but I haven't been running

I have a habit of disappearing. But lately I feel like my fits of flight have become more productive. I guess I have better places to end up and a few more loving arms to entice me back. I remember once I was distracted and upset and I found myself sitting at a rest stop off of the highway somewhere in PA and I put my car in park and buried my head in my hands. I have moments and I have whole days of stillness--yesterday was one--and at this time, I was having a day of stillness, too. I was stony for maybe ten minutes before I heard the clear sound of a single trumpet. When I looked around I saw a man sitting in the back of a truck forty feet away with a trumpet up to his mouth. He was playing scales and arpeggios and it was a cold afternoon and he was like crystal. I've always wondered why but at the time I accepted it as necessary. I could do that again--I could run away and have my only destination be a highway rest stop and selfish, lonely trumpet sound. But I haven't been running, and even when I do run, I already have a destination before I've left, and the destination is warm, and full of light. So this afternoon I feel like I've turned over a new leaf in my career as leaver, because I was restless and I started to feel the walls tightening around me and all I wanted was to run, so I did and I mean that literally--I mean I took off at a jog and it was a while before I came back. And that was only the first part, because later I got into my car and have ended up in an empty house up on a snowy hill with a dog and a cat and a guitar and it's really ok.

I can divide my brands of love into two

If my love for you isn't because you're not me, but better, it's because you're not me, and better.

blush

I won't say awkward because it was more
... a sly sort of inevitable
sitting with my fingers tied
and rain running down in
silver arrows.

g00d tidings

My father has hotkeyed in a new 'o' for my sorry, o-less laptop and for the first time since August, I can type complete sentences without the assistance of a clipboard. I feel that this augurs good things for the rest of the day. And if that's not enough--it should be--I have a green garland draped around my neck and bright red glass earrings dangling just above.

while I patiently wait for my laundry to fold itself

I'd estimate that this (I'm gesturing around my room, around my house, around my brain) is 1/3 pure mess. Actually, it's more than that in this room. I have been for a week emptying this container and that bag and the former contents are all over the floor. Don't judge me. I'll clean tomorrow. And I do have all but the last (let's find another fraction) 1/8 of my Christmas/holiday-time birthday gifts wrapped and some are on my dining room table and some are under a tree in the parsonage. That would be firmly in the non-mess side of things. My brain, though. It's allowing my hand to feed my mouth chocolate and buttered toast at 1:00am, so it can't be trusted and certainly qualifies as a floundering mess.
I feel like I've made it past an important hurdle. Of snow? I got over (only just) the injustice of being snow-bound for most of a weekend. Also, am done with work until January. If you'd think I would be thrilled, I'm not. I'm just... this is how it goes. It will be good to have a bit of break, it will be good to come back.
Christmas is going to be a good one this year. Let's be honest, everything in the past few months has been a good one because I've got good company. Like tonight, for example. I don't know that I've ever held anyone tighter. But I also say Christmas is going to be a good one because deep down I actually am pleased at the prospect of a white Christmas, and this one will be. And because my family is unbelievable. They are so much and we're going to be adventurers together, testing out the way this holiday feels in a new house an inch or so lower on the map.

I really can't be predicted because I refuse to do anything with this blog other than what I feel right at the very moment, so I don't know if I'll post something later that says 'Merry Christmas and blessings and THANK YOU FOR READING MY SILLY AND SURPRISINGLY INCOHERENT WORDS.' If I don't actually say it, assume the sentiment is there, and that I'm just too busy cuddling and singing 4-part harmony and drinking hot chocolate to put the thought into words. Thank you. And you. And really, you.

hemmed in

This two feet of state-crippling snow is absolutely gorgeous and I hate it.

a very different buzz

I look at myself in the mirror. I'm wearing red and my eyes are wild and my hair is ruffled and dusted with snow and I think to myself: you are loved. And Loved. I sway and then catch myself on the edge of the sink--the last glass of wine is still running through my blood--and I see all these things. Favors and gifts and the right place at the right time. Shiny silver wrapping paper and Christmas cards and anticipation. Oh, I do appreciate spellcheck and I do appreciate the way the snow came up to my shins as I waded up to my back door a few minutes ago. I feel like I'm too far north, but I'm here--I'm in Virginia and I'm glad to be so and this snow, this sparkly, deep, drifting snow, is covering up everything I've been trying to forget. I need nights like these, with the blue and red and green and white lights and endless glasses of sangria and mutualism and the boy who drives in to town through the snow just to be with me, to be by my side when I need him. I mean, who am I to earn this? I'm not, and I have not, but it's mine, nonetheless--the dear, dear friend in the tall white socks and the laughter and accented voices and oranges hung on a tree. I mean: I'd be thinking all of this even without the buzzing in my head, but it's helping, in a way, to get this in place and to put it in a line. I don't mind.

a shrill buzz

My mind looks like this: DON'T BE AFRAID hibernate later letter people what do I have that's worth $10 killer ringtone will I have time before the now STOP WORRYING let's be reasonable here I'm so behind on holiday cheer I always get this timing wrong want to have the wrapping over with real ribbons I have to leave the office but I refuse to put on my glasses wish I could be in that audience again tonight I'm embarrassed to show my need the problem is fear, I'll tell you right now--it's fear and that's all-- 110 pages and the wrong resolution what the eff, self, are you thinking it would kill you to make sense hold me, you feel good MAYBE I'LL FAKE BLINDNESS I still have the stocking on top of my wardrobe I never have anything to say when does that stop being ok I'm not sure how to face another storm penit! penit! how much longer can I avoid cleaning up the mess I'm leaving I always wish I could also be somewhere else but there's nowhere else CHIN UP I get why this is a choice but I'm too timid to speak my decision craving green sheets I only have half what I had a year ago I should become as heartless as you think I am for self defense this is all way too blue and very very average I just lied about my bike MORE LINT I wish it were already next year because I'M LOSING and would rather have already lost apple pies feigning interest I still feel you on my stomach THANK GOD YOU CANNOT READ MY MIND I'm jealous--wait, plane tickets?--I'm feeling empty would like to be smothered or whispered to thumbnail thumbnail what if I miss out on the family and tomorrow am a disappointment I HAVE BEEN FEELING SO BORING.

maybe later

I've been carrying around a shopping list in my pocket all week and continually rationalizing my way out of actually doing anything to reduce it. And guess what--I think I just talked myself out of going shopping tomorrow after work, too! Because I swear, I'm going to set my alarm for the last possible minute tomorrow morning because --it's late-- and that means I probably won't even fully wake up until I'm home from work and THEN I'll take care of little details like hygiene and cat naps and THEN I'll spend all evening at a Christmas party. It's so easy.

recovery

I'm not sure I knew exactly that I had a person-shaped hole in my day until it was filled by a tall and gentle sweet-smelling man who kissed my forehead and made music and tracked dragons with me.

accident

Halfway to work this morning I turned a corner and didn't see the patch of black ice. My bike flew out from under me and into the road and I landed with an icy thud three feet away. You know how it is--you close your eyes tightly for a second and you let your body relax into the pavement. Am I whole? I'm whole. I got to my feet and pulled my bike out of the road. Checked us both over. My bike is a beast; it's not even scratched. Me, well, I may be a bit bruised, but I am certainly in tact. I sat on the curb for half a minute, catching my breath and holding my head. I finally stood and smoothed my scarf and straightened my helmet and kicked off, thinking 'I am fine, I am fine, I am fine.' I am fine. But as I picked up speed again my eyes filled with tears and I cried the rest of the way to work. Not because I'm hurt--I was just bent and muddied--but because in the space of the three minutes of falling and caution and recovery, fully four vehicles had stopped to make sure I was ok. A lady in a truck even offered to give both me and the bike a ride to wherever I was heading. So I cried, because I AM ok, and because I easily could not have been, and because early morning strangers would have been kind.

I've gotten the mud off and my head is finally clearing, but this is going to color the rest of my day--I'm going to be very young.

conspiracy

I am quite pleased by the fact that my boyfriend's car is sentient and is in truth actively conspiring to keep us together. Am also pleased by a handful of paper snowflakes and the killer combination of a gingerbread latte and gingersnap cookies.

like a big blanket of happy

My lower half is fine. The long underwear does its trick. But the top half of me hasn't fully fought off the chill of an early morning bike ride in sub-freezing air. I'm not actually complaining—I don't actually mind the challenge and the almost-too-cold fingers that revive again the minute I'm inside the warm library. I have ways of coping with the chilly arms and shoulders that lag behind.

It's been a good week. The wind-down week. The office is slipping into a half hibernation that we will maintain until the middle of next month. It empties. The stacks shrink and stay low. We upgrade and we trim and we plan ahead, a little. My breathing slows, I write long, long rows of words, speeches to myself in my free time. I try to remember where exactly I left off in the book on my windowsill that I last touched back in June. The thing about me is that I often fail to recognize patterns because I can never remember what came before. But in this case, in the case of this week and the next, I do remember. I know this is the way it always is. I know I felt just so last year at this time and will again.

I am still thinking about warm. I am feeling, aside from the outside of me, wholly so. I almost lifted out of my seat twice last night while I listened to my brother and the rest of the choir sing and once I almost did when I was playing along. I will always say yes. It fills me up. Not to mention the warmth I felt in the after, in the arms, in the ability to help, in the way the warm pink coat got me home and back and home again. I am flooded with joy when I hear news of engagements and look forward to helping, to being right there. And I can nearly choke on the affection I feel for my family, for the warm house on the hill that's becoming a home, for the odd, sacred, unplannable fellowship of four that makes me the luckiest one. They are my best quality.

I can't get this better than how it is: I am exactly where I should be.

every damn time

Yes!
I do know how to restore my sense of self when it falls apart! I have a method--I have a way of slapping me into sense. The catch is that,
No!
I refuse to let that solution kick in automatically!

I like to make myself suffer first.

But I do come around.

home

There's freezing rain against the window. I'm at my parents' house for the evening. For the night, if I feel like letting myself get iced in. I do. I'm taking the morning off work tomorrow to be there for my brother when he gets up on a stage and tells an audience what Africa was to him. So until then I am safe and warm here. I've been sipping tea and sitting at their piano and playing something I'll never be able to replicate. I know I was throwing in a lot of Cmaj7 chords but other than that it was nonsense. The way I like it. I am content.

ch-ch-ch-changes

I used to think I'd be the one standing still while the world around me spins. But I'm moving, too. I'm evolving and revolving and leaving the static in my wake. I have changed. The problem is timing; the problem is not falling off the wheel when the outer world turns in one direction around me while I'm twisting the opposite way in the middle.
But suddenly I'm looking forward to a new year. To the holidays that will come first, and then to old friends and long days and turning the page to a new set of months and a new set of living and being, and is it too trite to say loving?

I woke up grumpy

but I'd say the day picked up steam. A Baptist morning (I was fine because I was wearing black and sitting up front and at the end they handed me a sizable paycheck in exchange for limited effort). Hours of a quartet (quintet) of band music. A quicksilver nap. Liturgical Evensong with harmonies so thick I didn't want to exhale. Jazzy Christmas music and diet coke that wasn't but might as well have been spiked. Hours of warm green blankets and patience and honest-to-god you make me whole. I end the day still smiling, because there was such music in my day! I'm referring mostly to the last few hours which were unaccompanied except by our laughter.

24 hours

Yesterday we were sitting around a table in a Venezuelan restaurant and watching the waiter watch WWF instead of bring our check. It was ok--I have been in worse binds. And then there was a show a town away and a compelling reason to be there. My name was on the VIP list. The bouncer touched my shoulder as I walked by. 'Ooh, you are important!' I function function functioned all the way up until the end, through a few drinks and a few secrets and localized dancing, and past the time my friends were ready to leave. It's ok. I have a way home. And I'm still not afraid of sitting at a table alone. Besides, I was was/am/will be entirely occupied whenever I'm in that sort of audience. The balance shifted from needed to needy when the music faded and the bar emptied. I realized the poems I'd been scribbling were nonsense; I realized I'd been awake for too long to follow lines. I wished my sweater zipper worked. I wished I were already at home, and that home was different. It was so hard for me to leave the shoulder and arm that had been mooring me and make my way inside alone. He drove away before I'd found my keys. I was heavy. I fell asleep at 4:00 am in the middle of a thought and woke five hours later to a blanket load of new snow and a pounding body ache. Forgot my downsides when there was a familiar voice at my door and then a bonecrushingly anticipated bear hug from the brother whom I have had to live without for four months (AND IT SHOWED). I would have said--well, for the rehearsals and the hormones and the braving the cold, there could be worse days! But my car wouldn't start. Because, probably, I'd just yesterday been talking about how for five years it's never let me down. I stood in the road, wet feet and frazzled hands, wishing I'd be catching snowflakes on my tongue instead of making harried phone calls... can I borrow the car? No, really. Trudged down the long road (It seemed), dug out another, inched through town. Starving. Hadn't managed to eat lunch. The rehearsal, now, that was fine. It was long without dragging. I was clear and my timing was in place. But I again felt needy. My pant legs didn't dry entirely even after I'd been in the church for two hours. And I had to pry the silver ring off my finger (I just typed pry the silver finger off my ring and almost didn't want to fix it) as I inched across town again. With a taco. With a headache. My car still wouldn't start. I checked again. I heated up the leftover coffee and told myself, don't worry because the best part of the day is to come! If I make it there! I am tired of snow already and it's been three quarters of a day and two inches. But my entire family was fitting around the dining room table again this evening. It'd been a while. And the kid on my right, wow. Do you know, there's really just something about the way I love that brother of mine? It's different. We put together a Christmas tree. This is the first year it's fake. I craved the scent of pine. In the crowded den we cycled through hundreds of photos of Africa. Quickly--we'll go slow later, when the jetlag wears off and the gaps have been filled in. He seems to have been enamored of tiny flowers and goats. My mind wandered. I think I was comparing skin tones. We watched a movie, we juggled cars and keys and logistics and times. I am grateful to my car for cutting out after my dad has moved here and not before. He puts the right thoughts into my head. I am home now. Kind of hiding. Wishing I had eyes and ears at a restaurant across town, because this somehow seems more feasible than sending my whole body. My feet have been cold all day, and my eyelids are slick and feeling poisonous. My highs and my lows have not been taking turns, and I think that's a sign that I need to sleep. Will wake up in the morning in time for the Christmas cantata that needs my help--unless it ices over and is canceled. In that case, let's spend the day in bed.

not cryptic

Hey, I like it when you bug me. Because then I get to bug you back. And then I get to reassure you, get to absolutely cover you up from head to toe with dude, really, I mean this.

looking in the mirror and thinking

today I wish my eyes were brown and for a stronger sense of duty.

I can be backwards

I am awake late at night because I will roar myself out of bed in the morning. Because of the echoes of steel drums and expensive chocolate and Aerosmith and plaid shorts and tick tick tick boom. In the meantime, between now and afewshorthoursfromnow I'm thinking:

I can be backwards.

I can get to the place where my outer edge
is disobeying, and recognize this,
and refuse to self-correct.
Flat out no.
No.

I think this is a disservice.
I think I actually have more control
when I'm dropping myself by the wayside--on purpose.
Discard me in favor of you.

Like a box of second-hand clothes,
I do a much bigger favor to accept
than the giver does to place it in my arms.

fuh

Today's self is brought to you by the letter F and the word 'hey' in three different inflections.

neck-deep

I fell on my ass, I don't know, six times today. But it was always into a pile of dry, woodily sweet oak leaves and it was never without family at my side, falling right along with me. Hours later when I'm still wiping leaf dust off my cheek and pulling stems from socks, I think--I just had one of those days, didn't I? I think you could have heard our laughter rolling all through the valley. I think it was exactly right.

before I burst

I am thirsty and drowning.

graced

Have so much to be thankful for. We could start with the way I felt when I woke from a nap on my parents' couch this evening. Drool drying on my cheek, afghan balled up at my feet. I had fallen asleep feeling ragged and feverish and when I woke my head had cleared. This is the magic of parents living twelve miles from me. Five days and I'm already a convert. I could keep going with gratitude. I could close my eyes and transpose myself into any number of warm, welcoming living rooms surrounded by friends and family. Could count the many ways I fit to the inch into the job I've had for three years. Could pat lovingly the new bike in the garage that is now mine. It has a horn on it shaped like a rhinoceros head. I could begin to tell you how thankful I am for my ears and eyes, for the music I absorb and the art I try to create. I could say, there's this hill and that tree, and the way the grass feels under bare feet in the summer. I am thankful for water. Bright colors. Strong arms. For the smell of a piano and the taste of a Sunday morning. I am so, so thankful for long distance love and friends and people in my blood who delight in me as much as I do them. And I'm thankful for this: this is not the first Thanksgiving I have loved, but it is the first Thanksgiving I have been in love. It is like the exhale after a long-held breath and I am complete. I am blessed.

payback is a bitch

If there's a word for today, for the consistency of my brain and the soupy movements of my limbs, it's muzzy. I am muzzy.

a whole set

I had a yes in my heart and I was thinking: it really is fantastic to have so many senses with which to experience it.

this will be a little pitiful right up to the last part

I have made the six hour drive up to what used to be home twice in the past month, and this time was officially the last. R and I drove up through pouring rain Thursday evening. And we spent all day (ALL DAY) Friday packing the hell out of that big ramblin' house that used to be ours. And loading the hell into a gigantor moving truck. Fifteen hours of stress and heavy lifting will wear a body out. Especially as I forgot to communicate to my sister that the M&M dispenser mom had in the living room? THAT WAS WHAT WAS KEEPING ME GOING and she packed it away and it was buried under another layer of boxes in the bottom of the truck before I realized it was missing. We had help. Yeah, we had amazing, perfectly timed help. Could not have been better people at better moments--it was exactly who we needed down to the minute. BUT WE ALL WORKED REALLY HARD. And then slept on the floor, because the beds were long since lashed in and buried. Woke early again. So much more to be done. It was twenty six years worth right there. And the dust it left behind. Mid-morning the cat and I left in my dad's old mail car. She cried the entire time and I'm not sure if it was commiseration or just general drippiness, but I did, too. For half a state, tears were leaking out of the corners of my eyes. I hate that I can be such a sap. I also love it. There was a huge crew waiting to help out at my parents' new house. So many friendly faces and strong arms. We made short work of the unloading, and soon twenty six years worth was all inside the new walls. I hid in the master bathroom with the cat while some of the bigger stuff moved on through. I think we'd bonded over our shared hysteria. I read an article about America's first malls once and I remember that the first few to be built included specially designed calm rooms. They called them 'silence rooms for nerve-tired shoppers.' Yes. I was nerve-tired. My brother spilled a paper cup full of beef stew down the front of him. The dog licked it off. And then he and I drove the ten minutes into town and I had 45 minutes to shower and make it over to meet with the orchestra conductor to go over tricky sections in tonight's concert. I only played in the second half, so you know what I did? When the concert began I made my way up to the very top of the balcony and I stretched out on my back on the pew, and I closed my eyes and counted the muscles in me that were sore and the ones that weren't, and I listened to the chamber orchestra and some jazz and some choral pieces and was in time, was barely in time, getting back downstairs to warm up and check pitch during the intermission. The music was swimming in front of my eyes as I sat on stage. I was surprised when it began and surprised when it ended. It was complete, for the first time. Parents put down the boxes long enough to be there. I realized part of my new role is hitch. I grabbed one end of my parents and pulled it up to community members I think they should know and I jammed them together. I thought all along: as soon as I down this one glass of reception punch, I will walk back home. I will speedwalk back home. And I will run my head under water and I will put a fresh pillowcase on, and I will collapse and sleep for twelve hours or until my muscles unwind, whichever comes first. I didn't. Well, I did speedwalk home. You know how suddenly something like a gong can ring in your head? Inspiration? Clarity of mission? I realized I actually had something besides sleeping that I needed to be doing--something I'd not even considered doing til then. I drove downtown and as I walked up to the building, I heard rhythm and bass and something very solid, and when I walked in and toward the stage, I saw it. Took in the full picture first--the band. Then narrowed my vision down to a single point--the guy with the tenor sax in his hands. Forget just stopping in for a song or two. Once I caught sight and sound of him (I guess I mean 'them,' but not really), I was going to stay. And once he caught sight of me, I had won. Like, a prize. Am a winner. Ding. Several times I shifted like I was about to head out, but I seem to have found a very powerful attractive force and I can't think of anything I didn't like about staying for two and a half hours and feeling all my stiffness and tired nerves start to dance. Especially when he'd shoot me a look that was the from-stage equivalent of the kiss he gave me when they took a break and when I finally at the end, after the end, said goodnight. So I had said even before the orchestra concert that I was worn entirely out, and I think I was. Am. But I deserve absolutely no pity for the fact that I'm still awake. I think I worked for three days straight to earn the right to abandon absolutely everything else aside from that pure, delicious funk. Mmmhmm.

I can do this.

I am not apologizing for staying up three hours too late. It was reasonable, because my evening made sense. I began it all writing stories and hearing poems around a long, noisy table, and then I sat in a dark car in the rain before I warmed up a little in a bright, ariose bar and then overheated in someone's arms a bit later. It's fair that this took hours and it's fair that this is something I wouldn't want to cut short.
There's really no weighing the justice of what is coming next. I can't say whether or not it's fair to be leaving from work today to drive the last time to the old home and to be there as it is ripped and wiped clean. And to be one ripping and cleaning.
My reaction to the idea of this is varied. On my chart I have spikes of selfish and I have spikes of selfless and at least once I've shut off the first though I didn't want to... I really, really didn't. But, I AM AN ADULT. ADULTS ARE CALM AND PATIENT AND ADULTS DO REASONABLE, RESPONSIBLE THINGS. And, more to that, I am collecting experiences, and even solo this is a good one to add to my list. CHECK.
I know EXACTLY how to make it the six hour drive with my sister tonight: the boxed cd set of 90s pop I snagged from the library and a midway stop for Taco Bell and I know EXACTLY how to get back home in one piece (without my sister, but with a cat, in a car that smells of gasoline and mail): one last iced coffee (cream, no sugar) from the Dunkin Donuts on the corner, really loud mood music (to block out the sound of the cat's semi-drugged panic) and anticipation for What Comes Next.

I'm hoping I autopilot well

I just (opened my eyes) shook my head and realized it's 3:00. It comes as a surprise because my day has? not been made of task and completion--it's been made of Bless Yous and delighted cupcake eyes and a pile of sand pouring from the binding of a book on child psychology. This is good--this is why I am who I am. I wonder if it's enough, and I wonder if the reason I am lacking is the sugar build up under my fingernails or the empty mug.

working late

I am not
worried
but what I have here between my thumb and forefinger is a marble worry stone direct from Connemara.
It's keeping me grounded in Touch
as the rest of my evening is spiraling away in Feel.

renewed

This evening was cathartic.
I bought funfetti cake mix and listened to soul music and played soul music and
sorted laundry and finished leftovers and
played yahtzee and
told a love story from my angle and
had a taste of burn-your-lungs moonshine and
a taste of needed (much much) reason and
perspective! and
maybe it's time to be as selfish as that! and
I loved the faces around the table especially the one on my right and
I'm sleeping alone
but he's coming back.

(mute)

I am having to bite my tongue to keep from ripping it out and handing it to you.

balance

I am walking a knife's edge today. Very little to stop me from toppling off to the left into a big steaming pile of OMFG I CAN'T DO THIS. But I do have coping strategies. A violin concerto, for example. And my own advice.

ctrl+v

I have been without an 'o' key on my laptop for too long. I know this because just now at my work computer I typed this sentence: 'I lcodifyingcodifyingk fcodifyingrward tcodifying hearing frcodifyingm ycodifyingu.'

because it needs to be said

I am in love.

morning song

I think this is the most reliable high point of my week--the Sunday morning one. I wake and immediately my problems are tiny and my possibilities are endless. I am happy. Helped enormously by a cup of coffee (accidentally too weak this time), my second-hand fluffy pink bathrobe (I always suspected I could be a bathrobe person), the smooth feel of my arms and legs, and the anticipation of a whole free day ahead in good company under a sunny sky.

self

My sense of self has been, these past seven days, I don't know. Everywhere.
Last weekend someone I'd met only hours before gave me a check for $500 to help cover medical bills. I have never ever felt I deserve something like this. Twice this week I have been strong enough to stand behind words I'd written and call them mine, and twice, strong enough to claim beauty as my intended result. I've swallowed down lumps in my throat the size of a fist and swallowed down pure mouthfuls of love--the type I always thought I'd have to bargain for, but no! It's just been given! I have been Not Good Enough and Not Reaching Far Enough and I have also been Exactly Right. I have not replaced the ripped bike tire. I am not going to. I have played through half a hymnal at a piano keyboard and wished I'd remembered to say thank you one more time to the woman who first showed me middle C. I have been a disaster. Nothing less than an utter failure. I'm stung, but worst still, stinging. I am going to just hope that the smell of decay wafts away. It's true that I am a coward. I'm also taking leaps. I have been a child and a shadow and a lover and a piece of stone and am surprised when I realize this all adds up.

Today I

am pumpkin spice latte and
showing too much sock.

off

I was listening to a sweet thin woman tell me about her new granddaughter, and how, when she is refusing a bottle, she will stiffen her whole body down to her toes and squinch shut her eyes. That is how I'm feeling in regards to today.
It is a flat tire day, and that is both a metaphor and not one.

flip

I'm becoming binary. Off, or on, and I can tell you exactly the when of each.

Life Goes On

I spent yesterday uncovering things. I found a three-page rhyming poem about my great-great-grandfather while I was packing the bookcase. The best part was
There was many a tree that fell at his swing,
The sledge on the wedge through the thicket would ring.

I like to make boundaries distinct. That's why I remember when we crossed the line into New York on Friday night. It was 10:13. I was curled to the left in the back seat of the car and when we passed the welcome sign, I slapped my hands down onto my legs. I think I'll always do that. I'll do it late this evening (probably 10:13 again) when we're passing the border going south.

In a few hours will be my dad's last sermon here and the last afternoon and then the goodbye party that's been in the works for months. They've said the first announcement was heartbreaking and doubly so because they could see dad was stifling his excitement. Now they say they've realized Life Goes On, and they will be excited in the same way we will. There will still be tears. I am ready for it. I don't often like to be the center of attention, but today I will be and today I am learning to revel in it, and stand up straighter because of it.

claws in

I was a lion this morning (growl!). My three co-workers and I won second place in the library's Halloween costume contest. My prize? A whoopie cushion. Worth it.
But part two of my day is right now, and it's not going well. Am currently fuzzing out over here trying to be ready to leave in 45 minutes and feeling, in a different way, needy. Needy as in, this is the first Friday in quite a few that I will be ending on my own. Growl.

home is changing

I am going to have to move moment-by-moment for the next four days. Like, take cookies out of oven. Put cat outside. Make tuna sandwich. Brush teeth. Orchestra. Pack weekend worth of clothes. Find tail. Sleep.
I have been feeling 50% apprehension and 50% anticipation for this weekend ahead and the going home for a last time. I have such a preemptive hole in my heart when it comes to the people, house, town, state I'm about to say goodbye to that I've been aching for weeks. It will be less permanent than I'm picturing, I know, but it will still be a turning over. I'll miss the willow tree. Have I mentioned that? And the picture window in the living room. Being in that place was always so warm--of the heart, I mean--and I am not yet convinced that the warm I have found and am finding down here will ever match it.
I am usually not afraid of change because it proves to me again how malleable I can be. I adjust. I always adjust. And maybe not always, but often, I like the after-me better than the before-me in the end. So. We'll see. I'll say the goodbyes. I'll run my hands up and down the stairway walls. Maybe do one last frantic lap around the house up one flight of stairs and down the other. I think if I have time I'll walk up the hill to my old elementary school. To see it. I think maybe I'll fall asleep curled against my mom on the brown loveseat and take a picture of the Tree I Let Live (there's a story) and circle around a few of the neighborhoods that made me who I am.
And I think I will cry myself to sleep at least once. I'm not trying to be an adult here. I'm just going to feel. The maturity will come later.

too much macro, need more micro

Have been feeling antsy. I need to remind me to stay seated in the now. Don't get up just yet. Keep touching the little things, like the way black coffee + cherry tomatoes + peanut butter crackers + baby carrots tastes like nacho Doritos (I swear.), and the warm arms of this too-big sweater and the earthy blue smell of an overcast morning.

poison

I really hate the whole one drop ruining a well thing.

over the hump

I woke before my alarm and had an extra hour to sit in the kitchen and sip and think.
I had a fight with silver symbolism and won.
The cats reminded me of the value of an ambush.
My eyes devoured red and gold dipped trees.
My ears were given a gift--sounds the shape and texture and flavor of an apple. Fresh and tangy and crisp.
There was a hill, and the world at my feet.
I ran towards the sun through a field of brittle corn.
I remembered the words and what they mean.
I overcame a low-grade panic through sheer, muscley reason.
I was a feast.
I feasted.
I tasted love on my tongue.
I felt at home.

is it any wonder

I woke up with the blankets piled at my neck and for a brief flash was disoriented, grasping for something not there. I have been incomplete ever since.

That's not why, but I feel like I am struggling with impulse control. Want to do something permanent and sudden. I might settle for a brisk walk instead.

I have a recommendation. Two, actually. One is to be friends with someone attending massage school because you get to be their homework. The other is to walk out and say hello and ask questions and do some relationship soldering when you have a chance instead of staying under the covers. I know the first one from reality and the second from alternate reality.

Today I am into cinnamon flavored coffee, the word 'peripeteia', stretchy black pants, Harry Potter, and fudging the process but still getting a decent result. I'm well.

this is what shows up when I blink

I have spent an entire minute hunting around for the storage key, the one with the bright blue tag. The one that was sitting, all the while, six inches from my right elbow. I blame this on the dimness of the sky (remember the summer when we could leave the office lights off all morning?), and the seething hatred I felt toward my alarm this morning (I'm usually so much more charitable). And I blame the train that stopped me as I biked up the hill (I was already running late) and the smell of the hand lotion I have at my desk (it creates such a cloying thick fug, thig fuck).
I have been drinking my coffee black because I have been getting over sugar (it's an amicable breakup).
And I miss my brother. I really, really, really miss my brother. I'll leave the parentheses off that last one because if I got started I'd run on about needing irreverence and rhythmic tapping hands and the attack of Nova Scotia and a baseline for the harmony that springs up when my family is together. I mean that literally. I mean I miss his low notes.

When I plan ahead I start wondering about claws and brown fur--I'm going to be a lion one week from today. I start wondering about one week from today + twelve hours, when I'll be unloading into the house that has already been sold and spending the second-to-last weekend ever in the red room at the left end of the upstairs hallway. I dreamed last night, in one of the few hours my eyes were closed, of the pond in the park behind the church behind the house. There's an island in the middle, and I used to cross over the bridge and slide between the bushes at the far side of the island and watch a family of seven baby ducks. It's been years, and I still seize up when I think of those ducks, because over the days that summer their number kept dwindling. One day there was only one. I named him Pip because I liked the sharp, cute sound of those Ps and I daydreamed about catching him and taking him home with me. I didn't. I don't know whose meal he ended up being. THIS is what I think about.
I think about the maze bridge and the river and the willow tree and the way it feels (has always felt) to run full speed down the halls at my dad's church when the building was empty. You could start on the carpet of the altar up front and push off and sprint through the sanctuary and through the double doors and down the hall ahead. If you wore socks you could stop your legs but keep going at speed, all the way down into the door at the end. The mat would stop me a second before I'd fall forward into the doorframe. I can think of how that smells. And I think: I'll be cold. In one week I'll be sleeping in the red room in the Bed of Sleep, and I'll be by myself and I'll be cold.

me

Every once in a while I run headlong into my outlines. The edges to my blob of being. I did that again just now when I was digging and found a phrase I wrote four years ago: 'The thing I want most in the world right now is a hug and complete solitude in which to receive it.'

stasis

I watched the walk-away, and tried to imagine what he was thinking. 'This is unbalanced! I'm not on a bicycle! She must have watched the clock!' I bet I was wrong on all counts.

Through a tangled route I heard from someone other than my mom that my great uncle had died. I found his obituary online and looked at the photo of him. His sister is the grandma of mine who died when I was four, and of whom my memories are only warmth, butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies, and blue beads. It's another sort of unbalance, not like I meant above, to be so separate from two generations ago. It's been a year, maybe more, since my other grandma has known who I am. I'm not sad. I should be.

I cut myself this morning and bled in a line. I always think I'll remember this! but no, not yet.

noch einmal

Up too late again. Still not tired. Will regret this in the morning. But.
I guess you don't get it until you get it.

on my mark

If ever there was a day for refusing to speak, for counting the tiny hairs that run along the back of my wrist. Brushing the dead weight on my chest off to the side, pouring the unmatched coffee back into the pot. I hear echoes of a guttural growling, and then realize it's because there's a bird perched on the bush under my window. I've been sitting here for two hours waiting for the chronology to reset, waiting for four years ago to line up with today. I have sore muscles--stiff, at least--and a lack of foresight and
I think,
I'm running away
for the day.

the problem with rain

The problem with a late afternoon full of rain is that it makes me feel like curling up in bed with a book. The problem with that is bed + book + purring kitten asleep on chest = nap. And this becomes a problem when I wake up from the nap with an inflated sense of energy. Which in turn causes me to decide to spend the evening out instead of in, which becomes a problem when an evening out involves being with my boyfriend and being with him makes me want to be even more with him, which becomes a problem when I realize it's already well after 11:00, damnit, and this is a big problem because after I've pulled myself away from him, by the time I'm back home I am WIDE AWAKE AGAIN and all I want to do is eat peanut butter straight from the jar (PROBLEM) or maybe watch tv for a while or pick up my leather-bound journal or a book or or or but it's past midnight and all these little problems have added up to one huuuge one, and that's the fact that I have to get up early tomorrow and I need my sleep, folks--I don't function well on less than seven hours a night--and too freaking late, kiddo.

I REGRET NOTHING.

patter

The silver kitten--the not-Oliver, the bane of the gray cat's existence--fits in through the biggest hole in the upended milk crate I use as computer table. Barely. He's growing at such a rate that if he ever takes a nap while he's inside, he'll be stuck. You'd like to make that a lesson, wouldn't you?

feeling bruised

I've forgotten the laws of physics, or maybe everything has shifted a few centimeters to the left and I stayed still. Either way, the world is full of sharp edges today and I'm running into them all.

quick, before it hardens

Here I am dripping with sap. So am going for a twilit walk to let the sap run down and form pools in the places I leave behind.

all-at-once

In my head is the silver balloon bigger than the silver kitten
and
the pile of papers I've lined up on my floor
(I will never be rich!)

It's my three year workaversary
I thought it was fitting that this was the morning the storage area in the basement was flooded with coffee.

I took the scenic route home because today is a scene
and
I'm pleased by how well I was trained by my 6th grade English teacher to say, when someone asks for me by name on the phone, 'this is she.'

Today I had a taste of the autumn-euphoria that I catch every year. But it's different this year. I am impatient.

Oliver

I have been collecting good feelings today. The first one happened the moment I awoke--there was something very glad-to-be-alive about this morning. And there were other good feelings throughout my day... correctness and ease and completion. But the best, easily, is the feeling I've got trapped in my ribcage right now: I am wanted. This is the best. I say this even after I've ended my evening watching a sweet little gray striped kitten methodically explore its new home. He's a scientist, I think, and clever and he likes me--he walked along the length of my leg and curled up on my hip as I lay on the floor studying him. I might have said 'there's nothing better than a kitten!' But I don't know, today I still maintain that he came in second.

what came first

the rebound

I'm needing to erase.
So I'll say that there was all this layered gold as I drove over the mountain at 7:00 this morning. Sheets and sheets of new sun on top of blue mountains and drifting white fog. I pulled over at a scenic overlook. I started to use my camera before I realized that I should instead use my eyes. I'd already gotten out of the car twice before the overlook. But at least I drove the whole way home in one stretch.
Work today was a gift, and I know this because I had enough fleeting free time to create a birthday banner with clip art flowers.
I got home ok. I atoned a little. I ate well. I'm going to be well-set for the rest of the evening. There will be couch and there will be a banana with peanut butter in about thirty minutes. In the meantime, I have a letter to write and I have some history to transcribe (I take my own dictation), and I'm going to play nurse and let myself drift to sleep without losing hold of my mind first.
God, it really is true that I have been blessed.

DAMMIT.

MASSIVE FRIENDSHIP FAIL.

I meant to be in bed an hour ago... tomorrow I have an early morning full of needles. But here I am, peeled back and human and clearly, for the last time, unable to juggle.

Oktober

The gray cat is sneezing all over my green afghan--the one I made to mimic my mom's dark brown afghan that used to be the roof to all our living room forts. You could see out through the holes. Lie on your back and pretend the points of lights through the dark yarn were stars.
I was all set to spend the afternoon with Lis and oompah music, but one of those components just sliced off the tip of her finger.
And. I am trying not to focus on negatives on a day like today (do you want to know how my today began? Or how my yesterday ended? You'd envy me). But I AM, ANYWAY. I am looking at bottles of pills. And thinking about cake. And I am resenting myself for being so internal when I know full well that I need to learn to reach out again.
I'm restless. And needy. And impatient. And using the word 'and' too much. I think it gives me a false sense of connection, when in reality I'm really more of a here then there with no explanation for the change type of girl. I think if I stood up and stretched my arms toward the ceiling and moved around a bit I'd be happier.

exhausted

The fact that my brain made it home the same time as my body is a testament to chocolate and copy-and-paste.

I'm quite well, really, but

my current mood is:

want.

pointed

Just now I got a splinter in my heel when I kicked the wall

and

an invitation to my parents' farewell party.

tender

I have been looking at pictures of a wrecked van and imagining my uncle being pulled free. Wondering what would have happened if he'd been in the sky instead. My heart is full. Already this weekend it has been full in three ways. Maybe four, if you count the painfully happy sound of the violin my brother and I heard yesterday.

The hood of this sweater has been up all day. Even when I wasn't outside in the rain. I spent three hours in my car. I didn't go anywhere, not really. I left in search of food, found some, and then didn't leave the parking lot. I curled up in the seat and rested my chin on my arms and my arms on the edge of the window and watched the rain add up in the puddles. I listened to NPR and counted rests.

I wasn't home yet when my phone rang and I pulled into the parking lot of a bank and held Egypt to my ear and really wanted to start by asking the hard questions, like and how did you know? It reminded me of why, and why not. And made me wish I had the means to buy plane tickets whenever I want to go halfway around the globe to see for myself.

10 ¢

I have a perpetual extra dime issue when I'm scrounging for change to hit up the vending machine for a diet coke. I think it's mostly bad math, but maybe there's a part of me that expects the worst. I am over prepared. Me?!
One evening when I was 18 my roommate and I made the two floor journey to the vending machines three times and it wasn't until the third that we had enough change. But that was because of a hole in a pocket the first time and slippery fingers the second.

I'm wading through sand at work today. I have been working! Working hard! But I feel like from the outside you wouldn't be able to tell. There's still so much left to finish! I am working as I type this (I swear!) and drinking diet coke and spinning the leftover dime. I AM WORKING. I am on page 57 of 66.
I should tell you that I was thanked on an acknowledgments page of a recently published master's thesis. By name! Me! Never mind the fact that I never actually personally helped the author. My coworkers did. Their names were listed, too.

I feel a little like an amputee. My best friend deleted her facebook account. Have I been talking to myself all these years?
Sometimes mass purging scares me. I knew someone once who would acquire acquire acquire for months and then would all of a sudden give it all away. Clothes, books, equipment. She'd be down to cardboard and empty hangers. Then she'd start all over.

I bet I could figure out which things I could live without.

heron

The shade of my shirt is identical to that of my eyes. The reason I am late returning from lunch is that I spent a full five minutes studying the two in the staff bathroom mirror upstairs and pondering the significance of being able to so nail down the color of my irises. The answer is I'm proud, and I feel hemmed in (oh, pun!)--in the sense that well, now I feel that I have definite edges. Now I am within bounds.

dropping segues

I am waiting. I am writing checks and avoiding vowels and I'm waiting.

I'm fighting my constant compulsion to stick in a fulcrum and see which side sags, my perpetual desire to always balance a bad with a good.

For example, TODAY WAS A WASTE BECAUSE OF THE WAY I FELT AND ACTED. But no, of course it wasn't, because of a 1946 edition of Ladies Home Journal and dark chocolate and clever coworkers and an hour on the phone with my mom and dark, leafy night air. Today is never a waste. I noticed patterns! I am still getting to know me, it's true--after all these years. Ah, a new key to that one door in my head, you clever, intemperate girl.

The wind was at my back this afternoon. Thank god--that's how I made it home!

I'm soft today. Day three of derailing (that's where I hit the limit and come back up for air). And by soft I also mean, do you know that football sometimes makes me cry?? And the thought that I've disappointed my brother? And thinking of how I'll miss that kickass closet I painted in five or six colors when I was 15? And Beatles songs? My word.

getting better all the time

I need to learn to step on the toes that need stepping on before a month passes and it takes a crisis to realign. Thank god for crises.

I need to stand in the shower and laugh and cry because the water takes away both and I'm so glad. It is so good.

I need to breathe deep into my lungs and relive that feeling I had last night--whole. And close. And warm. And desperate.

I need to have more of the evenings of burgers and beer and ice cream and walking, sort of, in the right direction until it gets shrill and hilarious and my heart is already full before I let it get even fuller after the doorbell rings.

I need to keep saying yes when it comes to trial runs and taco salad and jojoba oil and beaded earrings. Because how lucky am I?? How lucky. How blessed.

I need... to brush my teeth and brush my hair and laugh along with the rest of the table when it comes up that the muscles in my back are almost completely devoid of tension. I know why that is.

forgiven

I get way more second chances than I deserve.

the universe delivers!

Ah, finally—here it is! An email from a colleague who used to work here and a year ago left to head the ILL department at a college thirty miles away that says this: 'Thanks, April! You rock!!' I told you I'm easy. That will work. Mood pointing back up above sea level.

the reason why:

unknown.

Maybe something to do with the way as I biked to work this morning the air smelled just like a fall hike on this one hill near my parents' house and I almost cried--really--because when my parents move in a month and a half I'll be losing things like that hill.
It's stupid. Stop caring.

Perhaps it's because I was lagging behind this morning and didn't get coffee made at home. There's a Starbucks in my building. I hated myself for standing in line.
It's stupid. It's once.

It could be something else, too, something personal. Seven years of personal. And am feeling like an ass as it starts to seep through the holes under my toes.
NOT STUPID. IT STINGS.

I am a mess of moody illogic. Stand back and watch me pretend otherwise!

please

Universe, I'm just going to put this out there: I need something from you this morning. It doesn't have to be big--my signature move is a complete 180 brought on by the smallest bit of good--but GOD, I need something. Today is not great and I am not great, and until something lands on my lap (another signature move--letting it) I will be wallowing. So I'm asking you, world, give me a hug or a slap or a quick jolt of caffeine or all three.

Saturday

I am feeling accomplished. Silly, because I'm not. Not today. I had a list of things to do, errands to run, stories to set straight. Uncheck, uncheck, uncheck. Sometimes I wake up on a Saturday and even before I get out of bed I've decided I will burrow in deep to this day. So there was none of the cleaning and none of the gathering and self-betterment. Today was more about all the different positions in which I can use my laptop from my bed without it overheating. And it was about leaving all the windows wide open to catch the change in the air and sipping coffee three hours too late in front of a brightly patterned football game on tv. And loving the voice over the phone and the ones that bleed through these walls. It was about yarn, and untying knots and setting the pattern aside because I've memorized it, and it was about minor chords on the piano keys and the sweet, resigned feeling that I'll never really understand how they work. And today was about possessive pronouns and the movie Up and having the center of my chest melt and drain down into my stomach, and it was about sibling-love (so much!) and plans for tomorrow, which will be less of a day to burrow down and more of a day to take a running leap.

9.11

That morning I was skipping class to hang out in the band room. I used to pretend it was legit by calling it a 'lesson' but I was never there to learn. Maybe I had my oboe with me, maybe I didn't. Maybe I was goofing off on one of the pianos in the back room. What I do remember is that the previous spring on the annual chorus trip to NYC my friend Amanda and I had bought matching gray t-shirts with 'New York City' embroidered on them and by chance we'd both worn the shirts that day--September 11th, 2001. An hour earlier when we'd noticed that we matched, we'd laughed about great minds thinking alike, joked about it feeling like a day for a city. When our principal's voice--even grimmer that day than it usually was--came over the loudspeaker I remember looking down at the writing on my shirt and thinking 'Shit. Amanda and I broke the city.' I just wanted to go home.

It might sound like I am again, but I'm not.

The core of my right foot is sore. Too much for six miles, I don't know. When I'm in the moment I always think, if I did one, I can do two. If I do two, I can do six. There are always things in my ears to goad me on.
I was ravenous this morning. It threw off the rest of my day. Even up to the part when I kept insisting 'I really am a nice person!' even though we both knew that, eh, some days I'm not. I was shooting. And we both know that today I was actually quite selfish. The stacks of books, I took it personally. And the empty wallet. And the hard, unforgiving surfaces I kept careening off of.
I can feel so untethered sometimes--I try to hide it, keep it off of my face, but I don't know. I think I'm much more transparent than I imagine. I was lucky tonight to have had an anchor reach out and grab onto me to keep me from drifting much further to the side. Isn't this so opposite, and so wonderful, when the anchor chases the boat?
(Whenever I use the word 'lucky' I am reminded of the way I felt last Thanksgiving, and how I learned to substitute in the word 'blessed,' and why that feeling faded by Christmas.)
(And then I think of miscarriages, of broken hearts, of that dream that just drifted away into the wind like smoke. Damnit.)

On my way home there's a stop sign I always ignore, but tonight it brought me to a full stop.

I am not complaining.

I walked this morning through thick gray rain with an umbrella that leaked on the tip of my nose.

THIS IS SO GOOD, AND

I found the perfect hole in the fabric of today to slip through. Wait, no, that comes across as escape. What I mean is, I found the way to turn this evening into a warm fleece blanket. Just now I made myself a cup of coffee, liberally doused with hazelnut creamer (I have a reason to want to stay awake) and drank it outside on a wooden chair under the full moon. I was out long enough to watch the moon drift into the edge and through the branches of our neighbor's tree. The gray cat joined me. He doesn't DO laps, but tonight he deigned to settle on mine. We listened to the cicadas and the crickets and the hum of life from the college campus two blocks away, and I thought: aha, I've discovered myself. Aha, this is the best day.

THIS IS SO GOOD, but

Yesterday I found myself dripping with symbolism and oily silver glitter.

beat beat beat

Sometimes I just love a highway, regardless of the reason I'm on it.

beat beat beat

and grass under my bare feet.

I've started to disobey again. I mean, my fingers have found their way back between my teeth. I mean, I said, I would sit on the porch with a book of poetry, and I have not.

The occasional slump in my shoulders, if you notice, is that I have lost-am losing the sense of Home... I can read so much into a silent stare. Tell me you're just tired. Again.

That, and you might catch me feeling incomplete between now and December because my bass is gone.

I'm going to start walking again next week. Rather than replace gear shift cables, or fight through the challenge (the HILLS, have mercy!), I'm going to deny that there is a problem until a solution lands on my lap (sometimes it does!).

Anyway, I have been falling into rhythms that I think I always knew were there, and am smiling with one side of my mouth even when I'm alone. It's my favorite time of year, I can shake my hair and tap my feet and be blessed. I can offer out my hands, and someone is there to take them.

honest

Don't let this color me as a habitual liar (because I am not--I am too lazy to regulate my fictions!), but

today I told the truth.

AND I LIKE IT

For the FIRST TIME in the nearly three years I've been working at the library, I am willingly accepting assistance. YES, do my work while I supervise! Please! Is this a sign of maturity? Laziness? Opportunism? Do I even care? Am learning to relinquish control, people, and it is sweet.

held

I am saying please out of one side of my mouth and thank you out of the other.

puncture repair

Today someone wrote me a note and I tore it into a dozen pieces and threw it in the trash, and later I spent two hours giving someone else a very pointed dose of silent treatment. Do you know I didn't mean either?

I am

drifting.

There's really no other way to say that I only get this much before I settle back down to the ground.

I'm trying to think of one way to say two things without having to pick which holds more weight. And here at my desk, I've caught the scent of the phrase I want and I can nearly feel the heat of it, and the metaphor, she makes sense, in that nebulous thought world before the words. But after another minute my eyelids slide down and my mind wipes clean and I've already forgotten where I started. In my mind I have always called these moments birdcages—when I drop the chain that led back to the start. I could say why, but I don't think I should.

Another I am—

I am juggling. Gracelessly.

I need an expander, or a second unit, or a spare room in my head to hold these things at once.

for the weight of it

I'm not cold, but tonight I'm going to sleep under extra blankets.

bloom

Had been walking around for a few days with a flower in my ribcage. Tonight I reached in, pulled it out, and planted it.

roots

I'm going camping. I'm chopping off the last three days of my work week (fine by me; they're the freshmen move-in days) and my much-missed brothers and my parents will be driving down to meet my sister and me, and screw the rain in the forecast, all six of us are going to claim a site on Skyline drive. We're going to sit around the fire and read to each other and climb trees and stretch our legs and play cards and tell jokes no one else thinks are funny and pass around the pocket knife and the hatchet and hope for a clear patch through the clouds one night so we can discover the stars. Then by this weekend one of us will be gearing up to go to South Africa for four months, one of us will be starting a last year of college, one will be substitute teaching, two will be looking at houses in the next town up (WTF?), and me, I'll be catching the other half of the embrace that had to be cut short last night, and I'll be quite occupied, thanks.

twitterpated

I've become wrapped up in the now.

caught

If I had to organize my evening thoughts
they'd center around the
missing 'o' key on my keyboard, and
the way, just now
I sat down and played the piano in the dark and
I could have sworn it was only ten minutes,
but when I looked at the clock, it'd been
nearly an hour.
And I'd linger for a while on--
good lord, has it always been so easy to lose track of which pulse is my own?
Because I have been
oh, I have been.

job

Somebody in the White House is researching the economics of energy efficiency today and I'm helping. I'm probably earning my keep.

pleased

Could totally get used to having a chauffeur.

living up

This morning got an email from 2007. From me. It said, 'dear self, today is 8/12/07. If you are not [redacted] by 8/12/09, you're screwed.'

I am [redacted].

something a little different

Ew, negativity. I'm going to push it down by saying something else. Like, hmm, I really love a few of my coworkers, like really, like my heart melts for them. And I want to give a thumbs up to my resilience, to my ability to walk home through the muggy heat and arrive smiling. And also to protein! Yay, protein! And, did you know, this is the 200th entry in this blog-I-never-talk-about? I am looking forward.

the inside of me

I don't like being this person--the one with the worries. There's something wrong with me? Maybe, probably. I deal with it through vicious passivity. I hang up the phone after I've gotten results and scream, but only in black and white, and flop my head down on my arms and moan, but only in front of my mom or my best friend. I want your sympathy, world, but I don't want to tell you why, tell you what the reason is--partially because I don't know, I still don't know, and while the bruise fades from the last one I'm already being pointed toward one more test, toward slow, biting insanity. It's like this: maybe I am fine! I mean, I am not normal, but maybe I am not threatened. Mom told me that none of this will be more than I can handle, god doesn't give us more than we can take. Oh bullshit, doesn't god know that I'm a paranoid wimp? This is already too much.

we left before the dancing

I bought a new feather pillow this morning. There's a whole story with that and never mind. This one will last.

I've been fighting all day today with be happy be happy because there is so much to be happy about and yet, it has just been one of those days when I'm not. My parents are in town. Interviewing. They were busy all but two hours of today with meetings and discussion and welcome to town barbeques. Tomorrow will be even more intense, and I'm going along to hear him preach (I know how that will feel) and I will put on a charming smile and shake hands and pretend I'm going to remember their names, when I know I won't.

I'm sitting in my room and I've taken off the wedding clothes I was wearing and when I stop and look around, I feel like I might be on the tail end of I'm not--I mean, on the tail end of my dip in mood--so there's no reason I won't like tomorrow.

I know I did love the half hour break when I cuddled into my mom's shoulder this afternoon. I forget just how much I rely on touch, but then along comes a week like this one, and I am very, very reminded.

I feel like--I am being bombarded. The wedding I was at today, it was a deluge. We fanned ourselves with silhouettes of the bride and groom cut from cereal boxes, and sat in a circle surrounding the two of them in the middle of a field. There was turquoise and poems and ribbons being woven, and fiddle music and a fist bump at the end of the ceremony--you're husband and wife, you may fist bump each other. Almost. The reception, well, I kept getting preoccupied by the dimming sky and the path of tiki torches leading away from the tent. I kept getting distracted by the fresh flowers in the center of the table and the way my skirt fell across my knees.

I was thinking about a year ago, and I realize that I've become someone else since then. But I still wish I could have been in two places tonight (scratch that, three), and had one of them be home.

satisfaction

I like when the music knows what I need and runs out in a stream through my ears and down my back.

And skipping numbers--I like skipping numbers. I don't mean counting by threes, I don't mean adding wrong, I mean
that jump from one place to the other
even though it defies logic.

nictitation

April's blinks--Now 50% Longer!

I have my reasons.

things I am into today:

plums
cherries
apples
(a theme?)
Dr Pepper
peanut butter cup ice cream
honey mustard pretzels
(maybe not)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
attention
clean feet
cat bellies
friendly cellists
Jon Stewart
refrigerators
and,
So You Think You Can Dance (don't judge. It makes me cry.)

thumbs; one week later

I am making progress!

Am high. Again.

Two days in a row I am having solitary dance parties in the office when I'm the only one in the room. The office lights are off because our whole wall is windows and it's a beautiful day, I'm cranking out my still-favorite album of the moment--Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid, and I'm, like, getting a lot of work done in between dance breaks. Geez life, let's spread out some of the awesomeness a little better, because it's clumping up like mad and I'm afraid I'll run out by tomorrow.

being a disgustingly incurable optimist

Some of my mornings are euphoric. I have always had a talent for turning on in the mornings, for hopping out of bed and sweeping the last bits of dreams out of my head within seconds of my alarm. But then there are mornings like this one--when once I am out of bed, OH MY WORD HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW AMAZING EVERYTHING IS? My senses feel sharp. Soap smells intoxicatingly sweet. Cheerios taste wonderful--food of the GODS. I hold my head high, and damnit, I look good. I walked to work today because walking three miles actually makes a lot more sense than people think it does. And lord, I kind of danced the whole way. I kept thinking, the sky, has it always been so big? And the leaves on the trees hanging over the sidewalk, have they always been so incredibly full of green? I was listening to my mp3 player on random shuffle, and each new song that played would give me goosebumps. It is so good. All this, and I hadn't even had coffee yet. I don't know, I just feel like today is going to keep getting better.

untangling

I like how quickly I can reset from a state of mental twist to a state of smooth ok-ness. Sometimes all it takes is being on the receiving end of one sincere smile.

maintenance

Once, and by once I mean just now, I spent two hours working on my bike tires. The problem was a nail and the problem is that I have too much faith in patches. And I lack a back-up plan when the patches fail. Then there I am, sitting on the porch steps, covered in bike grease and dirt and sweat, out of tire tubes and luck. What is there to do but trudge back inside and douse myself in soapy water and chase that down with wine?
I will take this as an opportunity to walk. I've noticed that I like that. Shall I make a bet with myself that I can do this for a week? By then I'll have forgiven the indignity of black smudges on my forehead.

it should have been obvious

After attending my first (and, I'd guess, last) city council meeting tonight, I realize just why I will never run for mayor. Because, DEAR GOD I'D WANT TO LET THE PEOPLE HAVE CHICKENS.

I've decided to sacrifice my thumbs

I can't seem to leave my fingernails alone. Ever. Or my cuticles. I've tried to quit the chewing and the picking cold turkey, and I'll last just long enough to get a glimpse of what smooth, unmolested fingertips look like before WHAM I'm in a stressful situation or, well, I'm bored, and the nails go back into my mouth and then so long, cuticles! I want to try again. Because I have a thing for hands. I mean, I really have a thing for hands. My own included. But mostly, yours. I am not kidding when I say that, if I know you, I have memorized your hands. I'm not always the best with faces, sometimes I forget names, but damnit, I will remember your hands. Sometimes when I'm lying awake at night I'll distract myself by cycling back through old friends, through family, through coworkers. Their hands, I mean. It's a little weird. So I guess I've decided to make my own hands a bigger deal by taking care of my fingernails. Although I know there's no way I can just STOP biting all ten. So, I'm throwing my thumbs out of the deal. My thumbs = fair game. I feel a little bad for them. Just a little.

blue skies

I am thinking of other people's hearts today--not my own! I think this is equivalent to a lid fitting tightly on a jar.

The breeze keeps pulling me back outside. It's a good way to spend a Saturday. I opened all the windows and I took a long bath and I straightened my rug, and the cat and I went belly up in a sunbeam.

Maybe I'll spend all afternoon watching golf on TV. I could--I love that I could.

Missing from today is a new bike. If I'd bitten down and purchased the one I fell in love with three weeks ago, I might be on it right now. I might be miles and miles out of town somewhere over the green hills. I didn't buy the bike. I am wary of spending what savings I have because sometimes I feel like I'm going to need that for something else, later. My old blue Schwinn is still. I mean, it is, still. It takes me the three miles to work and the three miles home. That's what I need, so stifle what I want.

I am tired of landlords staying in the basement. It makes me feel like I can't walk around half-dressed. Because I would, if I knew I was the only one who could open the outside doors.

Sarah is away for the weekend, my sister isn't moved back in yet, Krista is still six weeks away from returning. It should be just me and the cat at home, but it's not. So I'm wearing a shirt.

The song I have had as a ringtone for a year shows up on TV every so often. Once, on the radio. So, ok, nice that it gets used. I haven't been answering my phone much lately, even when I do hear it ring. Not that I won't answer it, but that I haven't. Something's different.

Last night at midnight I started reading The Giver. I was halfway through when I fell asleep with the book open on my chest. I think I'll do the same tonight.

I have stopped freaking out. I was serious when I put that on my to-do list. And for now, it has abated. I'm not worried about what's wrong with me, I'm not worried about my family, I'm not worried about work. I think the calm hit me when I got home one evening this week and thought, I'm not going to be able to sleep!! but then, within minutes, I conked out. When I woke up the next morning I realized how many gaps I'd had in my consciousness--my self-consciousness--the day before (this is a good thing!) and I have been able to string it forward ever since.

two birds

I took a walk in the rain today. I was here first, I told the rain, but if I can't talk sense into myself, I can't talk sense into the heavens. The way to handle the downpour was to stop in the middle of the street and look up. Arms stretched out. Music, for once, out of my ears and coming straight from my heart.

Then there is the more prosaic. Like fig newtons. I have been into fig newtons. And into Regina Spektor (although she is not prosaic in the least). I have been noticing potential and have been proud of my steady nerves. I've been looking around, seeing the mess, and deciding with a solid sort of resolve that this weekend, I will fix it. I've been an editor and a clown and am going to try really, really hard to actually listen this time.

I still always feel like I need a third paragraph, a third number in the series. A THIRD IDEA. WITHOUT BREAKS BETWEEN. Gosh, though, maybe I need to learn to stop with two.

trust and obey

I might cry myself to sleep because I just listened to the audio of my dad beginning to say goodbye to his congregation. Oh, what now.

my aim is off

Sometimes I run away from easy. That's stupid. Because I also run away from hard.

I am up.

I walked to work today because I'd left my bike on campus. I'm assuming it's still in the rack by the dorms by the parking garage where I left it locked at 7:00 on Friday morning, pre- all-day conference and post- don't-rain-don't-rain!! sprint up the hill.
The walking was GOOD. I can get into mornings. Second best to camping.
I'm thinking of this because I was camping this weekend, and I kept thinking MORNINGS! The morning, when you're camping, is the best part. You wake up early because campgrounds are awake early, and the Chinese family reunion across the way and near the water pump is full of early risers. I don't always let them slide by, morning noises, but when I'm in a tent, and the early sun is shining through the canvas, I forgive. To be burrowed in a sleeping bag, fending off the dew and chill, long past the part when the ground is hard and into the part when your muscles have learned how to relax into the dips and grooves, and to know that soon--it really doesn't matter when--you will pull yourself up and into sweats and out of the tent, and--eventually--you'll have a fire going, and smoke-flavored eggs for breakfast along with the wild raspberries picked from the bushes that surround the campsite... this, this is the best way to have a morning.
I hold on to complete feelings like these because I know I will probably soon drift back into the state which has become my default this summer--the way my whole mind feels the way the skin on your forearm does an hour after you brush against a stinging nettle plant. That not actively stinging but phantom stinging, worried feeling. It saps me.
But what I mean to say is that walking to work this morning didn't feel like an OPTION before I left my front door, but it is, and to feel that in my legs and to notice the way those miles cleared some of my dullness is almost as good as waking up at the beginning of a day in a tent in the woods.

it helps!

I just discovered gmail's new Tasks feature. I made a to-do list, and the only item is STOP FREAKING OUT.

feeling

When I'm afraid, I immediately look for a talisman. I think, April, are the earrings you're wearing enough to protect you? Today I'm wearing the earrings I share with my best friend (although she's worn them once and I've worn them over and over because of the weight of them, because of the dark red color). I guess they will help, and I am glad I have that curved piece of wood I carry around in my purse. Three, or was it four? summers ago while camping with my family I tried to whittle with my dad's pocketknife. I told them I was making a duck. It ended up just a smooth half-circle. Light, grained, and comforting. I have kept it in my purse ever since. Once, not for me, I was in the ER all night, and I held on to that duck. My other instinct, after looking around for something to hold on to, something with enough significance to cast a shadow big enough to hide in, is to flood my ears with music. Right now I want Fernando Ortega. These days he is one of the very, very few Christian bands/singers I don't automatically skip when they appear on my mp3 player. I will always listen to his voice. And he will calm me down. I am sitting here at my desk, earbuds in, the duck sitting in front of the keyboard. I am saying, to the air, I guess, that I am going to be ok.

lists

I have a couple of themes this week, including: paranoia, late nights, rice cakes, and Life is a Highway.

I plan on blocking out all but the late nights part by hitching a ride up to the St Lawrence River this afternoon and spending three days swimming, boating, sitting around a bonfire, drinking beer, and scratching mosquito bites.

perspective

I was feeling sorry for myself until I stood behind the guy in the grocery store check-out line who was buying bologna and mayonnaise and cat food.

marching on

For someone who never really got the hang of patriotism and probably never will, July 4th sure does stick better in my memory than most holidays. Past Christmases blur together, so do birthdays and Easters, but I can feel my way back through the long chain of ghosts of past July 4ths in my memory. I was here, I was here, I was biking along the Erie Canal, I was home alone with my parents' dog who was panicking with every loud noise, I was walking along the river with a favorite uncle who was whistling the Star Spangled Banner, I was in Nashville, I was on my way home from Ohio, I was in Austria and the only reason there was celebration was that the 4th happened to coincide with the 2004 Europe soccer cup thingy, I was in the back seat of a 15-passenger van, craning my neck for signs of fireworks in the towns we passed through on the way home from Kentucky, I was anxiously circling a neighborhood on foot, looking for the stupid labradoodle I was dog-sitting for who'd somehow gotten past her electric fence. All the way back to middle school I could tell you where I was and how it felt. Maybe I've thrown my string of memories off, though, by doing the same thing two years in a row. A waterfall. A tour of the back roads. Mint tea. Lexington. A long highway back home with my head everywhere else, watching fireworks in the rear-view mirror.

pinch

I have been listening to Elbow's 'The Seldom Seen Kid' album over and over. I wasn't until lately an album person at all--I was an artist person, or more likely, a single song person. I choose to see this as a sign of growth. Getting more than just one flavor in the bites I take. But it's all ice cream.
Every so often I get discouraged about a future that doesn't have a discernible outline. I can look at an upcoming month and groan at the prospect of the same, all over again. The same mattress with the springs poking through, the same old blue bike along the same worn streets. The same office, the same patterns of movement through my day, the same catching-of-breath the minute I'm back home. The same measured bits of friendship and activity in the evenings and on the weekends. The same couch with the same lamp and the same stack of books I still haven't finished. I catch myself right about there. I'm being a fool. This is a good life, it is! There are problems, and there are strangers living in my basement, and there are things about me that I haven't figured out how to fix yet, but my life is very sweet. And after I'm thankful again, the stasis shifts anyway. New faces pop up, old faces look at me differently. I still am surprised! I make plans to spend a weekend hiking and sharing someone else's family. And I work out hitching a nine hour ride to visit someone I really love, and I talk about camping trips and museums and the new Harry Potter movie, and well hell, I'm going to be just, just fine.

adding steam

I'm telling you: I can get high off of being one of 99 on a stage in a park, playing Sousa marches and watching the old men in the audience cry.

starting off slowly

I think I will devote an hour of my morning trying to figure out where the bruise on my elbow came from. I don't have high hopes.
I'm scattered this morning. I keep laughing to myself at the memory of the cat, mid-hairball, in the middle of the kitchen floor. I picked him up telling him 'not in the house, mister!' and as I hustled him out the back door, he kept gacking away. And with every wheeze, I saw his toes splay out. Front paws and back paws, waving around, toes stretching every time a wave of hacking hit. 'I shouldn't be laughing at you' I told him. Oh, but I did.
Sometimes I start a week off by asking myself : should I give into whims this time? I don't think I will this week. Well, I don't think I will after I satiate my Cheez-its craving. Hello, vending machine breakfast.

nothing much

I read this phrase in a book today: 'a doomed, Octoberish oboe of a voice.'
Maybe a bookmark inching through a book is the only visible progress I've made.
I did, though, notice that there are four identical houses in a row in town. I could have said 'yes, I know where that is' if you'd shown me a picture of just one. But I couldn't have told you it had three neighbors that look just alike, except the fourth has red trim.
It's about that time of year when I start hankering for an orchestra again. Oh, and scarves.

Duck

When the neat white
Duck walks like a toy
Out of the water
On yellow rubber-skinned feet,

And speaks wet sounds,
Hardly opening
His round-tipped wooden
Yellow-painted beak,

And wags his tail,
Flicking the last
Glass water-drops
From his flat china back,

Then we would like
To pick him up, take
Him home with us, put him
Away, on a shelf, to keep.


-Valerie Worth

balance

Spring was a challenge for me, and I was dealing with the patches of haze and rain and uncertainty by keeping myself held very still. I have had a series of doctors appointments that haven't been leaning enough in one direction or the other enough to actually define, so I won't yet. And I dealt with that, and with a few other unexpected things, by setting all these rules for myself to keep myself tied to that wall so I don't fall off the ledge. You know? I'm not talking about the same sort of rule that was my January thing, when I made myself wake up a half hour early and go running. God. I kicked that habit in February. My new rules were things like a prescription for how I spend my Sunday evenings when my brothers are gone, and the order in which I eat my lunch. And sitting down at the piano during appropriate hours and playing inappropriate things--I mean, things without words and without anything else dictated beforehand. And I fricking started flossing by teeth every day. I realized, 25 years too late, that following rules is good for me and it was keeping all the WHAT NOW at bay. Oh, but this evening I am home alone and having no plans for this weekend and the WHAT NOW has come back. It kind of feels like panic, the kind you keep swallowed but that doesn't mean it's not there, it's just stuck in my chest. I am all of a sudden losing my balance, and the entire month of July is looming over me and it is heavy. I should probably concentrate on picking up the little things again. Flossing. Don't ask me to go for a run, but I might surprise you and do it unannounced.

You just don't forget

Today is the day I didn't pay my bills, and the day I bought three 75¢ paperbacks at the thrift store but just set them aside in favor of chicken wings and wine and the number two guilty pleasure in my life (number one being marshmallow fluff)--So You Think You Can Dance.
Yesterday, as we were heading down out of Canada, on the wrong highway--sad, but true--we stopped for one last visit to Tim Horton's, because I had the thought a few days earlier that I will crave a Tim Horton's iced hazelnut cappuccino for the rest of my life. We were down to our last Canadian pennies--sad, but true. Actually, we were out of our last pennies. About to tell the cashier to cancel the order. But a man in line behind stepped in and said 'oh no. Don't do that. How much do you need?' Do you know how much a difference 70¢ can make? It made the difference between one last iced cappuccino and one smaller last iced cappuccino. I'm glad we were on the wrong highway for those few kilometers, because at a different exit, would someone have spotted us the gap in change? This little bit was like the shadow of the overarching Big Generosity that let this trip go through as planned. I'm not just talking about the generosity of the uncle who had a cabin with open doors and my best friend paying for the gas and almost all of the food because, well, let's not worry about my finances tonight, maybe later. What I mean by Big Generosity is that the car died halfway there, and a family friend let us take--TAKE--her car for five days and 800 miles while Sarah's was in the garage. I want to be that person who PAYS THE 70¢ and I want to be that person who HANDS OVER THE KEYS. That's what I learned.

there and back

Since I was here I've been to Canada and back and I have thing after thing after thing I could-should write to pin the last five days down. If the alternative is cleaning and a slow fade, yes I will. Here is something: what kind of idiot am I, to go skinny dipping in Lake Huron late on the first night of summer but forget to take my watch off? I noticed the moisture bubble under its glass face at midnight and the next morning it stopped at 11:15.
I am full. Of sunburn and shit and renewed hope for good news and in humanity. I might say more.

DING

I am mad. At the dirty dishes. And my body. And the heavy traffic on the way home. And not being ready for the vacation I'm taking in a few days. And because I should be tired, should be asleep! but I am neither, and I'm going to have to make an uncomfortable phone call in the morning and and and and

unwinding

I'm losing track of how many picnics have been rained out
and the number of times
the duck's quack sounded like
a sneeze
and at the same time, we both said
'bless you'

with apologies to the 12 year old me

Sometimes I find the word 'shit' very liberating.

looking up

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

-Eden Phillpotts

He smelled like marshmallows

Yesterday I was sitting on a picnic table in a park, swinging my legs, eyeing the clouds, trying to will the dark ones into turning back around, and because I was looking up it took me by surprise when a little curly-headed blond boy was suddenly in front of me. He was probably two, three at the most, and he had these gorgeous big green eyes. He patted my legs and reached up and said ‘up up!’ I looked around and didn’t see a concerned mother anywhere, and well, what was I going to do but pick him up? So I did. He was adorable. He flung his arms around my neck and buried his curls on my shoulder. I stood up with him in my arms and thought, oh dang, did I just steal a baby? and thought maybe I should have had my cell phone on me so I could call, what, 911? Lost adorable baby in Gypsy Hill park? If no one else wants him I’ll take him home? After thirty seconds of me hugging him back and asking him, 'where’s your mommy?' I heard a lady yelling ‘Ronnie! Get your butt back here!’ and there was a heavy, bored-looking woman 50 yards away over in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette. Is that your mommy? She hollered again, so I set him down and pointed him in the right direction. She finally picked herself off the hood of her car and walked over to meet him in the middle. In that minute I thought that if there was a way for me to pick him back up and run off with him, I would. Change his name, give him a bath, and keep him.

chastised

I had to pee all morning. And my pant legs were still wet from my rainy commute. I'd forgotten about the meeting. So I was already over a barrel by not being prepared. Pushed further by a greek chorus of you're doing it wrong. I know. I am, I guess, not a team player. I felt the--ouch--slings of judgement and disappointment and plans for the future that will make this all worse. And I really, really had to pee. Do you know how sometimes, like after someone rips up the flowers you planted at your home, you feel like just moving out? I felt like that today.

THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR

I always forget to put pants on before I paint my toenails.

wanderlust

It's become the best part of the week, when I'm driving north on the highway on a Monday evening, coming home from the park in the next town down where I've just played a community band concert. Last night I felt as if I should just keep driving, my windows down, Vanda on shuffle (I always give them names), night all around me. I thought, well, in six hours if I keep driving north I could be at my parents' house. I sort of wish I had an excuse to run away. Or a not-excuse. It's hard to flee from comfort. Besides, New York is clearly not the answer. I have a recurring fantasy of giving fair warning to boss and family and friends and then disappearing for a week. I wouldn't make plans, but I'd take maps, and I'd take granola bars and a tent and my brilliant little car and we'd just see what would happen next.  

prize

I buy nearly all of my clothes at thrift stores. I used to leave that out of my self-definition, but oh, it's in now. Anyway, last week I found a big white t-shirt with a picture of a cow on it that says 'I LIKE GRASS' and it was worth a buck and a half even though it's too big to be anything but sleepwear. I can't wait until I've worn it and washed it enough that it gets soft and thin.

and I remembered to say thanks

There are days when the highlight can be the morning in bed with a book and the afternoon testing out the new hiking sandals and the evening of ice cream at the outside tables of the fast food place down the street and watching a sparrow try three times before on the fourth try achieving lift-off with the french fry in its beak.

left

You know the minute before the minute you lose your cool? Three times in three days I got stuck right there. And that's fine, that's fine, because while I'm stuck I can see both ends of the hallway and one end will inevitably make more sense than the other. Even if I don't chose the right one, it's a choice, not a reflex.

individual

I spent all of today more or less alone in public, and I'm upset with myself when I catch myself trying to defend, trying to offer up excuses for why this is ok. OF COURSE this is ok. I am not now nor will ever be the type of girl who needs to be on someone's arm, or is reluctant to eat out alone or treat myself to a movie, just me. Damnit.

stop! go back!

I've decided that the only way to salvage today is to wash my feet and put fresh sheets on my bed.

earning it

One of the best parts about life is a Saturday morning when you wake up at 6:00 and it's already sunny, so you open the window and fall back asleep for another two or three hours, because.

logophile

Am liking the word moribund today.

lopside

Did I tell you I diagnosed my fatal flaw? One has time to think when chasing magazines up and down cramped stairways and keeping one hand in a back pocket, just in case. Perhaps fatal flaw is too pejorative. Roadblock. I've been in the business of whittling down lately, like the wardrobe full of sweaters I'll never wear. And whittling down my appetite, and the extent of my scheming about (A) but not (B). But what I'm getting at is, I'm whittling down my pile of failings to the heart of the thing: I think, humbly, that I'm not stupid. I'm quick. But here's the rub—although my mind belongs in the category of (at least a little) above average, my MEMORY certainly does not. I might not be wholly anchorless, totally unaffected by what I knew and do know and see and hear, but my ability to anchor—my ability to retain and organize the things I learn—is the ability of someone below average intellect. If I had a memory to match my raw brain, I'd be someone else entirely. Probably, I'd be my brother. My mind gets a B and my memory gets a D, and what the hell, why would I be made like this? Wouldn't I be happier if they met in the middle and I was two Cs? I have time to think about such things, and I'm learning to write my discoveries down, because if I don't, in a month, I'll be heading in a direction quite the opposite.

tightrope

I'm not sure if I'll be able to strike the right balance of none and enough before I collapse. Or of now and in time.