nobody wants to read a blog that’s updated, oh monthly. blogging is an industry now. isn’t it?
this is the first year i did not put “journal daily/more often/etc” in my new year’s resolutions. i’ve journaled more.
januarys always make me think about what i include in my life and what i leave out—and the stuff i simply allow in. there are far too many things i “simply allow.” when i picture my pretty life, my future, my dreams—there’s a disconnect between that life and the one i live. in that pretty life, i do meaningful things, enjoy simple pleasures, use my hands, learn to slow down, connect. in that life, i do not spend hours reading about other people’s beautiful lives (unless, of course, i’m reading a book).
all said, i’m taking another break from my RSS feed, my dailies. i enjoy their inspiration, their perspective, their thoughts—but ultimately, it’s someone else’s life, and i want to live my own. i’m finding in these few months before i move/marry/make the transition to “the real world” that i want to become as complete as i can be, that i want to use my time intentionally.
i’d rather write a letter than send a text message. i’d rather bury myself in my bed with a book than scroll through design blogs. internet, i love you, but i need a break. you’re a distraction.
i don’t want to lose my connection with tactile tasks, with flesh&blood people, with paper&type, with voices. so i’m taking an indefinite break to preserve and strengthen those connections.
are you still going to read a cup of jo? and design sponge? probably so. we all do. nobody cares about my internet resolutions.
but maybe you should. maybe you should think.
when i come home, i tend to burrow in. i miss text messages, twitter less, prefer quiet nights in my bedroom with the door closed, a hot bath every night. i never feel like seeing anyone, doing anything, staying in touch.
this is the last time i will ever be home for “christmas break.”
on a whim, i decided to take a bath in the guest bathroom tonight. i forgot my razor and soap until i was settled in a steaming tub with a book, so i decided fresh-shaved legs weren’t an essential. the bathtub was oddly bare of shampoos and soaps—except for one square, reddish bar. it seemed better than no soap, so i dipped it in the water and lathered up. halfway through, i realized it was men’s soap–a bar, in fact, i had bought for charlie months ago. he left it here when he came in august. now my skin smells like one version of him—clean, cinnamon.
i don’t understand why i have cried every day that i’ve been home so far. my future mother-in-law came to visit, and we all watched father of the bride, a white family tradition when someone gets engaged. we all cried, and i thought how strange and telling it was that as i cried about leaving my family/childhood behind, i caught myself wishing i could cry into charlie’s shoulder.
it’s always so strange to hover in thresholds. they’re made for crossing, not lingering,
but i am always the kind of girl who looks back.
“please look back,” you said. “after i leave, please look back.”
on my way from the bathroom to my bedroom, freshly showered, i paused in front of my roommate’s open window. it was raining, barely, and the street lights cast an ugly orange benevolence on the wet pavement. there was a sudden metallic catch, an industrial sort of hum–the sound of something large powering up. our apartment complex is conveniently located directly behind a grocery store. trucks come and go all the time, unloading exactly behind my window, i think. the first week, the banging, the emptying of the huge dumpsters, the beeping, the voices woke me.
now, when the dumpsters are unloaded at six-thirty a.m., i simply roll over.
i’ve gotten used to it.
a person can get used to almost anything.
may i never get “used to” my life.
last year, at this time almost, it was sleep vs. no sleep. when i was dizzy with wonderment, uncertain if i was dreaming, swinging up out of a dark time in my life. when i stayed up till four a.m. watching short foreign films with a redheaded boy i had just met, when i wrote letters to him in class and shyly exchanged them later that evening, when my best friend gave me yellow shoes for christmas and i wore them on a first date with him.
last november, i was unhappier than i had ever been before. i was desperate get out. and without warning, and before i could understand, doors opened and windows, too, and light spilled in. happiness, after a long time without, is like light. whether it enters your life in a flood, as in the sudden yank of blinds, or whether it creeps slowly behind you, like a sunrise–it’s a gift, a surprise, an essential you’d forgotten.
this november, i am one thousand miles away from my love. i have been since may, will be until may. sometimes it is like this: “Days of absence, dark and dreary, / Clothed in sorrow’s dark array / Days of absence, I am weary.” (shakespeare). last november, my fingernails were gold or silver; i lived on bagels. i was not happy. i didn’t know where i was going. but my beautiful God knew—now my fingernails are dark red; He is opening doors for me. and i know that really, “absence weakens mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and kindles fires.” (Rochefoucald)
what if i drank every last drop of coffee in my cup one morning? would he wonder why? would he notice a change that slight?
i say yes, because charlie sees me.
“We lived long together / a life filled, / if you will, / with flowers.” –william carlos williams.
i used to be lonely,
but then i liked your shoes.
some things don’t seem important anymore.
under quilts or in my car, i can touch the world and it’s real. the bait and hook of college classes doesn’t hold me anymore. i slip through my weekly schedule like i’m asleep, or like i’m in a waiting room. the next thing is always on my mind. i don’t think that’s a beautiful way to live, but it is inescapable. i am happiest when my time is own.
i want tangible things. i’m tired of papers and credentials. i want a down comforter, peppers on my kitchen counter, wool socks on my feet, books by my bed, laundry to do, even. i can’t care about wordsworth or coleridge or the marxist theory of literary criticism. world, do you hear me? there is snow on the ground in massachusetts and the teeniest of color on the trees here—i cannot focus on class.
the world is too big or too small (Dunn’s small: “hand-size, mouth-size”) for my feet to tread contentedly here.
isn’t that what God asks me to do?
i no longer feel like a college student.
am i not one?
there’s a moment—paddling far enough out on a lake, driving high enough on the side of a mountain—when the limitations of your previous perspective drops away, and you can see everything you couldn’t before. it happened to me this summer, on three mile lake in alaska. on a plain summer day, i caught my breath, realizing for the first time, that the place i had walked and slept for weeks was literally ringed by mountains. on the ground, i couldn’t see them.
i think in may i’ll see some mountains.
why don’t i write anymore?
i was thinking, tonight, after flying to boston, getting engaged, catching the flu, and spending my last five days holed up in the sick bed—why don’t i write anymore? when grown ups ask me what my plans are next year, or assume that i’m going into teaching since i’m majoring in English, i smile politely and murmur something about how i want to write or edit. so why don’t i write anymore?
i have all these stories in my head. i re-read drafts from last spring, and i think i can re-work them. i have real things to write about. why don’t i write them? instead i sleep earlier and read wedding blogs or books and battle my longings to be in a different place. creative work is hard. beginning it is often the hardest part. i forget that, sometimes. i think writing only happens when it’s required of me. i’ll never publish anything that way.
i’m marrying a boy who once told me that if i had periods of dead writing or no writing, he would give me writing assignments. with that kind of encouragement, how can i not write? there are not that many demands on my time right now….and yet, i never feel i use my time the best i can.
balance, balance, balance. everything in life is balance.
right now,
there is dntel playing in the background, tanzanian peaberry in my coffee cup, a pen tucked into a blue literary criticism textbook, navy polish on my fingernails, a burn on the top of my tattooed foot. my life is strange sometimes. yesterday morning, i woke up, ate two bowls of post-select (doesn’t the word select always make your breakfast seem nicer) with soymilk, heated honey before applying it to my face—and managed to slosh scalding honey onto my foot. now i wear a funny, stinging red mark and i smile when i see it, because it’s typical of me.
my life is heavy in routine right now. which is odd, because i flew 5,000 miles back home from alaska this summer, craving the freedom my summer schedule never really allowed me—yet, lately, i’m taking comfort in patterns, the regularity of to-do lists. i have attempted to start this blog post for weeks now. something about my alaska experience changed me. seventy-six nights of sleeping in a tent, seventy-six letters from massachusetts, mountains, people, trial, rawness.
there are so many intense longings i carry daily. i am learning how to balance, how to temper dreams with patience, how to seek contentment. fall, beautiful beautiful dizzying fall, is here again, making me even more restless and giddy.
once, this blog was a record of my days and a collection of my musings. for a time, it progressed to short short stories and sometimes poems…but that time is gone, for now. i needed those stories, needed a way to write about my life without writing about it. maybe this is a way of easing into it. maybe i’ll finally be able to blog again.
welcome to the best days of our lives.
letters flying back and forth, like trusty little birds, like sparrows: (always sparrows)
(Skein of skin is all too few /To keep me from you / But oh, my love, though our bodies may be parted / Though our skin may not touch skin / Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow / I will come on the breath of the wind)—the decemberists.
i’m learning:
—sometimes we just can’t find words. my creative writing is sleeping. i am okay with that. real life is too dizzying right now. my stories will be back. they’re never gone too long.
— life happens much faster than i expected.
—to trust. to stop the snow flurries of worry about future jobs/residence/timing and rest in God. be still and know that i am God. God has opened and held the door (like a gentleman) for every step of my life so far. nothing’s changing here.
—to wait. to be thankful for may fifteenth and the ones before. to smile happily because i am.
—that distance is a matter of the heart, not the head. the head, the heart/the head, the heart.
i’m listening to:
—animal collective.
—c.w. playlists.
—lua, by bright eyes and gillian welch (over and over again).
—the andrews sisters.
—under a honeymoon, by the good life (also over and over).
i’m thankful for:
—google video chat.
—text messaging.
—free time, a set of blank parentheses in order to recover from junior year/prepare for alaska/conquer long distance.
—my mom.
i’m reading:
—lolita.
—the paris review anthology
—and this:
HEAT
a mechanism:
where flames the necessary power to raise your temperature (excitement)
a relationship of equal ratchets to exponent tremors (mass)
a convalescence of whorls to the edge of the fire, an immolent (by degrees)
conversion: call these marshmallows that flare so brief & singe shorthairs (prostrate)
as salty water washes in;
& melt like the witch in a puddle of functions which (engine)
—geneva chao
there are some things you didn’t think you’d ever be doing.
crying a lot, for example.
