I could be

I'm feeling myself pulling like the hook side of velcro away from the other half--my fluffy, fuzzy old habits. It is always astonishing to me how much change I am capable of undergoing. I think we all see ourselves as made of granite. Immutable. Oh, but this is not true. For me, it is not true. I have a habit of looking back at a year ago, paging through the long-winded, sometimes obsessively detailed journals I keep privately. This week I read about March of '10 and I am astounded with the way my mind was even a year ago so different from the present. Astounded by how much tighter then I was clinging to the fuzzy size of the velcro. I love--I LOVE--differently this year. I am bolder, I think, and I am quicker to jump to my feet. In a year I am another belt notch, my reach has extended, my fingers are whole. A year ago was at the very start of the Cancer that ran ragged through the heart of my family, before I accepted a new sister, before a summer's worth of traveling and secret telling and falling deeper in love made me agree to give away the rest of my life to the tall man with the devilish eyebrows. I am far from immutable. I am built on a slope. What do I take from this? Oh, danger. Danger in that I might trip and just too easily roll down and back. Danger in that, what is another year going to create of me? I think I am trending well, but I am always a little unsure. I could be...

the peep

I was greeted at work this morning by a row of happy little Peeps on my desk. I waved them menacingly at the window streaked with rainy gray as I ate them. Suck it, freezing rain, IT IS SPRING.

divination

It's good that--six months before the wedding--we find out our zodiac signs are compatible. I hear something about his lion lying down with my lamb, and I think: into the fire.

why wait?

I keep hiding Snickers from myself because I keep having to.

could not take my eyes

I thought I had outlasted the burning early morning cold in my thighs. I had not.

I slept last night in the sling between a flashing 'check engine' light and an evening full of budding, adorable genius. Spiked right in the middle between the two.

Oh lord, there was a lot of frozen dog shit this morning and I could not take my eyes off of it.

my right arm

I am in a bathrobe and coffee dregs and pondering the nature of a human body. I think I've learned a new secret. It's so simple, really.

I've been handling all business with my right arm very cautiously for the past nearly-a-decade because of a hard tumble I took in a state park with waterfalls one summer. The torn muscle didn't heal well and as a result, I always always carried my right arm with more deference than my left, and my range of motion was much less and much less certain. But I've recently been taught some things I should have always known, and like, like MAGIC I am better. I feel like there are so many just general principals of humanship I am missing, learning years too late if at all. I am just now figuring out what makes my body do this and that, what creates these sensations, what fills it up and what tears it down. It is so obvious to me now that to fix a limb held immobile by scar tissue and fear, you must force it to be mobile again.

Since the new year I've been learning to lift weights with my arms, learning to stretch them out and gradually reach farther and farther. This fixed me. And it's not even as if I noticed the healing taking place--I'm still dense enough to miss out on why I needed these things until the results were reached. But it worked like this: while I was strengthening the arm I was also busting up old scar tissue, deleting the clumped fascia that held my arm pinned in a half life. And it worked, and finally I have learned my lesson. So here it is: move.

My arm is stronger and so much more flexible than it was just months ago, and the kicker of it all is this healing that feels like magic, the way I can stretch and reach and pull things from the shelves without pain. I am 95% of a whole person. It's MOVING. MOVING.

convicted

I wanted to say 'I am a convert!' and it came out 'I am a convict!'

fyi

Do you know, it took me three minutes to figure out how to spell 'penchant'? Do you know, I'm feeling much more whole today than I've felt all week? The two are not related.

spree

This goes against my ancestral bones (but then, so does the word 'fuck' and a penchant for Jack Daniels), but lately I have been uncoiling my mind late at night with fantasies of unaccountable shopping sprees. Just going out and taking everything off the rack.

Time to wake up.

orders

Relax into the fingers,
scalp.
Rest your fragile bones onto the insoles,
feet.

Start beating again,
heart.

used to be

My toes remind me of pomegranate seeds which reminds me of the first time I bit into one and the mattress that used to be on the floor.

breaking

Oh lord, my apathy. Oh, the apathy. It sometimes feels like it's about to breach my containment walls and take over this whole body of mine. Stand up, stand up! One foot after the other! Job! Walk! Dote! Damn. Even the small things are taking on an air of Not Really Worth It, and is this just because it's Monday?
Or am I legitimately breaking?

ego

I wonder what it would be like to have grown up in the center of the universe. I have too much of that already--entitlement and (inaccurate) self-grandeur. I am way too eager to accept praise and unjustified kisses. Sometimes I pretend I'm not, but it's a load of crap. I am full of myself. I suppose this could have been tempered by direct intervention, full attention from day one. But I'd say probably not. I'd say if I were the only thing that mattered I'd choose turn myself into a wild-eyed source of destruction. I'd say I'd probably be bending myself in half in the pursuit of freedom. I'd probably be miles away.

one side to the other

I am keeping the feeling of floating on my back in a big blue pool as tonight's number one rock-me-to-sleep thought.

denying the inevitable

Last night was unexpected. I never really expect failure and tears and running away. Though I suppose that might be part of my problem--the fact that I don't expect meltdown. If I anticipated it better perhaps I could prevent it. In this case, go back in time by two months and start rigorous training so that I can feel like I'm capable of honoring the music I'm playing and the brilliant boy I'm playing it for. So anyway, I got to 7:00pm and a short break and my heart was racing and my head was pounding and there were hot tears just under the surface of my lids and it's like, keep it up? Keep it up, April, and stick through hours two and three? I am not sure where the line between cowardice and self-preservation is. I'm never sure when I should give myself permission to throw up my hands from duty and run for comfort. Not surprising, as I'm the same girl who has never known the line between a blemish and a beauty mark. I ended up taking off. Driving too quickly and without my license and begging for reassurance from S, who met me in front of his house with a few wedges of a fresh orange in his hand held out to me. And instead of fighting my way through a long rehearsal, I spent the evening in the audience of a jazz ensemble concert led by one of the greatest drummers who has ever lived, and I smiled and laughed and thought, 'this is so life-affirming!' This is a really great way to deny the inevitable.

tweet

I think, very seriously, that the new bird song clock in our front office is hilarious. O'clock and it lets out a mighty chirp and we all jump and I laugh and laugh. It won't last--it's bound to drive one of us crazy and be taken down, silenced. It will drive one of them crazy, I mean. Not me. It is exactly that thing once missing from our wall that suits me best.

well

To the fingernail clippings and the ugly dark stain:
well, it's been fun.

incompletely

I incompletely cried three times today. The man in the pew in front of us in church collapsed during the middle of the second hymn this morning. He hit the bench hard. He was gray, stiff, unresponsive. We got out of the way of the stretcher and my eyes welled up because of the people who knew how to help and the way they darted over before the verse had ended. And later, after lunch, a perfect quartet made my eyes water. The incredible, crisp richness of four people breathing through their horns together. They rehearsed a romantic piece, the swoony sort. Soprano, alto, tenor, bari. I shivered from my seat off to the side, waiting, wanting more. And then tonight, after all that came between--after a walk through the spring hills and a long hour sitting in tall grass left over from last summer, after a meal with my new family and food so good I kept reaching for more, after time and time again with my lips brushing up against his--S and I were on the couch, watching Futurama, sipping a strong drink, the smell of clean laundry filling the room, and as the time wore on and the drink sunk in I leaned down until my head was on his lap and I fell asleep quickly and shallowly and when a half hour later his laughter woke me, my eyes had run together, pooled on his leg. Crying without words, without thought. That's a good ending.

shower

I loved writing 'sister' in the card and I loved the pink faced surprise when she entered the room.

It's a good day for being a part of all of this expanding.

the beat

I was up til the wee hours last night at a bar where S's band was giving a show. I can still feel the smoke on my skin. I am still blushing a little. Every time I go along to one of these gigs I feel pride bubble up in me, creeping up my throat. It's acid, visceral, how proud I can be of that man. Proud of his funk, his charisma, that incredibly confident talent. Several times last night I was in conversation with someone by the side of the bar and I froze, the way I always do, because S started a solo. The questions I was being asked fell on ears deaf to anything but that saxophone. Redo, ask me again once he's stopped. I am so proud of the fact that he's not going to.

conspicuously lucky

So grateful for medial posting and for strappy gold sandals (here I come) but mostly grateful for the fact of a friend/neighbor/massage therapist/shoe consultant/personal trainer. This exists. I really am conspicuously lucky.

the opposite

I am holding opposites in my head. I believe you/I don't. We'll make it/we won't. It's worth the struggle/of COURSE not.

(Of COURSE not.)

I hope I have a new pair of shoes by the end of today: I need some control. I need a sugar detox. And enough wits to get back home in one piece.

feeling bright

Woke up feeling bright this morning. It helps to be kissed goodnight and the covers tucked around my shoulders. It helps to have a neat little red laptop named Trevon in the mornings and Cheerios, and it helps to be picked up on the way to the gym and to spend an hour looking down at myself, wondering.
I have all these things-- a bottle of bubbles, plans for Thai food for lunch, good books, good coffee, tree-dreams, a full set of keys, new music piping though my earbuds.
I'm pretty proud of myself for being on my feet today. Not that it was almost a case of me not standing on my feet, but that I've, well, got some vigor in me today. Here, needed.

so far

Today is a great day for cleaning the kitchen in my underwear.

red

I am in a temporary half-cubicle, with no Sheriff Finchley for company (he's in storage). Just cube-y walls and bookshelves stacked with paper that isn't mine. Sigh. Everyone working in this area of the library is library-quiet, even on a Friday. I will put some NPR in my headphones once I find them.

I woke up at 3:00am last night and painted my nails bright red to match the lid of the laptop ebay sent me. I couldn't sleep. I didn't waste any time after turning on the computer for the first time and the inaugural facebook check before naming the new computer Trevon. No need to bandy about.

So I didn't sleep much last night. I have so many things whirling about. Anonymous notes in the mail. Where to put my coffee cup. An inability to tolerate suspense. What to DO about [left blank for reasons of me being chickenshit]. Also have the third movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto bubbling through my head. The romantic part. The part we skipped over in the rehearsal last night. 

But it's Friday! And this new fake office is an adventure! And I'm always just glad for the days I plan to end beside S.

taking it

Bring it, Thursday. BRING IT.

(early morning caramel chocolates)

archeology

Today I am an office archeologist. We're moving. Out, and then in. It's not an exciting reason: asbestos. Well, asbestos and new carpet. We were angling for our bare walls to be painted, perhaps the calming pale purple of the first floor, or the warm tan of the stairwells. But we were denied--it's just our floor, our asbestos-y floor, that warrants attention.

So, we're moving. We will be like stray dogs for a week and some change, our bare-bones selves begging for scraps of desk space somewhere in the technical services cubicle farm until we are allowed back home.

I always sort of relish this kind of chaos. It will be a pain in the balls. But it will not be tedious.

Today and tomorrow we are razing this place. Drawers that hadn't been cleaned in decades, boxes of paperwork from the 80s. I am feeling like an explorer, neck deep in paperclips and dried out rubberbands. I am recycling old papers with vigor. And feeling a stab of regret that I am the last person who will stumble upon these old billing forms from 1995 and think 'oh, so THAT'S how it used to be done!' I'm getting rid of our evidence.

We have an old screwdriver-in-a-screwdriver-in-a-screwdriver-in-a-hammer in the bottom drawer of one cabinet. I've used it more times than you'd think, to tighten pencil sharpeners and unbend cart wheels and once to fix a loosening pair of glasses. I wrapped it in a dust cloth and tucked it away in a box. I hope this all gets back to us.

Today I tossed out the tiny stubs of 17 pencils, and I feel like I will still find more.

fragments

I can be so frustrating in my inability to allow you to verify the steadfastness of your

This morning is already not what I expected

I am an unfortunate blend of poor impulse control and

But in other news, hey! I am beginning to believe that I

I am feeling accomplished, in the way gold

There I go breaking the world

I'm a little disappointed when I wiggle my toes and nothing attacks

My newest goal: make myself easier

Today's word is 'yawp'

It has been one of those DAYS! So full of sunlight and catchphrases

I want to say, sensitively, that I have been coming so close to losing my shit

I think this breeze is beautiful, and the straightened rug