore it in certain ways as ones does their own creation, makes me feel exposed too. More exposed than I'm comfortable with, and definitely more exposed than I am on a day-to-day basis, even with those close to me. So I'm thinking about it. I think it would make the travel bit more accessible; people wouldn't need to wade through my random analyses and thoughts about whatever life topic I was obsessed with that day in order to see my pictures and read about the chronology of my time and travels in Southeast Asia.

A friend told me yesterday that when he has children, he won't allow them to watch TV but instead will make them play outside, learn the violin, read and talk and craft. As I've gotten older, I've realized that almost nothing in life lends itself to such a black-and-white, good-and-evil analysis; practically everything worth analyzing is nuanced and complex and ranges, from person to person, from day to day, from situation to situation. It got me thinking, though, about the relative worth of TV in my life, because I don't think it's all nonsense, or useless, or destructive. Certainly I wouldn't be the same person without all those years spent watching the Simpsons, and I can name at least two friendships in which our individual love for that show formed the foundation of our union. But aside from that, TV informs some aspect of our understanding of social dynamics, how people treat each other, how those different from us live, our roles in this society and in the world. Are these all susceptible to stereotyping and misinformation and hyperbole? Of course. My point isn't that TV is perfect, or even essential; just that, taking it with a grain of salt, I think that in moderation it can be beneficial. Kids should still be playing outside, of course; kids should be encouraged to read books and play instruments and learn to cook and sew and hammer and garden - basic life skills. But TV has taught me things; yes, it's biased. Yes, it's limited and doesn't do it all - nor should it. Reading the news doesn't either, though. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Progressive, Slate.com, the New Republic - all these sources are biased and limited. I believe TV should be one element - albeit a circumscribed one - of our lives and of children's lives. The problems really foment when TV is abused and used to babysit, or to substitute for a social life, or to be our sole source of news and media. I've learned many important things from TV that stick with me to this day, months or years after I first watched them, not the least of which included Kiva, the microloan program helping people in developing countries, who otherwise wouldn't be able to secure loans, start their own businesses; the One Laptop Per Child program, providing a better education to children in impoverished nations; or any of the super interesting stories around the globe on WHYY's World Focus series. Oh how wonderfully my life changed when I first saw the Jon Stewart show! And then again when Colbert launched his Report. What end is achieved by sheltering kids from this hilarious and valuable aspect of our culture?

In a sense, the value of television is a lesson in moderation. Too much of a good thing can be many different things: wonderful, according to Mae West; stifling, drowning, overwhelming; or just right. More than any one of those answers, I think it just depends. On what it is, on where you are, on who or what is giving it. Every good thing has an edge; nearly every bad thing seems to have a silver lining. Perhaps it all comes down to a matter of perspective.

Which reminds me of a lesson I learned today about perspective. Often I ride one of five or six elevators up to the 8th floor of a large 20-story building. Normally I take one of the middle ones, or if not, one left of the middle as you face them. Today, though, I rode in the one furthest to the right, and as the doors opened onto the hallway, I thought it was the wrong floor! I was so convinced I stepped back into the elevator to check which number was illuminated. It was 8, but it took me about 5 seconds of looking around to recognize it as the correct floor. I almost missed it because I had become so set in my viewpoint, my angle, my reference point that my brain literally couldn't acknowledge that, simply because I wasn't familiar with it, wasn't indicative of its wrongness. But, if something so minute and trivial can trip me up, will I be able to discern the situations in which the only thing real problem is my perspective? What if that is the source of most of the pain and suffering in life, in general? Our inability to accept and diverge from what's expected and familiar and previously vouched for. What's strange about that to me though is that we do it over and over in the course of our lives: we try something new, we take a leap, we challenge ourselves, only to find a new happy medium from which we then retreat into fear of the unknown again! Why do we never seem to learn, and internalize, that the unfamiliar isn't necessarily something to dread; that perhaps what's more frightening is the atrophying of our minds and hearts that results from staying the same, only confronting the habitual? I think on some level that is the case, and it's certainly more true in some situations than others. Perhaps, then, because the more minor trifles, the less serious snafus, are less apt to ruffle us, when a significant one comes, it appears smaller because our threshold is emptier; it hasn't been collecting slights all day, and this new perspective is able to transform such petty indignities into barely memorable affronts that are unable to stick to us.

I'm going to try to try this. This new lense, this different angle. We'll see how practicable it is when life gets stuck in my hair like gum, and I've just run out of peanut butter.

And to my babe, "giant proclamations are all very well, but our love is louder than words" - Sunday, by Bloc Party. I love you in the morning.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

i'm trying


Trying to step back. Trying to get some perspective. Trying not to jump to conclusions. I'm trying to act from a place outside of my feelings, outside the emotions that are telling me to feel a certain way, a way that is not appropriate or deserved. I'm trying to trace back the steps of my assumptions, my leaps and emotional linkages and triggers.

Because I shouldn't feel this way. Or at least if I have to, if I'm stuck here for the time being, feeling uncomfortable and unsettled and disconnected, I can at least hover somewhere above the uncomfortableness in relative peace, knowing that a storm is brewing down below, my emotions all entangled and thorny and swollen.

Perhaps that's just it; was my ego bruised? I started out at a deficit from the moment I woke up, arising from a startling dream that was interrupted by the alarm. In it was an old friend, a person who is not longer a 'friend,' a person who, on multiple levels in our mutual past, betrayed me. She was so vivid, she was so real; I felt violated. She was there, we were talking and I was telling her how I felt, why she was wrong and how she had hurt me. Before she could respond we were split open by the incessant dinging of my alarm, and she vanished, forever emblazened in my memory as just another person who, yet again, will never be held accountable. As far as my subconscious knows, I'm permanently vulnerable, forever standing in front of her, wishing for consolation. Needing her to acknowledge my pain. Needing her to pick me over them.

Why do I need her, though? What is it about my last memories of her that compel me to seek and desire her acceptance, even now? For various reasons I shall not explicate here, I cannot contact her; it would be dangerous, it would be threatening and terrifying. But she (as a metaphor for many) is holding hostage such an important and instrumental part of my mind, a part that gets accessed and sparked daily as a result of my current friendships. She needs to be uprooted.

In summation, I'm trying to step back. Release and breathe. It's so much harder to do than it should be. I'm trying to remember that my thoughts and my feelings aren't necessarily reality; that I don't have to succumb to them if I don't want to. I'm trying to be mindful about it.

I'm not a religious person, and generally I'm okay with that. Sometimes, though, I find myself wanting something. I want a community, I want to believe in something bigger than me, I want to make self-improvements guided by some larger philosophy that is logical, and plausible, and which doesn't denigrate me or anyone else in the process. A practice that doesn't influence political groups; a practice that truly and inherently advocates for peace and unity, and doesn't just preach it and then spend its efforts causing strife and hostility.

I had a practice for a while, a certain Buddhist group. It just never quite struck me, I could never allow myself to
siiiink
into it,
the way everyone else seemed to. The way I was expected to. There was always an edge, there was always a cognizable air of superiority, indoctrination, and prosthelytization that warned me against fully submitting to its teachings. On its face it was practically perfect, based on my parameters and desires for a spiritual practice. It spoke repeatedly about the value of world peace, about a culture and a world of collaboration and determination and working through personal and shared struggles. It seemed to stress egalitarianism, community, study and mutual appreciation between leader and follower. I kept getting stuck though, on why there was a living leader at all? Isn't that why I navigated away from Christianity, these fellow humans relegating themselves to be above everyone else, one step (or a quite a few) closer to god than I? My question was always, how does he (because aren't they, 99% of the time, male?) know any better than me what god wants? Why do I need to worship through someone else, another regular person (because under the garb and ritual and incense and self-aggrandizement, that's what they are) to get to god? So it lost me. It's not my truth, and it was never a positive force in my life.

I shed it, I denounced it and I went floating down the streams of agnosticism, philosophy, atheism, and my own belief system, a collection of observations and conclusions about human behavior, hopes about humanity and about what any sort of god would be like. And, if I never find another suitable practice, I'll be okay with that. But because I feel like I want something there, something more than there is, and because I haven't exhausted the possibilities, I think I'll go searching. I'm hoping my summer in Thailand will inform this part of my life, will expose me to otherwise unknown and unknowable practices, will teach me whatever lesson(s) it is I'm yearning for, whatever I've yet to figure out, and will be positive. And will help me be positive. Because, ultimately, isn't that why we all, on some fundamental level, ascribe to a certain religion? Isn't that what each deity sought to convey - that this way, that this practice, is the right one, the one that lifts you up to sainthood by encouraging best human practices? I'm not sure; perhaps many would disagree with this analysis, but I think that's what its ultimate purpose should be.

So I'm searching. Yearning maybe, a little. I feel like my heart is opening up in anticipation of my upcoming experience, my three month hiatus from the life I've built here. It's trying to be positive, trying not to focus on what I'm leaving, but on what I'll be gaining and on making it as good as possible. See, my fear of being stagnant and resigned to my place compelled me to take this leap, this risk and adventure, and I'm doing my best to embrace it and keep my mind on the positive, rather than ruin what hasn't even begun by letting the sadness and fear shade and color what I hope will be one of the most important and memorable experiences of my life. What will open doors for me and my sweet, in our careers and our lives, what will create a new baseline in my life about what's normal, what's acceptable, and what ultimately will make me happy. Feeling conflicted is the worst; I'm trying to head-off the bad and revel in the wonderful.

Because it's just so apropos: Lives, by Modest Mouse, recently touted as one of six songs that best embody our humanness.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

stuck in the good


It surprises me.

People do good things. They give you a boost. They act unselfishly. They smile as they pass you on the street. They do you favors and they keep your secrets.

At this point in my life, in the midst of trying to establish my embryonic career and falling back sometimes, feeling overcome by hopelessness, the best it gets is being respected. As a professional; as a professional woman. Not a girl (I'm wearing a suit, dammit!) and not just a student (almost 2/3 of the way through law school) but as an equal. An adult. Because before law school, no one had ever treated me like an adult; and to be fair, I didn't really consider myself one. I never wanted to be. Paying rent sucks; being responsible, planning and cleaning and signing up for electricity made me feel like I was doomed for a life of suburbia, a philandering husband and a boring office job, kids I didn't want, a mortgage ball and chain I'd spend the next 30 years unhappily paying off when I'd rather be funding a travel account. That's not me; that has never been me. If I have anything to do with it, it will never be me.

IT'S NOT ME!

And some of the most difficult, painful, and darkest times have been the fruit of my efforts to try to be a certain somebody, to fit into a role I thought I wanted, to be a source of pride to my parents or to be better than I used to be. To rise above the ghosts of my naysayers, the ones who spent our youth belittling me and sucking the vibrance from my life. I spent almost ten years trying to 'show them' I was someone not to be meddled with. I wasn't who they thought I was. I didn't deserve their ostracization, their collective poison. Eventually I emerged; I don't know exactly why. I couldn't tell a teenager in a similar position how to do it, how to believe against all evidence and depression and after all remnants of hope and desire have abandoned you, how to keep going. You just have to. Luckily, I did. I extricated myself from the various situations (friends, boyfriends) I'd recreated out of the model of my tormented past, and I left it. I left them. I escaped. I was so badly burned, I had worked so hard to release myself of its and their grip on me, those memories, the trauma and the faces and the degrading comments that clung to, tainted, every.fucking.thing.I.did. since I was 15. In the way that a marshmallow, if you alight it and let it burn until the outside is pure charcoal, will uncloak so easily, leaving just the ooey, gooey, yummy middle that spreads and sticks and melts the s'more chocolate to perfection.


The self that I knew when I was 15 years old, the person that I was, my inclinations and habits and lenses, were charred so completely, all I had to do was, slowly and carefully, shed the skin, erase the scars of then, to reveal this butterfly-like being.

Yes, I'm fragile sometimes. For some things, I hope I always will be (I'm sensitive). Being vulnerable allows you to be closer to other humans; it strips away some barriers and boundaries and gets rid of motes and Great Walls and booby traps. Once in a while, it'll be a mistake. By definition, when we are more open to the good, we are more open to be wounded, too.

I lost where I was going. I made a misstep. I didn't think I would talk about it here.

In any case, I'm trying to be good. Good at what I do; good to my friends and family; good to strangers and waitresses and maintenance people. Good to the mailman. Good to the checkers at the grocery store. And it's okay to make declarations like those when it's unseasonably warm and millions of pink petals are blowing in the city's corridors and you've gotten a pat on the back for your work. It worked out today. Sometimes life goes our way for a bit. Sometimes things go better than expected, sometimes people treat us better than we deserve, sometimes we get on a good karma roll that seems to have come from nowhere.

I had this person once, he was mine for a long time, and he would always tell me, somewhat annoyed at my usurpation, not to use other people's quotes to convey something to him. Like from songs or poems, I would use others' words to say what I wanted to say to him. I never understood, I still don't really, why he hated this practice with such ferocity. My counter-argument was always, if they say it as good or better than I ever could, why wouldn't I use their language? Some of my most utilized appropriations come from E.E. Cummings, others from song lyrics or books, a good number from the Simpsons. Because there is not, within this universe or cosmos or lifetime, any way that I could say these sentiments better. Any attempt would lack the layers and layers of meaning, enigmatic significance, and pure emotion that belies their configurations of words, but which is conspicuously absent from mine. Even Bloc Party used Cummings' "i carry your heart with me" as the chorus of 'Ion Square', and they make their living being creative! My sweet words are cliched, they're trite and they're thin and wrinkly and have the consistency of a dried leaf that crumbles with touch. Even some of the most famous and influential musicians cover others' music - Johnny Cash covering NIN's 'Hurt'; Elliott Smith's various Beatles covers; Ben Harper's cover of Marvin Gaye; Eddie Vedder playing Neil Young - so I see it as nothing more than reverence for those who do it better. I don't agree that it takes away from the overall message if I use someone else's words. If I'm saying them as if they came from me, in the exact same way I would had I authored them, aren't they just as meaningful?

As far as I'm concerned, in many different contexts, there's no need to reinvent the wheel, especially when you're first starting out. Learn what you can from those who did it before you, ingest their collective knowledge and the fruits of their research and mistakes, and build off of that. There's no shame in not starting from the bottom if you don't have to; it doesn't detract from the legitimacy of where you are or what you've done (as long as there is no cheating, plagiarizing, taking credit for others' work, or other ethically questionable actions involved).

That seems to be all for the day.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

where did it go?


It's raining today. It's dreary and hard to smile and stay awake.

I've been thinking lately about the value of writing down your life, documenting it, in pictures, and words, and oral volumes told to friends or family or strangers even. Strangers, in the right context, will listen to much more than your partner or your biff or your mom. Those people tire of our point of view, our memories, our analysis and recitations of what happened today. Which, admittedly, can be boring. Do we have to ask each other the requisite, "How was your day?" upon seeing or talking to each other for the first time? Many times I ask knowing I don't much care to hear the answer, unless something out of the ordinary happened, and I'm sure most people don't either. That's not really what we're getting at I think, when we say it; "what's up," or "how's it going," is really more like a universal "hello," and rather than requiring a response appropriate for the question, it's more of an acknowledgment of the other person. Which makes me feel better about not being especially interested in hearing that nothing of consequence happened at your work today. Maybe, though, this ritual is important; not so much for the asker, but for the one being asked. Kind of a "namaste" to their lives, their beings and existences, outside the context of us, and the action of extending our time and effort to (at least pretend to) listen to their voices, to them. It, less than the literal meaning of what we're saying, conveys the message that they are important enough, they are real enough to us, and thus we are interested in making their life part of ours for the short time it takes to hear about their day, or how they're doing, or what the fuck is new.


Multiple times today I've been reminded of something that happened in the past, a memory I've forgotten, an image or an experience that is not at the fore when I recall that time. Which is bizarre. Things that occurred within the last year, many of them, seem gone. Outside the reach of my mind. And I wonder, warily, what about everything I felt and smelled and saw and did and laughed at more than a year ago? Where is all that? Particularly in the context of traveling, which seems to take up more space in my brain and my life as the day quickly approaches when I will depart from my city and my loves, people's names (I can always remember faces), names of small towns, dates and places I went, things I did, even big things, I can't remember! I feel lost, I feel without context, I feel like I'm floating on an ocean with no land or physicality at all within sight. Gone. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing with which to give today, or then, or this person, any meaning. Which must be somewhat similar to what Alzheimer's does - it destroys the short term memory so that the present becomes an island from our past, so that our brains can't put current information into the complex network of triggers and memories and boxes and thus it just floats around, lost. Alone. Void of meaning. Without a hook to reclaim it, if possible.

And though I do not have Alzheimer's, it seems like I'm already, at the relatively dapper age of 24, missing large chunks of my past, as recorded in memories. Which is why I'm appreciating the points in my life when I've been a journaler (as opposed to keeping diaries) because I have a record, a real, hard, incontrovertible record, of what happened. Of what I did, and most importantly, what I felt when I was doing it. If you ever want a gauge of how much you've matured and grown as a person, or, I suppose, withered and wilted and immatured, read something you wrote about your life/feelings/relationships a year or two, five or ten, or decades ago, and notice how your analyses have changed, how ridiculous you sound, how you can't imagine that you ever took yourself seriously. For real? I thought that? Some things I've written are so, hmmm, little girl who thinks she's grown up, I'm almost even embarrassed to reread for fear that, because these words exist as discoverable matter, someone, at some point, might read them. I think I might explode if that happened. I wouldn't even need to know foreign eyes were perusing my journals; the force of the invasion and attendant embarrassment would be so strong it would reach me wherever I was, and my body would burst into pieces.

I'm reaching. Yesterday and the day before I physically couldn't stop writing to you, my beloved blog. Today, I all I want to do is shrug and nap.

Last night I picked up my guitar, my beautiful man was playing when I came home and ooohhhhh how I could
listen
to
that
for
years.

But at the same time I was anxious, it was heavy, because IknowIshouldbepracticingbutIhaventinsolongandnowIvelostitIllneverbeabletoplayagain. Phewww, breathe, breathe, breathe. It was a set up for failure, this reunion between me and her (my guitar), I put too much pressure on her and me and my recollection of how good I was before the hiatus, and as I put her neck in my hands and tried to hold C and strum, it felt foreign. It wasn't right. I lost it. What will happen this summer, when three months will separate my fingers (and my hard-earned callouses) and hands and arms and upper thighs from cradling the guitar, from moving with her to create glorious sound, the elixir of my life: music. Three months! It's been three weeks and already there is emotional separation between me and her, so much so that playing feels like a violation. What will I come home to? Will she be happy to have me? Am I enough for her? Perhaps she's given up on her musician and would rather be pawned, would rather live with - sing for - someone else. Or maybe I was sitting awkwardly and need to say hello to her again tonight.

I started teaching myself last June (2009), although I've had her since, ooooh, my 21st birthday (2006). I overcame an ocean of frustration with her, all the normal beginner complaints: sore fingers; inability to reach certain chords; switching chords too slowly; bar chords and power chords, ugh. I recently mastered F, but my fingers spend their time resisting B minor like dogs resist baths. B itself is an entirely different dilemma. I always ask my person, "how do your fingers do that? See! See! Mine don't reach that far! I'll never be able to play this chord. I suck I suck I suck," and he says, "no, that's just not true. I've given up before too when I got frustrated. I didn't start out knowing how to do this; it takes time and it takes practice. You just have to practice." And then, the best part: "you sound amazing. You're improving so much babe. You've learned so fast." And then I pick her up again and begin all over. The basics. My pride and joy, the F chord that sounds like it's supposed to sound. Maybe even hammering on and off the B string, if I'm feeling frisky. It's slow and fast, it's unpredictable, it's like sprinting, jogging, and walking, but you go in blind, not knowing at what pace you'll be moving when you play. Sometimes I begin and, feeling similar to the way I often do about my writing, I wonder when, and how, I got good at this one thing. Other times I wonder whether all my pride is earned, whether my memory has a glitch in it, as I stumble clumsily through my warm-up songs glad no one can hear but me.

This is the song that got me over the hump with F; it's soooooo wonderful I couldn't stop listening, I was addicted. I looked it up, happily realizing I could play (almost) all of the chords. I didn't stop practicing until I could (I was sprinting!): Forgive me by Missy Higgins.

Monday, April 12, 2010

today I'm Czech

This is my city of late:


Love Park in bloom! Tulips and daffodils and pink trees, baby lupine even? I don't know what those purple things are. It's sad, these pictures from my phone simply don't capture even a fraction of the beauty of this day and those flowers and colors and the strange juxtaposition of nature and human development.


I think I sound smarter in my writing than I actually am. It's weird, often I'll write something, something random, part of an assignment, or an email, thinking it's just terrible, absolutely atrocious and unreadable, and then I'll wait a bit, go back in that mindset to re-read, and find that it sounds as if the words I know to be mine came from someone else. My reaction is always, I don't think those things, I didn't know I was capable of thinking those things, where did this come from? And especially in the context of trying to sound lawyerly, as I often do in emails for my internship, after some time away I read it over and think, wtf? Where did that come from? Did I...me?! really compose that? In a good way! But if put on the spot, or forced to write something that was immediately worthwhile, I could never do it. I feel like writing is more like a game of yahtzee: you shake it up and roll the dice, never knowing what's going to come out on the board. Often the roll starts out looking good, only to end up being unremarkable; likewise, right before the dice settle, they can make one last turn and come out absolutely stellar.

Ultimately, it might all be a matter of perspective, like when you go into something assuming it's going to be super great or fun or totally boring and terrible, and it ends up being the opposite. It's almost inevitable that when you look forward to something, an event or a certain date or a trip, and you build it up with all the attendant excitement and anticipation, it's difficult for it to actually end up, or more accurately, for you to remember it, as fun or exciting or memorable as you thought it would be. The opposite is also true; if your expectations are small, or generally negative, about something, a person, a visit, a party, then almost anything beyond a low threshold our brains will remember as so much better than, maybe, it actually was. And, in a sense, isn't that what matters? It's less important exactly how we felt, or the time we had, doing something, and so much more meaningful how we remember that time we had. I suppose it's similar to being in love, when all your initial interactions and feelings and thoughts are cloaked in rosiness and congeniality, when in reality during that time you were in constant agony about how he was feeling, or what a brief touch meant, or why it always takes him so damn long to text back! My friends and I always remind each other about law school: "Let us never think back on this time as something fun! This is absolute misery." But I think we probably will remember it fondly. Not because we're actually having fun, or enjoying ourselves, but because, for some reason when hard times get more distant, they take on that taint of that rosiness themselves. It's strange; perhaps a coping mechanism for our brains not to become overridden and sluggish with grief and annoyance and just the sheer mundane of day to day living.

I wonder often why we don't pursue the things in life we know, for sure, beyond a doubt, will make us happy. Why instead do we give our time to the TV, the internet, movies and driving and shopping, instead of sitting in a coffee shop with friends; laying outside in the sun and the air and the green, reading a favorite novel; playing an instrument of choice, or learning to do it; teaching ourselves to cook or speak Thai or knit or grow things. A friend recently posted on his facebook page that he spent all Sunday (the holy day of law student study-cramming) practicing bass, his instrument, which he hadn't done in a very long time, and which he missed but wouldn't let himself do because of the pressingnatureofeverythingelse. I can't forget his comment about it either; he said, don't neglect your loves. Don't neglect your loves! Simple, simple, simple.

It's easy to make excuses not to take care of ourselves; it might be a case of not knowing what your needs are. My biff is going through the rather painstaking process of learning how to take care of herself, and she says to me, "I don't know what my needs are. What do I need? How can I care for myself and attend to my needs when I have no idea, literally not the slightest inclination, what that means?" We have to start small I think; that's what I try to do. Identify the basics. Healthy food, tea, good company. Check. Ability to access free music. Check (youtube is one of my great new loves, it is serving as my comprehensive jukebox, so much so that I hate when I have to be away from my computer because my ipod doesn't have any of my current songs on it!). Some, even attenuated and simple, inkling of what you might want to be, or do, when you grow up (refer back to fake-Vonnegut speech) (to give you any indication of how basic I mean, mine is "I want to help people, not rich people, who can't help themselves for whatever reason. Preferably abroad.") (which reminds me of Michael Pollan's advice to Americans on modifying our repulsive food habits: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.) Aaaaahhhh my brain and its incessant connections. (My guy's response to his first reading of this blog is: "I like when you ramble." Which, to me, says: "The whole thing is a digression.") And, while amusing and therapeutic for me, is very likely perturbing and difficult for you dear reader! (of which there are the two - the two I bribed by telling them they made guest appearances. Which was true, they did. I'm no liar, just an embellisher. And in all honesty, isn't that better than being an omitter?)

So, ok back to it, the basics. Goals, I like having goals; or, rather, dreams, because they're certainly less plausible than my goals generally are. I guess I have two categories, maybe more, of future plans. The more grounded, doable, and believable goals; and the more exciting, inspiring, bigger and grander but more difficult dreams. And that is number four.

To recap, which is necessary based on that hairy paragraph, the basics are:

(1) good food, tea, good company
(2) free music, the food of the soul
(3) some sort of life direction
(4) (a) goals, and (b) dreams

Plus a few more:

(5) friends that are family
(6) a hobby, or nine (an instrument, gardening, crafts, reading, painting, exploring, writing, etc.etc.etc.)
(7) an open mind

And if you pick up a few along the way, all the more rich and meaningful your life. I realize I've lost track of my point with all this list-making, but my basic point is that these are things that serve as guideposts when one seeks to take care of herself. These are like sunlight and water to a plant - you nurture yourself with healthy food and drink, good friends, and doing something you love love or care deeply about. Try to have something you are working toward, so that you are never stagnant or more lost than necessary. Of course, love of my heart/life/soul, some sort of mother to us all, according to me, we must have music. Life would be empty without music. (On a side note, I recently read a quote that said "music is what feelings sound like,” which I realize now that I’m saying it out loud to the webosphere, is maybe trifling, but sometimes, when I hear a song I love [and by love I mean, makes my heart grow and pump and smile] it makes sense [try it!]) and there is no greater truth. No greater truth. All you need is love, if you have a broad definition of love, and love is music/music is love. It's food and water. It's the sun and the moon and the oceans and the trees and the sea anemones. Lastly, my belief is that if you approach life with an open mind, as open as you can stand, and try not to attach to things, try not to attach meaning that's not there to people and happenings and accidents and frustrations, there will be less hardship. It will be easier.

Anyway, in reference to both being Czech and letting my writing represent to others that I am more intelligent and know more stuff than I actually do, tonight I will present an international, multilateral treaty that I wrote as an authorized representative of the Czech Republic, on saving a forest. And goddamn, I sound pretty good. But if I had to write it again, I guarantee it would be nowhere as good or professional-sounding as it is. Perhaps I've hit my peak. I think it was likely just a lucky yahtzee roll. Which leaves me wondering: isn't it all?

Also, WHAT THE FUCK, this song is so delicious. I know it's already been a song of the day, but, as is my tendency when I hear a song of this caliber, I just become consumed with it; thus, I'm still listening to What You Want by John Butler Trio. It reminds me of my upcoming time away from my love, and what I'll do to get through it.