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
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Gearing up for Winter 2010
Classes start on Monday! In one sense it feels like I've been on break forever, and in another it feels like it's all starting up again so soon.
My main class will be the continuation of the biology class I took last quarter. This time though, the focus will be on evolution for the first half of the term and plant form and function for the second half of the term. I'm excited for both, though I read somewhere that in the evolution section the students have to memorize phylogenetic trees (basically these charts with branches showing how closely or distantly different species are related based on their rRNA sequences) and that sounds a bit tedious. Still, I'm sure it will be interesting. And I'm psyched for plants, even though last quarter I felt like the chapter on photosynthesis was the one I had the hardest time really committing to memory and understanding. I just think it'll be really fascinating to learn more about how plants, trees, flowers, etc. work. The class will be split between a professor I never had before for the first half, and my professor from last quarter for the second half.
And lab should be really interesting too. I heard from a study partner who took this class last year that the labs are a lot more fun for this quarter of the yearlong class. And I heard from my prof. from last quarter that they are trying some new labs and that sounds like it'll be exciting and fun. I will have my lab assistant again this coming quarter, and a different TA. I'm glad I have it during the week this time around, instead of Saturday afternoons, b/c it meant I could never take off for the weekend or anything, but I did get used to it, and hope I'll get used to having my Wednesday afternoons spent in lab instead.
For anyone who read this post about a course sign-up dilemma that led me to consider taking a singing class, I signed up for it! So I will be taking voice right after Bio lets out, and must say that I'm really looking forward to it. I have wanted to do this for soooo long, and always had trouble finding a way to make it happen, so I am going to soak it up!
At that point I was at 7 credits, and I have to stay at 8 (or under, but not above), so I had one more spot left for a one-credit class, and I decided to take another leap into something I've been wanting to do for awhile - I signed up for a self-defense class. I actually had to go out and find some workout clothes because the only thing I had was from when I was much smaller and definitely no longer fit. It's definitely the class I'm most nervous about. Traditionally, gym classes have been pretty hard for me visually. The human body is an intricate thing and it's just hard for me to see the exact movements that the teacher is modeling, and I'm not too well coordinated or adept at phys ed stuff. It's just not my forte. In fact sometimes in the past taking this kind of class has been downright traumatic and just incredibly difficult and painful.
So I am nervous about it, and trying not to indulge an urge to opt out before I even experience the first class. I'm trying to remind myself that I have taken yoga classes on Orcas, and did gymnastics as a kid and dance lessons in India, so, there is hope. And I've contacted the instructor ahead of time, hoping to find a time to meet and just touch base about my disability. I think it will be a good class, and definitely an important skill to have. I mean I'm a visually-impaired girl walking around downtown in a city by myself a lot. And I like to feel free to do whatever I want, and sometimes that includes going to visit people or places that aren't so close to me and drinking and then coming home on the bus and walking late at night. I mean, I do this anyway, but I would like to feel like I have some skills to protect myself if I ever encounter a scary situation. Especially since I am no longer so into the idea of getting a guide dog.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the new quarter.
Currently Reading:
Day Breaks Over Dharamsala - Janet Thomas - will definitely have more to say about this book as I go along, and as its author begins marketing. It will soon be widely available but for now I think is only at Griffin Bay Books in Friday Harbor, WA, or available directly from the author. So I am going to wait to say more until I can help promote it, because this is a total brilliant masterpiece of real human life.
The Real Grey's Anatomy - Andrew Holtz - I don't know how I happened upon this book, but I guess that is the magic of Powell's Books. This book also isn't out yet, the copyright says 2010 and what I have is a copy that says "Uncorrected Proofs for Limited Distribution/NOT FOR SALE," yet I found it for sale at a discounted price. In the book, the author, a medical journalist, follows the real lives of surgical interns, and has millions of references to lines and scenes from the show, which just tickles me. The coolest part is the surgical interns and residents he follows are here in Portland at OHSU, so it has a local flavor (also cool since Grey's takes place in Seattle, so both have the Pacific Northwest in common). The book doesn't even have a real cover, just a yellow dummy cover. I think it's cool. And it is true that it's uncorrected, I've found errors and I've only read the first few pages so far. This author also wrote a book called The Medical Science Behind House, M.D. but (maybe surprisingly) I haven't read that yet.
Currently Listening:
"Life is Short" - Butterfly Boucher - love this song, from the Pilot episode of Grey's.
When it doesn't rain, it snows
Yeah the cookie crumbles, but in whose hands?
All things said and all things done
Life is short
Oh I am young but I have aged
Waited long to seize the day
All things said and plenty done
Life's too short
Oh, oh, could this be
Oh, oh, Could this be
The day I've waited for?
Another door to peak in through
The floor is filthy but the couch is clean
At the end of the day, it's another day gone
Life is short
Oooh, life is short
Oh, oh, could this be
Oh, oh, could this be
The day I've waited for?
Oh I am young but I have aged
Waited long to seize the day
All things said and plenty done
Oh I am young but I have a past
Travelled far to find the start
Yes I am scared and I've been burnt
But life is short
Oh, oh could this be
Oh, oh could this be
The day I've waited for?
My main class will be the continuation of the biology class I took last quarter. This time though, the focus will be on evolution for the first half of the term and plant form and function for the second half of the term. I'm excited for both, though I read somewhere that in the evolution section the students have to memorize phylogenetic trees (basically these charts with branches showing how closely or distantly different species are related based on their rRNA sequences) and that sounds a bit tedious. Still, I'm sure it will be interesting. And I'm psyched for plants, even though last quarter I felt like the chapter on photosynthesis was the one I had the hardest time really committing to memory and understanding. I just think it'll be really fascinating to learn more about how plants, trees, flowers, etc. work. The class will be split between a professor I never had before for the first half, and my professor from last quarter for the second half.
And lab should be really interesting too. I heard from a study partner who took this class last year that the labs are a lot more fun for this quarter of the yearlong class. And I heard from my prof. from last quarter that they are trying some new labs and that sounds like it'll be exciting and fun. I will have my lab assistant again this coming quarter, and a different TA. I'm glad I have it during the week this time around, instead of Saturday afternoons, b/c it meant I could never take off for the weekend or anything, but I did get used to it, and hope I'll get used to having my Wednesday afternoons spent in lab instead.
For anyone who read this post about a course sign-up dilemma that led me to consider taking a singing class, I signed up for it! So I will be taking voice right after Bio lets out, and must say that I'm really looking forward to it. I have wanted to do this for soooo long, and always had trouble finding a way to make it happen, so I am going to soak it up!
At that point I was at 7 credits, and I have to stay at 8 (or under, but not above), so I had one more spot left for a one-credit class, and I decided to take another leap into something I've been wanting to do for awhile - I signed up for a self-defense class. I actually had to go out and find some workout clothes because the only thing I had was from when I was much smaller and definitely no longer fit. It's definitely the class I'm most nervous about. Traditionally, gym classes have been pretty hard for me visually. The human body is an intricate thing and it's just hard for me to see the exact movements that the teacher is modeling, and I'm not too well coordinated or adept at phys ed stuff. It's just not my forte. In fact sometimes in the past taking this kind of class has been downright traumatic and just incredibly difficult and painful.
So I am nervous about it, and trying not to indulge an urge to opt out before I even experience the first class. I'm trying to remind myself that I have taken yoga classes on Orcas, and did gymnastics as a kid and dance lessons in India, so, there is hope. And I've contacted the instructor ahead of time, hoping to find a time to meet and just touch base about my disability. I think it will be a good class, and definitely an important skill to have. I mean I'm a visually-impaired girl walking around downtown in a city by myself a lot. And I like to feel free to do whatever I want, and sometimes that includes going to visit people or places that aren't so close to me and drinking and then coming home on the bus and walking late at night. I mean, I do this anyway, but I would like to feel like I have some skills to protect myself if I ever encounter a scary situation. Especially since I am no longer so into the idea of getting a guide dog.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the new quarter.
Currently Reading:
Day Breaks Over Dharamsala - Janet Thomas - will definitely have more to say about this book as I go along, and as its author begins marketing. It will soon be widely available but for now I think is only at Griffin Bay Books in Friday Harbor, WA, or available directly from the author. So I am going to wait to say more until I can help promote it, because this is a total brilliant masterpiece of real human life.
The Real Grey's Anatomy - Andrew Holtz - I don't know how I happened upon this book, but I guess that is the magic of Powell's Books. This book also isn't out yet, the copyright says 2010 and what I have is a copy that says "Uncorrected Proofs for Limited Distribution/NOT FOR SALE," yet I found it for sale at a discounted price. In the book, the author, a medical journalist, follows the real lives of surgical interns, and has millions of references to lines and scenes from the show, which just tickles me. The coolest part is the surgical interns and residents he follows are here in Portland at OHSU, so it has a local flavor (also cool since Grey's takes place in Seattle, so both have the Pacific Northwest in common). The book doesn't even have a real cover, just a yellow dummy cover. I think it's cool. And it is true that it's uncorrected, I've found errors and I've only read the first few pages so far. This author also wrote a book called The Medical Science Behind House, M.D. but (maybe surprisingly) I haven't read that yet.
Currently Listening:
"Life is Short" - Butterfly Boucher - love this song, from the Pilot episode of Grey's.
When it doesn't rain, it snows
Yeah the cookie crumbles, but in whose hands?
All things said and all things done
Life is short
Oh I am young but I have aged
Waited long to seize the day
All things said and plenty done
Life's too short
Oh, oh, could this be
Oh, oh, Could this be
The day I've waited for?
Another door to peak in through
The floor is filthy but the couch is clean
At the end of the day, it's another day gone
Life is short
Oooh, life is short
Oh, oh, could this be
Oh, oh, could this be
The day I've waited for?
Oh I am young but I have aged
Waited long to seize the day
All things said and plenty done
Oh I am young but I have a past
Travelled far to find the start
Yes I am scared and I've been burnt
But life is short
Oh, oh could this be
Oh, oh could this be
The day I've waited for?
Friday, January 1, 2010
"Nothing Changes, On New Year's Day"
Okay actually, though I like that U2 lyric and think it's true, I also believe it's not. I just wanted to say that before plunging into my 2009 Year in Review. The numerologist in me believes in the cycle of the personal years. For a brief overview of what that's about by a numerologist I really appreciate, check out Angelwood Consulting because it rocks and gives a brief overview of the years and how to figure out which one you're in. I'm now in the 9 year (the last of the cycle) and have known about this since the last time I was in a 9 year, and it has been remarkably accurate, in a tenuous, not quite tangible way that these sorts of things often are. So I do believe there are shifts with the new year, and I am a big believer in setting intentions, and that doing so can be amplified by these more esoteric forces. So the fact that new year falls on a full moon, blue moon, lunar eclipse, makes it seem especially auspicious for setting clear intentions. I think these energies are worth tuning into.
Also, since we're on the metaphysical subject, if you want to read a really detailed (and in my opinion a bit too verbose - and coming from the queen of long-windedness, that says something) prediction for January with some attention to the rest of the year, check out Susan Miller's AstrologyZone. Her predictions are so in-depth, and the few I've read (or had read to me by friends) for this coming month, are INTENSE! What a transformational time, between two eclipses. So check it out and milk whatever cosmic connections are headed your way.
And I just must say one more thing briefly before going into this survey, which is wtf has happened to the world since NYE? I mean, I thought it was just me, or my street or neighborhood. It's been ridiculously loud at night ever since NYE. I mean at first it was kind of expected, the screaming and the fireworks and all that, but it's still going on (well not the fireworks but the screaming). That and people driving by with really loud music just BLASTING. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it one bit. I lived too long on a quiet island. I love being in the throes of the energy. But something is definitely up. And aside from the noise issue, I haven't been sleeping well at all. Then today (Jan 4), I saw a post from my friend Trish on Bainbridge Island that no one is sleeping there either, and others replied saying they were having the same experience. 2010 is not coming in quietly.
And as for 2009, here goes: (Side note to Samsara/Leo: just because I'm late with my survey doesn't mean you're getting out of it. Start answering.)
1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Since I spent three months in India, it seems the list to answer this question is endless: left the continent, traveled overseas, had rice beer, traveled with a group of people I'd never met before, hiked in the Himalayas, experienced Holi, had pink hair accidentally, took dance lessons, hung out on Indian rooftops, saw monkeys, experienced the border ceremony between India & Pakistan, rode rickshaws (cycle and auto), rode in vehicles that drive on the left side of the road, went three months without wearing a seatbelt in the craziest driving conditions ever, was bitten by a dog, had my shoes stolen, ate in a rotating restaurant, got a tattoo (in a group) in a foreign country, on impulse in Calcutta no less, ate street food, walked down "gnarly street," went three months without my music, visited monasteries, went on road passes that were 14, and then 18,000+ feet in elevation, went to a rest stop where I was literally peeing on frozen pee (at the pass), had another person (KAREN) ask me to take a picture of her peeing on frozen pee, told my life story in a group, saw someone (BEN) kill a chicken, visited remote villages, rode a toy train which included standing for six hours and at one point during that time sitting on my daypack and falling asleep leaning on a stranger's leg, ate food cooked over cow patties, drank butter tea, used "eastern" toilets, visited hindu temples, sikh temples, mosques, went to Hindi class, drank a bhang lassi (and later told my former college RA who's traveling in India where to get bhang lassis and got her hooked), saw pot growing outside the Taj Mahal, saw the Taj Mahal, and the GOLDEN TEMPLE, went on a jeep trip at 4 in the morning to see a sunrise that didn't really happen, listening to Peacock (or really, Smokey) on the way there, fell asleep on an airport floor and on my pack in a train station, gave away hiking boots for a flute for someone else (WILLA), ate nutella, watched someone run right into a pole (HILARY) during a scavenger hunt in Delhi, had black boogers from so much smog in the more urban parts of India, went to massage class, took Reiki lessons, ate mediterranean food, met Mr. Jordan and Mr. Sikkim, had a driver who people said looked like Snoop Dogg who drove our group through treacherous terrain and weather and was ultra sexy when he drove, saw cows, goats, dogs, cats and lots of other animals just chilling in the street, ate paneer, used a digital camera, was bitten up by leeches!
I'm sure there is so much I'm not even thinking about at the moment. The places and the people of that trip will always hold such a huge piece of my heart. By far the best thing I could have done. It's one of those things that if I had known, really known how hard it would be, I probably wouldn't have gone, so it's a really good thing I didn't know, because I'm so, so glad I went.
Now, there are some other new experiences unrelated to India that I should also include: lived in a friend's basement for two weeks, met a long-time internet friend after knowing for years and not meeting, took out student loans, went to school part time, took biology in a college setting, went to school totally on my own promptings and desires, lived in a studio apartment, had a 4.0 for a term, read every word of assigned reading (that is a big-time first, lol), put together a couch (it came in two boxes as 45 pieces of wood, tools, directions, gloves and a sander, and it was awesome to "build" it), went to a strip club, went to the rodeo, saw yellowstone and mount rushmore and crazy horse and south dakota's black hills (not to mention Wall Drug), took a camping road trip, rode a streetcar, lived in a downtown setting, went out for a drink before class, went a whole term without skipping a single class, watched all of My So-Called Life. And again, I'm sure there are lots more firsts I'm not thinking of at the moment.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't really do regular "resolutions" because when I think of those, they're usually restrictive ("I won't eat chocolate," "I'll exercise every day") that are just impossible and no fun to fulfill. Instead I like to think about goals or wishes. So in looking at what I wrote down last year, I stuck to a good percent of it - applying to school and starting this year, getting new glasses (my old ones were a shitpile), and writing Morning Pages (from Artist's Way). I wasn't perfect on that one, but a lot more consistent than in previous years, and was very daily about it for a large portion of my time in India. Another goal I set was to be more in touch with my spirituality, which still feels lacking, but I felt in touch in India, and at other times throughout the year. As for the wishes, one was for clarity and ease in transitioning to school and moving, and I think that's been good, one was for romance (always) which was completely 100% non-existent for me in 2009. The other wish I made was I guess somewhat fulfilled.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No one really close, but my friend and roommate Jeri from the NFB convention is due soon, I believe.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope. Knock on wood. It really, really freaks me out that I've been spared in terms of having people close to me die. Other than my grandmother, it's just something I haven't dealt with much, not for me personally anyway, and it always makes me feel like at any moment that is going to change, like all this time going without experiencing that kind of loss is going to build up so the universe can deliver some huge wollops. Either that or I'll die young or something. Yeah, it scares me.
5. What countries did you visit?
India and the Hong Kong airport.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Romance (always). A hot lover. A part-time job I love. Oh and a different apartment where I can actually control the heat and don't feel like I'm living in a fucking sauna and wasting energy by the bucketful by keeping my windows open (I'd suffocate if I didn't) and don't wake up feeling like all the water has been leeched from my body. (Aside from that, I'm really happy with my place). Yeah I definitely want to move when my lease is up. My location is AWESOME but my rent price is too high and my place is too small, but the heat thing is what gets me more than those other issues, big time.
7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
In random order:
Feb 12th - flight to India.
May 7th - return from India.
Sept 26th - signed my lease & saw Pearl Jam.
August 7-9 - Lollapalooza.
Sept 28 - school began.
Dec 7 - school ended (well, the day of my final).
Aug 25 - a nice walk in a park w/a friend.
Sept 23 - the day I left Orcas.
July 2-9 - NFB convention in Detroit.
July 4 - my roommate at the convention (who was also pregnant) had a major diabetic emergency and I went w/her to the hospital (she and the baby were fine, thank god, but it was very scary - at first the paramedics couldn't get her to respond at all and the way they were talking I thought I might actually watch someone die - second time in my life I've had that fear - it was at a point where, "either this is going to work or nothing will - so fucking scary). After we got back we had to switch rooms b/c they had such trouble putting in her IV that there was blood and needles all over the floor.
Dec 21-24 - stayed at my old favorite home, the dispensary at Camp Orkila, walked my old beaches, stayed in my old room and for three days felt reconnected to a very happy time in my memory.
June 19 - last day of work at Camp Orkila kitchen for good.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving India, rocking biology. Making the decision to go to school even after obstacles arose and other opportunities seduced me into having such serious second thoughts that I really thought I would put it off for another year.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not speaking up for myself, not being real with people out of fear, keeping secrets and hiding and running away from anything of intensity (and a few things that were just awkward) out of fear. I really want to change these things about myself. I drive myself fucking crazy, I swear. Not writing memoir.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Anything bad?
No. Knock on wood again for this one, I was remarkably healthy this year, which is surprising considering I spent a part of it in a third world country where lots of people get sick. My only real complaint was constipation, and getting bitten by a dog.
11. What were the best things you bought?
I'm going to mimic Tara's answer (I copied this survey from her) and say, does my tuition count? Also, plane ticket to India, for sure. And my couch. Also, a desk! I bought it very synchronistically from a friend from Orcas who's also living in Portland. I was in desperate need of a desk for school and when I went to her house for dinner, found she was really trying to get rid of one and having no luck on Craigslist. I love when life works out like that. Some cool clothes, including some dresses (which will make some people reading this fall over with shock, I'm sure). Some AWESOME lamps. Oh and Grey's Season 5 DVD - I freaking LOVED season 5. And lots of great books.
But probably the thing that has made the biggest impact (and wow I'm a dork), is a dock for my iPod for my bathroom. It's so small, the sound isn't great, but it has made such an impact on my daily life. I feel so much happier while getting ready for the day and sometimes I sit in the bath, reading and listening to music and thinking that life is almost momentarily perfect.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Stealing from Tara again: I feel like I say the same thing every year, but my friends are always doing such amazing things and making such amazing strides, I can't help but celebrate them. More specifically (this is me now): Willa and Maryam for sticking through tough situations at their job or program through to the end and making sure to get something better once their situations were over, all my study group people for being awesome and making studying for biology even more fun with their humor, funny stories, great minds, disgusting medical stories and references to The Office, Mandy my lab assistant, Clarkie for livin' the dream, Edie for taking all the necessary steps to venture out there and make the world a better place at the same time. Janet, for not only writing a brilliant, heartfelt, ironic, wise, deep, activist, fierce, loving memoir, but also for really respecting the writing and the book in a way that I admire in her path to making it complete and published. Linda for writing the crap out of her new novel PURE, which to me feels important and precise and masterful.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A few people.
14. Where did most of your money go?
OMG rent ($$$!) and tuition ($$$!) and cell phone and other bills and my textbook, bus pass, etc. And the India trip (though I barely spent anything while there).
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
INDIA, going to school, Portland.
16. What song/s will always remind you of 2009?
"Paper Planes" - M.I.A. (and it's playing right now!), whatever that "clouds above" song is that Willa and Graham were always playing in India, Joshua Radin, and I'm sure tehre's more but it's hard to really know until time has passed, and you hear a song and it gives you that nostalgia feeling.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Probably happier
ii. Thinner or fatter? Probably a little fatter.
iii. Richer or poorer? Poorer! For sure! Going from working, even if it wasn't quite year-round, to taking out student loans, well, the math is pretty simple.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, blogging, flirting, reading, playing my (digital) piano, being in nature, being more authentic. Mostly writing.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Hedging, letting fear paralyze me, suppressing how I really feel, trying to please everyone else at my own expense, watching TV to avoid things.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it in Friday Harbor with Janet and a great group of her neighbors and friends.
21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nope.
22. How many one-night stands?
None
24. What was your favorite TV program?
Grey's Anatomy, House and The Office. This summer was torture on all three fronts. Oh and My So-Called Life was so great to watch all the way through - what a smart, real and in a lot of ways brave show. I also found this old show from a few years ago that only lasted one season called Medical Investigations, which is all right, though I must say that House makes a MUCH better genius asshole than MI's main character and makes a much more likable character.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Kind of. Not really hate though, just pissy.
26. What was the best book you read?
Snow Falling on Cedars - so, so good, and about a fictional place that in reality is so close to where I called home. Wuthering Heights was surprisingly great to finally read. Oh, and someone from my study group recommended a book called What I Learned in Medical School, which is a collection of personal memoir essays from non-traditional medical students (single moms, refugees, a descendent of holocaust survivors, students with Tourette's, sickle-cell anemia, OCD, etc). It was a perfect mixture of things I like to read about - the real life stories of real people, medical stuff, and had a huge social justice element. On Friday I'm passing it on to my blind naturopathic physician friend. I devoured that book and read the first half on my recent train to Seattle on my way to Orcas. I have just started a book that I know will make this list for 2010 - Day Breaks Over Dharamsala by Janet Thomas.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I am disgustingly hooked on the Grey's soundtracks. Some favorites include Joshua Radin, Butterfly Boucher, Kendall Payne, Rilo Kiley, Psapp, Regina Spektor, Jem, Snow Patrol. Also want to include the songs that my friend Kelly's daughter got me hooked on during our cross country camping travels by Rise Against and The Darkness. Also, this is so NOT new b/c I've loved Tori since just after Christmas 2002, but I really LOVE her new albums Abnormally Attracted to Sin (and freaking love that title) and Midwinter Graces (love that title too, makes me think of Mists of Avalon).
28. What did you want and get?
Again, stealing Tara's answer because it's true: A sense of purpose and intellectual fulfillment. I guess the former I sort of had, but the latter was sorely lacking. (Okay, me again): A decent living situation very close to campus, the excitement and anonymity and pulse of living in Portland, a visit to the ocean, a stay in the dispensary.
29. What did you want and not get?
Boys. A guide dog (though I am honestly still really on the fence on whether or not I want one).
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Slumdog Millionaire, Where the Wild Things Are (just saw it two nights ago).
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
28 (in fact, about two weeks ago, someone said to me for the first time, "You're pushing thirty." Aaaah!) I was here in Portland, visiting schools, and spent my birthday evening with Kelly and Elynn at the Sapphire Hotel and it had all this cool lighting and we had to use little flashlights to see the menu and ate some kind of dish with squash in it which made the whole thing just about perfect. Kelly & family gave me a pretty funny card that somehow ended up in my tarot bag and came with me to India, and when I needed a connection to my world back home, I would pull it out. Overall, it was a very cool birthday and not too out of control. Will have to get crazier for 29 :) which is barely a month away (again, aaaaah!). I'm gettin' old.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More courage.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
"If it's not colorful and artistic and pleasing to my own unique sense of aesthetics and expressive and also really hot, I'm not interested." I wore a lot of purple, pink, red and green and a lot of outfits that would inspire comments like House's towards Cuddy. You know, I've gained weight, in interesting proportions and as a friend of mine says when you have bigger boobs there are really only two options, dress real frumpy to cover yourself or show it off, and I vote for the latter so my attire borders on the "come fuck me" side of things. I jokingly told a friend yesterday that my goal is to be a hardcore science nerd who dresses like a tramp, lol. I'm exaggerating of course, but still. Just doing my part to debunk the whole notion that girls are either smart or sexy and not both.
34. What kept you sane?
Good friends, music, long baths in my awesomely deep tub in my new apartment, good books, having a few days to be in the dispensary, on the Orkila beach and in the woods. Nature plays a big part in keeping me sane, if sanity is really what this is. It disturbs me a little that that always seems to be a question.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I always have a thing for Maynard, and always have the hots for Derrick Jensen's writing, so those two always have a place in my answer. Oh and I wanted to take reeeeally inappropriate pictures with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama at an inauguration party on Orcas last January, LOL just because it would be so wrong. Mostly instead of celebrities I just lust after fictional characters, like Alex from Grey's.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Universal health care.
37. Who did you miss?
It would be a much shorter list to ask who I don't miss. So many of my friends are long-distance. Special shout out to Tracy, Leo, Caren, my India peeps, Maryam, Clarkie, Edie, Claire, Forest, Elynn, all the people I didn't get to see on my recent trip to Orcas, and many, many, many more.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
My study group - Alicia, Ryan & Scott. My India group - Hilary, Willa, Desmond, Nina, Ben, Andrew, Karen, Graham. Though not exactly "new" in terms of knowing a person, meeting Aaron was very awesome. Also have to include Katie O, Donna and Gaza - probably the coolest people I met at Orkila this year.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Doing what scares the fucking daylights out of you is one of the most valuable things you can do, and it is a LOT easier said or contemplated than done. Also, it is good to keep the wild part of you alive and well, the reckless childlike part that wants to run across the streets or roll down hills or have pillow fights - it's good to indulge that sometimes, keep yourself young and vital and alive the way children are - passionately, intensely, vibrantly and full of awe.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Gotta go with this one, this song was in my head so much during my trip.
"I have ended up in India, ohhhh
With no map to guide me home'
The strangest place I think I've ever been."
~Kendall Payne, from "Scratch"
Currently Listening:
"Always in My Head" - Psapp - I must say I have no idea what this song is supposed to be about, has almost a disjointed, almost psychedelic but in a subdued way sort of feel.
One step just behind me
One stretches out ahead
Some walk just beside me
Some already dead
I fumble with time, keep walking
Just beside me
I want to watch the tread
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
Pace that quickens now to breaking point
I sprint across and here we are
I'm running up ahead and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
So step just behind me
You're stretching out ahead
We walk just beside and
We're already dead
I'm dancing in the light and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
Also, since we're on the metaphysical subject, if you want to read a really detailed (and in my opinion a bit too verbose - and coming from the queen of long-windedness, that says something) prediction for January with some attention to the rest of the year, check out Susan Miller's AstrologyZone. Her predictions are so in-depth, and the few I've read (or had read to me by friends) for this coming month, are INTENSE! What a transformational time, between two eclipses. So check it out and milk whatever cosmic connections are headed your way.
And I just must say one more thing briefly before going into this survey, which is wtf has happened to the world since NYE? I mean, I thought it was just me, or my street or neighborhood. It's been ridiculously loud at night ever since NYE. I mean at first it was kind of expected, the screaming and the fireworks and all that, but it's still going on (well not the fireworks but the screaming). That and people driving by with really loud music just BLASTING. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it one bit. I lived too long on a quiet island. I love being in the throes of the energy. But something is definitely up. And aside from the noise issue, I haven't been sleeping well at all. Then today (Jan 4), I saw a post from my friend Trish on Bainbridge Island that no one is sleeping there either, and others replied saying they were having the same experience. 2010 is not coming in quietly.
And as for 2009, here goes: (Side note to Samsara/Leo: just because I'm late with my survey doesn't mean you're getting out of it. Start answering.)
1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Since I spent three months in India, it seems the list to answer this question is endless: left the continent, traveled overseas, had rice beer, traveled with a group of people I'd never met before, hiked in the Himalayas, experienced Holi, had pink hair accidentally, took dance lessons, hung out on Indian rooftops, saw monkeys, experienced the border ceremony between India & Pakistan, rode rickshaws (cycle and auto), rode in vehicles that drive on the left side of the road, went three months without wearing a seatbelt in the craziest driving conditions ever, was bitten by a dog, had my shoes stolen, ate in a rotating restaurant, got a tattoo (in a group) in a foreign country, on impulse in Calcutta no less, ate street food, walked down "gnarly street," went three months without my music, visited monasteries, went on road passes that were 14, and then 18,000+ feet in elevation, went to a rest stop where I was literally peeing on frozen pee (at the pass), had another person (KAREN) ask me to take a picture of her peeing on frozen pee, told my life story in a group, saw someone (BEN) kill a chicken, visited remote villages, rode a toy train which included standing for six hours and at one point during that time sitting on my daypack and falling asleep leaning on a stranger's leg, ate food cooked over cow patties, drank butter tea, used "eastern" toilets, visited hindu temples, sikh temples, mosques, went to Hindi class, drank a bhang lassi (and later told my former college RA who's traveling in India where to get bhang lassis and got her hooked), saw pot growing outside the Taj Mahal, saw the Taj Mahal, and the GOLDEN TEMPLE, went on a jeep trip at 4 in the morning to see a sunrise that didn't really happen, listening to Peacock (or really, Smokey) on the way there, fell asleep on an airport floor and on my pack in a train station, gave away hiking boots for a flute for someone else (WILLA), ate nutella, watched someone run right into a pole (HILARY) during a scavenger hunt in Delhi, had black boogers from so much smog in the more urban parts of India, went to massage class, took Reiki lessons, ate mediterranean food, met Mr. Jordan and Mr. Sikkim, had a driver who people said looked like Snoop Dogg who drove our group through treacherous terrain and weather and was ultra sexy when he drove, saw cows, goats, dogs, cats and lots of other animals just chilling in the street, ate paneer, used a digital camera, was bitten up by leeches!
I'm sure there is so much I'm not even thinking about at the moment. The places and the people of that trip will always hold such a huge piece of my heart. By far the best thing I could have done. It's one of those things that if I had known, really known how hard it would be, I probably wouldn't have gone, so it's a really good thing I didn't know, because I'm so, so glad I went.
Now, there are some other new experiences unrelated to India that I should also include: lived in a friend's basement for two weeks, met a long-time internet friend after knowing for years and not meeting, took out student loans, went to school part time, took biology in a college setting, went to school totally on my own promptings and desires, lived in a studio apartment, had a 4.0 for a term, read every word of assigned reading (that is a big-time first, lol), put together a couch (it came in two boxes as 45 pieces of wood, tools, directions, gloves and a sander, and it was awesome to "build" it), went to a strip club, went to the rodeo, saw yellowstone and mount rushmore and crazy horse and south dakota's black hills (not to mention Wall Drug), took a camping road trip, rode a streetcar, lived in a downtown setting, went out for a drink before class, went a whole term without skipping a single class, watched all of My So-Called Life. And again, I'm sure there are lots more firsts I'm not thinking of at the moment.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't really do regular "resolutions" because when I think of those, they're usually restrictive ("I won't eat chocolate," "I'll exercise every day") that are just impossible and no fun to fulfill. Instead I like to think about goals or wishes. So in looking at what I wrote down last year, I stuck to a good percent of it - applying to school and starting this year, getting new glasses (my old ones were a shitpile), and writing Morning Pages (from Artist's Way). I wasn't perfect on that one, but a lot more consistent than in previous years, and was very daily about it for a large portion of my time in India. Another goal I set was to be more in touch with my spirituality, which still feels lacking, but I felt in touch in India, and at other times throughout the year. As for the wishes, one was for clarity and ease in transitioning to school and moving, and I think that's been good, one was for romance (always) which was completely 100% non-existent for me in 2009. The other wish I made was I guess somewhat fulfilled.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No one really close, but my friend and roommate Jeri from the NFB convention is due soon, I believe.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope. Knock on wood. It really, really freaks me out that I've been spared in terms of having people close to me die. Other than my grandmother, it's just something I haven't dealt with much, not for me personally anyway, and it always makes me feel like at any moment that is going to change, like all this time going without experiencing that kind of loss is going to build up so the universe can deliver some huge wollops. Either that or I'll die young or something. Yeah, it scares me.
5. What countries did you visit?
India and the Hong Kong airport.
6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Romance (always). A hot lover. A part-time job I love. Oh and a different apartment where I can actually control the heat and don't feel like I'm living in a fucking sauna and wasting energy by the bucketful by keeping my windows open (I'd suffocate if I didn't) and don't wake up feeling like all the water has been leeched from my body. (Aside from that, I'm really happy with my place). Yeah I definitely want to move when my lease is up. My location is AWESOME but my rent price is too high and my place is too small, but the heat thing is what gets me more than those other issues, big time.
7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
In random order:
Feb 12th - flight to India.
May 7th - return from India.
Sept 26th - signed my lease & saw Pearl Jam.
August 7-9 - Lollapalooza.
Sept 28 - school began.
Dec 7 - school ended (well, the day of my final).
Aug 25 - a nice walk in a park w/a friend.
Sept 23 - the day I left Orcas.
July 2-9 - NFB convention in Detroit.
July 4 - my roommate at the convention (who was also pregnant) had a major diabetic emergency and I went w/her to the hospital (she and the baby were fine, thank god, but it was very scary - at first the paramedics couldn't get her to respond at all and the way they were talking I thought I might actually watch someone die - second time in my life I've had that fear - it was at a point where, "either this is going to work or nothing will - so fucking scary). After we got back we had to switch rooms b/c they had such trouble putting in her IV that there was blood and needles all over the floor.
Dec 21-24 - stayed at my old favorite home, the dispensary at Camp Orkila, walked my old beaches, stayed in my old room and for three days felt reconnected to a very happy time in my memory.
June 19 - last day of work at Camp Orkila kitchen for good.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving India, rocking biology. Making the decision to go to school even after obstacles arose and other opportunities seduced me into having such serious second thoughts that I really thought I would put it off for another year.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not speaking up for myself, not being real with people out of fear, keeping secrets and hiding and running away from anything of intensity (and a few things that were just awkward) out of fear. I really want to change these things about myself. I drive myself fucking crazy, I swear. Not writing memoir.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Anything bad?
No. Knock on wood again for this one, I was remarkably healthy this year, which is surprising considering I spent a part of it in a third world country where lots of people get sick. My only real complaint was constipation, and getting bitten by a dog.
11. What were the best things you bought?
I'm going to mimic Tara's answer (I copied this survey from her) and say, does my tuition count? Also, plane ticket to India, for sure. And my couch. Also, a desk! I bought it very synchronistically from a friend from Orcas who's also living in Portland. I was in desperate need of a desk for school and when I went to her house for dinner, found she was really trying to get rid of one and having no luck on Craigslist. I love when life works out like that. Some cool clothes, including some dresses (which will make some people reading this fall over with shock, I'm sure). Some AWESOME lamps. Oh and Grey's Season 5 DVD - I freaking LOVED season 5. And lots of great books.
But probably the thing that has made the biggest impact (and wow I'm a dork), is a dock for my iPod for my bathroom. It's so small, the sound isn't great, but it has made such an impact on my daily life. I feel so much happier while getting ready for the day and sometimes I sit in the bath, reading and listening to music and thinking that life is almost momentarily perfect.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Stealing from Tara again: I feel like I say the same thing every year, but my friends are always doing such amazing things and making such amazing strides, I can't help but celebrate them. More specifically (this is me now): Willa and Maryam for sticking through tough situations at their job or program through to the end and making sure to get something better once their situations were over, all my study group people for being awesome and making studying for biology even more fun with their humor, funny stories, great minds, disgusting medical stories and references to The Office, Mandy my lab assistant, Clarkie for livin' the dream, Edie for taking all the necessary steps to venture out there and make the world a better place at the same time. Janet, for not only writing a brilliant, heartfelt, ironic, wise, deep, activist, fierce, loving memoir, but also for really respecting the writing and the book in a way that I admire in her path to making it complete and published. Linda for writing the crap out of her new novel PURE, which to me feels important and precise and masterful.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A few people.
14. Where did most of your money go?
OMG rent ($$$!) and tuition ($$$!) and cell phone and other bills and my textbook, bus pass, etc. And the India trip (though I barely spent anything while there).
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
INDIA, going to school, Portland.
16. What song/s will always remind you of 2009?
"Paper Planes" - M.I.A. (and it's playing right now!), whatever that "clouds above" song is that Willa and Graham were always playing in India, Joshua Radin, and I'm sure tehre's more but it's hard to really know until time has passed, and you hear a song and it gives you that nostalgia feeling.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Probably happier
ii. Thinner or fatter? Probably a little fatter.
iii. Richer or poorer? Poorer! For sure! Going from working, even if it wasn't quite year-round, to taking out student loans, well, the math is pretty simple.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Writing, blogging, flirting, reading, playing my (digital) piano, being in nature, being more authentic. Mostly writing.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Hedging, letting fear paralyze me, suppressing how I really feel, trying to please everyone else at my own expense, watching TV to avoid things.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it in Friday Harbor with Janet and a great group of her neighbors and friends.
21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nope.
22. How many one-night stands?
None
24. What was your favorite TV program?
Grey's Anatomy, House and The Office. This summer was torture on all three fronts. Oh and My So-Called Life was so great to watch all the way through - what a smart, real and in a lot of ways brave show. I also found this old show from a few years ago that only lasted one season called Medical Investigations, which is all right, though I must say that House makes a MUCH better genius asshole than MI's main character and makes a much more likable character.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Kind of. Not really hate though, just pissy.
26. What was the best book you read?
Snow Falling on Cedars - so, so good, and about a fictional place that in reality is so close to where I called home. Wuthering Heights was surprisingly great to finally read. Oh, and someone from my study group recommended a book called What I Learned in Medical School, which is a collection of personal memoir essays from non-traditional medical students (single moms, refugees, a descendent of holocaust survivors, students with Tourette's, sickle-cell anemia, OCD, etc). It was a perfect mixture of things I like to read about - the real life stories of real people, medical stuff, and had a huge social justice element. On Friday I'm passing it on to my blind naturopathic physician friend. I devoured that book and read the first half on my recent train to Seattle on my way to Orcas. I have just started a book that I know will make this list for 2010 - Day Breaks Over Dharamsala by Janet Thomas.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I am disgustingly hooked on the Grey's soundtracks. Some favorites include Joshua Radin, Butterfly Boucher, Kendall Payne, Rilo Kiley, Psapp, Regina Spektor, Jem, Snow Patrol. Also want to include the songs that my friend Kelly's daughter got me hooked on during our cross country camping travels by Rise Against and The Darkness. Also, this is so NOT new b/c I've loved Tori since just after Christmas 2002, but I really LOVE her new albums Abnormally Attracted to Sin (and freaking love that title) and Midwinter Graces (love that title too, makes me think of Mists of Avalon).
28. What did you want and get?
Again, stealing Tara's answer because it's true: A sense of purpose and intellectual fulfillment. I guess the former I sort of had, but the latter was sorely lacking. (Okay, me again): A decent living situation very close to campus, the excitement and anonymity and pulse of living in Portland, a visit to the ocean, a stay in the dispensary.
29. What did you want and not get?
Boys. A guide dog (though I am honestly still really on the fence on whether or not I want one).
30. What was your favorite film of this year?
Slumdog Millionaire, Where the Wild Things Are (just saw it two nights ago).
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
28 (in fact, about two weeks ago, someone said to me for the first time, "You're pushing thirty." Aaaah!) I was here in Portland, visiting schools, and spent my birthday evening with Kelly and Elynn at the Sapphire Hotel and it had all this cool lighting and we had to use little flashlights to see the menu and ate some kind of dish with squash in it which made the whole thing just about perfect. Kelly & family gave me a pretty funny card that somehow ended up in my tarot bag and came with me to India, and when I needed a connection to my world back home, I would pull it out. Overall, it was a very cool birthday and not too out of control. Will have to get crazier for 29 :) which is barely a month away (again, aaaaah!). I'm gettin' old.
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More courage.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
"If it's not colorful and artistic and pleasing to my own unique sense of aesthetics and expressive and also really hot, I'm not interested." I wore a lot of purple, pink, red and green and a lot of outfits that would inspire comments like House's towards Cuddy. You know, I've gained weight, in interesting proportions and as a friend of mine says when you have bigger boobs there are really only two options, dress real frumpy to cover yourself or show it off, and I vote for the latter so my attire borders on the "come fuck me" side of things. I jokingly told a friend yesterday that my goal is to be a hardcore science nerd who dresses like a tramp, lol. I'm exaggerating of course, but still. Just doing my part to debunk the whole notion that girls are either smart or sexy and not both.
34. What kept you sane?
Good friends, music, long baths in my awesomely deep tub in my new apartment, good books, having a few days to be in the dispensary, on the Orkila beach and in the woods. Nature plays a big part in keeping me sane, if sanity is really what this is. It disturbs me a little that that always seems to be a question.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I always have a thing for Maynard, and always have the hots for Derrick Jensen's writing, so those two always have a place in my answer. Oh and I wanted to take reeeeally inappropriate pictures with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama at an inauguration party on Orcas last January, LOL just because it would be so wrong. Mostly instead of celebrities I just lust after fictional characters, like Alex from Grey's.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Universal health care.
37. Who did you miss?
It would be a much shorter list to ask who I don't miss. So many of my friends are long-distance. Special shout out to Tracy, Leo, Caren, my India peeps, Maryam, Clarkie, Edie, Claire, Forest, Elynn, all the people I didn't get to see on my recent trip to Orcas, and many, many, many more.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
My study group - Alicia, Ryan & Scott. My India group - Hilary, Willa, Desmond, Nina, Ben, Andrew, Karen, Graham. Though not exactly "new" in terms of knowing a person, meeting Aaron was very awesome. Also have to include Katie O, Donna and Gaza - probably the coolest people I met at Orkila this year.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Doing what scares the fucking daylights out of you is one of the most valuable things you can do, and it is a LOT easier said or contemplated than done. Also, it is good to keep the wild part of you alive and well, the reckless childlike part that wants to run across the streets or roll down hills or have pillow fights - it's good to indulge that sometimes, keep yourself young and vital and alive the way children are - passionately, intensely, vibrantly and full of awe.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Gotta go with this one, this song was in my head so much during my trip.
"I have ended up in India, ohhhh
With no map to guide me home'
The strangest place I think I've ever been."
~Kendall Payne, from "Scratch"
Currently Listening:
"Always in My Head" - Psapp - I must say I have no idea what this song is supposed to be about, has almost a disjointed, almost psychedelic but in a subdued way sort of feel.
One step just behind me
One stretches out ahead
Some walk just beside me
Some already dead
I fumble with time, keep walking
Just beside me
I want to watch the tread
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
Pace that quickens now to breaking point
I sprint across and here we are
I'm running up ahead and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
So step just behind me
You're stretching out ahead
We walk just beside and
We're already dead
I'm dancing in the light and still I tip over
Watch our fortunes cross
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
Oh and always in my head
Always in my head
Always in my head
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
Monday, December 7, 2009
Killing Time Waiting for my Final
And my brain is full, I don't think there is any point in trying to stuff in any more details about biology. Anyway we had a practice final and I got 78 out of 80, so I'm probably fine, I hope.
So, today is the last day of my first term. Overall, it's been really good. Really loving the biology class, and my lab group started studying together. That's been great! We're all contributing, splitting up tasks like writing up vocabulary, going through practice tests, teaching each other things the others don't get so well. I know it has been a huge benefit on both ends. It's great to have people to clarify things you don't quite get, and it's also very helpful to teach something to someone else. I feel like my knowledge of how to solve genetics problems really solidified when I wrote it out to show another girl in my group. And studying with these guys is fun! Our ages range from 22 to 39 and a lot of times we take our study sessions to the bar, or go grab a beer before class or after a test. It's been really fun, and it's kinda cool to have people to talk with about this stuff b/c most people I know aren't really into biology.
Apparently our study group is pretty effective, we kind of have a study group stalker (this guy who really, really wants to be in our study group next term, which is fine as long as there is some contribution).
It's been a LOT of information though! In these 9 weeks we covered the very basics of evolution, basic biological chemistry (mostly involving carbon and water), proteins, DNA & RNA, lipids, the cell and alllll its components, cell communication and signaling, aerobic respiration, photosynthesis, cell division, cell division in gametes, genetics, DNA replication, how genes work, transcription and translation, gene expression in bacteria, gene expression in eukaryotes, genetic engineering, genomics, bacteria, and viruses.
It's like holy shit that's a lot of material! And a lot of it is pretty detailed. I am enjoying the challenge, and learning a LOT. One of the things I love is that our book is very well illustrated. The artist who drew them has a Ph.D in biology and really tried to draw things as they really look. I am learning that I am a very visual learner. Whenever we're going over something in study group, I'm always, "Oh yeah, it's that picture with the purple enzyme..." The enzymes are definitely the coolest looking things in the book. My favorites so far are phophofructokinase (plus that name is so cool), the spliceosome and the basil transcription complex. A lot of the enzymes look like these blobby monsters. They're kind of adorable (or "cute" as I'm told is the "in" word here in Portland).
One of my favorite things is called dideoxy sequencing, which is just a really, really cool and innovative way to determine the sequences of smaller stretches of DNA. The guy who thought that up, Sanger, just had to be soooo fucking brilliant to put that together and that sort of genius just kind of turns me on, lol. I am hot for dideoxy sequencing (although actually doing it now is not quite as cool as the original way, and probably really doing that kind of sequencing would be tedious and boring, I just think the invention is sooooo cool).
It's also really interesting to have a working knowledge of what genetic engineering is and how it's done. I'm sure what is in our book is very cursory, but still I know a lot more now, about things and concepts that are sort of tossed about a lot and how they are done. Our book brings up some ethical concerns about it, but what I thought was cool was that our prof really went into a lot more of that, including things I had never thought about and lots of things I had. In fact there is a class next term called Genes and Society which is all about the ethics of genetic stuff, by this woman who's gone all over the world studying the effects of genetic engineering. I really wish I could take it but I am half time so I can't or it will put me over my financial aid bracket which would be no good at all. I might see if it's going to be offered again next year, and if not maybe I will see if I can sit in. Gotta say, a lot of this stuff is soooo fascinating! In our study group, I was the one who wrote up the genetic engineering chapter so feel very familiar with it (I also had the sex/cell division in gametes chapter, lol).
All right, well just stopping by b/c it's been awhile. I think I am actually going to go review viruses one more time, eat some dinner and then head over to the classroom. Almost wish the test was earlier in the day, feeling pretty antsy just sitting here killing time.
Currently listening:
"500 Miles" - Tori Amos - really getting into this album (abnormally attracted to sin, and must say I love that title), and this is probably my favorite so far. I'm just digging it, loving the lyrics, singing it all the time. I am definitely on yet another Tori kick.
He walked 300 miles
just to bring, to bring me bread
His body like a sculpture
almost decorated
And I’ll wake him as the dawn does
and we’re breaking on the bus
saying this was made for us
and now
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, bring me again
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will we break even break
step it up
grab your phone, get your suitcase
there’s no time to waste
a big adventure awaits
Sad news
France suffered a late snow
The blooms break through the ice
And San Francisco,
Her guitar man finally confessed
He loved that actress
With hearts touched by frost
We fought in the land of a midnight sun
I lost myself
I lost myself
I walked 300 miles
just to bring, to bring him bread
In love some gifts are simple
Others I underrated
So I wake him as the dawn does
and we’ll face what any lovers must
blueness pales within a flame’s lust
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, bring me again
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, even break
will we break, even break
Break, even break
Don’t slide, don’t weep
my life even
break
Okay, this is NUTS - right as I was about to hit post, the power in my building went out. I had to forgo the rereading of notes and get ready in complete darkness! The hardest part was finding my glasses in the dark, lol, and then I also had to find my scantron form. On my way out my apt manager told me I shouldn't leave (our door has this electrical key thing to open) b/c she was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back in, but I was like sorry lady gotta take my exam. So I did, and it went well. It was pretty straightforward. No real hard thinking/puzzling through questions like usual. Just straight up do you know your shit. Hopefully I did.
So, today is the last day of my first term. Overall, it's been really good. Really loving the biology class, and my lab group started studying together. That's been great! We're all contributing, splitting up tasks like writing up vocabulary, going through practice tests, teaching each other things the others don't get so well. I know it has been a huge benefit on both ends. It's great to have people to clarify things you don't quite get, and it's also very helpful to teach something to someone else. I feel like my knowledge of how to solve genetics problems really solidified when I wrote it out to show another girl in my group. And studying with these guys is fun! Our ages range from 22 to 39 and a lot of times we take our study sessions to the bar, or go grab a beer before class or after a test. It's been really fun, and it's kinda cool to have people to talk with about this stuff b/c most people I know aren't really into biology.
Apparently our study group is pretty effective, we kind of have a study group stalker (this guy who really, really wants to be in our study group next term, which is fine as long as there is some contribution).
It's been a LOT of information though! In these 9 weeks we covered the very basics of evolution, basic biological chemistry (mostly involving carbon and water), proteins, DNA & RNA, lipids, the cell and alllll its components, cell communication and signaling, aerobic respiration, photosynthesis, cell division, cell division in gametes, genetics, DNA replication, how genes work, transcription and translation, gene expression in bacteria, gene expression in eukaryotes, genetic engineering, genomics, bacteria, and viruses.
It's like holy shit that's a lot of material! And a lot of it is pretty detailed. I am enjoying the challenge, and learning a LOT. One of the things I love is that our book is very well illustrated. The artist who drew them has a Ph.D in biology and really tried to draw things as they really look. I am learning that I am a very visual learner. Whenever we're going over something in study group, I'm always, "Oh yeah, it's that picture with the purple enzyme..." The enzymes are definitely the coolest looking things in the book. My favorites so far are phophofructokinase (plus that name is so cool), the spliceosome and the basil transcription complex. A lot of the enzymes look like these blobby monsters. They're kind of adorable (or "cute" as I'm told is the "in" word here in Portland).
One of my favorite things is called dideoxy sequencing, which is just a really, really cool and innovative way to determine the sequences of smaller stretches of DNA. The guy who thought that up, Sanger, just had to be soooo fucking brilliant to put that together and that sort of genius just kind of turns me on, lol. I am hot for dideoxy sequencing (although actually doing it now is not quite as cool as the original way, and probably really doing that kind of sequencing would be tedious and boring, I just think the invention is sooooo cool).
It's also really interesting to have a working knowledge of what genetic engineering is and how it's done. I'm sure what is in our book is very cursory, but still I know a lot more now, about things and concepts that are sort of tossed about a lot and how they are done. Our book brings up some ethical concerns about it, but what I thought was cool was that our prof really went into a lot more of that, including things I had never thought about and lots of things I had. In fact there is a class next term called Genes and Society which is all about the ethics of genetic stuff, by this woman who's gone all over the world studying the effects of genetic engineering. I really wish I could take it but I am half time so I can't or it will put me over my financial aid bracket which would be no good at all. I might see if it's going to be offered again next year, and if not maybe I will see if I can sit in. Gotta say, a lot of this stuff is soooo fascinating! In our study group, I was the one who wrote up the genetic engineering chapter so feel very familiar with it (I also had the sex/cell division in gametes chapter, lol).
All right, well just stopping by b/c it's been awhile. I think I am actually going to go review viruses one more time, eat some dinner and then head over to the classroom. Almost wish the test was earlier in the day, feeling pretty antsy just sitting here killing time.
Currently listening:
"500 Miles" - Tori Amos - really getting into this album (abnormally attracted to sin, and must say I love that title), and this is probably my favorite so far. I'm just digging it, loving the lyrics, singing it all the time. I am definitely on yet another Tori kick.
He walked 300 miles
just to bring, to bring me bread
His body like a sculpture
almost decorated
And I’ll wake him as the dawn does
and we’re breaking on the bus
saying this was made for us
and now
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, bring me again
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will we break even break
step it up
grab your phone, get your suitcase
there’s no time to waste
a big adventure awaits
Sad news
France suffered a late snow
The blooms break through the ice
And San Francisco,
Her guitar man finally confessed
He loved that actress
With hearts touched by frost
We fought in the land of a midnight sun
I lost myself
I lost myself
I walked 300 miles
just to bring, to bring him bread
In love some gifts are simple
Others I underrated
So I wake him as the dawn does
and we’ll face what any lovers must
blueness pales within a flame’s lust
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, bring me again
In lovers communion for 500 miles
and in 500 miles
will he break, even break
will we break, even break
Break, even break
Don’t slide, don’t weep
my life even
break
Okay, this is NUTS - right as I was about to hit post, the power in my building went out. I had to forgo the rereading of notes and get ready in complete darkness! The hardest part was finding my glasses in the dark, lol, and then I also had to find my scantron form. On my way out my apt manager told me I shouldn't leave (our door has this electrical key thing to open) b/c she was afraid I wouldn't be able to get back in, but I was like sorry lady gotta take my exam. So I did, and it went well. It was pretty straightforward. No real hard thinking/puzzling through questions like usual. Just straight up do you know your shit. Hopefully I did.
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