During recess on the playground, I played with my best friend Lisa, a quiet girl with the straightest, longest brown hair in our grade. We sat in a tunnel and played Outer Space, which meant we named ourselves after planets.
“Do you like New Kids on the Block?” she asked me.
“What’s that, Mercury?”
“A music group. Everyone loves them.”
I shook my head. “I never heard of it.” At my house we only listened to Sesame Street and Disney.
“Oh,” Lisa said. “Hey Jupiter, let’s go to the tower.” I liked being called Jupiter. I played it over and over in my head as we walked across the wooden playground. I wanted to be someone else.
“Ewww!” yelled Awful Andy as we passed by his group of boys on our way to the tower. “Everyone get away! We’ll get Chrys germs!” The boys scattered and shrieked. One of them stopped running, turned and asked, “How many fingers am I holding up?” in a taunting voice. I could see the blurry shape of his hand, but it was too far away for me to make out individual fingers. I would never admit that I couldn't see well enough to know. It would prove they were right in their teasing, and give them more to use against me. Instead of answering, I ran after the boys as they dove away in horror. “I do not have any germs!” I screamed.
They were too fast for me to chase. “You can't catch us, Grandma!” yelled Lance. I knew it was him by his voice, and because he always called me Grandma, for my white hair. “Grandma's too slow,” he said to one of the other boys in the group. They were about ten feet away, and it was hard for me to distinguish their faces, especially because they were boys. Girls were easier to tell from far away because their clothes, backpacks and hairstyles were more unique and distinct. The boys all wore dark colors and had similar short haircuts, so I would've had to be closer to discern the details and separate them by names.
Lisa caught up to me as I made mean faces at the boys in the distance. We could still hear them talking. “She's a ghost,” said one, and I cringed. I hated when they called me that. “It's good we didn't catch her germs,” said another, kicking at the gravel and stirring up clouds of dust I could see. “Did you ever notice,” asked yet another boy in the huddle, “that every time she sharpens a pencil, she puts it so close to her eye and stares at it?” That must've been Kurt, because he always laughed at me after I came away from the pencil sharpener in our classroom and studied the tip of my pencil to make sure it was sharp. “She's a freak,” he said.
“Come on, Jupiter,” Lisa said quietly. “Let's go to the tower and play Outer Space some more.” We walked back to the castle but I kept looking back at the boys, my mouth slightly open. I wanted to run after them, prove that I wasn't a freak or a grandma and it wasn't my fault I had to look close at things like pencils to see if they were sharp, or hands to see how many fingers they were holding up. And that I didn't have germs.
Deep down though, I felt like a ghost, a weirdo beyond weirdos, and even though I wanted to, I felt like I had no solid grounds to defend myself. I sat in the tower with Lisa, and felt more like a mealworm than a celestial body.
Lisa came over my house that afternoon. “Well, how was school?” Mom asked as we settled in with my brother Randy for an afternoon snack. It had to be healthy so we had peanut butter crackers. Mom sat down at the table with us.
“They did the ‘Chrys germs’ thing again,” I said and bit into my cracker.
“Did you provoke it?” She was across the table so it was hard for me to see her features, but her voice made it sound like they must be hard.
“No,” I said right away. “They’re mean, Mom.”
“It’s really stupid,” Lisa chimed in my defense. “I mean, they’re just so dumb. You don’t have germs. And even, let’s say you really did, it’s not like you catch them just like that.” She tapped me quick on the shoulder. “Boop!”
“Right,” I said. Even Randy, who was two years younger and probably didn’t know what germs were, nodded his head.
“Actually,” said Mom, “germs do jump that fast.”
I couldn’t finish my crackers. I was crushed. Sometimes it felt like she thought I had germs too. She didn't ever touch me. I had the strong feeling that she was ashamed of my albinism, of having a child who was such a freak. It was a topic we never touched. That shame seeped into me like osmosis.
*******
This is my second #FridayFlash - short pieces of writing posted every Friday, so keep reading! This is an excerpt from the very beginning of my memoir, Moonchild, a memoir about being a freshman in college with albinism.
Before the bulk of the book is a section called Eclipses, four chapters about my childhood and adolescence before college that really shaped that experience. This one is from the first chapter, Constant Eclipse, which is about my life when I was in elementary school.
Some names have been changed.
Another excerpt from the same area of the memoir:
Constant Eclipse - Flash One
Currently Listening:
"American Cowboy" - Jada - I can't believe I'm publicly admitting to listening to this song, b/c it's soooo not my style, and it's pretty stupid (and I'm not into cowboys, lol), but I blame House for getting me stuck on this song - for anyone who watched Season 5, it's the song from Chase's bachelor party. It's infuriatingly addicting and strangely, I like it, kind of a lot. So there!
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Constant Eclipse - Flash One
I was scared that Mom or Dad would kill me in my sleep. Dad was an FBI agent and he had a gun that he sometimes kept in the house. I thought even he was afraid of Mom, who screamed all the time, got hysterically mad and spanked me when I was little. It was her I listened for as I laid in bed in my thin yellow nightgown, reading Nancy Drew by the light of my night-light, while I tried not to think about getting murdered.
My parents' bedroom door opened and I heard Mom’s sharp footsteps in the hallway. They sounded mad. I waited curled on my side with the book under the covers and screamed No, Mom, No! inside my head. If either of them came for me tonight, I’d jump out the window. I didn’t care that my room was upstairs. I’d jump anyway, land mangled on the driveway and run across our yard as fast as I could. I’d pound on our next-door neighbor’s door. If she answered, I’d tell her my parents were chasing me and beg her to protect me. If she didn’t believe me, I’d run faster and pound harder at the next house and go through the neighborhood with wild desperation until I found someone who would keep me safe. It might not last. My parents might follow me, shoot into the distance or use the authorities to take me back, but that was like the second story window and the driveway; if I wanted to survive, I'd have to think about it later.
The bathroom door opened and Mom went in. I kept freezing. She finally stalked back to her room and I breathed. The quiet lasted a few full chapters.
I got up and went to my window. It faced the driveway and our front yard with its giant tree. The moon was out, maybe full, I couldn’t tell. It was big and white and round and it cast shadows through the branches onto the grass. I had a huge feeling of dark and mysterious magic in my chest. If I could touch it, it would be like touching my soul. It would make me huge too, and magic. I stood watching the moon, the tree, and the shadows until I was finally tired.
I woke up early for school. I woke up alive. I went downstairs and talked to my dad about the weather as I got ready for school. I talked to him as cheerfully as possible and asked a million questions in hopes of hearing his usual cheerfulness back. It was reassurance that I would be okay. He was a good way to gauge if anyone was mad at me, because Dad agreed with everything Mom thought. Being downstairs helped me eavesdrop and figure out where everyone was and put me in a much better position to run if I had to. When I walked out the front door, I felt like I could finally fully breathe, and drank in deep breaths of fresh air.
*******
This is my first #FridayFlash - short pieces of writing posted every Friday, so keep reading! This is an excerpt from the very beginning of my memoir, Moonchild, a memoir about being a freshman in college with albinism.
Before the bulk of the book is a section called Eclipses, four chapters about my childhood and adolescence before college that really shaped that experience. This one is from the first chapter, Constant Eclipse, which is about my life when I was in elementary school. It's a pretty intense piece, I admit, but I figure, why not just dive right in?
~Chrys
Currently Listening:
"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" - The Darkness - something about the music to this song really reminds me of The Cars, which is just sort of...funny or something. It's an addicting song.
My parents' bedroom door opened and I heard Mom’s sharp footsteps in the hallway. They sounded mad. I waited curled on my side with the book under the covers and screamed No, Mom, No! inside my head. If either of them came for me tonight, I’d jump out the window. I didn’t care that my room was upstairs. I’d jump anyway, land mangled on the driveway and run across our yard as fast as I could. I’d pound on our next-door neighbor’s door. If she answered, I’d tell her my parents were chasing me and beg her to protect me. If she didn’t believe me, I’d run faster and pound harder at the next house and go through the neighborhood with wild desperation until I found someone who would keep me safe. It might not last. My parents might follow me, shoot into the distance or use the authorities to take me back, but that was like the second story window and the driveway; if I wanted to survive, I'd have to think about it later.
The bathroom door opened and Mom went in. I kept freezing. She finally stalked back to her room and I breathed. The quiet lasted a few full chapters.
I got up and went to my window. It faced the driveway and our front yard with its giant tree. The moon was out, maybe full, I couldn’t tell. It was big and white and round and it cast shadows through the branches onto the grass. I had a huge feeling of dark and mysterious magic in my chest. If I could touch it, it would be like touching my soul. It would make me huge too, and magic. I stood watching the moon, the tree, and the shadows until I was finally tired.
I woke up early for school. I woke up alive. I went downstairs and talked to my dad about the weather as I got ready for school. I talked to him as cheerfully as possible and asked a million questions in hopes of hearing his usual cheerfulness back. It was reassurance that I would be okay. He was a good way to gauge if anyone was mad at me, because Dad agreed with everything Mom thought. Being downstairs helped me eavesdrop and figure out where everyone was and put me in a much better position to run if I had to. When I walked out the front door, I felt like I could finally fully breathe, and drank in deep breaths of fresh air.
*******
This is my first #FridayFlash - short pieces of writing posted every Friday, so keep reading! This is an excerpt from the very beginning of my memoir, Moonchild, a memoir about being a freshman in college with albinism.
Before the bulk of the book is a section called Eclipses, four chapters about my childhood and adolescence before college that really shaped that experience. This one is from the first chapter, Constant Eclipse, which is about my life when I was in elementary school. It's a pretty intense piece, I admit, but I figure, why not just dive right in?
~Chrys
Currently Listening:
"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" - The Darkness - something about the music to this song really reminds me of The Cars, which is just sort of...funny or something. It's an addicting song.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Albino
Since I am going to be posting some of my writing here, and a lot of my writing is memoir, I thought I'd preface all that with a brief discussion of the condition that I have, which is called albinism, as it obviously colors my story and who I am. I thought it would be a good reference point for future stories. I also thought it would be good for any new readers (and I always want those, and want to make this place as user-friendly as possible) and also for long-time readers because I am still working on being more comfortable talking about it. And I want to welcome discussion, if anyone has questions or comments.
Here it is:
I am albino. Albinism is a recessive genetic condition characterized by lack of pigment and legal blindness. My skin and hair are paler than pale, and my eyes are a translucent blue that sometimes looks red in the light. Since albinism is recessive and fairly rare, I'm the only one in my family with the condition.
As an albino, I'm sensitive to light. Outside I wear sunscreen, and either dark glasses with UV protection or hats with dark brims. Bright light hurts my eyes and makes my eyesight worse, blotting out everything else around me so all I see is blinding brightness.
My eyes move all the time. It's another part of albinism called nystagmus. Even if I'm staring at a fixed point, my eyes jiggle. I don't notice it myself and often feel like I'm looking in a steady direction, but the constant eye movement makes my vision loss visible to everyone else. I live in the murky territory of visual impairment: legally blind, technically classified as disabled, but not totally blind. I rely on my limited vision, a heightened sense of sound and a lot of guessing to get along in the world.
So, there you have it, in a nutshell.
Currently Listening:
"Colorblind" - Counting Crows - oddly sort of almost appropriate to the post, but not really. Hmmm. Some people might know this song from the "Cruel Intentions" soundtrack of oh-so-many years ago, but I know it from their third album, This Desert Life, which is such a good album, and one I haven't listened to all the way through in years. It always reminds me of the spring of my freshman year of college (as does their debut, August and Everything After) - there is something really atmospheric about their songs, even though they don't really come out with atmospheric music. It's hard to explain, it's like I get a feeling I can't really name or hold onto that almost feels like a memory of a past life in a different place when I listen to them. Somewhere hot and humid with warm wind as early as March, with a certain feeling in the air that I really can't grasp. Time to go listen more fully.
I am color...blind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready, I am
taffy stuck, tongue tied
Stuttered shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am...fine
I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside
I am folded, and unfolded
and unfolding, I am
colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready, I am
fine
I am fine
Here it is:
I am albino. Albinism is a recessive genetic condition characterized by lack of pigment and legal blindness. My skin and hair are paler than pale, and my eyes are a translucent blue that sometimes looks red in the light. Since albinism is recessive and fairly rare, I'm the only one in my family with the condition.
As an albino, I'm sensitive to light. Outside I wear sunscreen, and either dark glasses with UV protection or hats with dark brims. Bright light hurts my eyes and makes my eyesight worse, blotting out everything else around me so all I see is blinding brightness.
My eyes move all the time. It's another part of albinism called nystagmus. Even if I'm staring at a fixed point, my eyes jiggle. I don't notice it myself and often feel like I'm looking in a steady direction, but the constant eye movement makes my vision loss visible to everyone else. I live in the murky territory of visual impairment: legally blind, technically classified as disabled, but not totally blind. I rely on my limited vision, a heightened sense of sound and a lot of guessing to get along in the world.
So, there you have it, in a nutshell.
Currently Listening:
"Colorblind" - Counting Crows - oddly sort of almost appropriate to the post, but not really. Hmmm. Some people might know this song from the "Cruel Intentions" soundtrack of oh-so-many years ago, but I know it from their third album, This Desert Life, which is such a good album, and one I haven't listened to all the way through in years. It always reminds me of the spring of my freshman year of college (as does their debut, August and Everything After) - there is something really atmospheric about their songs, even though they don't really come out with atmospheric music. It's hard to explain, it's like I get a feeling I can't really name or hold onto that almost feels like a memory of a past life in a different place when I listen to them. Somewhere hot and humid with warm wind as early as March, with a certain feeling in the air that I really can't grasp. Time to go listen more fully.
I am color...blind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready, I am
taffy stuck, tongue tied
Stuttered shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready
I am...fine
I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside
I am folded, and unfolded
and unfolding, I am
colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am ready
I am ready, I am
fine
I am fine
A Fun, Flash Fiction Contest You Can Vote In!
Want to read some very cool and short fiction? You can vote for your favorite, and the winner gets published in an anthology. I think it's really cool. This whole thing is centered around #FridayFlash, a writers phenomenon thatstarted on the internet and has really taken off. I think it's just awesome to support grassroots writing communities like this.
So go to the #FridayFlash contest site, read the entries, and vote!
I also have to add my own persuasion in here and especially urge you to vote for the gifted and brilliant writer, Linda Simoni-Wastila and her piece, SILVER BULLET. It's excellent. Any readers who may be or ever have been involved in academia might especially enjoy it. Or anyone who's just had a real asshole for a teacher at some point. And that has to apply to just about everyone! So go read it, and don't forget to vote to see your favorite piece get some publication.
I just think the whole thing really rocks.
In other news, I am going to be joining #FridayFlash myself, so look for some memoir writing, fiction writing, maybe another splash or two of poetry, here on Fridays. Some people on here, even those I've known for years, haven't ever seen my writing, so here is your chance. I'll still do other blogs about life and all that during the week. I hope you will read along and check in on Fridays.
In other, less-related news, it is Thursday night and I can't help myself (even though I am a little embarrassed about my over-the-top fandom) from saying how freakin' happy I am that Grey's Anatomy finally came back tonight! My world has been a little dark ever since New Year's Eve adn I can't seem to shake that darkness, and today was definitely a dark day and somehow, dorky as this may be, watching Grey's tonight brought a little light to my smile and brightened my day. And I can't wait until next week, when The Office will also be back. Just loving having that to look forward to on Thursdays and House on Mondays.
But don't forget! Go read the flash fiction and vote!
Currently listening:
"Independence Day" - Ani DiFranco - so weird, this song just came up twice, not quite right in a row, but close, on my iTunes. I've been in an Ani sort of mood lately, and I really love this song. I love sassy Ani, but I also love her softer, dark and brooding like this. And I love the lines about trying to make molehills out of mountains. Just love her way with words.
we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp
on the 4th of july
we sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks
explode in the sky
and there was an exodus of birds from the trees
but they didnt know, we were only pretending
and the people all looked up, and were pleased
and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending
and i don't think war is noble
and i don't like to think that love is like war
and i gotta big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot
of your front door
don't leave me here
i've got your back now
you'd better have mine
cause you say the coast is clear
but you say that all the time
so many sheep i quit counting
sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel
trying to make mole hills out of mountains
building base camp at the bottom of a really big deal
and did i tell you how i stopped eating?
when you stopped calling me
and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks
and pretending that i was finally free
don't leave me here
now that your back
you'd better stay this time
cause you say the coast is clear
but you say that all the time
we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp,
on the 4th of july
and i planted my dusty boots on the bumper and sat out on the hood,
and looked up at the sky
So go to the #FridayFlash contest site, read the entries, and vote!
I also have to add my own persuasion in here and especially urge you to vote for the gifted and brilliant writer, Linda Simoni-Wastila and her piece, SILVER BULLET. It's excellent. Any readers who may be or ever have been involved in academia might especially enjoy it. Or anyone who's just had a real asshole for a teacher at some point. And that has to apply to just about everyone! So go read it, and don't forget to vote to see your favorite piece get some publication.
I just think the whole thing really rocks.
In other news, I am going to be joining #FridayFlash myself, so look for some memoir writing, fiction writing, maybe another splash or two of poetry, here on Fridays. Some people on here, even those I've known for years, haven't ever seen my writing, so here is your chance. I'll still do other blogs about life and all that during the week. I hope you will read along and check in on Fridays.
In other, less-related news, it is Thursday night and I can't help myself (even though I am a little embarrassed about my over-the-top fandom) from saying how freakin' happy I am that Grey's Anatomy finally came back tonight! My world has been a little dark ever since New Year's Eve adn I can't seem to shake that darkness, and today was definitely a dark day and somehow, dorky as this may be, watching Grey's tonight brought a little light to my smile and brightened my day. And I can't wait until next week, when The Office will also be back. Just loving having that to look forward to on Thursdays and House on Mondays.
But don't forget! Go read the flash fiction and vote!
Currently listening:
"Independence Day" - Ani DiFranco - so weird, this song just came up twice, not quite right in a row, but close, on my iTunes. I've been in an Ani sort of mood lately, and I really love this song. I love sassy Ani, but I also love her softer, dark and brooding like this. And I love the lines about trying to make molehills out of mountains. Just love her way with words.
we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp
on the 4th of july
we sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks
explode in the sky
and there was an exodus of birds from the trees
but they didnt know, we were only pretending
and the people all looked up, and were pleased
and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending
and i don't think war is noble
and i don't like to think that love is like war
and i gotta big hot cherry bomb, and i want to slip it through the mail slot
of your front door
don't leave me here
i've got your back now
you'd better have mine
cause you say the coast is clear
but you say that all the time
so many sheep i quit counting
sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel
trying to make mole hills out of mountains
building base camp at the bottom of a really big deal
and did i tell you how i stopped eating?
when you stopped calling me
and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks
and pretending that i was finally free
don't leave me here
now that your back
you'd better stay this time
cause you say the coast is clear
but you say that all the time
we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp,
on the 4th of july
and i planted my dusty boots on the bumper and sat out on the hood,
and looked up at the sky
Sunday, January 10, 2010
I Am Not Your Touch Tank Sea Star
So, for whatever reason, I've been feeling like putting some of my writing up, so here is a poem I wrote that I really love.
I Am Not Your Touch Tank Sea Star
When I’m a sea star
I hold the sea’s mystery in my purple
Yet I live at the tips of my spines
Erected like walls to protect
My soft center from being hurt or feeling
The hurt I’ve already been.
As I scavenge along the bottom
For bull kelp and sea lettuce
I cling to any steady surface
With tube feel like a miser who knows
I don’t deserve the water
And I don’t let anyone touch me
Sometimes I’m a sea cucumber
Spikes only ward my demons off for show
I let them go tender
And as I lay exposed
My past creeps up behind me
Slithering inside my open sores
Carrying their torches of truth
I feel them settle in my gut
So I twist it around them, bunch it up
With a hurl I eviscerate my organs
And scramble to grow new insides
Once I was an octopus
Used eight arms to lift the top of the holding tank
Squeezed out, dropped to the floor and crawled
Through the crack under the door
Famished on the sand, inching forward
Telling myself I will not let them
Make me let myself die
If I can give me a little slack and a lot of love
I might make it
Back to the deeper seas I knew before captivity
Where they can’t coax me back
To put me in the big tank, captive
For their audience
I am free
On a blue moon I’m a blue dolphin
On waves with deeper frequency
Intelligence unfocused on rational thought
Feel no shame for stranding myself
To help a member of my pod in need
Sensed out with echolocation
Weathered harsh, howling storms
By surrendering to their windblown frenzy
I know the patterns of Earth’s turning
I have been to blue depths
Today I just want to be
Myself
Deep down
I am
The sea.
I wrote this in the summer of 2003 so it's several years old now. That spring I worked OEE (Outdoor Environmental Education) on Orcas Island. During that season, I had to teach challenge and science classes to groups of kids, mostly in fifth or sixth grade (but there were a few groups younger and older). Some of the science classes included pond ecology, forest ecology, the water cycle, microforest, "Super Salmon" and most notably related to this post, marine invertebrates and marine mammals.
I had a rough time for a lot of reasons, one being that I was not so familiar with this material before I worked there. I had taken some basic environmental science class but nothing in depth on marine life. And a lot of these creatures we were looking at and studying were soooo small I could barely see them, much less make distinctions and identifications. So I was learning as I was teaching, and learning by teaching. At the same time I was going through some intense personal stuff, and felt stressed out always having to be so "on" for the kids. There were a lot of fourteen-hour days and I remember walking around, going from class to class at different locations around camp with this poem in my head, the words coming together around my own personal struggle and what I was learning about marine life.
And just FYI the octopus part is based on a real story that happened that spring. An octopus really did escape a holding tank by somehow lifting the lid and slithering out. I can't remember all the details, I want to say it died trying to get back to the water, but am just not sure if I'm recalling that accurately. I remember feeling so inspired by that octopus' instinct for freedom.
All in all, I am not absolutely satisfied with the poem - to me it feels too prose-y. And that is always my issue. I don't think poetry comes naturally to me. I don't read a lot of it, and blasphemous as this may sound, I don't like much of it. When I find a poem or a poet I like, it is a big deal. In fact, I honestly prefer some of the poetry written by friends and people I know (in a blows everything else out of the water sort of way) to most of what I'd find in anthologies, literary journals or acclaimed chapbooks. A huge percent of it just doesn't speak to me. I like the idea of poets and poetry, and even the word poetry, more than I actually like it. All this to say, I am well aware that poetry is not my forte.
I want to say this too, for anyone who isn't familiar, the title and the last line are a play on a song by Audioslave called "I Am the Highway." It's on their first, self-titled album and though I was not a huge fan of that album, there were a handful of songs I really loved, and this one was particularly fitting for my life at the time, especially the winter immediately before that spring working OEE on Orcas Island. I had moved out of my parents' house, which felt more like an escape than a moving out, and was struggling through life in Seattle, and this song just embodied a lot of my sentiments at the time. No wonder some of the rhythm and the music seeped into my own attempt at poetry.
Currently Listening:
"I Am the Highway" - Audioslave - well, duh. It relates to the post so I put it on (and actually realized I had never transferred this album to my computer, though I did have a few songs). Crazy how you can go so many years without hearing a song and how seamlessly the words come back to mind.
Pearls and swine, bereft of me
Long and weary, my road has been
I was lost in the cities
Alone in the hills
No sorrow or pity
For leaving, I feel
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
Friends and liars don't wait for me
Cuz I'll get on all by myself
I put millions of miles
Under my heels
And still too close
To you, I feel
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night
I Am Not Your Touch Tank Sea Star
When I’m a sea star
I hold the sea’s mystery in my purple
Yet I live at the tips of my spines
Erected like walls to protect
My soft center from being hurt or feeling
The hurt I’ve already been.
As I scavenge along the bottom
For bull kelp and sea lettuce
I cling to any steady surface
With tube feel like a miser who knows
I don’t deserve the water
And I don’t let anyone touch me
Sometimes I’m a sea cucumber
Spikes only ward my demons off for show
I let them go tender
And as I lay exposed
My past creeps up behind me
Slithering inside my open sores
Carrying their torches of truth
I feel them settle in my gut
So I twist it around them, bunch it up
With a hurl I eviscerate my organs
And scramble to grow new insides
Once I was an octopus
Used eight arms to lift the top of the holding tank
Squeezed out, dropped to the floor and crawled
Through the crack under the door
Famished on the sand, inching forward
Telling myself I will not let them
Make me let myself die
If I can give me a little slack and a lot of love
I might make it
Back to the deeper seas I knew before captivity
Where they can’t coax me back
To put me in the big tank, captive
For their audience
I am free
On a blue moon I’m a blue dolphin
On waves with deeper frequency
Intelligence unfocused on rational thought
Feel no shame for stranding myself
To help a member of my pod in need
Sensed out with echolocation
Weathered harsh, howling storms
By surrendering to their windblown frenzy
I know the patterns of Earth’s turning
I have been to blue depths
Today I just want to be
Myself
Deep down
I am
The sea.
I wrote this in the summer of 2003 so it's several years old now. That spring I worked OEE (Outdoor Environmental Education) on Orcas Island. During that season, I had to teach challenge and science classes to groups of kids, mostly in fifth or sixth grade (but there were a few groups younger and older). Some of the science classes included pond ecology, forest ecology, the water cycle, microforest, "Super Salmon" and most notably related to this post, marine invertebrates and marine mammals.
I had a rough time for a lot of reasons, one being that I was not so familiar with this material before I worked there. I had taken some basic environmental science class but nothing in depth on marine life. And a lot of these creatures we were looking at and studying were soooo small I could barely see them, much less make distinctions and identifications. So I was learning as I was teaching, and learning by teaching. At the same time I was going through some intense personal stuff, and felt stressed out always having to be so "on" for the kids. There were a lot of fourteen-hour days and I remember walking around, going from class to class at different locations around camp with this poem in my head, the words coming together around my own personal struggle and what I was learning about marine life.
And just FYI the octopus part is based on a real story that happened that spring. An octopus really did escape a holding tank by somehow lifting the lid and slithering out. I can't remember all the details, I want to say it died trying to get back to the water, but am just not sure if I'm recalling that accurately. I remember feeling so inspired by that octopus' instinct for freedom.
All in all, I am not absolutely satisfied with the poem - to me it feels too prose-y. And that is always my issue. I don't think poetry comes naturally to me. I don't read a lot of it, and blasphemous as this may sound, I don't like much of it. When I find a poem or a poet I like, it is a big deal. In fact, I honestly prefer some of the poetry written by friends and people I know (in a blows everything else out of the water sort of way) to most of what I'd find in anthologies, literary journals or acclaimed chapbooks. A huge percent of it just doesn't speak to me. I like the idea of poets and poetry, and even the word poetry, more than I actually like it. All this to say, I am well aware that poetry is not my forte.
I want to say this too, for anyone who isn't familiar, the title and the last line are a play on a song by Audioslave called "I Am the Highway." It's on their first, self-titled album and though I was not a huge fan of that album, there were a handful of songs I really loved, and this one was particularly fitting for my life at the time, especially the winter immediately before that spring working OEE on Orcas Island. I had moved out of my parents' house, which felt more like an escape than a moving out, and was struggling through life in Seattle, and this song just embodied a lot of my sentiments at the time. No wonder some of the rhythm and the music seeped into my own attempt at poetry.
Currently Listening:
"I Am the Highway" - Audioslave - well, duh. It relates to the post so I put it on (and actually realized I had never transferred this album to my computer, though I did have a few songs). Crazy how you can go so many years without hearing a song and how seamlessly the words come back to mind.
Pearls and swine, bereft of me
Long and weary, my road has been
I was lost in the cities
Alone in the hills
No sorrow or pity
For leaving, I feel
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
Friends and liars don't wait for me
Cuz I'll get on all by myself
I put millions of miles
Under my heels
And still too close
To you, I feel
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night
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
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
New Year, New Blog Look, New Blog Address for 2010
I've been feeling the urge to overhaul this place for awhile now, so familiar readers will notice a completely different look, and lots of updates. For the first time since 2007, I put some new pictures on here, updated my profile, started a section where I can post any writing credits and updated my writing resume (which was about two years overdue).
So, I hope you enjoy!
I hope to be blogging more in 2010. It's funny, I was looking at my old stats, and it seems I've increased by 5 posts a year, steadily, since I started this blog in the summer of 2007. I'll see if I can really amp that up in 2010! I'd love to get on some sort of weekly schedule.
I also changed my URL - I just felt funny about having my full real name on there. It made me feel like I didn't really have any privacy, and of course a blog isn't really private, but still, changing it up a little makes me feel a little freer to post more candidly. And that's important to me. So, the new address is http://chrysanthymum.blogspot.com. The Chrysanthemum part comes from my India trip - Willa Rose named me Chrysanthemum and I loved it. It's probably a good thing I didn't go with my other India nickname (sex pot)!
So Chrysanthymum it is for now.
Also, in light of the new year, I don't exactly believe in resolutions, which are usually all about self-restraint, but I totally believe in goal setting and intention setting, I'm kind of hooked on it, you might even say. And along with writing, blogging more and kicking ass in school, I want to set an intention to be more honest and authentic. For anyone who watches The Office, think Pam in "Cocktails" from Season 3 (love that episode).
Authenticity can be an issue for me in blogging. I have no idea who does or doesn't read this, and because of that I can tend to tread too lightly for my own likely, and it's my freakin' blog, so it matters if I like it.
So, I feel I should issue a bit of a warning to the feint of heart: I'm going to tread less lightly. If you are offended by sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, cursing, atheism, political thought on the left side of liberal, metaphysics, you might want to avert your eyes! I would rather be real, even if people don't like it, than to sit here, not blogging b/c I'm so worried what this or that person will think of me. It's no way to live, so, yeah, I'm going to try less knee-jerk self-censorship. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Currently Listening:
"Elepant" - Damien Rice - Listening to 9 Crimes - such a great album. LOVE his voice in this song, holy shit.
This has got to die
This has got to stop
This has got to lie down
Someone else on top
You can keep me pinned
It's easier to tease
But you can't paint an elephant
Quite as good as she
And she may cry like a baby
And she may drive me Crazy
'Cause I am lately lonely
So why d'you have to lie?
I take it I'm your crutch
The pillow in your pillow case
It's easier to touch
And when you think you've sinned
Do you fall upon your knees?
And do you sit within your picture?
Do you still forget the breeze?
And she may rise, if I sing you down
And she may wisely cling to the ground
Cause I'm lately horny
So why would she take me thorny?
What's the point of this song?
Or even singing?
You've already gone
Why am I clinging?
Well I could throw it on, and I could live without
And I could do it all for you
I could be strong
Tell me if you want me to lie
'Cause this has got to die
This has got to stop
This has got to lie down, down
With someone else on top
You can both keep me pinned
'Cause it's easier to tease
But you can't make me happy
Quite as good as me
Well you know that's a lie
So, I hope you enjoy!
I hope to be blogging more in 2010. It's funny, I was looking at my old stats, and it seems I've increased by 5 posts a year, steadily, since I started this blog in the summer of 2007. I'll see if I can really amp that up in 2010! I'd love to get on some sort of weekly schedule.
I also changed my URL - I just felt funny about having my full real name on there. It made me feel like I didn't really have any privacy, and of course a blog isn't really private, but still, changing it up a little makes me feel a little freer to post more candidly. And that's important to me. So, the new address is http://chrysanthymum.blogspot.com. The Chrysanthemum part comes from my India trip - Willa Rose named me Chrysanthemum and I loved it. It's probably a good thing I didn't go with my other India nickname (sex pot)!
So Chrysanthymum it is for now.
Also, in light of the new year, I don't exactly believe in resolutions, which are usually all about self-restraint, but I totally believe in goal setting and intention setting, I'm kind of hooked on it, you might even say. And along with writing, blogging more and kicking ass in school, I want to set an intention to be more honest and authentic. For anyone who watches The Office, think Pam in "Cocktails" from Season 3 (love that episode).
Authenticity can be an issue for me in blogging. I have no idea who does or doesn't read this, and because of that I can tend to tread too lightly for my own likely, and it's my freakin' blog, so it matters if I like it.
So, I feel I should issue a bit of a warning to the feint of heart: I'm going to tread less lightly. If you are offended by sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, cursing, atheism, political thought on the left side of liberal, metaphysics, you might want to avert your eyes! I would rather be real, even if people don't like it, than to sit here, not blogging b/c I'm so worried what this or that person will think of me. It's no way to live, so, yeah, I'm going to try less knee-jerk self-censorship. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Currently Listening:
"Elepant" - Damien Rice - Listening to 9 Crimes - such a great album. LOVE his voice in this song, holy shit.
This has got to die
This has got to stop
This has got to lie down
Someone else on top
You can keep me pinned
It's easier to tease
But you can't paint an elephant
Quite as good as she
And she may cry like a baby
And she may drive me Crazy
'Cause I am lately lonely
So why d'you have to lie?
I take it I'm your crutch
The pillow in your pillow case
It's easier to touch
And when you think you've sinned
Do you fall upon your knees?
And do you sit within your picture?
Do you still forget the breeze?
And she may rise, if I sing you down
And she may wisely cling to the ground
Cause I'm lately horny
So why would she take me thorny?
What's the point of this song?
Or even singing?
You've already gone
Why am I clinging?
Well I could throw it on, and I could live without
And I could do it all for you
I could be strong
Tell me if you want me to lie
'Cause this has got to die
This has got to stop
This has got to lie down, down
With someone else on top
You can both keep me pinned
'Cause it's easier to tease
But you can't make me happy
Quite as good as me
Well you know that's a lie
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Sun Connections
So, this is kinda trippy. I'm in the midst of what feels like the enormously overwhelming task of sorting through my apartment and deciding what I want to keep, what to sell at a yard sale, what to give away. It is mind-blowing and incredible how much crap I've accumulated. Before I moved to this apartment, I was always on the move, so this never happened. Now I feel like I'm drowning in stuff.
Anyway, just now I was sorting through a stack of back issues of The Sun magazine. I tend to hang on to things so I have them going back for years. There are a lot I haven't read in awhile. What was kind of a trippy experience is looking back through the table of contents of previous issues and realizing I've met a lot of the featured people in the interviews and articles. Some of it's not surprising - I went to a writer's retreat put on by The Sun in 2005, so those connections aren't surprising, but some of the other ones are.
The one I just looked through had a feature article by Reza Aslan, who was here on Orcas last fall for a lecture and reception. Another feature article was by Diane Lefer, who taught at the Orcas Island Writers Festival last fall. She was fabulous, her writing practice comes from a deeply passionate social and political conviction adn she was a real inspiration in that way. And then there was another issue with an interview with Andrew Harvey, who was also recently on Orcas doing a workshop.
Anyway, just now I was sorting through a stack of back issues of The Sun magazine. I tend to hang on to things so I have them going back for years. There are a lot I haven't read in awhile. What was kind of a trippy experience is looking back through the table of contents of previous issues and realizing I've met a lot of the featured people in the interviews and articles. Some of it's not surprising - I went to a writer's retreat put on by The Sun in 2005, so those connections aren't surprising, but some of the other ones are.
The one I just looked through had a feature article by Reza Aslan, who was here on Orcas last fall for a lecture and reception. Another feature article was by Diane Lefer, who taught at the Orcas Island Writers Festival last fall. She was fabulous, her writing practice comes from a deeply passionate social and political conviction adn she was a real inspiration in that way. And then there was another issue with an interview with Andrew Harvey, who was also recently on Orcas doing a workshop.
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?
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?
Friday, January 30, 2009
I Am Fried
This month I have made applying to colleges and scholarships my full-time job, and have actually spent more hours at it than at most jobs. I set myself a goal of 8 hours a day working on all of it, and I often went over and rarely took a day off. Yesterday I worked for fifteen hours with only a break for lunch. And now I feel totally fried.
In the last month, I've written 28 essays. If I have to write or look at another personal statement anytime soon I might spontaneously combust. I usually created each new essay by pulling from previous ones, and adjusting it for whatever particular purpose I needed, so it's not like they were all from scratch, but still. And many were, because the questions were specific and not covered elsewhere. I have reached the limit. This isn't even including all the short answer questions.
I don't even know how many forms I have filled out online and in print. I've been to the local office supply store almost every day, faxing transcript requests, copying required documents and letters of recommendation, which I coerced out of many sources, copying all my tax forms for financial aid offices and scholarship committees (I actually had my tax forms filled out before I got my W-2/etc in the mail). I don't even want to think how much paper I've gone through printing out application forms and required supplemental information. If the aforementioned office supply store was open right now Id probably be there b/ there's much I still need to copy today for the last batch of scholarship applications, and one of them needs everything scanned!
In the midst of all that I also planned and scheduled visits to three schools before I fly out, replete with interviews, sitting in on classes, campus tours and the like. All the other schools I'm applying to I've already visited. It's cool though, I'm sitting in on different types of classes at each place. At one, I'll sit in on a writing class, of course. The cool thing about that is that in conversing via email with the professor to set that up, one of the emails she sent me had a piece of a poem in it, a poem by Tony Hoagland. I don't consider myself very well-versed in poetry and I know that I don't know my poets all that well, so when I know one it says something, and I know Tony Hoagland. Not well, but his "Reasons to Survive November" is one of my favorite poems, so I thought that was a cool coincidence.
Speaking of, I'm taking a bit of a quick detour here to say I watched Into the Wild this weekend, and LOVED it. I got chills big-time when he started reciting Sharon Olds' poem "I Go Back to May, 1937" because that probably is my favorite poem. I first read it in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and have loved it ever since. It seems like now instead of music coincidences I'm having poetry coincidences. I can dig it.
Back on track. At another school I'm most likely sitting in on an interdisciplinary humanities course (yes!) and at another, a class on environmental health and social justice. I'm very glad that it'll be varied. I need variety.
But along with all of that came arranging all of it, arranging my travels, arranging whose couch to crash on at each place, getting bus tickets, etc, etc, etc. I actually thought I would also be able to plan a separate visit to Bellingham this month. I've visited Fairhaven before, twice actually (once in 2005, once in November) and had interviews and toured and all but I haven't gone to a class. So I wanted to try to squeeze that in, and some friends were considering going, but shit, I think I was crazy to even think I might be able to fit that in.
All of this while also doing everything to get ready for India - apply for India Visa, all the medical stuff, getting everything squared away with my apartment and with the person who will be watching it and doing my bookkeeping, getting supplies that I didn't have and probably more that I'm not even remembering anymore b/c I'm so fried. What I haven't done yet is pack.
Somehow I also did manage to have a pretty decent social life this month. I hung out a lot and had a surprise visit from my friend Heather in Seattle (though I also worked on stuff while she was here). I feel pretty good. I got everything done that I intended to. All my applications and their supplements are submitted. All the financial aid forms are filed (there were sooo many of those) and I applied to all the scholarships I originally set out to apply for. Except for the copying and scanning I mentioned, I am pretty much done. And that is a very good thing, b/c today's my last chance to mail stuff out before I take off on Monday morning. I just feel like everything is sort of squared away, like I made myself a goal and met it better than I might have thought.
That being said if I had to write another personal statement I might kill myself. And if I heard about another scholarship opportunity today, even if it sounded perfect and was for a million dollars, I might not bother. I am fried, completely and totally fried.
And so is my bank account - this shit is not cheap! Between all the application fees, the transcript requests (those get me every time, I've spent over $100 on that alone and luckily only one of my former schools charged for or I would be in the red), the College Board fees (for the financial aid profile and the sending of old SAT scores, which in most cases was optional and I opted for since my scores kicked major ass), all that copying and mailing and on and on and on, added up to over $600. Yikes.
And that is not to mention this is the same month as everything for India. I bought my plane ticket this month and paid a big chunk of the program fee, and paid for a domestic flight inside India as part of the itinerary, and then there were all the vaccinations, and the meds (!!!), and international insurance (funny I am insured overseas and not in America, go figure), and all my travel between here and San Fran where I'll fly out, and supplies. I think I have spent more money this month than in some (most?) years of my life. Seriously. The hope is that it will all be worth it.
Speaking of the meds, wow, what a trip. I was a bit worried about taking mefloquine for malaria - it's known to have serious emotional side effects and that's something I don't need, but the other option causes increased sun sensitivity, and I've already got that in spades. My doctor warned me that the Mef might cause weird dreams, and she wasn't kidding! I took my first one on Wednesday, and early that next morning I was in some weird state of lucid dreaming, I'm not entirely sure if I was asleep or awake, because I was dreaming, but also completely aware of my body. I think if I had ever tried acid, I would've been having acid flashbacks, it was totally weird. Kinda cool, but I'm glad it didn't happen again last night/this morning because there is just only so much I can take. If it happens once a week the night after taking the meds, I guess I'm cool with that. I don't think I'm having any emotional side effects, knock on wood. And with my current mental state of being totally fried, I feel I'd be ripe for those side effects if I was going to have them.
So that's that. My apartment is the messiest it's ever been, it looks like a hurricane hit my kitchen, and a tornado of paperwork laid waste to the living room, and another hurricane of boxes and packing material (from things I ordered) hit my bedroom. So I'd better get to cleaning that up, and to packing, at some point today after I finish my shit later this morning.
I'm leaving here in THREE DAYS. I can't believe it!
Currently listening:
"How to Save a Life" - The Fray - This song is on my computer b/c it's on the Grey's soundtrack. I don't really know The Fray, and not sure I really want to, but I do like this song a lot and play it often. I really like the piano, and the chorus. It's from the episode "Superstition" which I think is a really good one (I think Season 2 is just soooo good, probably my favorite) and during a pretty intense scene. Anyway while looking for the lyrics online, I found out this song is apparently written about a crack-addicted teen. I like that some of the songs on Grey's, like this one, have titles that could make sense in a medical sense too.
Here are the words:
Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
How to save a life
In the last month, I've written 28 essays. If I have to write or look at another personal statement anytime soon I might spontaneously combust. I usually created each new essay by pulling from previous ones, and adjusting it for whatever particular purpose I needed, so it's not like they were all from scratch, but still. And many were, because the questions were specific and not covered elsewhere. I have reached the limit. This isn't even including all the short answer questions.
I don't even know how many forms I have filled out online and in print. I've been to the local office supply store almost every day, faxing transcript requests, copying required documents and letters of recommendation, which I coerced out of many sources, copying all my tax forms for financial aid offices and scholarship committees (I actually had my tax forms filled out before I got my W-2/etc in the mail). I don't even want to think how much paper I've gone through printing out application forms and required supplemental information. If the aforementioned office supply store was open right now Id probably be there b/ there's much I still need to copy today for the last batch of scholarship applications, and one of them needs everything scanned!
In the midst of all that I also planned and scheduled visits to three schools before I fly out, replete with interviews, sitting in on classes, campus tours and the like. All the other schools I'm applying to I've already visited. It's cool though, I'm sitting in on different types of classes at each place. At one, I'll sit in on a writing class, of course. The cool thing about that is that in conversing via email with the professor to set that up, one of the emails she sent me had a piece of a poem in it, a poem by Tony Hoagland. I don't consider myself very well-versed in poetry and I know that I don't know my poets all that well, so when I know one it says something, and I know Tony Hoagland. Not well, but his "Reasons to Survive November" is one of my favorite poems, so I thought that was a cool coincidence.
Speaking of, I'm taking a bit of a quick detour here to say I watched Into the Wild this weekend, and LOVED it. I got chills big-time when he started reciting Sharon Olds' poem "I Go Back to May, 1937" because that probably is my favorite poem. I first read it in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and have loved it ever since. It seems like now instead of music coincidences I'm having poetry coincidences. I can dig it.
Back on track. At another school I'm most likely sitting in on an interdisciplinary humanities course (yes!) and at another, a class on environmental health and social justice. I'm very glad that it'll be varied. I need variety.
But along with all of that came arranging all of it, arranging my travels, arranging whose couch to crash on at each place, getting bus tickets, etc, etc, etc. I actually thought I would also be able to plan a separate visit to Bellingham this month. I've visited Fairhaven before, twice actually (once in 2005, once in November) and had interviews and toured and all but I haven't gone to a class. So I wanted to try to squeeze that in, and some friends were considering going, but shit, I think I was crazy to even think I might be able to fit that in.
All of this while also doing everything to get ready for India - apply for India Visa, all the medical stuff, getting everything squared away with my apartment and with the person who will be watching it and doing my bookkeeping, getting supplies that I didn't have and probably more that I'm not even remembering anymore b/c I'm so fried. What I haven't done yet is pack.
Somehow I also did manage to have a pretty decent social life this month. I hung out a lot and had a surprise visit from my friend Heather in Seattle (though I also worked on stuff while she was here). I feel pretty good. I got everything done that I intended to. All my applications and their supplements are submitted. All the financial aid forms are filed (there were sooo many of those) and I applied to all the scholarships I originally set out to apply for. Except for the copying and scanning I mentioned, I am pretty much done. And that is a very good thing, b/c today's my last chance to mail stuff out before I take off on Monday morning. I just feel like everything is sort of squared away, like I made myself a goal and met it better than I might have thought.
That being said if I had to write another personal statement I might kill myself. And if I heard about another scholarship opportunity today, even if it sounded perfect and was for a million dollars, I might not bother. I am fried, completely and totally fried.
And so is my bank account - this shit is not cheap! Between all the application fees, the transcript requests (those get me every time, I've spent over $100 on that alone and luckily only one of my former schools charged for or I would be in the red), the College Board fees (for the financial aid profile and the sending of old SAT scores, which in most cases was optional and I opted for since my scores kicked major ass), all that copying and mailing and on and on and on, added up to over $600. Yikes.
And that is not to mention this is the same month as everything for India. I bought my plane ticket this month and paid a big chunk of the program fee, and paid for a domestic flight inside India as part of the itinerary, and then there were all the vaccinations, and the meds (!!!), and international insurance (funny I am insured overseas and not in America, go figure), and all my travel between here and San Fran where I'll fly out, and supplies. I think I have spent more money this month than in some (most?) years of my life. Seriously. The hope is that it will all be worth it.
Speaking of the meds, wow, what a trip. I was a bit worried about taking mefloquine for malaria - it's known to have serious emotional side effects and that's something I don't need, but the other option causes increased sun sensitivity, and I've already got that in spades. My doctor warned me that the Mef might cause weird dreams, and she wasn't kidding! I took my first one on Wednesday, and early that next morning I was in some weird state of lucid dreaming, I'm not entirely sure if I was asleep or awake, because I was dreaming, but also completely aware of my body. I think if I had ever tried acid, I would've been having acid flashbacks, it was totally weird. Kinda cool, but I'm glad it didn't happen again last night/this morning because there is just only so much I can take. If it happens once a week the night after taking the meds, I guess I'm cool with that. I don't think I'm having any emotional side effects, knock on wood. And with my current mental state of being totally fried, I feel I'd be ripe for those side effects if I was going to have them.
So that's that. My apartment is the messiest it's ever been, it looks like a hurricane hit my kitchen, and a tornado of paperwork laid waste to the living room, and another hurricane of boxes and packing material (from things I ordered) hit my bedroom. So I'd better get to cleaning that up, and to packing, at some point today after I finish my shit later this morning.
I'm leaving here in THREE DAYS. I can't believe it!
Currently listening:
"How to Save a Life" - The Fray - This song is on my computer b/c it's on the Grey's soundtrack. I don't really know The Fray, and not sure I really want to, but I do like this song a lot and play it often. I really like the piano, and the chorus. It's from the episode "Superstition" which I think is a really good one (I think Season 2 is just soooo good, probably my favorite) and during a pretty intense scene. Anyway while looking for the lyrics online, I found out this song is apparently written about a crack-addicted teen. I like that some of the songs on Grey's, like this one, have titles that could make sense in a medical sense too.
Here are the words:
Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
How to save a life
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Long Time, No Post
Yeah, I know, it's been like, two and a half months.
There's lots of news to report, I suppose. It's been an interesting few months. I lost internet connection for awhile, which drove me nuts. I don't have TV so I rely on the internet for my fix. It drove me crazy to miss House and The Office, but what drove me even crazier was not being able to be really connected around election time. I like to keep up on those things, and it was like being totally disconnected from the world. And that's not to mention all the people I fell out of touch with. It sucked. I spent hours and hours on the phone with CenturyTel, trying to figure out what was wrong. They were telling me I'd have to take my computer to an Apple store (not easy to do, since I live on an island). Then my friend Rachel visited, and fixed it in about two seconds. Now I'm trying to catch up.
In other news, I quit my job. It was a pretty big deal. There were some major management changes in the department I worked in, and my new boss was pretty downright weird about my visual impairment and it made me really uncomfortable working there. It was a difficult month, from mid-September to mid-October. After working the same job, this came out of the blue. I was already a little unhappy there, but for other reasons, I wanted to do something that was more mentally engaging and less physically demanding, my body was exhausted, and with the commute (I walked about 45 minutes each way), it took up a lot of time and I just hadn't found the space to write. But this was totally unexpected and I just couldn't stay under the circumstances. So I gave my notice, and worked another two and a half weeks.
The last day was, ummm, classic. My co-worker who usually leads the shift called in sick and there were three of us, and 450 guests. We had to work late. Just a classic last day. After though, wow was that a night to remember...except I don't remember most of it. I went to the bar to celebrate and everyone came out that night. It really blew my mind, that was the most people I'd seen from work (and all different departments of work) come out in one night. It was wildly fun. I was very lovey. I remember hugging lots of people and telling them I loved them. It was all true, what a great group of people. I was probably the drunkest I've ever been, which was not fun the next day. I haven't been able to drink cranberry & vodka since. I continued to hang out with the fall staff for the next few weeks (which was even more fun after I wasn't working there). And in the next few weeks, said goodbye to a lot of awesome people. It was a season to remember in many respects.
Before all that leaving, I went to Bellingham with some camp friends, and checked out Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University. I've written about it before on here somewhere. I really liked it, though I will have more to elaborate on that later. We came back on the 4th, and upon getting off the ferry, a freind got a call that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio, so we knew we were in for a good night. We drove to the bar and watched the results, definitely the quickest since I've been eligible to vote. I have more to say on that too.
Though I was no longer a kitchen employee, I did work a Women's Wellness Weekend at camp reading tarot cards, always my biggest event, $-wise, of the year. I made more in that weekend than I did in some two-week paychecks.
My friends from New Jersey, Rachel and Vito, came to visit. It was their first time out this way. I think it was a bit of culture shock. Another friend, Tara, is coming for a visit in December.
I'm planning to go to India for three months, starting in February. I wrote about all those plans in the "Adventures, Quests and Foreign Sands" post, and narrowed it down a few months ago, to the Latitudes program, which would consist of the India semester, and then a solo internship (also international), to be determined before departure for India. I've been working full-force on that. Had my interviews and got into the program and paid my deposit (which was pretty scary). Applied for scholarships and financial aid all over the place. Now I'm just waiting to find out about all that.
I've been reading a lot. I think the last time I posted about books, I was reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which is basically the true-life story of a Sudanese refugee. Very good. I highly recommend it. After that, I went back and read Reading Lolita in Tehran, also excellent. It made me actually want to go back and reread a lot of the books I was assigned but never read in high school (there were lots of those), because Azar Nafisi's class discussions on those classics were so engaging. And I am sure that at least one of my friends (Leo, this means you), will be proud to know I actually, finally, convinced by so many people, picked up a copy of Wuthering Heights, which I found totally boring in high school (but that might be somewhat affected by the fact that I skimmed and skipped and generally didn't really read), but am willing to give another try as an adult. I also read the book recommended by Silver Lining in my last blog post, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - another great read. It invigorated my writing, for sure, and give me a whole host of other books and stories I want to read. Now, partly because of a discussion with Kali Durga, I picked up A Natural History of the Senses, which I started earlier this year and then abandoned. I'm loving it.
I've been loving this fifth season of House. I realized I wanted to post more about my reactions to that show (if I don't, I'll be in danger of falling into another online forum, and I don't need that, but I do need an outlet). So, maybe no one cares or wants to read that (except Mr. Luke Chastain, of course), but I don't care.
I've been listening to a lot of the music from House lately. It's really different than the music I usually gravitate towards, but I'm liking it. Some of the songs from the show that top my playlists are "Colors" by Amos Lee, In the Waiting Line by Zero 7, In the Deep by Bird York, On Saturday Afternoon in 1963 by Ricky Lee Jones, Baba O'Reily by The Who (who I love), and lots more. I'm trying to find the unofficial soundtrack for season 4, so if anyone's got any tips on how a girl could find such a thing, I'm all ears. Other music currently topping my charts include "Electric Feel" by MGMT (for sure THE song of this past summer), "Forget Her" by Jeff Buckley, everything Damien Rice - I'm still obsessing on him, "Beast of Burden" by the Stones (this song always reminds me Emily C, Forest and Gigi), "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman and again, many more.
Speaking of music, I don't even really want to talk about the new Chris Cornell stuff, too disappointing to stomach. In fact I started a whole post about it well over a month ago, but it was too depressing to finish.
And the great news is, I've been writing! I'm taking some classes and that's been helping me stay on track. I've been setting aside about three hours a day. It's been soul-satisfying and heart-wrenching at the same time, and it's good. Real good. Feels good to be back into it again. I want to get tons more done before I go to India. I've been digging into some tough stuff though!
Well, that's all for now. I've got to go bake pumpkin bread!
Currently Listening:
"Colors" - Amos Lee - I am really obsessed with this song, can't stop playing it over and over. For any other House fanatics, this song can be found in Season 2, episode 7 "Hunting" (what a GREAT title, on at least three different levels, for that episode), at the end, when Stacey turns House away after realizing that he stole and read her therapist's files on her. Here's the words:
Yesterday I got lost in the circus
Felling like such a mess
Now I'm down I'm just hanging on the corner
I can't help but reminisce
When you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Your mama called she said that you're downstairs crying
Feeling like such a mess
Yeah I hear you you're in the background bawling
What happened to your sweet summertime dress
I know we all, we all got our faults
We get locked in our vaults and we stay
But when you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Colors seem to fade
Yeah
There's lots of news to report, I suppose. It's been an interesting few months. I lost internet connection for awhile, which drove me nuts. I don't have TV so I rely on the internet for my fix. It drove me crazy to miss House and The Office, but what drove me even crazier was not being able to be really connected around election time. I like to keep up on those things, and it was like being totally disconnected from the world. And that's not to mention all the people I fell out of touch with. It sucked. I spent hours and hours on the phone with CenturyTel, trying to figure out what was wrong. They were telling me I'd have to take my computer to an Apple store (not easy to do, since I live on an island). Then my friend Rachel visited, and fixed it in about two seconds. Now I'm trying to catch up.
In other news, I quit my job. It was a pretty big deal. There were some major management changes in the department I worked in, and my new boss was pretty downright weird about my visual impairment and it made me really uncomfortable working there. It was a difficult month, from mid-September to mid-October. After working the same job, this came out of the blue. I was already a little unhappy there, but for other reasons, I wanted to do something that was more mentally engaging and less physically demanding, my body was exhausted, and with the commute (I walked about 45 minutes each way), it took up a lot of time and I just hadn't found the space to write. But this was totally unexpected and I just couldn't stay under the circumstances. So I gave my notice, and worked another two and a half weeks.
The last day was, ummm, classic. My co-worker who usually leads the shift called in sick and there were three of us, and 450 guests. We had to work late. Just a classic last day. After though, wow was that a night to remember...except I don't remember most of it. I went to the bar to celebrate and everyone came out that night. It really blew my mind, that was the most people I'd seen from work (and all different departments of work) come out in one night. It was wildly fun. I was very lovey. I remember hugging lots of people and telling them I loved them. It was all true, what a great group of people. I was probably the drunkest I've ever been, which was not fun the next day. I haven't been able to drink cranberry & vodka since. I continued to hang out with the fall staff for the next few weeks (which was even more fun after I wasn't working there). And in the next few weeks, said goodbye to a lot of awesome people. It was a season to remember in many respects.
Before all that leaving, I went to Bellingham with some camp friends, and checked out Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University. I've written about it before on here somewhere. I really liked it, though I will have more to elaborate on that later. We came back on the 4th, and upon getting off the ferry, a freind got a call that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio, so we knew we were in for a good night. We drove to the bar and watched the results, definitely the quickest since I've been eligible to vote. I have more to say on that too.
Though I was no longer a kitchen employee, I did work a Women's Wellness Weekend at camp reading tarot cards, always my biggest event, $-wise, of the year. I made more in that weekend than I did in some two-week paychecks.
My friends from New Jersey, Rachel and Vito, came to visit. It was their first time out this way. I think it was a bit of culture shock. Another friend, Tara, is coming for a visit in December.
I'm planning to go to India for three months, starting in February. I wrote about all those plans in the "Adventures, Quests and Foreign Sands" post, and narrowed it down a few months ago, to the Latitudes program, which would consist of the India semester, and then a solo internship (also international), to be determined before departure for India. I've been working full-force on that. Had my interviews and got into the program and paid my deposit (which was pretty scary). Applied for scholarships and financial aid all over the place. Now I'm just waiting to find out about all that.
I've been reading a lot. I think the last time I posted about books, I was reading Dave Eggers' What is the What? which is basically the true-life story of a Sudanese refugee. Very good. I highly recommend it. After that, I went back and read Reading Lolita in Tehran, also excellent. It made me actually want to go back and reread a lot of the books I was assigned but never read in high school (there were lots of those), because Azar Nafisi's class discussions on those classics were so engaging. And I am sure that at least one of my friends (Leo, this means you), will be proud to know I actually, finally, convinced by so many people, picked up a copy of Wuthering Heights, which I found totally boring in high school (but that might be somewhat affected by the fact that I skimmed and skipped and generally didn't really read), but am willing to give another try as an adult. I also read the book recommended by Silver Lining in my last blog post, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose - another great read. It invigorated my writing, for sure, and give me a whole host of other books and stories I want to read. Now, partly because of a discussion with Kali Durga, I picked up A Natural History of the Senses, which I started earlier this year and then abandoned. I'm loving it.
I've been loving this fifth season of House. I realized I wanted to post more about my reactions to that show (if I don't, I'll be in danger of falling into another online forum, and I don't need that, but I do need an outlet). So, maybe no one cares or wants to read that (except Mr. Luke Chastain, of course), but I don't care.
I've been listening to a lot of the music from House lately. It's really different than the music I usually gravitate towards, but I'm liking it. Some of the songs from the show that top my playlists are "Colors" by Amos Lee, In the Waiting Line by Zero 7, In the Deep by Bird York, On Saturday Afternoon in 1963 by Ricky Lee Jones, Baba O'Reily by The Who (who I love), and lots more. I'm trying to find the unofficial soundtrack for season 4, so if anyone's got any tips on how a girl could find such a thing, I'm all ears. Other music currently topping my charts include "Electric Feel" by MGMT (for sure THE song of this past summer), "Forget Her" by Jeff Buckley, everything Damien Rice - I'm still obsessing on him, "Beast of Burden" by the Stones (this song always reminds me Emily C, Forest and Gigi), "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman and again, many more.
Speaking of music, I don't even really want to talk about the new Chris Cornell stuff, too disappointing to stomach. In fact I started a whole post about it well over a month ago, but it was too depressing to finish.
And the great news is, I've been writing! I'm taking some classes and that's been helping me stay on track. I've been setting aside about three hours a day. It's been soul-satisfying and heart-wrenching at the same time, and it's good. Real good. Feels good to be back into it again. I want to get tons more done before I go to India. I've been digging into some tough stuff though!
Well, that's all for now. I've got to go bake pumpkin bread!
Currently Listening:
"Colors" - Amos Lee - I am really obsessed with this song, can't stop playing it over and over. For any other House fanatics, this song can be found in Season 2, episode 7 "Hunting" (what a GREAT title, on at least three different levels, for that episode), at the end, when Stacey turns House away after realizing that he stole and read her therapist's files on her. Here's the words:
Yesterday I got lost in the circus
Felling like such a mess
Now I'm down I'm just hanging on the corner
I can't help but reminisce
When you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Your mama called she said that you're downstairs crying
Feeling like such a mess
Yeah I hear you you're in the background bawling
What happened to your sweet summertime dress
I know we all, we all got our faults
We get locked in our vaults and we stay
But when you're gone, all the colors fade
When you're gone, no New Year's Day parade
You're gone
Colors seem to fade
Colors seem to fade
Yeah
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Orcas Island Writers Festival
The first annual Orcas Island Writers Festival ended a few days ago. It was awesome. I'm already looking forward to the next one.
I'm so glad I went, too. I almost didn't. I haven't really written much in awhile, and have felt like work takes over my life. But I had put in for the time off back in April or something, so I said what the hell and signed up. I thought if nothing else, at least I'd have a few days away. The festival was held at Moran State Park which is a good drive from my place, so I stayed overnight in one of the cabins during the festival.
The festival blew my expectations out of the water! The instructors were EXCELLENT! A lot of them teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts which has a low-residency MFA writing program. In the mornings, we had small workshop groups. I chose the non-fiction track, and so each morning, our small group gathered to very thoroughly discuss our work. Each of us had to submit a ten-page sample of our writing before the festival, so we spent considerable time each morning, working with a few people's work each day. It was great. I forgot how great it is, not only to get feedback on your own work, but to work as a group on others' stories. You learn so much. I felt so engaged, like my inner artist was engaged in a way it hasn't been in so long. I was exercising my writing muscles. It was great even to go over some of the basics of story arc and point of view. I didn't realize I was so hungry for this sort of thing. But oh was I ever! It fed my soul, and my soul has been a bit starving as of late.
So our group looked at my piece on the last workshop day. I submitted the first chapter of my book, which I've worked on extensively. I have to say (and I think I've said before), that for the last, well, year or so, I've felt kinda flat, numb, disinterested feelings about my manuscript. It doesn't really excite me anymore. So I thought, what the hell? I also picked the non-fiction track (as opposed to another workshop which was for memoir/fiction), partly because the instructor and some of the people in the group were male (in the mem/fiction group, it was all females). It may seem silly or even arbitrary, but almost all of the places where I've shared my work - other writing circles, friends, classes I've been in - have been all women. I feel like I have a pretty diverse sampling of female responses to this particular piece of work, and I wanted to see a more mixed-gender reaction. I'm glad I did. I left feeling more confident that my story could have a more universal appeal, which was good. I also got great feedback on what worked in my piece, what was effective.
And I got some great ideas for how to change it. I've actually been thinking recently of reshaping and re-visioning the whole project in a major, major way, and this workshop pretty much confirmed that for me. I felt like I got a real sense of where the real juice of the story is, what needs to come in and be included and what I can draw out and yeah, I would just sit there at different points during the weekend with all these thoughts, ideas and inspirations coursing through me.
I also got to rethink another book idea I had in mind. I realized the starting point was a totally different place, and really saw how perfectly that would work. It was like reframing the whole thing. And because of that, I had passages just swirling in me throughout the whole time.
I thought a lot about story structure. In our workshop group we talked about the typical pyramid of a story - the introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, ending. I kept thinking of The Kite Runner, because it's such a perfect book in that way, it has all those elements so clearly. And because I just love thinking about that book anyway. With my other favorite, The God of Small Things, it's so much more murky (and that story weaves in out of time, so if I think about, in chronological order the events of the book probably do follow that arc, but the telling doesn't, not really).
Then in one of the afternoon sessions (these were lectures and mini-classes), Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country, said she thinks of story structure in another way. She thinks of it as the story starting out in stability, you enter the world of the story, then there's a destabilizing event, either by ambition, wanting something, or by some sort of loss. Then follows a period of resistance - either a character is resisting something, or the world is resisting them. Then they face the inevitable, or the bottom, etc (analogous to the climax in the other structure system), and then a period of acceptance. Well this description of story structure also perfectly fit The Kite Runner. I just got such a clear picture of it, using that book as a tangible example. And from there could clearly extrapolate to a book I want to write. It just makes a lot of sense.
Another thing we talked about a lot in workshops and afternoon sessions was about reading like a writer, which is something I think I sort of do, but have never been taught to do, looking at good writing and really looking at it, getting into what makes it so good, what the author did to make it so effective. I think I do some of that just by nature of being a writer and reading a lot. I mean, my LENGTHY post on here about The Kite Runner isn't really a review, not really, it's more a writer's appreciation and noticings. I want to go back to the passages from that book that I quoted in my post (there were several), or to the passages I've makred in White Oleander. I want to re-read The God of Small Things again, even though I just reread it a few months ago when I was in Hawaii, because it's just so good. The writing is so fucking good it's unbelievable. And there are so many just mindblowing things about the story structure. Oh God, I'm getting all jazzed up just thinking about it I'm getting up, walking around, thinking about it. That book is SO FREAKIN' GOOD I can hardly stand it. Some of the most gorgeous prose ever. All these great little things that Arundhati Roy does with the writing. And the end, oh the end. Yes, I want to reread it, specifically to read it like a writer, really dig into it and analyze what makes it so good, learn from it.
I'm still DYING to post about that book. I especially want to discuss the end, the choices she made in writing it that way, in the name of the last chapter (which still, years after my first reading of the book, gives me full body shivers), and on what note she chooses to end it and all the implications. I lent it to a friend actually, who was leaving to work on a six month cruise and needed some reading material. I wish I hadn't. I love my friend Holly, and I'm glad someone else will read the book, but I realize I wish I hadn't parted with it. And it hasn't even been two months yet! So, someday, I will post about it. I just feel I couldn't really do it justice without the book here. Anyway I am anxious to dig into that book again and read it in a slightly different way.
I've gotten a bit off-track, as usual. I'm taking a screenwriting class starting in a week or two. I'm going to base it on a short story I wrote a bit ago, which was based on a dream I had about writing this story (now that I think about it, the dream might have also involved it being for a screenwriting class, I just put that together, weird). I'm a little nervous about the fact that my two main characters are on acid during part of the story, since I don't know how that'll fly in some of the writing circles of the island, but after one of the readings at the festival (each night a handful of authors/instructors read their work), I'm inspired to NEVER hold back. So that should be an interesting class. On an un-writing note, I'm also taking an anthropology class this fall, on comparative Islamic cultures. I'm really looking forward to that too. My mind is just craving something like that.
Currently Reading:
Dave Eggers' What is the What? - I'm only a few chapters in. It's very good, harrowing in many places, immediately draws me in.
Currently Listening:
"Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman - this is not a random iTunes pick like usual in this section. I am sort of obsessed with this song. In some other post, I totally want to write about this song the way I want to write about books. There are so many great lyrical things she does in this song. It's also heartbreaking.
I'm so glad I went, too. I almost didn't. I haven't really written much in awhile, and have felt like work takes over my life. But I had put in for the time off back in April or something, so I said what the hell and signed up. I thought if nothing else, at least I'd have a few days away. The festival was held at Moran State Park which is a good drive from my place, so I stayed overnight in one of the cabins during the festival.
The festival blew my expectations out of the water! The instructors were EXCELLENT! A lot of them teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts which has a low-residency MFA writing program. In the mornings, we had small workshop groups. I chose the non-fiction track, and so each morning, our small group gathered to very thoroughly discuss our work. Each of us had to submit a ten-page sample of our writing before the festival, so we spent considerable time each morning, working with a few people's work each day. It was great. I forgot how great it is, not only to get feedback on your own work, but to work as a group on others' stories. You learn so much. I felt so engaged, like my inner artist was engaged in a way it hasn't been in so long. I was exercising my writing muscles. It was great even to go over some of the basics of story arc and point of view. I didn't realize I was so hungry for this sort of thing. But oh was I ever! It fed my soul, and my soul has been a bit starving as of late.
So our group looked at my piece on the last workshop day. I submitted the first chapter of my book, which I've worked on extensively. I have to say (and I think I've said before), that for the last, well, year or so, I've felt kinda flat, numb, disinterested feelings about my manuscript. It doesn't really excite me anymore. So I thought, what the hell? I also picked the non-fiction track (as opposed to another workshop which was for memoir/fiction), partly because the instructor and some of the people in the group were male (in the mem/fiction group, it was all females). It may seem silly or even arbitrary, but almost all of the places where I've shared my work - other writing circles, friends, classes I've been in - have been all women. I feel like I have a pretty diverse sampling of female responses to this particular piece of work, and I wanted to see a more mixed-gender reaction. I'm glad I did. I left feeling more confident that my story could have a more universal appeal, which was good. I also got great feedback on what worked in my piece, what was effective.
And I got some great ideas for how to change it. I've actually been thinking recently of reshaping and re-visioning the whole project in a major, major way, and this workshop pretty much confirmed that for me. I felt like I got a real sense of where the real juice of the story is, what needs to come in and be included and what I can draw out and yeah, I would just sit there at different points during the weekend with all these thoughts, ideas and inspirations coursing through me.
I also got to rethink another book idea I had in mind. I realized the starting point was a totally different place, and really saw how perfectly that would work. It was like reframing the whole thing. And because of that, I had passages just swirling in me throughout the whole time.
I thought a lot about story structure. In our workshop group we talked about the typical pyramid of a story - the introduction, rising action, climax, denouement, ending. I kept thinking of The Kite Runner, because it's such a perfect book in that way, it has all those elements so clearly. And because I just love thinking about that book anyway. With my other favorite, The God of Small Things, it's so much more murky (and that story weaves in out of time, so if I think about, in chronological order the events of the book probably do follow that arc, but the telling doesn't, not really).
Then in one of the afternoon sessions (these were lectures and mini-classes), Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country, said she thinks of story structure in another way. She thinks of it as the story starting out in stability, you enter the world of the story, then there's a destabilizing event, either by ambition, wanting something, or by some sort of loss. Then follows a period of resistance - either a character is resisting something, or the world is resisting them. Then they face the inevitable, or the bottom, etc (analogous to the climax in the other structure system), and then a period of acceptance. Well this description of story structure also perfectly fit The Kite Runner. I just got such a clear picture of it, using that book as a tangible example. And from there could clearly extrapolate to a book I want to write. It just makes a lot of sense.
Another thing we talked about a lot in workshops and afternoon sessions was about reading like a writer, which is something I think I sort of do, but have never been taught to do, looking at good writing and really looking at it, getting into what makes it so good, what the author did to make it so effective. I think I do some of that just by nature of being a writer and reading a lot. I mean, my LENGTHY post on here about The Kite Runner isn't really a review, not really, it's more a writer's appreciation and noticings. I want to go back to the passages from that book that I quoted in my post (there were several), or to the passages I've makred in White Oleander. I want to re-read The God of Small Things again, even though I just reread it a few months ago when I was in Hawaii, because it's just so good. The writing is so fucking good it's unbelievable. And there are so many just mindblowing things about the story structure. Oh God, I'm getting all jazzed up just thinking about it I'm getting up, walking around, thinking about it. That book is SO FREAKIN' GOOD I can hardly stand it. Some of the most gorgeous prose ever. All these great little things that Arundhati Roy does with the writing. And the end, oh the end. Yes, I want to reread it, specifically to read it like a writer, really dig into it and analyze what makes it so good, learn from it.
I'm still DYING to post about that book. I especially want to discuss the end, the choices she made in writing it that way, in the name of the last chapter (which still, years after my first reading of the book, gives me full body shivers), and on what note she chooses to end it and all the implications. I lent it to a friend actually, who was leaving to work on a six month cruise and needed some reading material. I wish I hadn't. I love my friend Holly, and I'm glad someone else will read the book, but I realize I wish I hadn't parted with it. And it hasn't even been two months yet! So, someday, I will post about it. I just feel I couldn't really do it justice without the book here. Anyway I am anxious to dig into that book again and read it in a slightly different way.
I've gotten a bit off-track, as usual. I'm taking a screenwriting class starting in a week or two. I'm going to base it on a short story I wrote a bit ago, which was based on a dream I had about writing this story (now that I think about it, the dream might have also involved it being for a screenwriting class, I just put that together, weird). I'm a little nervous about the fact that my two main characters are on acid during part of the story, since I don't know how that'll fly in some of the writing circles of the island, but after one of the readings at the festival (each night a handful of authors/instructors read their work), I'm inspired to NEVER hold back. So that should be an interesting class. On an un-writing note, I'm also taking an anthropology class this fall, on comparative Islamic cultures. I'm really looking forward to that too. My mind is just craving something like that.
Currently Reading:
Dave Eggers' What is the What? - I'm only a few chapters in. It's very good, harrowing in many places, immediately draws me in.
Currently Listening:
"Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman - this is not a random iTunes pick like usual in this section. I am sort of obsessed with this song. In some other post, I totally want to write about this song the way I want to write about books. There are so many great lyrical things she does in this song. It's also heartbreaking.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Reflections on '07
Better late than never?
2007 is a year that for me is really hard to classify. In some ways it was incredibly hard. I started the year in pretty bad shape financially and romantically. Then by February, both seemed to get a little better, and then in April I said goodbye to Mr. O, which was really hard, and had a whole slew of financial setbacks. In November I said goodbye to the dog, which was also hard in its own way. I also had some difficulties with family and friends. This year was rife with trouble and turmoil. Numerologically, I was in a 6 personal year, which often is linked with extra responsibilities and burdens, and that was a gross understatement for how the year actually turned out. There were definitely times I felt like so much shit was hitting me at once I couldn't see straight. There was a lot I crawled out from underneath.
Yet, when I look back at it, my feelings about the year are more positive than negative. In some ways, I feel like I really came into my own. I feel stronger than I did at this point last year, that's for sure. I also feel like I sort of blossomed in a way, especially in terms of clothing, if that makes sense. I got rid of a lot of old clothes that had never fit well, that I'd worn for ages because they were there, things I didn't feel comfortable in but wore anyway, clothes people gave me as hand-me-downs or that I'd found at free clothing drives that were five sizes too big, or just totally not me, things that made me feel frumpy and homely. So I did a lot of clearing out, and then during my trip, got some new clothes that I felt supremely attracted to in terms of color and style.
I've always had this thing about looking at clothes with an artist's eye, looking at outfits almost like a painting. It's hard to explain, and it's something I've done all my life, so it's so integral to how I am that it's hard to nail down and describe. I am totally drawn to color, so I'm always looking at how my clothes look together color-wise, and going for an aesthetic satisfaction that may not make sense or even be noticeable to anyone else. And in recent years, in a lot of clothes I felt so blah and so unsatisfied artistically that I almost stopped thinking about it, but that just felt like dulling myself down. That's not to say nothing was good. This move towards my truer artistic compass and better fitting in dressing is something I've made steps toward in the last few years, slowly and surely, and then this year it was like, okay, I'm completely ready to take this on, and also to embrace being sexy. All of that has felt really good.
I've also worked hard to change my financial situation in the last year, and I feel great about that. I have savings, not a ton, but some to build on. I have paid off a lot of bills, not all, but pretty damn close. In fact, most months, I'm ready to go online and pay bills before they're even issued, which feels sooo awesome. I feel on top of things, secure, able to support myself. I also have been able to afford things, like my trip, without dipping into those savings. I don't feel completely poor, and I absolutely did when 2007 started and my account was severely overdrawn. It has taken a lot of hard work, and hopefully this trend will only continue into 2008, especially with college coming up!
I definitely feel like it's been a year for seeing my won strengths, my own ability ot take care of myself financially, emotionally and beyond, and it's been great. It hasn't been without the support of friends and others. I see a therapist, I get regular bodywork from my friend who gives the best massages ever. I have some of the best friends in the world. And I'm also learning how to do it for myself. I'm working on changing relationships that haven't felt good to me, ones in which I feel at the wrong end of power plays, because that has too often been the case. I'm working hard on learning to stand up for myself, be assertive without being aggressive, and being more honest about how I feel and who I am, being authentic and listening to my own authority.
I reconnected with some old friends, strengthened friendships that were budding last year, like Linda, my writing friend extraordinaire, and a local friend who I meet for lunch every month or so. She has been great to talk to and she's helped me sexify my life, meaning mostly she's helped me work on fixing up my apartment in a way that really suits me. In a way, a lot of this year has been about investing in quality things that I really love, whether they're from thrift stores or malls, whether it's in clothes or curtains or friendships or college decisions.
My friend found me matching lamps for my bedroom that were perfect colors, a painting to hang up that fits perfectly, and helped me rearrange the furniture in there, and now I just love being in there. Call it feng shui or whatever, but my bedroom now feels so much more inviting, peaceful, satisfying, sexy, instead of some sort of chaotic throwaway place. This same friend also found me a set of dishes and some other odds and ends, and I know I'll take these things with me when I move, and keep for years to come. It's a trend I'd like to continue.
I also met some new friends this year, like Janna and others at the PNWA writing conference, Kali who I met through an online forum, and then met in real life twice during my trip. It's funny, when I went back to work at camp this year, I was part-time, and I didn't live there, but somehow I feel like I've made more connections this year than in years past. Especially after the season ended, I got to spend a lot of quality time with quality people who stuck around, but even before that, I felt like I got to know the staff pretty well, and had some great times going out with them. I'm finally hanging with people my own age, which is really incredible. That's yet another thing I want to continue and increase in this new year.
Writing also went well for me in 2007. In January or February, I got the first full critique of my book, which was followed by Linda's, and I used those to completely rework my book, to take it deeper, to address albinism more, to focus the story, to brave the darker parts, enter them and put them on paper. I completely rewrote the first section, which was hard. Originally I had an essayish narrative a tthe beginning,a nd that grew and morphed and changed some more into now four distinct chapters with vivid scenes, most of which were pretty difficult to write, and I'm very happy with it now. In October I finished my most recent draft, and sent it to Linda again, and received her full critique a few weeks ago.
Also in writing news, I went to some open mic readings, locally and in Seattle, went to a writing conference and pitched to agents, had two pieces selected as finalists in I'm From Rolling Stone, got some personalized rejection letters from agents, got an agent referral after an open mic reading (that agent subsequently sent me a personalized rejection too, lol), entered a lot of contests in which I didn't place, got accepted for the Orcas ArtSmith Residency and was invited to read at The Best Memoirists Pageant Ever. So all in all, it's been a successful year for my writing.
I'll also say there was one other little writing thing I found out about in early December, that may or may not make it to print, I'll know very soon, but until then I don't want to say anything.
So overall, my feelings towards this past year, are largely positive.
Currently Listening:
"Shine" - Dog's Eye View - this song deserves its own post, it has quite the history for me, and has some really profound lines. Probably my favorite DEV song out there. This would be one of those quality songs that I will take with me forever, thanks to a friend, almost eight years ago, who used to call herself BlueShine.
2007 is a year that for me is really hard to classify. In some ways it was incredibly hard. I started the year in pretty bad shape financially and romantically. Then by February, both seemed to get a little better, and then in April I said goodbye to Mr. O, which was really hard, and had a whole slew of financial setbacks. In November I said goodbye to the dog, which was also hard in its own way. I also had some difficulties with family and friends. This year was rife with trouble and turmoil. Numerologically, I was in a 6 personal year, which often is linked with extra responsibilities and burdens, and that was a gross understatement for how the year actually turned out. There were definitely times I felt like so much shit was hitting me at once I couldn't see straight. There was a lot I crawled out from underneath.
Yet, when I look back at it, my feelings about the year are more positive than negative. In some ways, I feel like I really came into my own. I feel stronger than I did at this point last year, that's for sure. I also feel like I sort of blossomed in a way, especially in terms of clothing, if that makes sense. I got rid of a lot of old clothes that had never fit well, that I'd worn for ages because they were there, things I didn't feel comfortable in but wore anyway, clothes people gave me as hand-me-downs or that I'd found at free clothing drives that were five sizes too big, or just totally not me, things that made me feel frumpy and homely. So I did a lot of clearing out, and then during my trip, got some new clothes that I felt supremely attracted to in terms of color and style.
I've always had this thing about looking at clothes with an artist's eye, looking at outfits almost like a painting. It's hard to explain, and it's something I've done all my life, so it's so integral to how I am that it's hard to nail down and describe. I am totally drawn to color, so I'm always looking at how my clothes look together color-wise, and going for an aesthetic satisfaction that may not make sense or even be noticeable to anyone else. And in recent years, in a lot of clothes I felt so blah and so unsatisfied artistically that I almost stopped thinking about it, but that just felt like dulling myself down. That's not to say nothing was good. This move towards my truer artistic compass and better fitting in dressing is something I've made steps toward in the last few years, slowly and surely, and then this year it was like, okay, I'm completely ready to take this on, and also to embrace being sexy. All of that has felt really good.
I've also worked hard to change my financial situation in the last year, and I feel great about that. I have savings, not a ton, but some to build on. I have paid off a lot of bills, not all, but pretty damn close. In fact, most months, I'm ready to go online and pay bills before they're even issued, which feels sooo awesome. I feel on top of things, secure, able to support myself. I also have been able to afford things, like my trip, without dipping into those savings. I don't feel completely poor, and I absolutely did when 2007 started and my account was severely overdrawn. It has taken a lot of hard work, and hopefully this trend will only continue into 2008, especially with college coming up!
I definitely feel like it's been a year for seeing my won strengths, my own ability ot take care of myself financially, emotionally and beyond, and it's been great. It hasn't been without the support of friends and others. I see a therapist, I get regular bodywork from my friend who gives the best massages ever. I have some of the best friends in the world. And I'm also learning how to do it for myself. I'm working on changing relationships that haven't felt good to me, ones in which I feel at the wrong end of power plays, because that has too often been the case. I'm working hard on learning to stand up for myself, be assertive without being aggressive, and being more honest about how I feel and who I am, being authentic and listening to my own authority.
I reconnected with some old friends, strengthened friendships that were budding last year, like Linda, my writing friend extraordinaire, and a local friend who I meet for lunch every month or so. She has been great to talk to and she's helped me sexify my life, meaning mostly she's helped me work on fixing up my apartment in a way that really suits me. In a way, a lot of this year has been about investing in quality things that I really love, whether they're from thrift stores or malls, whether it's in clothes or curtains or friendships or college decisions.
My friend found me matching lamps for my bedroom that were perfect colors, a painting to hang up that fits perfectly, and helped me rearrange the furniture in there, and now I just love being in there. Call it feng shui or whatever, but my bedroom now feels so much more inviting, peaceful, satisfying, sexy, instead of some sort of chaotic throwaway place. This same friend also found me a set of dishes and some other odds and ends, and I know I'll take these things with me when I move, and keep for years to come. It's a trend I'd like to continue.
I also met some new friends this year, like Janna and others at the PNWA writing conference, Kali who I met through an online forum, and then met in real life twice during my trip. It's funny, when I went back to work at camp this year, I was part-time, and I didn't live there, but somehow I feel like I've made more connections this year than in years past. Especially after the season ended, I got to spend a lot of quality time with quality people who stuck around, but even before that, I felt like I got to know the staff pretty well, and had some great times going out with them. I'm finally hanging with people my own age, which is really incredible. That's yet another thing I want to continue and increase in this new year.
Writing also went well for me in 2007. In January or February, I got the first full critique of my book, which was followed by Linda's, and I used those to completely rework my book, to take it deeper, to address albinism more, to focus the story, to brave the darker parts, enter them and put them on paper. I completely rewrote the first section, which was hard. Originally I had an essayish narrative a tthe beginning,a nd that grew and morphed and changed some more into now four distinct chapters with vivid scenes, most of which were pretty difficult to write, and I'm very happy with it now. In October I finished my most recent draft, and sent it to Linda again, and received her full critique a few weeks ago.
Also in writing news, I went to some open mic readings, locally and in Seattle, went to a writing conference and pitched to agents, had two pieces selected as finalists in I'm From Rolling Stone, got some personalized rejection letters from agents, got an agent referral after an open mic reading (that agent subsequently sent me a personalized rejection too, lol), entered a lot of contests in which I didn't place, got accepted for the Orcas ArtSmith Residency and was invited to read at The Best Memoirists Pageant Ever. So all in all, it's been a successful year for my writing.
I'll also say there was one other little writing thing I found out about in early December, that may or may not make it to print, I'll know very soon, but until then I don't want to say anything.
So overall, my feelings towards this past year, are largely positive.
Currently Listening:
"Shine" - Dog's Eye View - this song deserves its own post, it has quite the history for me, and has some really profound lines. Probably my favorite DEV song out there. This would be one of those quality songs that I will take with me forever, thanks to a friend, almost eight years ago, who used to call herself BlueShine.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Coming Out of the Closet about College
I am nervous making this post, might as well get that out of the way from the very beginning.
As I've talked about in previous blogs, I'm planning on returning to school next fall to finish my undergrad degree. I'm looking at some WA state schools, and also, as described in I Can't Seem to Stop Stretching, widening my circles of where I'm looking. I'm not sure I want to stay in WA. I am sure it would be easier, especially financially, and that if I go somewhere else, everything will depend on financial aid. Still, that hasn't stopped me from looking. I dream big, always. And I'm determined as shit, so if I want to make something happen that's more of a stretch, I'll find a way. Of that, I have no doubt.
*
On a different note, up until April, I was living with this guy. He doesn't want to be written about (and almost definitely hasn't seen my blog), and I want to respect that, but also be able to give bare bones background stuff when necessary, so I'm taking a cue from Janna, (whose blog you should really read, btw - when I went to go retreive the addy to make the linkey, I got distracted by reading her latest post - she's great). She calls her husband "the dreadfully charming Mr. Right," or "Mr. R" for short. So, in that vein, I'm going to call this guy who was living with me, Mr. Orestes, b/c the song "Orestes" by A Perfect Circle reminds me of him. We'll make that Mr. O for short.
Wow, that's pretty weird, calling someone I lived with a nickname like that, but anyway, so yes, Mr. O and I were living together in my apartment with a big brown puppy. It was never really clear whether Mr. O and I were roommates, friends, or more than friends (and that ambiguity drove me absolutely batty). It definitely started as more than friends, and that's definitely what I wanted, but I can't say either of us would win any gold stars for communication (read: that is the understatement of the millenium) so, things were unclear. And then he had to return to Boston to take care of some things. Who knows what'll happen when he's done taking care of things, in the next month or two. It's been so long since April that I'm a little unsure what I want at this point, definitely unsure what he wants, but I am sure, definitely, that I love the guy. I promise you need to know this for the rest of the story to make sense, or at least for some of the dilemma to be clear.
*
Three weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Edie on the phone. Edie used to work at the YMCA camp with me and is now a grad student at Suffolk. We were having a grand discussion about schools I might look at, with the whole vast vista of the US open with possibility before me. We talked about schools out west, in the midwest, back east, schools we'd gone to, schools we visited, and so on. Then the following conversation ensued:
Edie: Chrys, you should look at schools in Boston.
Me: I can't. Mr. O's there. That'd be like, wrong, like invading his territory or something.
Edie: But there's so many schools here, and there's like 250,000 college studens here. You'd probably never even run into him.
Me: I don't know.
Edie: You can live in my tiny studio with me for free. Think about it.
Some idle daydreaming and joking about what it would be like to live in a small box together and rock the Northeast ensued.
Edie: Seriously, you should at least look into it. There's so many schools here. There's Suffolk, Boston College, Boston U... (she goes on to list a whole bunch and I brush them all off, having no particular inclination towards any) ... There's Emerson.
Emerson.
Oh, Emerson. I even love the name. But more importantly, I almost went there. Ten years ago, Emerson was THE school I wanted to go to. They have an amazingly awesome writing program. I met my high school boyfriend the summer before senior year at a blind kids' program, and that's how we started talking, we both wanted to go to Emerson. He went. I didn't. Oh, I got in. I even got accepted into their Honors program, which is highly competitive and hard to get into. But I didn't go. I didn't go partly because my parents had a lot of reservations about Emerson, and I won't go so far as to say they talked me out of it, but their concerns augmented my own.
And what concerns were those? I'm sure you're dying to know. First was that Emerson focuses mostly on communications, performing arts and writing. What if, as sure as I felt that writing was my passion, I decided I wanted to major in something else? Psychology, philosophy, a foreign language, science? I was a well-rounded student, generally doing well in and enjoying many different areas of academics. I even loved math (still do). It seemed a valid concern. The bigger concern, however, was that it was in a city. As my mom always liked to say, "It just worries me that there isn't any campus."
It scared the shit out of me. I'd always lived in suburbia. My life was extremely sheltered and overprotected, almost comically so. Even in my small NJ town, I had a very limited adolescent experience. The only places I ever felt like I'd been a real teenager were at blind camp, and among my neighbors, who stopped hanging out with me in my early years of high school. I was pretty socially retarded, partly because of being teased and ostracized by the other kids at school, and partly because I wasn't allowed to do anything. It seemed I was always in trouble, on some restriction for some report card indiscretion. My bedtime was earlier than anyone else's that I knew, and even my pop culture intake (movies and TV mostly) was very restricted. In a lot of ways, socially, I was a lot younger than my peers.
Even though I totally wanted to get out of high school and my house, the thought of going to college, anywhere, with kids who'd been real teenagers and who might party, drink, do drugs, have sex, go on dates, talk about all the pop culture things I'd missed and treat me like an alien for missing them, flirt, and so on, scared me, a lot. Then add in the city factor, and I was downright quivering with fear. I didn't know how to navigate a city. I'd never taken public transit alone in my life. I'd taken it a few times, with people who knew what they were doing, and it seemed confusing and scary and impossible to figure out. I was afraid of walking around my own hometown by myself b/c I'd been harassed while walking home from school before. I would never survive in a city.
So I didn't go to Emerson. I went to a small school with less than a thousand students in a tiny town with no public transit and felt suffocated by its smallness. Adventures to get to concerts made me take seriously the idea that I *could* possibly travel, fly, etc. I started to want something else, something far. I transferred to school in Flagstaff, which did give me some experience with travel, flying, taking buses from the airport to the school, but was still a small town. I still felt stifled. I wanted to really, truly, irrevocably be independent. So I left school and traveled to organic farms all over the west coast, by greyhound bus. I got straned twice in Portland, OR, where, by virtue of necessity, I took public buses. I almost slept on the floor in the bathroom of the greyhound station. I got asked for drugs (repeatedly, actually, that stands out as one of my largest Portland memories, the number of people who asked me for drugs). I even survived being asked for sex on a street corner by some guy who offered me $200 to come home with him, lol. And I had fun. I went to the Rose Festival, explored the city, spent a day in Powell's bookstore, stayed at hostels and generally made the most of my crazy circumstances. It was one of the most stressful times in my life, but I learned so much. In the end I had to go home (by Greyhound of course).
Four months later I moved to Seattle, and that was THE most stressful four months in my life, ever. I was poor as shit, so were my roommates, and we lived in a seedy section of south Seattle where people asked us if we wanted to buy crack. We were all jobless. Our house had no heat. We ate food from the Food Bank for months. And looked for work. I walked around Seattle all the time. I took the buses to get to job interviews or fill out applications, or to attempt to donate plasma for money. I learned the city fast. I took buses all over the neighborhoods. I remember walking around Seattle well after midnight, after a Pearl Jam concert (I got tix way before I realized how hard it would be to find a job). I walked from the Key Arena by the Space Needle, to my bus stop, which was so many blocks away I couldn't even count it. The whole walk through Seattle, I was alert but not afraid, and I realized I was really getting the hang of this city thing.
In time, I knew how to get just about anywhere on the metro system, knew how to orient myself if I was lost (which was somewhat common for me, at least in the beginning), and found myself telling strangers at bus stops how to get where and which bus to take. I got a seasonal job at Barnes and Noble and had to make a connecting bus under a bridge at First & Spokane, a lonely bus stop, often late at night. My bus only came once an hour, so I spent a large portion of time, waiting at that lonely stop, again alert but not afraid. By the time my four months were up and I was offered a job on this cozy island where I live now, I knew that I could handle urban survival.
But I learned that by doing, and didn't know that back then when I was deciding between schools, and probably honestly wasn't at all ready to handle soemthing like that at the time. But now, years later, I'm not so worried about any of those old concerns.
Suffice to say, Edie had piqued my interest.
Me: But I couldn't really go there. I mean, what if Mr. O thought I was doing it to chase him or something? My pride couldn't handle that.
Edie: I think you're thinking about that way too much. I mean why let it influence you one way or the other?
Me: Yeah.
Edie: But I do have to tell you, Chrys, (giggles), if you do meet up with Mr. O, and you do live in my tiny box with me (more giggles), you guys are not allowed to do it in my studio. I will not be sexiled!
We both laughed. Then we daydreamed some more about what fun we'd have going to school in the same city, revisited old inside jokes and memories from our days working together at camp, and talked about our futures. When we hung up, I told her I'd think about Emerson.
And I did. In fact, I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since. I went to the college's website, and nearly salivated over the writing classes. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, screenwriting, magazine writing, humor writing, even writing for stand-up comedy (which sounds totally fun), book publishing, magazine publishing, layout and design classes. A lot of these classes are offered at all levels (intro, intermediate, advanced), which means there's even more of them. I have looked at a lot of schools' websites, and Emerson definitely offers the best-looking classes. They also talk about links with numerous for-credit internship possibilities in publishing, magazines, etc. Another plus is that one of the things I want to do with my writing is readings, spoken word performance, and Emerson is strong in the performing arts. I'm sure I could take a class or two to amp my abilities in that department and take part in some student readings. I also like that though its majors are in communication and the arts, the curriculum there includes a solid liberal arts base. I might even be able to take a math class if I really felt like it. So, yes, I have been thinking about Emerson.
But I don't want to admit it. What will my friends think? What will Mr. O think if he finds out? How nicely coincidental is it that the school I'm thinking the most about just happens to be in his city? It seems a little too convenient, doesn't it? It shouldn't matter, really. For all I know, I may never hear from Mr. O again. And there are hundreds of thousands of college students in Boston. And I was interested in this school before I knew Mr. O existed. And it's a great school with a program I'm looking for, a philosophy I can get behind, and a good rep, as far as if I want to go to grad school (which I strongly believe I do - If I could I'd go straight to grad school for writing). And if I do this, I won't be going there until almost a full year from now, at which point, the Mr. O issue could be completely null and void.
But still, there is a small but extremely strong-willed, prideful part of me that says no, I can't go there, on principle. I can't go anywhere that might, even in the slightest way, be motivated by a boy. I am afraid of him finding out I'm even considering this. I hate ever doing anything that could make it seem like I might want someone who might not want me back. I am an independent, strong woman and that would look pathetic. And there may be a small, tiny, miniscule iota of truth in it. I'm not even sure, so I say there may be. As much as intellectually I'm sort of distancing myself from him, because I'm unsure where things are with us, like I said, I love the guy and when I'm being disgustingly dreamy I sometimes do picture us together still and hope that things could end up that way for us, if I'm being completely honest. So maybe that is part of the motivation.
On the other hand, when I'm not in daydreamy land, I'm not even sure I want to be with Mr. O anyway, even if we were in the same place. Our relationship was stressed, and his impending departure put pressure on it that both of us (and I have to say I was probably worse here, or more openly displaying it) didn't handle it well. We very well may not be right for each other. I would like to work some things out and maintain the friendship we had at the least, b/c I thought that was always strong, but I think a lot would have to change, for both of us, for a real romantic relationship to even work between us. And I don't know that he wants that and a lot times I'm no longer sure myself. Plus, with everything up in the air for so long between us, I keep thinking, well, if opportunity knocked in boyland, I just might answer the door. Lately I've even thought about actually, like, dating, wherever I end up going to school. I've always just hung out with people and ended up interested in someone or whatever, but I keep thinking, maybe I'd like to sample the dating scene, try to get past some of my shyness. So, I'm ambivalent now about Mr. O myself, and that ambivalence is what makes me say that I'm not even sure that he does factor into this picture at all. I mean, when I was writing up there all the things that make Emerson so enticing to me, it's like the Mr. O issue felt so....well, like a non-issue.
Another more clear-cut motivation that might be just as daydreamy and not down-to-earth is my childhood love of the Northeast and how I long for harsh winters, humid summers, fireflies, thunderstorms and the idea of New England (I was born in CT).
So, how does a person sort all this out? Might it be just as pathetic to not go somewhere b/c I'm afraid of how it would look? I'm sure it would.
So, I'm still thinking about it. Things have neatly fallen in place for me to visit the school. I got invited to possibly be part of a memoirists reading in NYC in November. It just happens that the big November weekend where I work (which most years, would be the same weekend as this NYC event) is the weekend before, leaving me free to go back east. It just happens that Edie has an extra day off that weekend I'll be in NYC, and says we can go back up to her place that Monday, to check out the city, and so I can visit the school. It just happens that Emerson has an Open House a few days later. It's all close enough to Thanksgiving that I could combine the NYC event and the school visit with a holiday with the family. Oh and yesterday, my boss said it'd be absolutely fine if I took all that time off, as we have almost no work at all while I'll be gone. Plane tickets back east are even disgustingly reasonable.
This could all really happen. I would like it to. I just wish, for convenience sake, that Mr. O was somewhere like Florida or Chicago, so his location woudln't enter into the equation and I wouldn't have to worry about my pride.
*
Note: Emerson, to my utter, astonishingly great surprise, was not discussed at all in Choosing the RIght College. Go figure.
Note #2: For anyone hoping for something a little more juicy from the title of this blog, a little girls gone wild or something, just you wait! If I do get into Emerson, I'll have to finance it somehow! Hahahaha, kidding. Sometimes I think if I wasn't so freakin' socially retarted still, I'd be a total flirt. Someday, someday.
As Chef on South Park would say, there's a time for everything, and it's called college.
Currently Listening:
"Like A Prayer" - Tori Amos' version
As I've talked about in previous blogs, I'm planning on returning to school next fall to finish my undergrad degree. I'm looking at some WA state schools, and also, as described in I Can't Seem to Stop Stretching, widening my circles of where I'm looking. I'm not sure I want to stay in WA. I am sure it would be easier, especially financially, and that if I go somewhere else, everything will depend on financial aid. Still, that hasn't stopped me from looking. I dream big, always. And I'm determined as shit, so if I want to make something happen that's more of a stretch, I'll find a way. Of that, I have no doubt.
*
On a different note, up until April, I was living with this guy. He doesn't want to be written about (and almost definitely hasn't seen my blog), and I want to respect that, but also be able to give bare bones background stuff when necessary, so I'm taking a cue from Janna, (whose blog you should really read, btw - when I went to go retreive the addy to make the linkey, I got distracted by reading her latest post - she's great). She calls her husband "the dreadfully charming Mr. Right," or "Mr. R" for short. So, in that vein, I'm going to call this guy who was living with me, Mr. Orestes, b/c the song "Orestes" by A Perfect Circle reminds me of him. We'll make that Mr. O for short.
Wow, that's pretty weird, calling someone I lived with a nickname like that, but anyway, so yes, Mr. O and I were living together in my apartment with a big brown puppy. It was never really clear whether Mr. O and I were roommates, friends, or more than friends (and that ambiguity drove me absolutely batty). It definitely started as more than friends, and that's definitely what I wanted, but I can't say either of us would win any gold stars for communication (read: that is the understatement of the millenium) so, things were unclear. And then he had to return to Boston to take care of some things. Who knows what'll happen when he's done taking care of things, in the next month or two. It's been so long since April that I'm a little unsure what I want at this point, definitely unsure what he wants, but I am sure, definitely, that I love the guy. I promise you need to know this for the rest of the story to make sense, or at least for some of the dilemma to be clear.
*
Three weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Edie on the phone. Edie used to work at the YMCA camp with me and is now a grad student at Suffolk. We were having a grand discussion about schools I might look at, with the whole vast vista of the US open with possibility before me. We talked about schools out west, in the midwest, back east, schools we'd gone to, schools we visited, and so on. Then the following conversation ensued:
Edie: Chrys, you should look at schools in Boston.
Me: I can't. Mr. O's there. That'd be like, wrong, like invading his territory or something.
Edie: But there's so many schools here, and there's like 250,000 college studens here. You'd probably never even run into him.
Me: I don't know.
Edie: You can live in my tiny studio with me for free. Think about it.
Some idle daydreaming and joking about what it would be like to live in a small box together and rock the Northeast ensued.
Edie: Seriously, you should at least look into it. There's so many schools here. There's Suffolk, Boston College, Boston U... (she goes on to list a whole bunch and I brush them all off, having no particular inclination towards any) ... There's Emerson.
Emerson.
Oh, Emerson. I even love the name. But more importantly, I almost went there. Ten years ago, Emerson was THE school I wanted to go to. They have an amazingly awesome writing program. I met my high school boyfriend the summer before senior year at a blind kids' program, and that's how we started talking, we both wanted to go to Emerson. He went. I didn't. Oh, I got in. I even got accepted into their Honors program, which is highly competitive and hard to get into. But I didn't go. I didn't go partly because my parents had a lot of reservations about Emerson, and I won't go so far as to say they talked me out of it, but their concerns augmented my own.
And what concerns were those? I'm sure you're dying to know. First was that Emerson focuses mostly on communications, performing arts and writing. What if, as sure as I felt that writing was my passion, I decided I wanted to major in something else? Psychology, philosophy, a foreign language, science? I was a well-rounded student, generally doing well in and enjoying many different areas of academics. I even loved math (still do). It seemed a valid concern. The bigger concern, however, was that it was in a city. As my mom always liked to say, "It just worries me that there isn't any campus."
It scared the shit out of me. I'd always lived in suburbia. My life was extremely sheltered and overprotected, almost comically so. Even in my small NJ town, I had a very limited adolescent experience. The only places I ever felt like I'd been a real teenager were at blind camp, and among my neighbors, who stopped hanging out with me in my early years of high school. I was pretty socially retarded, partly because of being teased and ostracized by the other kids at school, and partly because I wasn't allowed to do anything. It seemed I was always in trouble, on some restriction for some report card indiscretion. My bedtime was earlier than anyone else's that I knew, and even my pop culture intake (movies and TV mostly) was very restricted. In a lot of ways, socially, I was a lot younger than my peers.
Even though I totally wanted to get out of high school and my house, the thought of going to college, anywhere, with kids who'd been real teenagers and who might party, drink, do drugs, have sex, go on dates, talk about all the pop culture things I'd missed and treat me like an alien for missing them, flirt, and so on, scared me, a lot. Then add in the city factor, and I was downright quivering with fear. I didn't know how to navigate a city. I'd never taken public transit alone in my life. I'd taken it a few times, with people who knew what they were doing, and it seemed confusing and scary and impossible to figure out. I was afraid of walking around my own hometown by myself b/c I'd been harassed while walking home from school before. I would never survive in a city.
So I didn't go to Emerson. I went to a small school with less than a thousand students in a tiny town with no public transit and felt suffocated by its smallness. Adventures to get to concerts made me take seriously the idea that I *could* possibly travel, fly, etc. I started to want something else, something far. I transferred to school in Flagstaff, which did give me some experience with travel, flying, taking buses from the airport to the school, but was still a small town. I still felt stifled. I wanted to really, truly, irrevocably be independent. So I left school and traveled to organic farms all over the west coast, by greyhound bus. I got straned twice in Portland, OR, where, by virtue of necessity, I took public buses. I almost slept on the floor in the bathroom of the greyhound station. I got asked for drugs (repeatedly, actually, that stands out as one of my largest Portland memories, the number of people who asked me for drugs). I even survived being asked for sex on a street corner by some guy who offered me $200 to come home with him, lol. And I had fun. I went to the Rose Festival, explored the city, spent a day in Powell's bookstore, stayed at hostels and generally made the most of my crazy circumstances. It was one of the most stressful times in my life, but I learned so much. In the end I had to go home (by Greyhound of course).
Four months later I moved to Seattle, and that was THE most stressful four months in my life, ever. I was poor as shit, so were my roommates, and we lived in a seedy section of south Seattle where people asked us if we wanted to buy crack. We were all jobless. Our house had no heat. We ate food from the Food Bank for months. And looked for work. I walked around Seattle all the time. I took the buses to get to job interviews or fill out applications, or to attempt to donate plasma for money. I learned the city fast. I took buses all over the neighborhoods. I remember walking around Seattle well after midnight, after a Pearl Jam concert (I got tix way before I realized how hard it would be to find a job). I walked from the Key Arena by the Space Needle, to my bus stop, which was so many blocks away I couldn't even count it. The whole walk through Seattle, I was alert but not afraid, and I realized I was really getting the hang of this city thing.
In time, I knew how to get just about anywhere on the metro system, knew how to orient myself if I was lost (which was somewhat common for me, at least in the beginning), and found myself telling strangers at bus stops how to get where and which bus to take. I got a seasonal job at Barnes and Noble and had to make a connecting bus under a bridge at First & Spokane, a lonely bus stop, often late at night. My bus only came once an hour, so I spent a large portion of time, waiting at that lonely stop, again alert but not afraid. By the time my four months were up and I was offered a job on this cozy island where I live now, I knew that I could handle urban survival.
But I learned that by doing, and didn't know that back then when I was deciding between schools, and probably honestly wasn't at all ready to handle soemthing like that at the time. But now, years later, I'm not so worried about any of those old concerns.
Suffice to say, Edie had piqued my interest.
Me: But I couldn't really go there. I mean, what if Mr. O thought I was doing it to chase him or something? My pride couldn't handle that.
Edie: I think you're thinking about that way too much. I mean why let it influence you one way or the other?
Me: Yeah.
Edie: But I do have to tell you, Chrys, (giggles), if you do meet up with Mr. O, and you do live in my tiny box with me (more giggles), you guys are not allowed to do it in my studio. I will not be sexiled!
We both laughed. Then we daydreamed some more about what fun we'd have going to school in the same city, revisited old inside jokes and memories from our days working together at camp, and talked about our futures. When we hung up, I told her I'd think about Emerson.
And I did. In fact, I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since. I went to the college's website, and nearly salivated over the writing classes. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, screenwriting, magazine writing, humor writing, even writing for stand-up comedy (which sounds totally fun), book publishing, magazine publishing, layout and design classes. A lot of these classes are offered at all levels (intro, intermediate, advanced), which means there's even more of them. I have looked at a lot of schools' websites, and Emerson definitely offers the best-looking classes. They also talk about links with numerous for-credit internship possibilities in publishing, magazines, etc. Another plus is that one of the things I want to do with my writing is readings, spoken word performance, and Emerson is strong in the performing arts. I'm sure I could take a class or two to amp my abilities in that department and take part in some student readings. I also like that though its majors are in communication and the arts, the curriculum there includes a solid liberal arts base. I might even be able to take a math class if I really felt like it. So, yes, I have been thinking about Emerson.
But I don't want to admit it. What will my friends think? What will Mr. O think if he finds out? How nicely coincidental is it that the school I'm thinking the most about just happens to be in his city? It seems a little too convenient, doesn't it? It shouldn't matter, really. For all I know, I may never hear from Mr. O again. And there are hundreds of thousands of college students in Boston. And I was interested in this school before I knew Mr. O existed. And it's a great school with a program I'm looking for, a philosophy I can get behind, and a good rep, as far as if I want to go to grad school (which I strongly believe I do - If I could I'd go straight to grad school for writing). And if I do this, I won't be going there until almost a full year from now, at which point, the Mr. O issue could be completely null and void.
But still, there is a small but extremely strong-willed, prideful part of me that says no, I can't go there, on principle. I can't go anywhere that might, even in the slightest way, be motivated by a boy. I am afraid of him finding out I'm even considering this. I hate ever doing anything that could make it seem like I might want someone who might not want me back. I am an independent, strong woman and that would look pathetic. And there may be a small, tiny, miniscule iota of truth in it. I'm not even sure, so I say there may be. As much as intellectually I'm sort of distancing myself from him, because I'm unsure where things are with us, like I said, I love the guy and when I'm being disgustingly dreamy I sometimes do picture us together still and hope that things could end up that way for us, if I'm being completely honest. So maybe that is part of the motivation.
On the other hand, when I'm not in daydreamy land, I'm not even sure I want to be with Mr. O anyway, even if we were in the same place. Our relationship was stressed, and his impending departure put pressure on it that both of us (and I have to say I was probably worse here, or more openly displaying it) didn't handle it well. We very well may not be right for each other. I would like to work some things out and maintain the friendship we had at the least, b/c I thought that was always strong, but I think a lot would have to change, for both of us, for a real romantic relationship to even work between us. And I don't know that he wants that and a lot times I'm no longer sure myself. Plus, with everything up in the air for so long between us, I keep thinking, well, if opportunity knocked in boyland, I just might answer the door. Lately I've even thought about actually, like, dating, wherever I end up going to school. I've always just hung out with people and ended up interested in someone or whatever, but I keep thinking, maybe I'd like to sample the dating scene, try to get past some of my shyness. So, I'm ambivalent now about Mr. O myself, and that ambivalence is what makes me say that I'm not even sure that he does factor into this picture at all. I mean, when I was writing up there all the things that make Emerson so enticing to me, it's like the Mr. O issue felt so....well, like a non-issue.
Another more clear-cut motivation that might be just as daydreamy and not down-to-earth is my childhood love of the Northeast and how I long for harsh winters, humid summers, fireflies, thunderstorms and the idea of New England (I was born in CT).
So, how does a person sort all this out? Might it be just as pathetic to not go somewhere b/c I'm afraid of how it would look? I'm sure it would.
So, I'm still thinking about it. Things have neatly fallen in place for me to visit the school. I got invited to possibly be part of a memoirists reading in NYC in November. It just happens that the big November weekend where I work (which most years, would be the same weekend as this NYC event) is the weekend before, leaving me free to go back east. It just happens that Edie has an extra day off that weekend I'll be in NYC, and says we can go back up to her place that Monday, to check out the city, and so I can visit the school. It just happens that Emerson has an Open House a few days later. It's all close enough to Thanksgiving that I could combine the NYC event and the school visit with a holiday with the family. Oh and yesterday, my boss said it'd be absolutely fine if I took all that time off, as we have almost no work at all while I'll be gone. Plane tickets back east are even disgustingly reasonable.
This could all really happen. I would like it to. I just wish, for convenience sake, that Mr. O was somewhere like Florida or Chicago, so his location woudln't enter into the equation and I wouldn't have to worry about my pride.
*
Note: Emerson, to my utter, astonishingly great surprise, was not discussed at all in Choosing the RIght College. Go figure.
Note #2: For anyone hoping for something a little more juicy from the title of this blog, a little girls gone wild or something, just you wait! If I do get into Emerson, I'll have to finance it somehow! Hahahaha, kidding. Sometimes I think if I wasn't so freakin' socially retarted still, I'd be a total flirt. Someday, someday.
As Chef on South Park would say, there's a time for everything, and it's called college.
Currently Listening:
"Like A Prayer" - Tori Amos' version
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