Prying Open My Third Eye: reflections

Showing posts with label reflections. Show all posts

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dog's Eye View

I forgot how much I love this band. To most people, I think, they were mostly a one-hit wonder with the song, "Everything Falls Apart," and for awhile, that's what they were to me. Until my friend BlueShine came along. This was back in the Spring of 2000, when I spent most of my time at the Chris Cornell Fan Forum after the release of his "Euphoria Morning." When I wasn't posting at the forum, I was talking to people from the forum on chat. One night, Blue and I were talking about Counting Crows, who I'd just recently fallen in love with and she mentioned Dog's Eye View. It turns out that Adam Duritz from the Crows sings on one of their songs, and she piqued my curiosity.

Then the first time I met Blue, at a highway oasis outside Chicago while on a road trip with some friends from college, she gave me Dog's Eye View's album Daisy, and because she really loves their first album, Happy Nowhere, she also gave me something she'd written about it, giving me a few sentences about each song and snippets of lyrics. It's been almost ten years since then and I still think it is one of the coolest things anyone has ever given me, and of course I still have it. It was like this road map of how the album affected and touched her, filled with little stories, and LYRICS. It was just so awesome, to see music through someone else's eyes, before I had my own attachments or perceptions.

It still took me a bit of time to really start listening, but when I did, wow, did I ever listen! Tonight I was listening to them for the first time in a long time, and I thought I might give my own little roadmap.

DAISY

The first song, "Trouble With Love," is filled with all these wise, knowing, kinda cynical contradictions about love. Like this:

"If you say you need me
I will surely run away
But if you swear that you don't care
Then I'll stay until you do
And then I'll leave

I hate to admit it
But you know it's true
Others tell you differently but they're lying to you
Unless it's me
And then I've truly changed..."

I mean it's kind of fucked up, but it's also really real about what people do, and there is a real self-awareness in it that I really love. Some other favorites from this song:

"Love is blind baby, I did something stupid
If I ever find that little turd, I'm gonna kill cupid"

"1,2,3 let me count the ways
4,5,6 let me count the days
Since I thought about you
7,8,9 let me count the years
Lookin' for a heart to break tonight
I hope it's mine, I hope it's mine, I hope it's mine."

I always liked this song, but I remember one night in particular, I was terribly heartbroken, in a shattering sort of way (that had beauty to it too), I was kind of numb and being really funny b/c that's what I do when things are too much, and I played this song even though it's sort of light compared to what I was feeling at the time. I remember the room I was in was dark, and no one else was around and I just needed to sing something, something that had anything to do with love and how it can suck, and so this song was my refuge.

Another song on Daisy that has some history is "Falling in Place" - I used to send this song to a friend of mine on a somewhat regular basis, and I also meant it for myself in a way, because it just seemed like the music medicine she needed at the time. God that was so many years ago. I always left out the chorus, b/c it's a little too happy-lovey, and didn't seem quite as profound as the verses. So here it is, the way I used to post it to her:

"I put my toes on the floor this morning
Just like every other
For some reason today I was not scared
Through myself at the mercy of the wind
I don't know where I'm going
But I know where I've been and I am bored
I think there must be more

I spent 21 years in mourning
For someone I've never been
It's funny how everybody only sees
What they wanna see
Danger comes in all shapes and sizes
I'm tired of looking for it
If you spend your life avoiding surprises
Are you really living or just giving in?

Don't wanna wake up one day and realize
What I was dreaming of
Was right in front of my shut eyes
Don't want to spend my life
Afraid of saying hello
For fear of saying goodbye"

Powerful stuff. I think it's something that's hard NOT to relate to!

"Last Letter Home" is the song that Adam Duritz from Counting Crows sings on. I love the music to this song. It has a melancholy yet melodic feel. I also tend to like songs that refer to letters, b/c I'm a letter writer myself, and I think there is something really romantic and nostalgic and old-worldy and poetic and dreamerly about letters. So that theme in this song just pulls at my heart.

My favorite line is:

"Hopeless
Hope less and do more, say less and feel more this time."

I like how hopeless is kinda turned around. I also think that second line is something good to live by, and something it's easy to tell yourself, repeatedly, in situations that are stuck. It can be like a mantra.

But my favorite is the last song, Umbrella (funny, when I was trying to find the words to this song, I kept finding the Rihanna song instead, yikes). It's another sadder song, and I love, love, love the chorus, which is just one line that is just so perfect. This song also has the album title in it.

Did you like
Flowers I sent?
You could've called to thank me
Well, you could've called
When I tried to kiss you
On Brooklyn Avenue
But you got in your car
Before I could move

And I've been falling like the rain
But you've got your umbrella in my way

Fists and fingers
Tongues and teeths
I want to see you, I'm tired of my dreams
Nights of wishing I could open my mouth
When I finally did speak
You were nowhere to be found

Yeah I've been falling like the rain
But you've got your umbrella in my way

I had the sun in my hands
I had the sun in my hands
I had the sun, you said you liked the rain
Well I got it all in my hands
I had it all in my hands
but I gave it all away

Did I scare you off
By being honest?
How come we never see the end till it's right there upon us?
If you want, I can go away
But like the rain, I'll come again some other day

I've been falling like the rain
But you've got your umbrella in my way again

One of these days I'm gonna show up in the sunshine
Be a little sunshower
Fall upon you, make you rise up
Like a flower
You can be my little daisy
Be my daisy

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Monday, January 4, 2010

"All in the Cold Midwinter and at the Midnight Hour"

Or, what I did over my winter vacation.

I've actually been dying to blog about this but wanted to get some other things out of the way first. Like revamping it and updating it, for instance.

A few years ago, I wrote this post about my favorite winter memory, the second winter I spent living in the dispensary, a perfect cabin at Camp Orkila and how blissful that winter was, revelling in my connectedness to the natural world. I sometimes feel there aren't words for how satisfying in a soul way living there was to me. And it wasn't just the proximity to the ocean, the way I heard the owls and the creaking of cedar trees at night, or the thick woods I could walk through or even the months I lived there while having very little work, or all the great books I read, or the great company I had in my friend Tracy, or the walks by the coast.

Some of it was the house itself. I have lived a lot of places. I could romanticize a lot of them in memory. I'm a nostalgic kind of girl. But the dispensary was different. To me, it was perfect. It's really a cabin, all wood walls, and I just love the coloring and the light, it just really strikes something deep inside me and when I'm there, I feel like I'm sort of spiritually home. And it is not something that is only in retrospective nostalgia. I felt it the moment I first walked in, in late 2003. I remember it so clearly. The regular season at camp was over, there were only a few of us left and this girl who I didn't know too well was living there and she invited me to come over and so I went. When I got there she was on the phone and kept telling me she would be off soon and kept talking and I was just soaking up the surroundings, instantly struck with an affinity for the house, the adorable way the curtains hung on the windows, reminding me of some old camping trip or something. While I waited for her to get off the phone, I had a little notebook w/me and I took it out and wrote a poem about the house. If there is love at first sight, well maybe it felt a little like that. I am a place-lover anyway.

So all that to say, it's been years since I spent any extended time there, until a few weeks ago. I still don't know quite how it happened. I was planning on going to Orcas for the holidays, but was having some struggles arranging it, knowing where to stay, how to get there, and somehow it all fell into place. I took the train to Seattle, met with my buddy and writer friend/mentor Janet who drove to the islands, and some friends who are at camp this winter suggested staying in the dispensary. So I did.

It was blissful. In my heart of hearts it was exactly, EXACTLY what I wanted out of my winter vacation. It was like my own private writing retreat, and I desperately needed something to get me started. Something felt so comfortable there. I sat on the couch where I once read Mists of Avalon for a month, and wrote for three days. I slept in my old room, in my old bed and just tried to soak up every moment of being there. It looks a lot different, with different people's stuff there. In the summer, the house is the "health hut" so there were all these doctorly things in there, which just rocked my world of course, lol. In my bathroom there were all these anatomy charts on the walls. It was perfect.

My first night there, I got in late at night, dropped my stuff off and immediately walked by the ocean. I have missed the ocean. I have missed that stretch of ocean, even during all the years living on Orcas but off of camp, I have missed it. I have missed walking it alone. It had been probably close to five years since the last time I did that. It was weird. I used to do it all the time. I used to know all the trees and major logs and rocks. I used to walk there all the time. That got me through the early winter of 2004, which was my first winter on Orcas, and really hard, and really, really rewarding. I had so many insights and realizations and aha moments walking that shore. I walked in when I was sad, when I was working things out in my own mind, when I was caught up in grief, when I was inspired, when I was happy, and mostly when I was most deeply, really me. That shore, with its cold, softer Puget Sound waves, its inky dark water, its curved shoreline shape, its distant, unreal horizon, its other islands, its sky, became like a real, good, true friend to me and I loved it unequivocally. And knew it. There are so many experiences I could recount that took place there, like the time I went skinny-dipping in the middle of February and how gorgeously cold the water was, but most of the experiences were more internal, personally meaningful, subtle and intangible but palpable.

So it was weird to be back. Really weird. Disconcertingly weird at first. It made me think of that phrase, "you can't step in the same river twice." It was beautiful and somber as always. It was the same. I wasn't. I felt so viscerally the difference between me visiting and walking this ocean now from me who had walked and loved that ocean years ago. I don't know if this makes any sense, or even what it means, but the main feeling I got (aside from being a visitor now, rather than a regular part of that landscape as I felt before), was that I felt taller.

What? I don't know what that means. My actual height hasn't changed. If I felt heavier or bigger it would make at least some sense, but I just kept getting this unshakable feeling that I was taller than the last time I'd been there, alone, at night. It was such a strong, distinct and precise feeling, so unmistakable, but also so not actually true in reality. So I thought it might be symbolic, but of what? I don't know. I do think it meant something though.

I also felt like I couldn't re-enter that old self that used to walk that sea. Sometimes, I sort of do this thing, if I'm really hit w/nostalgia, where I can almost re-enter an older time. The almost part is painful, like it's just within my grasp, so almost there, but always not quite, just almost. In this state I can conjure up the old feelings like body memories and capture a sense or a "feeling" about the older time, something I never would have quite felt when I was in it because it's a sense or feeling colored in by memory. It's hard to explain. But I couldn't do it. I was so not the same person as I once was.

The distance felt so undeniable, an inarguable fact. I felt the distance and I felt like I was somehow more detached, more cynical maybe, though that doesn't quite describe it. Distant is really the word. The tide was out and I climbed up a huge rock that I always used to sit on. I sat there for awhile, thinking about what happened between back then and then. It made me feel sad, and I felt like I should have felt more profoundly sad, and on some level I did, but it felt like things were only getting to that level, and not to anything deeper.

It just got me contemplating, and thinking about how I haven't been writing much, for years. Not really. Not the way I used to. Not anything other than blogs or journal entries. No poetry. No stories. No memoir. When I start, I write for a few days and then I turn away and just don't want to go back to it. Something I've been sort of circling around for months now suddenly became crystallized.

I write because I don't want to feel.

And if I write, I will feel. And if I write, I will write about a particular situation and I don't want to feel one sliver of it. I don't. It was awful. I was in a horrible relationship - that is not to say the guy was horrible, I want to make that clear, and I was no saint either, not by far - but somehow the mixture of the two of us was destructive, to me anyway, in ways I couldn't see until after he left. What kills me, the part I have the hardest time with, is my part in it all, the fact that I betrayed myself. I betrayed myself every day, day in and day out, every day we lived together. I did it so much it became invisible and I stopped even seeing it. For whatever reason, of all the things that happened, THAT is the part I have trouble accepting and facing, that betrayal of self. I shut my mouth about what I thought. I didn't say anything when he would make these outrageously sexist comments that seriously offended me. I didn't say anything when he ridiculed things I believed in politically, I just stopped saying them, or pretended to agree, to keep the peace. And then there were the things that were actually directed at me, that I still would never want to say b/c I feel so awful that I didn't say anything. And those are just the surface-y things. It went so much deeper. I wasn't myself. I wasn't free to be myself. I've gone through a lot in my life, a lot of horrible shit in one way or another, and always I felt like there was some intrinsic, spiritual core inside me that survived, that sometimes was even enriched and deepened by loss in the right context, an inner guide of sort of led me through, and when things got really awful I would often have calming or sacred or healing experiences around nature. It always felt like that part of me didn't survive that relationship. Maybe because I suppressed it and abandoned it at every turn. I've felt really lost. Really afraid to feel. Ever since. It's been awhile now. I don't want to keep feeling that way.

And, sitting on that rock, I realized that continuing to not write is, in a way, just a continued betrayal. There are a million reasons not to write, but that, and the fact that it could be hard doesn't mean I shouldn't do it. All I know is, I feel like that story is inside me, screaming, clamoring louder and louder every day to be let out, to be put on paper so it can be real, so I can look at it and maybe see things I never saw, so I can write into truth that goes beyond what I consciously know, because that's what happens when I write, other ways of knowing surface, some sort of healing alchemy stirs into motion. And I always feel better after. Not always during writing difficult things, but I always feel better after. And a lot of times it's funny. I mean what can you do sometimes when things are really, really dark, how can you face that darkness without a way to laugh? So a lot of times it ends up funny in ways that surprise me, dark ways, ironic ways, funny ways that aren't really funny, not really because they're heartbreaking, but they're also funny. And laughter, like crying, is release. But most of all, when I'm writing, I am really, distinctly myself with all my complexities and not the face I put on for anyone else, or the self I put on in this shitty situation, but wholly myself. And it is terrifying! But also rewarding. So I decided for 2010 I am going to write. I am carving out the time. I don't know where it will take me, and I am really just writing for myself, longhand, but the point is, I am writing. At the moment I'm writing about writing, but still.

As I got off that rock and walked the sea back to the dock, I started thinking about an experience I had when I was living in the dispensary. One morning I woke up really early, just around dawn, and it was one of the most glorious mornings ever. I was in the middle of Mists of Avalon (which I will tell anyone, is a great book to read in winter, it just is). I was at this part where Morgaine, the main character who was trained as a priestess in goddess worship, who has sort of left behind her training to live in the world. Then, much later, at the point where I was reading that morning, she was reconnecting with her roots, rediscovering ley lines and the old ways. Something about the feeling and that morning was so infectious and filled me with this magical feeling like I too was waking up to something. It was winter, right before solstice, but there were some brilliant sunrise colors. I went on a walk through the woods to a place called Chapel Rock in the early light and just felt so inspired and connected to the natural world and like I was coming undone and blossoming inside myself.

Awhile later, when I left camp the first time and stopped living there, I was pretty heartbroken to leave. I feel like people never fully understand this because people are so used to loving people (which of course I do too) but I loved that land. Leaving felt like tearing a part of my heart out. I had never had a relationship with land quite like that and it really, really broke my heart to leave. I had my reasons, and I think they were good and wise, but really, really difficult. I was in mourning in the days leading up to my departure. And I remember my last day of work that time around, being there in the morning, and being really caught up in the mourning, thinking of all the things I was leaving, remembering fall mornings washing the lodge windows and seeing the brilliant colors of the trees, revisiting a tree I had once leaned on in a time of great sorrow, knowing my life wouldn't be quite the same after I left. And it wasn't. I always missed living there in fall and winter with a yearning that could cut through me, and years later, I still sometimes do. I was afraid I wouldn't be my true, in touch, soul-satisfied and whole self that I was while living there.

And I remember thinking that morning, as the hours slipped away, time feeling so unreal, that maybe it would be okay. Maybe we have to lose ourselves or just lose sometimes, so that we can have a morning of awakening like the one I'd had that winter morning, reading about Morgaine's. I even wrote something about it, because years ago, I wrote about that day. Let me go find it.

I’m a little worried still that I might just be numb, but then I think again, so what? Maybe it’s not so bad that we lose ourselves now and again, just so we can experience awakening. Maybe I will indeed have another day like that one in winter when I woke up so early with Mists of Avalon and couldn’t even contain my yearning for life in the wild early hours, when I felt acute and alive like the most divine lust. It’s never a straight path, there are so many spirals and levels that i’m sure there will be more euphoria mornings.

Okay, I must say, reading this years later, I am embarrassed by that last line, b/c it's a reference to Chris Cornell and it's kind of corny, and he sucks so bad now, but the words are perfect for the feeling.

So anyway, a few weeks ago, on the solstice and at night, walking back along the ocean, I was thinking kind of similar thoughts. Maybe it's okay if parts of us go underground for awhile. Maybe we need that for survival, even if it's surviving something that shouldn't be the way it is, something that needs to be changed. Survival always comes first. Sometimes those parts go underground because we need to live in the world, like Morgaine, and maybe that's okay because there is eventually if we allow it, the joy of rediscovery, awakening, coming home to ourselves. And it's somehow richer because there's some mettle behind it, if that makes sense. There's wisdom. There's life lived. Morgaine would have been pretty boring to read about if she had just stayed on Avalon, never joining the struggles of the world and living a human life.

It felt like that is what my journey to Orcas for the holidays was about. It was an inkling. It wasn't as vibrant or as innocent as the morning years ago, but it was a glimpse of how to dig up the buried parts, and for me, it's always primarily through writing and nature. So I'm writing.

I spent the next few days walking around, writing, soaking up the feeling of the dispensary, trying not to forget that thawing out and coming home may not be easy, but they are worth it. And now I'm back home in my new home, and I'm still writing. So, that's something. I guess I got what I wanted for the holidays, and I think I'd take this more difficult gift which might require some wrestling with over anything I could find in a store, any day, and especially in winter.

Speaking of, the lyric I used to title this blog is from a song that Tori does on "Midwinter Graces." And what shocked me is when I came home and had my own little holiday thing in my apartment, drinking hot chocolate and watching (yes, here we go again) the Christmas episode of Grey's (and I love, love, love, love it, one of my all-time favorite episodes, it's sooooo good) and another version of this same song was on there! Love it.

Currently Listening:
"Abnormally Attracted to Sin" - Tori Amos

mpeccable peccadillo
You are off your guard
Pussy will calls there by the church
"don't go in if you are
abnormally attracted to sin"
Abnormally attracted to sin

She may be dead to you
But her hips sway a natural kind of faith
That could give your lost heart
A warm chapel
You'll sleep in her bell tower
And you will simply wake
Abnormally attracted to sin
Abnormally attracted to sin

Impeccable peccadillo
I know who you are
Tales of longing sway
Lost without a verse
Hymns of swing lay low
there by the church
"don't go in if you are
abnormally attracted to sin"
Abnormally attracted to sin

She may be dead to you
Kind of faith that could give
Attracted to sin
To sin
To sin

Friday, January 1, 2010

"Nothing Changes, On New Year's Day"

Okay actually, though I like that U2 lyric and think it's true, I also believe it's not. I just wanted to say that before plunging into my 2009 Year in Review. The numerologist in me believes in the cycle of the personal years. For a brief overview of what that's about by a numerologist I really appreciate, check out Angelwood Consulting because it rocks and gives a brief overview of the years and how to figure out which one you're in. I'm now in the 9 year (the last of the cycle) and have known about this since the last time I was in a 9 year, and it has been remarkably accurate, in a tenuous, not quite tangible way that these sorts of things often are. So I do believe there are shifts with the new year, and I am a big believer in setting intentions, and that doing so can be amplified by these more esoteric forces. So the fact that new year falls on a full moon, blue moon, lunar eclipse, makes it seem especially auspicious for setting clear intentions. I think these energies are worth tuning into.

Also, since we're on the metaphysical subject, if you want to read a really detailed (and in my opinion a bit too verbose - and coming from the queen of long-windedness, that says something) prediction for January with some attention to the rest of the year, check out Susan Miller's AstrologyZone. Her predictions are so in-depth, and the few I've read (or had read to me by friends) for this coming month, are INTENSE! What a transformational time, between two eclipses. So check it out and milk whatever cosmic connections are headed your way.

And I just must say one more thing briefly before going into this survey, which is wtf has happened to the world since NYE? I mean, I thought it was just me, or my street or neighborhood. It's been ridiculously loud at night ever since NYE. I mean at first it was kind of expected, the screaming and the fireworks and all that, but it's still going on (well not the fireworks but the screaming). That and people driving by with really loud music just BLASTING. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it one bit. I lived too long on a quiet island. I love being in the throes of the energy. But something is definitely up. And aside from the noise issue, I haven't been sleeping well at all. Then today (Jan 4), I saw a post from my friend Trish on Bainbridge Island that no one is sleeping there either, and others replied saying they were having the same experience. 2010 is not coming in quietly.

And as for 2009, here goes: (Side note to Samsara/Leo: just because I'm late with my survey doesn't mean you're getting out of it. Start answering.)

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Since I spent three months in India, it seems the list to answer this question is endless: left the continent, traveled overseas, had rice beer, traveled with a group of people I'd never met before, hiked in the Himalayas, experienced Holi, had pink hair accidentally, took dance lessons, hung out on Indian rooftops, saw monkeys, experienced the border ceremony between India & Pakistan, rode rickshaws (cycle and auto), rode in vehicles that drive on the left side of the road, went three months without wearing a seatbelt in the craziest driving conditions ever, was bitten by a dog, had my shoes stolen, ate in a rotating restaurant, got a tattoo (in a group) in a foreign country, on impulse in Calcutta no less, ate street food, walked down "gnarly street," went three months without my music, visited monasteries, went on road passes that were 14, and then 18,000+ feet in elevation, went to a rest stop where I was literally peeing on frozen pee (at the pass), had another person (KAREN) ask me to take a picture of her peeing on frozen pee, told my life story in a group, saw someone (BEN) kill a chicken, visited remote villages, rode a toy train which included standing for six hours and at one point during that time sitting on my daypack and falling asleep leaning on a stranger's leg, ate food cooked over cow patties, drank butter tea, used "eastern" toilets, visited hindu temples, sikh temples, mosques, went to Hindi class, drank a bhang lassi (and later told my former college RA who's traveling in India where to get bhang lassis and got her hooked), saw pot growing outside the Taj Mahal, saw the Taj Mahal, and the GOLDEN TEMPLE, went on a jeep trip at 4 in the morning to see a sunrise that didn't really happen, listening to Peacock (or really, Smokey) on the way there, fell asleep on an airport floor and on my pack in a train station, gave away hiking boots for a flute for someone else (WILLA), ate nutella, watched someone run right into a pole (HILARY) during a scavenger hunt in Delhi, had black boogers from so much smog in the more urban parts of India, went to massage class, took Reiki lessons, ate mediterranean food, met Mr. Jordan and Mr. Sikkim, had a driver who people said looked like Snoop Dogg who drove our group through treacherous terrain and weather and was ultra sexy when he drove, saw cows, goats, dogs, cats and lots of other animals just chilling in the street, ate paneer, used a digital camera, was bitten up by leeches!

I'm sure there is so much I'm not even thinking about at the moment. The places and the people of that trip will always hold such a huge piece of my heart. By far the best thing I could have done. It's one of those things that if I had known, really known how hard it would be, I probably wouldn't have gone, so it's a really good thing I didn't know, because I'm so, so glad I went.

Now, there are some other new experiences unrelated to India that I should also include: lived in a friend's basement for two weeks, met a long-time internet friend after knowing for years and not meeting, took out student loans, went to school part time, took biology in a college setting, went to school totally on my own promptings and desires, lived in a studio apartment, had a 4.0 for a term, read every word of assigned reading (that is a big-time first, lol), put together a couch (it came in two boxes as 45 pieces of wood, tools, directions, gloves and a sander, and it was awesome to "build" it), went to a strip club, went to the rodeo, saw yellowstone and mount rushmore and crazy horse and south dakota's black hills (not to mention Wall Drug), took a camping road trip, rode a streetcar, lived in a downtown setting, went out for a drink before class, went a whole term without skipping a single class, watched all of My So-Called Life. And again, I'm sure there are lots more firsts I'm not thinking of at the moment.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't really do regular "resolutions" because when I think of those, they're usually restrictive ("I won't eat chocolate," "I'll exercise every day") that are just impossible and no fun to fulfill. Instead I like to think about goals or wishes. So in looking at what I wrote down last year, I stuck to a good percent of it - applying to school and starting this year, getting new glasses (my old ones were a shitpile), and writing Morning Pages (from Artist's Way). I wasn't perfect on that one, but a lot more consistent than in previous years, and was very daily about it for a large portion of my time in India. Another goal I set was to be more in touch with my spirituality, which still feels lacking, but I felt in touch in India, and at other times throughout the year. As for the wishes, one was for clarity and ease in transitioning to school and moving, and I think that's been good, one was for romance (always) which was completely 100% non-existent for me in 2009. The other wish I made was I guess somewhat fulfilled.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No one really close, but my friend and roommate Jeri from the NFB convention is due soon, I believe.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope. Knock on wood. It really, really freaks me out that I've been spared in terms of having people close to me die. Other than my grandmother, it's just something I haven't dealt with much, not for me personally anyway, and it always makes me feel like at any moment that is going to change, like all this time going without experiencing that kind of loss is going to build up so the universe can deliver some huge wollops. Either that or I'll die young or something. Yeah, it scares me.

5. What countries did you visit?
India and the Hong Kong airport.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Romance (always). A hot lover. A part-time job I love. Oh and a different apartment where I can actually control the heat and don't feel like I'm living in a fucking sauna and wasting energy by the bucketful by keeping my windows open (I'd suffocate if I didn't) and don't wake up feeling like all the water has been leeched from my body. (Aside from that, I'm really happy with my place). Yeah I definitely want to move when my lease is up. My location is AWESOME but my rent price is too high and my place is too small, but the heat thing is what gets me more than those other issues, big time.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
In random order:
Feb 12th - flight to India.
May 7th - return from India.
Sept 26th - signed my lease & saw Pearl Jam.
August 7-9 - Lollapalooza.
Sept 28 - school began.
Dec 7 - school ended (well, the day of my final).
Aug 25 - a nice walk in a park w/a friend.
Sept 23 - the day I left Orcas.
July 2-9 - NFB convention in Detroit.
July 4 - my roommate at the convention (who was also pregnant) had a major diabetic emergency and I went w/her to the hospital (she and the baby were fine, thank god, but it was very scary - at first the paramedics couldn't get her to respond at all and the way they were talking I thought I might actually watch someone die - second time in my life I've had that fear - it was at a point where, "either this is going to work or nothing will - so fucking scary). After we got back we had to switch rooms b/c they had such trouble putting in her IV that there was blood and needles all over the floor.
Dec 21-24 - stayed at my old favorite home, the dispensary at Camp Orkila, walked my old beaches, stayed in my old room and for three days felt reconnected to a very happy time in my memory.
June 19 - last day of work at Camp Orkila kitchen for good.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving India, rocking biology. Making the decision to go to school even after obstacles arose and other opportunities seduced me into having such serious second thoughts that I really thought I would put it off for another year.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not speaking up for myself, not being real with people out of fear, keeping secrets and hiding and running away from anything of intensity (and a few things that were just awkward) out of fear. I really want to change these things about myself. I drive myself fucking crazy, I swear. Not writing memoir.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Anything bad?
No. Knock on wood again for this one, I was remarkably healthy this year, which is surprising considering I spent a part of it in a third world country where lots of people get sick. My only real complaint was constipation, and getting bitten by a dog.

11. What were the best things you bought?
I'm going to mimic Tara's answer (I copied this survey from her) and say, does my tuition count? Also, plane ticket to India, for sure. And my couch. Also, a desk! I bought it very synchronistically from a friend from Orcas who's also living in Portland. I was in desperate need of a desk for school and when I went to her house for dinner, found she was really trying to get rid of one and having no luck on Craigslist. I love when life works out like that. Some cool clothes, including some dresses (which will make some people reading this fall over with shock, I'm sure). Some AWESOME lamps. Oh and Grey's Season 5 DVD - I freaking LOVED season 5. And lots of great books.

But probably the thing that has made the biggest impact (and wow I'm a dork), is a dock for my iPod for my bathroom. It's so small, the sound isn't great, but it has made such an impact on my daily life. I feel so much happier while getting ready for the day and sometimes I sit in the bath, reading and listening to music and thinking that life is almost momentarily perfect.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Stealing from Tara again: I feel like I say the same thing every year, but my friends are always doing such amazing things and making such amazing strides, I can't help but celebrate them. More specifically (this is me now): Willa and Maryam for sticking through tough situations at their job or program through to the end and making sure to get something better once their situations were over, all my study group people for being awesome and making studying for biology even more fun with their humor, funny stories, great minds, disgusting medical stories and references to The Office, Mandy my lab assistant, Clarkie for livin' the dream, Edie for taking all the necessary steps to venture out there and make the world a better place at the same time. Janet, for not only writing a brilliant, heartfelt, ironic, wise, deep, activist, fierce, loving memoir, but also for really respecting the writing and the book in a way that I admire in her path to making it complete and published. Linda for writing the crap out of her new novel PURE, which to me feels important and precise and masterful.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A few people.

14. Where did most of your money go?
OMG rent ($$$!) and tuition ($$$!) and cell phone and other bills and my textbook, bus pass, etc. And the India trip (though I barely spent anything while there).

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
INDIA, going to school, Portland.

16. What song/s will always remind you of 2009?
"Paper Planes" - M.I.A. (and it's playing right now!), whatever that "clouds above" song is that Willa and Graham were always playing in India, Joshua Radin, and I'm sure tehre's more but it's hard to really know until time has passed, and you hear a song and it gives you that nostalgia feeling.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Probably happier
ii. Thinner or fatter? Probably a little fatter.
iii. Richer or poorer? Poorer! For sure! Going from working, even if it wasn't quite year-round, to taking out student loans, well, the math is pretty simple.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, blogging, flirting, reading, playing my (digital) piano, being in nature, being more authentic. Mostly writing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Hedging, letting fear paralyze me, suppressing how I really feel, trying to please everyone else at my own expense, watching TV to avoid things.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it in Friday Harbor with Janet and a great group of her neighbors and friends.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nope.

22. How many one-night stands?
None

24. What was your favorite TV program?
Grey's Anatomy, House and The Office. This summer was torture on all three fronts. Oh and My So-Called Life was so great to watch all the way through - what a smart, real and in a lot of ways brave show. I also found this old show from a few years ago that only lasted one season called Medical Investigations, which is all right, though I must say that House makes a MUCH better genius asshole than MI's main character and makes a much more likable character.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Kind of. Not really hate though, just pissy.

26. What was the best book you read?
Snow Falling on Cedars - so, so good, and about a fictional place that in reality is so close to where I called home. Wuthering Heights was surprisingly great to finally read. Oh, and someone from my study group recommended a book called What I Learned in Medical School, which is a collection of personal memoir essays from non-traditional medical students (single moms, refugees, a descendent of holocaust survivors, students with Tourette's, sickle-cell anemia, OCD, etc). It was a perfect mixture of things I like to read about - the real life stories of real people, medical stuff, and had a huge social justice element. On Friday I'm passing it on to my blind naturopathic physician friend. I devoured that book and read the first half on my recent train to Seattle on my way to Orcas. I have just started a book that I know will make this list for 2010 - Day Breaks Over Dharamsala by Janet Thomas.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I am disgustingly hooked on the Grey's soundtracks. Some favorites include Joshua Radin, Butterfly Boucher, Kendall Payne, Rilo Kiley, Psapp, Regina Spektor, Jem, Snow Patrol. Also want to include the songs that my friend Kelly's daughter got me hooked on during our cross country camping travels by Rise Against and The Darkness. Also, this is so NOT new b/c I've loved Tori since just after Christmas 2002, but I really LOVE her new albums Abnormally Attracted to Sin (and freaking love that title) and Midwinter Graces (love that title too, makes me think of Mists of Avalon).

28. What did you want and get?
Again, stealing Tara's answer because it's true: A sense of purpose and intellectual fulfillment. I guess the former I sort of had, but the latter was sorely lacking. (Okay, me again): A decent living situation very close to campus, the excitement and anonymity and pulse of living in Portland, a visit to the ocean, a stay in the dispensary.

29. What did you want and not get?
Boys. A guide dog (though I am honestly still really on the fence on whether or not I want one).

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Slumdog Millionaire, Where the Wild Things Are (just saw it two nights ago).

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
28 (in fact, about two weeks ago, someone said to me for the first time, "You're pushing thirty." Aaaah!) I was here in Portland, visiting schools, and spent my birthday evening with Kelly and Elynn at the Sapphire Hotel and it had all this cool lighting and we had to use little flashlights to see the menu and ate some kind of dish with squash in it which made the whole thing just about perfect. Kelly & family gave me a pretty funny card that somehow ended up in my tarot bag and came with me to India, and when I needed a connection to my world back home, I would pull it out. Overall, it was a very cool birthday and not too out of control. Will have to get crazier for 29 :) which is barely a month away (again, aaaaah!). I'm gettin' old.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More courage.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
"If it's not colorful and artistic and pleasing to my own unique sense of aesthetics and expressive and also really hot, I'm not interested." I wore a lot of purple, pink, red and green and a lot of outfits that would inspire comments like House's towards Cuddy. You know, I've gained weight, in interesting proportions and as a friend of mine says when you have bigger boobs there are really only two options, dress real frumpy to cover yourself or show it off, and I vote for the latter so my attire borders on the "come fuck me" side of things. I jokingly told a friend yesterday that my goal is to be a hardcore science nerd who dresses like a tramp, lol. I'm exaggerating of course, but still. Just doing my part to debunk the whole notion that girls are either smart or sexy and not both.

34. What kept you sane?
Good friends, music, long baths in my awesomely deep tub in my new apartment, good books, having a few days to be in the dispensary, on the Orkila beach and in the woods. Nature plays a big part in keeping me sane, if sanity is really what this is. It disturbs me a little that that always seems to be a question.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I always have a thing for Maynard, and always have the hots for Derrick Jensen's writing, so those two always have a place in my answer. Oh and I wanted to take reeeeally inappropriate pictures with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama at an inauguration party on Orcas last January, LOL just because it would be so wrong. Mostly instead of celebrities I just lust after fictional characters, like Alex from Grey's.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Universal health care.

37. Who did you miss?
It would be a much shorter list to ask who I don't miss. So many of my friends are long-distance. Special shout out to Tracy, Leo, Caren, my India peeps, Maryam, Clarkie, Edie, Claire, Forest, Elynn, all the people I didn't get to see on my recent trip to Orcas, and many, many, many more.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
My study group - Alicia, Ryan & Scott. My India group - Hilary, Willa, Desmond, Nina, Ben, Andrew, Karen, Graham. Though not exactly "new" in terms of knowing a person, meeting Aaron was very awesome. Also have to include Katie O, Donna and Gaza - probably the coolest people I met at Orkila this year.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Doing what scares the fucking daylights out of you is one of the most valuable things you can do, and it is a LOT easier said or contemplated than done. Also, it is good to keep the wild part of you alive and well, the reckless childlike part that wants to run across the streets or roll down hills or have pillow fights - it's good to indulge that sometimes, keep yourself young and vital and alive the way children are - passionately, intensely, vibrantly and full of awe.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Gotta go with this one, this song was in my head so much during my trip.
"I have ended up in India, ohhhh
With no map to guide me home'
The strangest place I think I've ever been."
~Kendall Payne, from "Scratch"

Currently Listening:
"Always in My Head" - Psapp - I must say I have no idea what this song is supposed to be about, has almost a disjointed, almost psychedelic but in a subdued way sort of feel.

One step just behind me
One stretches out ahead
Some walk just beside me
Some already dead

I fumble with time, keep walking
Just beside me
I want to watch the tread
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head

Pace that quickens now to breaking point
I sprint across and here we are
I'm running up ahead and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head

So step just behind me
You're stretching out ahead
We walk just beside and
We're already dead
I'm dancing in the light and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head

Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head

Saturday, September 12, 2009

My Love/Hate Relationship with Orcas Island

(Originally written on September 6th, but I forgot to finish and post)

So, I'm back on the rock. Some might call it Orcatraz and these days, I might be among them.

What I've been wondering a lot lately is if there is a danger in staying somewhere that is too small and safe too long? I feel like I'm living out some negative consequences of having done just that. It's like staying in the womb too long and then not knowing how to breathe in wide open spaces or something.

When I first moved here, life on a small Pacific Northwest island was exactly what I needed. It felt like a port in the storm that was my life. It's also one of the lushest, most beautiful places I have ever encountered. And not in a "oh look at that honey, isn't it pretty?" sort of cheesy way, but in a deep, sacred sort of way, with thick forested areas, fog, and the ocean. Perfectly contemplative. Before I got here, while living in Seattle unable to find work and stressed out all the time, I had this constant daydream that somehow, someday I would be living somewhere where I could see the ocean, somewhere quiet and dreary and maybe even a little melancholy.

And somehow, that incessant daydream that felt like an impossible imagining came true when I came up here (which was six and a half years ago). I lived on the camp property and could see the ocean from my window. I'd wake up to go to work early and see the moon reflecting on the water, or look up and see constellations, and take walks through thick trees. I wrote in detail about this once before in this post. So yeah, for awhile, Orcas was an idyllic haven.

But then I moved off of camp, and started to feel a little suffocated by the smallness of the island, the difficulty and time-consuming complications of getting off the rock while not being able to drive, started to feel extremely intellectually frustrated, and wished there were more people my age, and missed seeing live music more frequently, and (shit I really hope I don't offend anyone by saying this) felt frustrated about writing on Orcas, in terms of, I felt I always had to censor myself, b/c I was always the youngest in any local writing circle I've been in on the island and while some people really welcome the kind of irreverance I would bring to the table, some people really don't. A lot of times it felt like people were writing about flowers and sunlight and sweet memories and so I'd ask them to skip over me as we all read aloud in a circle, b/c I'd written about something less delicate, like say, porn. I started to feel like I had to watch my language in these circles, and my topics, and just felt uncomfortable being myself. I felt like I had to suppress my fire.

Last winter I had cabin fever so bad I thought I would explode, and then I went to India, and when I first came back to my apartment I felt the realization as clearly as if it had been painted on my walls, I was done with Orcas. It was too small. I spent most of my summer thinking of how to get out of here sooner. But it also was a nice respite. I mean India was so intense and overwhelming all the time, sensory overload at every moment, and sometimes it felt really fucking scary. And even after getting used to that and not feeling as afraid, there was still the intensity. So it was nice to be somewhere totally safe, somewhere where I would never think twice about walking home at all hours of the night, sometimes more than a mile walk, sometimes completed while drunk or high or both and feeling totally safe while doing so. It really was nice to come back and just rest a bit, be in familiar surroundings.

And then I went to Chicago and Portland and was kinda freakin' out. I mean this usually happens when I've been on the island a while, whenever I first go to the mainland, it's overwhelming, and big stores and getting around by myself seem insurmountable. Actually I usually get cranky when first off-island as a reaction to feeling a bit out of my comfort zone. It's like clockwork. But I've noticed that it's definitely gotten worse over the years, not better. I feel more overwhelmed and more rusty on travel skills every time I leave the island.

So yeah, Chicago, I was mostly with a group for the whole time, but when I split off to meet up with two girls from my India trip, I was freaking out, terrified I wouldn't meet back up with my group. It ended up being fine, though we did get lost trying to find the right metro station and train track. Still the whole time I was there I was just like, this city is fucking huge and it made me feel kind of lost. And then when we got to Portland after the road trip I felt the same way. I was just so out of practice of living in a city of any size, and didn't know my way around, and felt really overwhelmed. For the first few days, I just wanted to be back on my safe little Orcas. I didn't REALLY want to, but was craving safety, familiar territory, only three main streets to navigate, relief. My friend Elynn had to talk some sense into me. As someone who'd recently left Orcas herself, she knew what I was going through and that it would pass. She gave me a stern little talking to, something like, "Chrys, on Orcas you have no prospects for getting laid and you only have two people to hang out with year round." And I thanked her for the reminder, b/c I needed that, and then all the reasons I was sick of Orcas came flooding back.

After that I decided to venture out and go take the bus to my school, which was a complicated venture. The internet where I was staying wasn't working that morning, so my friend Rachel helped me out. She worked hard looking up bus routes and a local bank b/c I was trying to open an account. It ended up being a really unsuccessful mission at the time. I wasn't able to open one (though later in my second week in the city, everything totally came together swimmingly), and it turned out that where I had to catch the bus to go back wasn't all that near where I'd been dropped off, and I got kind of lost, and had to call Rachel again and work it out. The weird thing was, after that bus adventure, after I got back to my friend's place and all, it's not exactly that I stopped feeling overwhelmed, but it lessened immensely, and I had zero more thoughts about wanting to be on Orcas. I stopped freaking out, like somehow crossing that hurdle made all the difference. And from then on I had a blast.

But it did make me really feel that staying on the island for as long as I have has had some detrimental effects. I can't imagine I ever would have felt all overwhelmed and shit like that before I lived here. I moved to Seattle not knowing one thing about how to get around the city, and not really knowing anyone either, and yeah it was kind of scary at first, but after a few weeks I was answering other people's questions about which buses to take to go where. So it's like, I know I can do it, I just have been horribly out of practice. And that brings me back to my original point, that staying somewhere that's too safe and small for too long has its dangers.

And I must say, I'm hoping not to be here too long. I have been back for not even 48 hours and I feel the same way I did when I first got back from India, I am done with this place. There are lots of people I love, and lots of things I love about the island, but I am just done. I am afraid of being pulled back in to the nest so to speak. I want to be free and Orcas feels like Orcatraz right now. I hate saying that b/c there are sooo many great things about the island, I've just had enough. So I'm keeping myself busy.

I spent a day in Seattle on my way back up North and it was a good reminder that I can be fine in a city, b/c I felt pretty at home there, partly b/c I know its layout and it's familiar. It just reminded me that even if I go somewhere where I don't know anyone or where anything is, it will eventually feel totally navigable.

Currently Listening:
"Paper Planes" - MIA - already did this song once before so I won't bore anyone w/reposting the lyrics. Am loving it though! Love the very beginning the most, "I fly like paper and get high like planes/If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name..." She's cool in a badass way.

Monday, August 31, 2009

After the Ecstacy, the Laundry

A few years ago, I went to this amazing writers retreat weekend put on by The Sun magazine in Big Sur, CA, and during the last morning we were all gathered and talking about what we felt about the end of the workshop, and a lot of people expressed some degree of sorrow at having to go back to their real lives, and someone brought up the quote that is the title of this blog, which I think was originally said by some spiritual teacher or something. Ever since that workshop, I think of this quote anytime I'm saying goodbye to any kind of supercool experience and going back to my regular life, and that is the case this morning.

I'm leaving Portland in a few hours, and I have a heavy heart, and I'm glad the sky is dreary and overcast, not just because I always like that, but also b/c it fits. I had too much fun this month, coming to stay w/my friend so we could take a trip to Lollapalooza in Chicago together, meet up with a bunch of friends for the festival, take an awesome road trip back to the west, and after that were my two weeks in Portland trying to start up OR residency so school can be somewhat more reasonable next year.

Where to even start? There is so much to say. The Lolla/road trip has been in the works since April. My friend emailed me about the possibility while I was in India and I remember it feeling like a beacon of light in a way, an adventure to look forward to after getting home. India was also an adventure of course, but it was a really difficult one, so it was really nice to have something to look forward to that would be a little more smooth and simple, yet still would cover new territory.

Lolla was awesome. I saw TOOL for the 4th time and they are fucking AMAZING live as usual. But those guys really, really need to shake up their freakin' setlist. I mean, really now. They have such a great catalog of songs, and I am craving more of it. Also saw Rise Against, The Killers (very excited and into it audience for them) and Snoop Dogg. Left the show for awhile on Friday night and had a random kinda crazy meetup with two of the girls from my India trip. It later involved literally running through the streets of Chicago trying to meet back up w/my group to catch a train. And the friend I was running with was barefoot and muddy. It rained like crazy that day, and two of my friends used plastic tablecloths as ponchos, of which I have photo evidence that I probably should refrain from posting :) And one friend Leo got hair dye in her eye b/c of the rain and it stained her contacts! The best part of the whole weekend, even better than Tool and Maynard was getting to hang out with some great people who I don't get to see nearly often enough.

I was definitely feeling overwhelmed by the crowds at the festival, not exactly my thing. When I was trying to get around Chicago with Nina from my India trip I told her that I was out of my element and she laughed and said, "I've seen you much more outside of your element," and I agreed, b/c crazy as some of it was, it was not India.

So the deal with the road trip was that we flew to Chicago and then met up with Kelly's neighbor as she was driving cross country back to Oregon. She had her dog with her, a fluffy, teddy-bear looking australian shepherd that got nonstop attention wherever we went. We piled into the car and headed west, making camp the first night in Wisconsin. From there we drove through Minnesota and into South Dakota, where it took us forever to try to see the sculptures in Sioux Falls (never mind trying to see the Falls). That night our campsite was RIGHT on the time zone line from Central to Mountain time - if we went from one part of the area to another, our cell phones would switch back and forth.

The next day we drove all through SD and had the hardest time finding a campsite in the Black Hills area, which I have to say was a really gorgeous area, really lush, really adorable little towns, and we drove through a rainshower and I always think everything looks beautiful in the rain. We drove into this one park and had to pay an admissions fee to even go look for a campsite, then drove through this loooong and winding road called the Needles Highway, which had these amazing rock formations, just incredibly cool, but when we finally got to the camp area, everything was full and we had to find somewhere else. We set up camp and went to an evening program at Mt. Rushmore. Oh this was after driving to Crazy Horse, but we didn't really go in there b/c they wanted to charge so much to basically look a bit closer at what we could already see. So fuck that. Mt. Rushmore was...interesting, as my friend Rachel would say. I mean it was definitely mind-boggling to think about how they made it, but the whole thing was way too sickeningly patriotic for me. I think especially after coming back from India, and this is probably true of any foreign experience, (and not even that, b/c I felt this way beforehand, it's just been strengthened by India).

We got up and the next morning and went to the Badlands which are also really cool. I must say I hugely prefer the naturally made phenomena like that to the manmade ones like Mt. Rushmore. I will have to post pictures because the Badlands are hard to describe, but amazing to witness. I felt like we got to see some really incredible parts of the country while driving and camping through them, and that was fucking cool. There is some really amazing landscape. And animals! We saw bison, donkeys, prairie dogs in the distance, heard coyotes, saw a bear while driving at one point, and I don't even remember what else. Lots of bison, which is cool b/c I didn't think there were really still that many out there.

And then there was the rodeo. In Cody, Wyoming, a memorable experience that I never ever need to re-experience. I couldn't see most of what happened for the actual rodeo and honestly, I am thankful. And unfortunately I could hear the announcer, who was this radio clown telling really, really offensive racist and sexist jokes, yelling out how proud he was to be a redneck, and just incessant blather. Afterwards, I felt just kind of all around grossed out and disgusted. During parts of our camping trip we were in really conservative territory, holy shit for sure. We drove past a billboard that said, "Manage your wildlife: Wear Fur." I mean, wtf?

We spent the next day in Yellowstone, which is just a massive, massive park. We didn't even see parts of it that we had meant to, like the Boiling River. There are just so many amazing things to look at, like a lake so huge (and with waves) that looks like the ocean, and all kinds of geysers, and pools of this orange mineral stuff. Really vibrant colors. I wish I knew more about what caused and formed all of these things. That night we had to search for firewood on the side of the road, around dusk, and piled into the back of the car on top the dog. Oh and we got a free campsite that night - someone who had already paid had decided to leave and so that was one of those awesome, cool experiences that comes with travel.

After that we drove through Idaho and into eastern Oregon and stayed at this beautiful lake. The stars were incredible. A few different times we just had amazing skies during the trip, and we were able to see the dipper and the milky way, and some shooting stars. Our last day we spent in the Painted Hills, which really are amazing looking with red and tons of green. We took hikes and stopped at a local museum to learn about the nearby fossil beds and history of the area. From there we drove back to Portland through the lushness of Mt. Hood.

It was a great trip full of awesome music and good times. It was nice though to get back and sleep in a real bed and not have to set up and take down camp every day.

All during the trip I was going through an internal indecisive struggle. It's a common thing I wrestle with. While in Chicago I got a call from my school saying I would most likely get housing, even though I had been wait-listed three times at that point. And that little flicker of hope made me want to say screw the center in Denver, I'm starting school. But I couldn't decide. I really, really wanted to start school. I have been putting it off awhile, I have been thinking about it for years, and seriously looking into it for the last two. I felt so beyond ready, and desperate for intellectual stimulation. I felt really gung ho about doing some science shit. I was going to go part-time b/c doing that, I could sort of afford, sort of, and at the end of the year, I'd be considered an in-state resident.

I kept going back and forth in my mind. I wanted to go to school, I knew that, but I also kept remembering what Desmond from my India trip always said, b/c I think it's a good motto to live by: "Make the choice that you would regret not making." I knew that if I didn't choose the Colorado Center, I'd probably always wonder what skills I could have gained or what it could have been like and how it could have enriched my life, but still, I was going to try to make school work. So I set about calling and doing paperwork crap only to get denied for a loan and wait listed again for housing. I still wanted to try but I sort of came to my senses and was like, okay, obviously the thing to do here is go to the Colorado Center. And that started to really feel right. But I spent my first week after the road trip dealing with that.

The second week, I had fun. I got to see a good friend of mine who used to live on Orcas who I rarely get to see anymore. I got to hang out with a long time internet friend. That was really freakin' cool. And things started to get busier at my friend's house during that second week. We had people over. We went out - to wine tasting, to exploring the Hawthorne area of Portland, to a movie showing about mental health, to an art street fair (at which I got of the car feeling strongly that I would run into someone I knew from Orcas, which turned out to be a very accurate prediction as I ran into the boat captain for the camp I used to work at), and one night we actually went to a strip club - not my idea. So there were four of us women who I think all consider ourselves like mostly straight, watching some naked girls. I was iffy about going, but it turned out to not feel seedy really, and also was pretty impressive - fire dancing and all. Yet another new experience I suppose.

We also had one sort of somber but beautiful morning, all four of us girls just sitting around and talking. It was a bit heavy b/c some of them were going through some tough stuff, but at the same time it was kind of cool to just talk and share insights and listen to kinda brooding music (Elliot Smith, Into the Wild soundtrack, Chris Cornell's Euphoria Morning, Jeff Buckley, Pearl Jam) and contemplate life, and incorporate tarot readings into it. Actually we had two weird music/tarot coincidences. I was giving this girl a reading about her love life and right before I turned over the first card the PJ song "Love Boat Captain" came on and someone remarked about that. Then later once I'd read for everyone else I did my own reading and I turned over The Tower (which is kind of a scary card honestly, was not thrilled to have that show up in the center of my reading), and just as I turned it over, the PJ song "You Are" came on, but I couldn't think of the name of the song or anything, just that it had lines about towers, and it was like whoa, weird.

Anyway on the last full day it was kind of cool b/c we went to this place called Cup & Saucer, which was actually the first place I ever went in Portland, I think it was over 8 years ago, the first time I met Kelly, and I love stuff like that, when things feel symmetrical in some way. While we were there I kept noticing this woman with this really unique purple and pink dyed hair, and there had been a lot of hair dying at the house, and I felt inspired and impulsive, so that last night, Kelly's daughter and her friend dyed my hair purple with pink streaks. It came out a rich deep purply pink and I LOVE it.

And now I'm headed back north. Feel like I did more in the last month than I do in some years (trips to India not included). It is hard to imagine being back on Orcas. I'm all packed up, and doing laundry before I start the long journey and trying to think positively about things I can look forward to about going back to my place, like sleeping in my own bed, seeing Orcas friends, remembering that fall is my favorite season on Orcas, and trying not to obsessively count the days until I can leave the island again. Already planning a possible off-island day trip with a friend, and looking forward to seeing Pearl Jam and David Cross in a few weeks, and getting my shit together for Denver.

In the meantime I'll probably go back to watching House, Grey's Anatomy and the Office while going through my stuff and making preparations so that I can be ready to move out when it's time to go to the Colorado Center. And of course, counting the days until those three shows premiere. I mean, come on, House is committed, Pam's pregnant and George and Izzie might be dead. That's some excitement to look forward to!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Can You Ever Go Home Again?

I don't know.

I woke up twice in the middle of the night completely disoriented, not knowing where I was and both times it took a few minutes to figure out where I was. It was weird, b/c I had something a little similar about halfway through the trip, when we had been moving around so much and slept in so many different places that as I drifted off to sleep, in that semi-lucid in between state I'd find myself momentarily thinking I was still in Calcutta or something. It happened for a few days in a row, but what happened last night was a lot stronger and felt so much more disorienting, like it really took awhile for it to register where I was and get my mind around it. Guess that could be expected for the first night sleeping at home in over three months.

I can't get over how weird it feels to be back. I honestly feel a bit uncomfortable with it. As I was saying at the end of the last post, a lot of things are the same as when I left. Some minor things have changed, like the local supermarket has totally changed their setup, and apparently my old job is just a clusterfuck of absurdities and people quitting and all kinds of trouble. And maybe that's good b/c it solidifies my resolution not to go back. Overall though, a lot seems the same, and it's sort of hard to reconcile that, b/c I am not the same.

I was wondering how that would feel. Everyone told me before I left that I would come back changed. My friend Becky told me she thinks of her life in terms of before a big trip she took to Jamaica and after. It's kind of a huge cliche, go to a foreign country, especially one like India, and come home forever changed, but it's also so true. What's hard to anticipate is how to integrate it all and how hard that can be.

I don't think I ever elaborated on the tattoo I got in Calcutta. For awhile three of the girls in the group, who I bonded with early on in Varanasi in week two of the trip, were talking about getting tattoos in India. At first, though I wanted to join in, I was skeptical - when I got my first tattoo I knew for over a year what I wanted to get before I had it done, and this time I had no idea. By the time we got to Calcutta, I had a strong feeling that the theme of the trip (and by this point I knew I wasn't coming home the same person I had been) was courage. I actually thought about getting something Durga related but decided against it. One morning while volunteering at the Mother Theresa home, doing laundry on the rooftop with the Willa and Graham, I kept thinking about it, thinking maybe I'd get "courage" in Hindi or something. I later looked it up online, and just didn't really like any of the translations I found for different Hindi words that meant courage or something similar, the definitions were all too warlike for me, more about power and dominance and I was looking for something more inner. So another morning I was again doing laundry on the roof and thinking about it, and was thinking that I wanted a song lyric that symbolized courage, and was going over Tool lyrics in my head, mainly the song "Lateralus" for whatever reason. And then I picked up this tiny t-shirt (there were some interesting ones with all kinds of logos and sayings) to hang up to dry and looked at it and it said, "Learn to Swim" on the shirt.

It was perfect. It's a Tool lyric that to me has everything to do with courage and finding one's own way, the courage to swim against the current. In fact, for awhile I was going to call my book Learning to Swim, and there's just been a lot of swimming and drowning symbolism in my life and I've had a lot of spiritual experiences involving swimming and water. So that's what I got, on my left upper arm (I knew for years that's where I'd get my second tattoo so that was a no-brainer). I got it in purple, in a style called Goddess Script, and felt good about it being on my left side, which is the side of the body that's traditionally related to moon energy, to the subconscious, the intuitive, the heart, the inner, deeper, the feminine, and these things all symbolized the more inner courage I was trying to get at.

What was really cool was that Graham got "water" in Hindi, Willa got an anchor and "deep" in Hindi (and a spiral), Hilary got "beauty" in Hindi, and we figured out that if you put our tattoos together, it's "Learn to swim in deep, beautiful water." And that was completely unintentionally awesome. It was such a bonding experience.

Anyway, the point, if there is one, is that the tattoo to me sort of symbolizes some of the whole bit about feeling like I'm not the same person I was when I left the country. What was cool was that both of the trip leaders referenced my "learn to swim" as we were leaving. Karen mentioned it in my "exit interview" thingy that I was writing about yesterday, and both of the leaders wrote us each cards and Andrew referenced it in my card. It just feels like the symbolic phrase signifying the inner changes.

But I also look really different. I've never really had short hair, and when it's been semi-short I've never liked it, but it looks different this time, and I do like it, and it's way shorter than ever before, and still pink. It really changes the way I look big time. And I think I carry myself differently too. Actually my sense of my body has probably changed more than my appearance. I was sick a lot as a kid, and always had the feeling I had a pretty weak constitution, below par immune system, susceptible to being blown about by the wind. Well, I was in the land of foreign diseases (one person in our group got e. coli and another got giardia) and was remarkably not sick. I think I was actually the least sick of anyone in the group, which I never in a million years would've suspected. And I never really felt jetlag. Even though my sleep schedule's been off and I felt tired from traveling, I really never felt anything yesterday and got up at a normal hour today. I never got carsick or even close to it, and trust me when I say we were on some carsick inducing bus/train/especially jeep rides (we also pretty much never wore seatbelts as most vehicles in India don't have them) and was just totally fine, even thoroughly enjoying the bumps and sharp turns and rockin' and rollin'. And I had zero trouble with the high altitude of Ladakh, and never felt lightheaded when we were on the really high passes or any of that. I knew the moment I stepped off the plane in Leh that I'd have no problem with the altitude (I'd been worried). Overall, I felt like I was a lot stronger than I give myself credit for, which expanded things for me in a way.

It's definitely more inner change, which is almost harder to integrate. I just don't feel the same inside, and coming back here, I'm afraid of losing that, of getting small, shrinking back, because things here do feel smaller. I do feel more courageous, more outspoken, less willing to take shit. I felt at times in the group that I drifted away in some ways from the ones I felt closest to, which felt sad at times, but I also think rather than a separation it was more me finding my own way and following my own path and following it. I think that's important, and something I was really looking for. Authenticity was another big goal for me, and I feel like I clearly made progress on that. I did a lot of journaling and inner work on the trip, and I feel like I covered some major ground and was in a really good place and able to see some things and have a lot of insights and realizations that were tremendously meaningful.

I thought a lot about myself in relationships, how though I've been single a lot, there's always somebody that I'm super into or someone I'm getting over, and I always have these intense crushes (at one point I went back to starting when I was like thirteen and went chronologically through my life and basically realized there was no time without this sort of intense feeling for an ever-changing someone else) and focus all my energy, practically live my life with someone else at the center, and usually that other person is like, the most unlikely person in whatever situation I'm in (including famous people and fictional characters, hahaha, I'm only sort of joking about the last one) so it's pretty much always unrequited, almost like on some unconscious level I'm seeking validation or love in places or people that won't or can't give it, so perpetuating a cycle of feeling rejected and unlovable and all kinds of bullshit. And in the meanwhile, always throwing my energy away. It's an incredibly unhealthy pattern and I realized that what I constantly seek for in others, I really have to find within. It's obvious, and it's something I've always known and thought about, but never really embraced, b/c it's easy to keep overlooking that when you're feeding yourself a constant stream of crushes on unavailable people and giving all your energy to trying to make them love you. That was the big picture, and I also had a lot of supporting realizations and observations about myself in love.

All that said, I have to say I do miss seeing lots of gorgeous exotic looking foreign men.

I also had a lot of insights and clarity about other areas of my life, and observations about how I operate and what I do and don't want to continue doing. I had a lot of ceremonial letting go of different things (my group knows I'm a big fan of ceremonial fire). A big unspoken goal of the trip was to re-awaken my spiritual side, which had felt a bit dead for some time. I felt beyond cynical, almost like I had an allergy to the idea of, and even the word spirituality for awhile there. I wasn't writing. I was avoiding everything, wouldn't even journal, didn't want to be alone with myself ever and my thoughts and had no belief in anything. This was all so unlike me, for my whole life no matter what I was going through, even when I was young, I always felt like I had an eye towards the spiritual (albeit in an earth-nature-sky-water loving way, and never a religious way), towards depth, towards self-awareness, personal growth, communing with the unseen, mystery, and all of that. So being without that made me feel a bit dead inside, but I couldn't seem to get out of the rut. That quickly changed in India, and part of that is because of Willa, who embodies spirituality and has so much wisdom. I found myself having profound experiences on rooftops under moonlight, or having spiritual revelations while rushing through the streets of Calcutta and felt that side of me re-awakened. I was writing like a madwoman during most of the trip, was seeking out and spending time in solitude, sometimes in nature, or just outside by myself on rooftops and felt a connection that had felt lost forever. It was amazing.

All in all, I feel bigger, stronger, and like I want different things out of life than when I left, and Orcas, though distance has made my heart feel fonder for the island and the nature here is nourishing to my soul in a way it was craving, just feels too small for me. And that really is factoring into what I'm thinking as far as school. It became really clear to me that what I'm looking for when I go back to school is not just academics or a degree, but to be somewhere where my spiritual and creative artistic sides feel nurtured and supported, somewhere that really fits me, and that it's a lot more important than the name of the school or anything like that.

Speaking of schools, I got rejected from my first choice school, which was a hard pill to swallow. As I told Nina at some point during the trip, I'm not used to academic rejection, at all. I only got turned down from one school when I applied as a senior in high school and by that point I didn't want to go there so it didn't really register. This did. I have to say a part of me felt relieved in a weird way, maybe just to know, or maybe it really wouldn't have been a good match - I think that's possible even though I had the most incredible experience there. But most of me felt sad. I only found out a few days ago, in Agra, soon after visiting the Taj. It's a loss for sure, but sometimes, as Julia Cameron would say, gain is disguised as lost. I do trust that, that it's probably a blessing in disguise. To add to that, my second choice school totally lost my financial aid papers (which I filed in January) and it's now way past the deadline and aid has been distributed and I'd need a considerable amount of aid to be able to go there, so, yeah, maybe another blessing in disguise as well. At least, it feels that way, like internally even though both of these things were big disappointments, I can't shake the feeling that they are also somehow right, and so I trust that feeling.

It leaves me with four major choices (and possibly trying to renegotiate my financial aid situation with the fifth), which all have strong pros and cons that are hard to weigh out. I know where I'm leaning, strongly, and I'm pretty sure that's where my ultimate decision will take me, but still questioning as well, b/c it has its cons and a few months ago I did not think I'd think this way, but again, times have changed. I'm also paying attention to signs and synchronicities, and the fact that an author I love and have blogged about is teaching a class there next semester. So we'll see, I have exactly a week to figure my shit out.

It's just sort of hard, being back here, sorting through the piles of mail from colleges, being in the same apartment I left, in a way going through the motions of my old life, to know where the newer self fits in. I don't want it to feel like I never went to India, which in a really surreal way I did sort of feel yesterday. It's just so strange being back to the place I was before with everything pretty much the same. I don't want to fall into the same patterns, go back to the spiritual deadness or other crappy habits. I'm not going back to my old job, I can't, it would be too much self-betrayal. I don't know who said it, but I'm thinking it's really true that you can never go home again. I feel really out of place. A part of me doesn't even want to stay on Orcas for the summer, but I also made a list of goals while here so maybe the integration is worth it and not something to flee from, and resting before rallying for the next big change. It just feels like this life doesn't really fit anymore, and I don't want it to, and that's okay.

Currently Listening:
"Chasing Cars" - Snow Patrol - another Grey's song that was stuck in my head a lot while in India. It randomly popped into my head during the first time I walked around Calcutta at night on my own, and was the one song that played twice while I was getting my tattoo. Graham and I were saying how this song comes up at such a crucial point in Grey's (she's my Grey's buddy) and how much we wanted to be able to watch the show together. What is interesting though is we were thinking of two different storylines that are going on when this song plays (she was thinking of Meredith and Derek, I was thinking of Alex and Izzie). Speaking of Grey's, I can't wait to catch up, though I've heard rumors that things are going pretty downhill. Anyway, the song.

Chasing Cars

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Is it dangerous to feel this good?

Am I tempting the fates here?

A complete 180 from last month, but I only continue to feel better and better. Tonight I feel downright ecstatic, not for any good reason, but there's movement coming in my life, and it's overdue. I'm psyched for my trip to India, and psyched for my trip to SF to fly out - not only will I visit schools (and all my visits are totally all confirmed and lined up), but I will stay with my friend Tracy, who is one of my favorite people ever, then stay with Elynn, one of my best Orcas friends who's moving south (who I just had the best evening with), then hopefully see my friend Kelly, and then see Luke C (BTW Luke if you read this, I think House will be on while I'm there in SF and OMG that'd be fun to watch together, I never get to watch with anyone who's super into it, so, let's make that happen) and Maryam. It's going to be a wild adventure before I even get on a plane!

Tonight, Elynn and I were playing with the love card and destiny card books, which are really fun to play with, and again it said I am going to have lots of unexpected money rolling in, and lots of love. I can dig it. It's unusual for these sorts of predictions to be so freakin' positive, but like I said in the last post, whatever positive power of suggestion that plants in my head, right on.

And I'm just feeling stellar about this college application stuff. I mean, I am just rocking it. It's a ton of paperwork, but shit, I'm just working my butt off and getting it all done and sent off, and it feels like it's starting to come together, getting those recommendation letters and transcripts. The financial aid stuff was the most daunting, it can feel overwhelming with all the forms, but I pretty much rocked those all in two days (not even full days). Now it's on to scholarship applications. There's still tons to do. I am leaving in less than three weeks, but it really does feel like it's all coming together! I'm psyched about that. I'm just feeling great.

On the other hand, I am having really freakin' bizarre dreams. Apparently my malaria meds for India can cause strange dreams, and I can only imagine, since they're already so weird (and currently really rich and vivid), once I start taking that stuff I'm going to feel like I'm on acid! Well, except I wouldn't really know.

The only thing I wonder is, with all this feeling awesome and hopeful and confident, am I tempting fate? The last time I felt this euphoric on life turned out to be the beginning of probably the most difficult year of my life, full of heartache and struggle and poverty and struggle, struggle, struggle. It was also at the start of adventure, much like now I am about to leave for India and embark on that journey as well as return to school. So it worries me a little. I want the euphoria to last, for things to pan out, to have shatteringly cool life-changing experiences in India. It was interesting, I went over to the big island for writing class today, and this writing teacher went to India four years ago (she was actually there during the tsunami, though not near that area), and I asked her, b/c I'm worried about the culture shock, which was harder, to get used to India, or to get re-adjusted to America after India? She chose the latter, and I would have put money down that she'd say that, which actually made me feel better about what I'm doing. It's going to be a huge adventure. And I do hope it turns my world upside down. I just hope it's not quite as challenging as the last time around when I chose adventure and really embodied The Fool in the tarot deck (which is a great card, but is also the start of the hero's journey, so to speak, and man it can be difficult). When I look back, that difficult time was so, so, so rich for me, in terms of growth, in terms of emotional richness, in terms of making me see my own strength in so many different situations, and in terms of feeling vibrantly alive.

But still, I'm worried about this euphoria. I don't want to crash. Funny how when things are good, it's like, oh don't get too happy, don't get your hopes up, it won't last, and it's hard to keep the same awareness of impermanence when things are all fucked up. In those dark places, it's easy to think I'll be there forever. So maybe I just want to ride the euphoria, enjoy it as long as it lasts, and realize that a lot of it comes from the fact that I've felt sort of stuck in my life here, much as I really do love the island, and that actually doing stuff to move things forward is making a huge difference. Taking action can be the best cure.

A friend today mentioned something about tipping points, how in any change there reaches a tipping point when you know the change will happen. In this case, she was talking about our local food bank (which she works with) moving buildings, saying that there's still some things to sort out, different ideas, but it's passed the tipping point, they know it will move (which is great, the way it is now, people have to wait in the freezing cold). I started thinking about how that applies to the story of my own life and reflecting on that. Because very few things are momentary decisions, and even the things that seem to be have usually built for a long time, perhaps burbling below the surface, before the actual change.

I've definitely passed the tipping point about leaving Orcas. That has definitely been brewing for a long, long time. I've thought about it off and on for years, especially starting in the summer of 2005, after I left camp for the first time, and more importantly, moved off the property. I loved that land so much, and the island wasn't the same for me once I lived somewhere else, and I knew it immediately and ever since. I've thought about going back to school for years too, and in many years, started applications, then got to a point where it just didn't feel right for one reason or another. I wasn't done here, I wasn't ready, I didn't totally have my heart in it, I couldn't get excited about it, I wanted to stay and save up money, and the like. A person has to be ready for the change to be right and meaningful, and now I feel like I am.

As for India, I don't know if there was a tipping point exactly, partly because I never fully believed it was real. I've been putting this together for probably close to five or six months now. I just did what I needed to apply, and then after I did, and got in, I sent in my deposit, but even then it didn't feel real. For the next two months, I was having serious second thoughts, to the point where I really thought I wouldn't go. Then one afternoon, I left to go to the post office, which is about a five minute walk each way. I had been checking my email all day, doing nothing, watching Grey's, and actually something on the show got me thinking (actually it was Meredith's shrink, hahahahaha) about being a quitter, b/c in some ways I feel I have been (in other ways maybe the extreme in the other direction), but then walking up to my apartment I said to myself, "I am not a quitter. I am not going to be a chicken. I am going to India." I opened my door, came inside and checked my email and that's when I found out about my scholarship, which just blew my mind. But it's interesting how those things happen, isn't it? I guess that speech to myself was my tipping point.

Which reminds me that a lot of times, a tipping point can be very subtle and internal. When I was living in Seattle and jobless and soon to be w/o a place to live (like in two days), it just was amazing the way that morning I made the decision that no matter what happened, I would not go home, no matter how dire my situation was, and within a few hours I had the job offer here on the island with the camp. I had been keeping a postcard of the camp in my room, afraid of how much I wanted the job, wanted to live in this beautiful place. All of this reminds me of that old famous quote:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manor of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man would have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."

~W.H. Murray

I retrieved this quote from Derrick Jensen's Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution, which is one of my favorite books. He uses it at the beginning of chapter on falling in love with writing. This is a book I treasure and something I want to reread while in school, because it always reminds me to go to the root of what my passions are, dig deep, dig into what's terrifying, into what's real, into what's the questions, who are you? Who are you, really? What do you love? What do you want? There's also such a different approach to education in this book, an approach I feel that all the schools I'm looking at are (to varying degrees), in alignment.

Anyway the larger point was the tipping points of change in our lives, and beyond that The Fool, the archetype of the fool. It is not about some naive idiot as some seem to think. Instead it's about a wise innocence. A mix of the hope and excitement that comes from the start of new ventures, and the wisdom that comes from having gone through them before. Think of it like a cultivated childlike state of mind, where wonder and awe are alive, but there is still maturity and knowing. It's all about taking the leaps that our inner voices whisper about, leaping and waiting for the net to appear. I always think that in so many cases in my life, if I really had any idea what something would entail, I wouldn't start it. Reflecting back to any sort of innocence always chokes me up, it' so tender looking back on the self that just had no idea what she was in for. But it was also totally necessary for her not to know, b/c again, then it never would have happened.

Okay now I'm going to divert, because this totally reminds me of a moment in a book I read as a teenager, which was called The Starlight Crystal by Christopher Pike. I was a huge fan of his books, and would probably still love them if I re-read them as an adult. This one though, was difficult. I wasn't so sure about it the first time around. It later came to be one of my absolute favorites. Some of his books, though they're YA, just have soooo much depth to them. It was about this girl Paige. At the very beginning of the book, she comes out of the library and has a strange moment with this stranger, who she thinks for a moment might pull out a gun and kill her, but doesn't. Almost immediately following that, she meets and falls in love with this boy Tem. They have this beautiful once-in-a-lifetime connection but she has to leave on this spaceship (it takes place in the 23rd century) that is traveling at near the speed of light, which means she'll experience time dilation (I love a book that incorporates relativity), so while only a small amount of time will pass for her, centuries will pass on earth, meaning he'll be dead. So she's on the ship, and all these things happen, and it's been about ten years so my memory's a little blurry, but she is a teenager in love and grieving, and then a lot of other stuff happens, I believe she and the spaceship crew watch the earth die as well. And if I'm not mistaken, I think it's her father or someone else on the ship, actually maybe everyone else on the ship, also dies. I remember there's this great part where she's between the death of the universe and the birth of a new one, and I just remember that part being gorgeous, but painful. I mean our heroine here has experienced loss the scale of which we can't really imagine. And she watches things circle back around, till she arrives again in that place in the 23rd century outside the library. Except this time, she's the stranger, and she's looking at her younger self, the innocent self, that has no idea she's about to meet Tem or the loss she's about to suffer, and she is thinking of pulling out a gun, sparing her younger self that pain. But she doesn't do it, she can't.

There's a lot more to the book, I'd even say it's got spiritual undertones, and it's really gorgeous in a melancholy way, but the point is, whenever I think of myself in a time of innocence, of not knowing what I was in for, and there are many, I get that feeling like the stranger outside the library in a way, like if I could go back and talk to myself before I moved to Seattle, before I first left for college, before, before, before, what might I say? Probably nothing. I just have to have a tenderness towards that sort of not-knowing, that Fool quality, wise yet so innocent, because without it, no great journeys would ever happen, and every journey in some way is a hero's journey. And in the end, I don't really regret them. Even the really hard ones. Even the ones I probably should regret a little. I can't, because the journey always has some value in itself. We each have several in our lives, I believe. And I think the key is to just be open to it, to realize you really can't prepare yourself, you just can't. That's what I came to today about India. My writing teacher Janet was showing me pictures from her trip. I was hoping to ready myself, to somehow brace myself against the culture shock I'll feel (come on I've never left the US except for brief visits to Canada, that if you ask me, don't really count), and I felt like as we looked through these pictures, we both realized there was no way for me to really do that, and in a way it might even be better not to, to just be open. And scared too, I can't help that. But also to embrace the Fool archetype energy, and leap.

So, be the fool. Have the grace to be a beginner. Cross those tipping points. Go for what has passion and meaning and juice - that's what I always focus on in writing critiques, which at least one of my readers can testify to, I'm always wanting the writing to go deeper, to find that lightning electricity, find what is really alive. Be bold, with all its genius and power and magic. Err on the side of audacity, because even when those journeys lead to the darkest depths, I think they also give us the most riches. And it's pretty much always worth it.

I did not expect to end up here at all in this post. I didn't expect to talk about the fool, and definitely not about a Christopher Pike book. But that's the other thing about starting things, and leaving yourself open, you end up in unexpected places.

Currently Listening:
"Alive" - Jeff Buckley - His voice is sooooo good on this song, and I can't stop playing it to death. It's a live track, and in the beginning, he talks about how 96 is going to be a great year, how we'll have Newt Gingrich's head on a plate and put the fear of God into Bob Dole. And then he says, "Freaks of America unite." Sweet. I must play this a hundred times a week, it's pretty poignant. Here are the words:

I feel the time is coming
I walk into the night
Oh, I don't mind if the clock is turning
Cuz I'm going to the other side
You either die or you keep on burning alive

And I am burning
And I am burning
And I am burning
And I am burning

I walked a long, long distance
I'm feeling sore inside
Oh, I don't care if the sky is falling
Cuz I'll never get to see the light
You either die or you keep on burning alive

And I am burning
And I am burning
And I am burning
And I am burning

You either die or you keep on burning alive

Prying Open My Third Eye

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dog's Eye View

Sunday, January 10, 2010

I Am Not Your Touch Tank Sea Star

Monday, January 4, 2010

"All in the Cold Midwinter and at the Midnight Hour"

Friday, January 1, 2010

"Nothing Changes, On New Year's Day"

Saturday, September 12, 2009

My Love/Hate Relationship with Orcas Island

Monday, August 31, 2009

After the Ecstacy, the Laundry

Friday, May 8, 2009

Can You Ever Go Home Again?

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Is it dangerous to feel this good?

My Written Words in Print

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Monday, January 25, 2010

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Monday, January 4, 2010

Friday, January 1, 2010

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

Friday, May 8, 2009

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

My Written Words in Print

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