Beginnings

A newfound interest in Massechussets.

I felt an earthquake, ate at the Purple Pig - whose tag line is cheese swine and wine- saw the Yankee hotel foxtrot towers, drank yuengling, drove through 5 states, paid numerous tolls, stopped for gas four times, consumed one ice cream cone, applied for four jobs, had one job offer i didnt apply for, and drank more coffee than I'd like to admit.

And that's just the beginning.

She's waiting, for me to smile, she's waiting...

Explicable joy. [written Tuesday]

This has been the best summer ever - and I lead a terribly charmed life.

The weekend was unreal, as in entirely epic, too beautiful for actual words, too incredible to say nothing about. I ran through the pouring rain amid soaked, light reflecting streets, took chances, was so (in)explicably happy, made countless unspoken knowing glances, smiled, didn't overact, had an understanding in my head - in my heart - that everything is going to change and this is the present moment and it is changing while we're in it.

We floated down the river, skipped stones and watched them slip away. Passages of time stood still on birthday island. In one particular, you walked towards me after juggling 4 rocks and we stayed still and smiled. I could hear the sound of the current but there was no motion. You hugged me and it was almost as if both of us knew that nothing at this moment would be as good. I kissed your shoulder and turned to release another stone into the river bend.

He puckers his lips in moments of contemplation, but cannot hold very long - succumbs - and let's out the best smile.  His eyes drift into the distance like mine, and the silences are golden. [I am going to miss him]

Today can only be one thing, and that is great.

I'm sorry.

Minneapolis

One month is not a lot of time.

If I didn't sleep much before, I fear I will sleep even less now. There is so much ground to cover in thirty days.

Without the cat and boyfriend of course - If I didn't know any better, I would say my life resembles The Future. A heightened sense of urgency to let life live. To make something. To do something. To make it all worth while.

It's like I'm tearing off paper rings on a construction paper chain, excited yet not wanting to at the end of each day. That whole bitter-sweet thing really rings true for once.

So many bird references

Its time you spread your wings and fly, little birdy

Learning to fly, one wing, flightless bird. There's a black crow sitting across from me, his wiry legs are crossed he is dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss...

Infiltrating every cavern.

This reoccurring image is apropos, albeit overused. In so many ways I am full of motion, without steady ground, migratory, moving. I am feeling transient.

Before this actually happened I thought it would make me feel crazier, I thought it would be more of a hard adjustment. Perhaps this is the fight or flight reaction of my body, more of an acceptance, knowing that really there is only one way to handle it, and it's up.

Motion

Moving feels something like a death. You want to see them again, be there, but you know that no matter how much you try, you cannot recreate it, that you just have to accept that This is now, this is the future and you just have to move forward.

Closing, opening

I overslept the last night in my bed, paid off my credit card, and am moving back home.

Feelings of adolescent, adult, child.

Moving around. And around

Almost positive I could currently sleep standing up (or sitting down).

The Future

She made my heart soar with hope.

I want the ability to stop time with my brain, push the ocean back into motion with the movement of my arms, with the power of will, and the guidance of the moon.

excitable.

Today is going to be a good day. This went through my head as I locked my front door this morning.

So far today has been a peach day. Today is a peach.

Without realizing it, I had peach yogurt for breakfast, and purchased peach iced tea over break.

Today is indeed a peach.

...
TANGENT TIME
It should be noted that I just wrote one of the most embarrassing e-mails of my life. And I have written hundreds of self-exposing, ridiculous ones in the past. And this time, I wasn't even drunk. Come to think of it, even saying the reason I wrote the e-mail is a bit shameful. Ready? To (essentially) beg (my ex-boyfriend's) [a] blog to give me tickets for a show Sunday night. I'm not entirely sure what is the worst part of this equation. Is it the fact that I cannot afford to fork over $20 to see a band I have loved for over a decade? The fact that I just spent a half hour carefully crafting an essay about just how much I adore a particular record by this band? Or that I just spelled out and e-mailed a fact that my ex-boyfriend already knows, and still abided by the formality of entering for this contest?

Shit is getting real.

In penning that exposing email I realized how coincidental my life is. Certain songs they get so scratched in to our souls.

And then they come back around, like clockwork, and reappear from other sources. I still cannot believe that song is one of your favorites. It entirely makes sense, sure, because it is apropos and sums up the story of your life, but I am not quite sure if you realize it, and if you do, I don't think you should...

[come tomorrow i'll be on my way back home/in the morning call from a roadside telephone / one night doesn't mean the rest of my life...last night everything was right and the rain was gone / one summer night's the only time we've known, so shut your eyes, when you wake up I'll be gone]

And thinking about this band/writing about this band has turned me into a fifteen year old again in 3...2...1...
...

ANYHOW

Today I am a peach. I am so terribly excited to see THE FUTURE tonight. It has been far too long since I have been to the Walker, let alone been this thrilled about an event. Hopefully something entirely strange happens. There is no doubt in my mind it will - nearly every time, every day spent there brought forth something unexpected. Miranda July, give me all you got.

Lucid Dreaming

Notes on Current Existence [Home]

At what point do you know if yogurt is bad? I'm fairly certain that mine has gone sour - but I ate a few spoonfuls for breakfast anyhow. Does it make the pro-biotics more pro-biotic?
...
You were in my dream last night. It has been weeks since I thought about you, really thought about you in a tangible sense, and you sat in the front seat of my car. Took me places and it was as if no space existed between us, we have been together all along.

When I woke up this morning, a wash of satisfaction engrossed me. I could have laid there forever. Mere moments of us sitting together, in my car, in my dream, us walking places, making plans, the initial hello. It was, we were, incredible. And I want that in the here, now. Let us see what August brings, I suppose.

[I wish I could photo document my dreams, if only for this feeling and this moment. It is three-twenty pm and my visions are already fading.]
...
Taking walks rather than sitting at my desk has become my new thing over lunch break. Today I walked around the Abbott campus. I passed the boy on the Bianchi. First he sat eating lunch outside of Manny's and second when he rode back to Abbott. Maybe he knows I have lunch at 12:30 every day, or maybe he too has his break then and wonders the same for me. Maybe people pass us and think, They actually know each other, because of the way we make eye contact. In our timid glance exchanges, I look for a ring every time, it's like this gun-shy twitch I have developed. Perhaps I have been single too long and assume that all the good ones are hitched. He's still not married.

I walk around the parking garage - the only other constant in my route - and hear a jazz band clearly playing outside. This alters the course of my trek. On 10th just past Anderson School, I loop up to the back entrance of the hospital. Bianchi boy passes me and I am pretty sure I blush. My badge is in my bag and I don't want him to think I follow him. Strategic routes. Would wearing my badge make him not think I'm following him? Maybe it is worse if he knows where I work, like I can see and know everything about him. I slow my pace slightly, until I can barely see him enter the doors. Not creepy. Crossing the street a man yells, Hi Gorgeous, and I don't turn to see who it is.

The band plays in the courtyard, just past the bronze statue of the family playing. I think they are naked but I cannot recall. It's been years since I've looked at the statue, like really looked. Something about it conjures up anxiety of being fourteen again, of hearts and scars, and sometimes, you just don't want to think about that anymore.

The woman who wears headphones in the break room and mumbles inaudible sentences does yoga in the park next to the band as I pass. Her hair is fried golden on the edges with two inches clean growth on the top. I wonder what she listens to. She stands under a tree and doesn't mumble when she moves.

Allston, Brookline, Minnesota; Home

Missions accomplished on so many levels.

Boston was more than I could have asked for - everything went off without a hitch, timing was everything, and I did not stop moving. After bar in a realty office listening to the Velvet Underground, a walk in the dark, rides up and down the green line, buses and stations, piers, numerous cups of frozen yogurt. And then I walked past a place that felt like home.

Yesterday was spent fulfilling my statement of Best Summer Ever. Breakfast with Erika and Justin at the ever gluttonous yet nevertheless delish Brueggers followed by coffee, then caravaned to Lino Lakes for swimming, sunning, volleyball, beer and other memorable times. Thank you, Minnesota.

Pairs

Banana bread and earl grey tea
Sun and sunglasses
Dresses and loafers
Baking and silence
Beirut and summertime
Airplanes and mornings
Mornings and green grass

Wants verses Needs; Strange Self-Restraint

What was once my favorite day of the week, has now morphed into a day-long personal challenge - a hunger strike, a fast. What is it about depravity that makes you yearn for something that much more? (Especially when you could, quite easily, have the object in question.) Last week I made it until Thursday before reading the Weekly Review. Today my co-worker chimed in and asked When are you going to cave today? Since when did my favorite moment, bite, simple literary pleasure, become a point of restraint, verging on scandalous contraband?

The whole concept of depravity is something I am not terribly well versed in. Material goods especially.
[But recently I have been in these situations where I am keeping myself from something and I'm not sure why. It has been a long, long time. Depravity as a way of self preservation - it's a funny thing.]

Strange brain battles I have with myself. Perhaps it is my anxiety and everything will settle down when I do in September.

I Can Help You

I could hear reading, see writing forever.

It's so easy to forget how funny people are. There are all of these events, all of these thoughts we have that are not often enough shared with others. For the first time in years, literally, I attended a public reading, and damn if it didn't feel perfect and oh-so-apropos. I started to think a lot about form, about conversations, interactions, thoughts and writing...

Wouldn't it be incredible if everyone you knew wrote a self-help book based off of personal experiences? Giving backbone to the form?

Make a list of things you would include in a self help book. Then make it entirely personal, in your voice as if you were talking with a friend, having drinks and shooting the shit. Tell asinine stories of how you were kicked out of a Walmart in Iowa for drunk and disorderly conduct. Then realize this is a great lesson in Hindsight is Always 20/20, but The Present Moment is Far More Fun. Or Impaired Judgement. Or How to Live Like a Kid again. You can make up your own classifications. Be sure to weave the narrative with the present, all knowing voice of the narrator. (That's you). Give some insight and don't try to be funny. You are funnier when you don't try.

You cannot write some of the things overheard in IT cubefarm land:

"No no no, I changed your password to Hot Dog"

Smells, sensory. We were so close

The smell of toast reminds me of daycare. and of vinyl chairs sticking to the backs of my bare legs. Of seeing dust particles float through the air accented by dusk's rays shining through living room windows. And smelling my mother. Really smelling her, my face pressed into her floral scarf and long wool coat. Nothing had ever felt so good.

In the mornings my dad would burn toast. I would give the unintentional Mom does not burn the toast look and he would reply that He only got burnt toast when he was a kid. He taught me how to scrape toast over the sink in a moment of weakness or sympathy, I'm not sure which. The crumbs would get stuck to my fingertips and I wouldn't brush them off.

Toast also means pre-packaged stale bread. Grandma ate melba toasts and drank more coffee than any stomach should ever have to handle. The smell of toast and coffee, is her, is mini rainbow marshmallows when I was sick as a kid, and is a look, a feeling of Grandma Save Me and she - this stoic woman - would and still does without even knowing.

ditto, et al.

Am I in the movie Groundhogs Day?

Stress knots have formed at the base of my skull. I don't think they are ever going away.

Booked tickets to Boston last night. Aiding/adding to the stress factor. I will be on a jet plane in eight days If only I could be suspended like that
in air
forever.

This all will be worth it eventually.

It is sort of like holding your breath
and not being certain when you can come up for air