light and shadow

I don’t have anything extraordinarily witty to say tonight, nor do I really have any particular direction in which to write.  But my goal is to try to write a thousand words per day, and though I have been on facebook and the like, I don’t really think that counts.  So here I am.

Today hasn’t been the best day.  At best, I feel directionless…much like this blog.  Or rather, I know where I want to go, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get there.  At worst, I feel jangled and emotional, and I want to cry.  A lot.  I feel guilty for being home for the past three and a half weeks with my injury.  I’ve missed a lot of work, and I’m catching some flak for it.  I understand why; I mean, three weeks is a lot.  I also am feeling super weak and lame.  In the traditional sense of the word.  Lame as in debilitated.  I can barely stand for an hour without severe pain.  Driving is just as bad.  I’ve been pretty much alone in my room for the past three weeks, which has made me lonely and helpless, and although I don’t really want to throw a pity party, I just want to feel like a human being again.

I don’t want to be a negative person.  I know that negativity is far from attractive.  So I think perhaps I will use this entry as a chance to force myself to try an exercise my mom has pointed me at several times in the past.  So here it is — a list of the things I like about myself.

I’m compassionate.  I’m able to put myself in other people’s shoes pretty easily and try to get inside their heads to try and understand where they are coming from.  I’m also fairly empathic, and I tend to be very sensitive to others’ pain.

I am loyal.  If I care about someone, I will stick with them.  I’m also very tenacious and rarely give up on anything I’ve set my mind to.  I’m patient.  I’m creative — I like to make art.  My kind of art just happens to be with words, and I try to do it as best as I can.

I’m a daydreamer and I have a good imagination.  While it can get me into trouble on occasion, I like seeing the world through my own lens.  I think if I were less shy, I would have been a good actress.  I can read expressively and with emotion.

I’m good with languages, both my own and otherwise.  I’ve always been able to pick up new languages easily, which is cool because I really enjoy them.  On a purely superficial note, I like my eyes.

I’m only about halfway to a thousand words, and I have to apologize for the quality of this blog.  I have a bad headache that came on sort of suddenly, and I am a bit out of it.

I really want to travel more.  I am going to try and go back to Scotland this summer if I can find a cheapish fare.  I’m hoping to fly out of Toronto so I can see Julia.  I haven’t seen her for almost a year and a half, and I miss her terribly.  It’s funny how you can meet someone so briefly and form such a lasting relationship — that’s been oddly true about the most important relationships in my life.  I met Julia when we both lived at the Inverness Tourist Hostel, and we became best friends after only a few short weeks.  That was in 2005, and nothing has changed.  She is still one of the only non-blood related people I count among family.

I miss Scotland, as well.  A strange peace comes over me when I’m there, ever since the first time my feet touched the rather unromantic tarmac at the Prestwick Airport an hour south of Glasgow.  It’s a place I’ve returned to so many times (Scotland, not Prestwick) and just felt like I was home.  I don’t think I have ever seen a parallel to the beauty that exists in Scotland.  I remember driving through Stirling on Megabus and looking out the window as the sun slanted through the clouds and lit up the earth as though it had flipped a switch within.  I remember the golden sheen of the mist on the hills, the Wallace Monument rising like…well, to be honest, rising like a giant, spiky phallus.  Perhaps that just ruined the romance of the shot.  Ha.

I remember Dollar Glen and Loch Ness and the way the ocean at John O’Groats is such a deep navy blue and contrasts with the shining white sand.  The earthy scent of soil, dust, and rock that makes up the interior of the Maes Howe, the rough-hewn slats of standing stones.  The smell of peat and the warm amber brown it turns the Ness River.  The Sisters of Kintail and Glen Coe.  The lone tree on Rannoch Moor near the cone-shaped Buachaille.  I have a hundred thousand memories of Scotland, each one stored away like delicate treasures within my mind.  I know I will return someday — it’s only a matter of time.  I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.  And I long to share it with my boyfriend.

If I can get there this summer, I know it will be a short visit, probably no more than a week or two at the most, but it will be a time of renewal as well.  A time to refresh my memories, see some dear friends, and rest my weary soul.

In the film What Dreams May Come, they espouse the philosophy that we choose our own heaven, or at least that we create it from our minds.  If that turns out to be at all true, I know where mine would be.  It would be a land of drums, of silver-smooth lochs, of smoky scotch and the scents of the earth.  There would be stone circles and sapphire seas laced with white sand beaches and forests with floors of soft moss where the rowans turn the circle of the seasons as their branches burst into bloom, the blooms turn to snowy berries that ripen into deep red before the leaves fall once more.  An eternity there would be an eternity of bliss.

I don’t plan on dying any time soon, so for now, I’ll look forward to the time when I can jet my earthly body there.

Well, what do you know?  Over 1,000 words.

holidays

holidays.  high holy days.  whatever that happens to mean to you.

sorry i’ve been absent.  i’ve been busy being in love.

yes, i meant to write that.  it happens, i suppose.  love is an easy thing to be caught up in.  especially when you never expected to find it for real or be allowed to touch it.  it all started a year and a half ago.  to make a long story a wee bit shorter, i (and he) knew from the beginning where we should go when we met.  but we couldn’t then, and we couldn’t for a very long time.  i couldn’t help waiting though.  i had to know what would happen.

so for the past six months, we’ve been finding out the “what next” after we got our chance.  and for the past two months, we’ve been together, in the official sense of things.

i never thought i’d have this chance again…and i certainly didn’t expect to ever find love that wasn’t the unrequited variety.  and yet.  here i am.  how lovely and odd.

needless to say, i’m really very happy.  i wrote something a couple posts back about how it’s one thing to be tolerated and something else entirely to be enjoyed.  appreciated.  i’ve never had a relationship where my quirks and idiosyncrasies were valued rather than merely put up with.  and it’s not as if we’re in the realm of rose colored glasses — this is also new territory for me because we’ve known each other for a year and a half.  and i’m finding that i simply enjoy him.

i’m finding that after a year and a half of wondering, hoping, waiting, nail-biting, pacing, laughing, soaring, head-scratching — i’m finding that after all that, his cogs and my cogs fit together still and simply turn.  clockwork.

when i’m with him, i’m more me than i’ve ever been able to be with anyone.  no pretentiousness or hiding.  and he’s who he is.  and that’s what i love about us.  that we’re two whole people building something more.

i was talking to a friend today who is also very happily ensconced in love.  we decided that there are few better feelings than falling for a good, good man.  especially when there have been so many bad ones before.

so this holiday season i am celebrating life.  i’m celebrating the changes that have brought me to dc and teaching my children to the best of my ability.  celebrating love and good friends and the changing of the seasons.  being grateful for what i have and the ability to share.  wishing i could do more for this world.

2009 is winding to a close.  when it began, i looked it in the face and said, “you’re going to be a fantastic year to put 2008 to shame.”  i wasn’t wrong.  i’ve found so many things this year.  a place in this country i can call home, which i never thought would happen.  a job i can do well that makes a difference.  one of my students called me on thanksgiving to say hello — made my night.  said job also gives me approximately 3 months per year of time i can write and pursue those things close to my heart.  by the end of this i will be financially stable for the first time ever.  i’ve found love, in more ways than one.  i may be busy and stressed, but i’m building a good life for myself here.  and i cannot wait to see where it goes.

happy holidays, whatever you celebrate.

may your days this winter be full of warmth, joy, and peace.

love.
emmie

luck, be a lady tonight

i honestly have no idea why i opened this blog.  hm.  possibly to open the floodgates of my current stream of consciousness?  could be.  could be.

aha.  i remember the first little spark i wanted to fan into a blazing flame (i’m cooooold, goddamn it).  i feel lucky.  it was something rather simple that triggered it, something that, to many people, might seem a bit odd.  “i love that you love zombie movies.”

but really, that simple statement was really quite touching.  to know and be known.  not just accepted, but enjoyed.  i’ve had it before in other senses.  friendish senses.  but not this way, and for that i feel as though i’m holding something rather shiny and pretty in my hands, and i can’t stop staring at it and marveling at how it got there.

so there’s that.  i also feel rather…odd.  not-quite-gone-with-the-grain.  i feel like that little whorl in a bit of wood that has a small eddy around it.

i keep thinking i know what to write tonight, but then i realize i really don’t.

what i’m thinking about right now is starlight.  it’s this soft silvery color, like strands of webbing that pulse with a quiet glow.  when i was younger, i got on this kick where i had to find out everything i could about astral projection.  all i wanted was to be able to leave my body so i could go explore the stars.  see the colors in the nebulae.  all of that.  i don’t know if astral projection is actually possible or not; all i know is that my goal was way out in space.

even though i don’t have a set path, i do know that i want to write something.

i truly love fall.  every year about this time, i seem to get a new lease on life.  the wiccan calendar ends at halloween.  samhain is the pagan new year.  in a lot of ways, that has always rather made sense to me.  it’s the death of all the growth of the year; trees turn, plants go dormant, animals hibernate, i wear fuzzy sweaters and drink excessive amounts of tea.  maybe that’s why halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  the new year is reborn from the  old, sort of like a phoenix rising from the ashes of a fiery death.

but really.  fall is awesome.  sweaters.  cuddles.  jackets.  leaves.  crisp air.  halloween.  pumpkins.  candles.  warm smells.

so tonight i feel thankful.  i feel lucky for having all of the above.  what a glorious thing.  couple thoughts for tonight:

we accept the love we think we deserve.

everyone is trying to be more or less than who they are, and it’s a violation either way.

goodnight, moon.

oddities, life lessons, and a starless void

maybe it’s working at a school, but i’m realizing lately just how much i’m learning about myself and how i work.  for instance, i’ve been trying to work on appreciating the small things in life as much as possible, like people who don’t tailgate and days when i can sleep in.  i’ve always sort of noticed the little things.  you’ll notice if you look at my facebook albums that i take an inordinate number of squirrel pictures.  i’m quirky.

i’m learning to appreciate a good quirk.  the squirrel thing is one.  i also tend to bounce when i have food — that’s something that i’ve mentioned before.

i really like sleeping.  as in…really like it.  so much i might even consider it a hobby.  first on the list is probably staying up late and sleeping in.  that is a glorious use of sleep right there.  there really isn’t much i find more personally satisfying than that, except perhaps adding a nice cuddle into the mix.  behind that is naps — the kind where you can get cozy in bed and curl up with a pillow.  again, also very nice if you add in a cuddle.  it’s one of my favorite things on the planet, sleeping.  maybe because the world just isn’t built for people like me, who function best between the hours of around 9 pm and 4 am.  add to that the fact that i get so anxious when i try to go to sleep that i have to drown out any little noises with a fan and have it completely dark, and i’m just not really made for this world.  so whenever i do get a chance to sleep and sleep well, i treasure it like it’s the last flower petal after a nuclear holocaust.

maybe that’s a little melodramatic…or not.

i also have some really ridiculous fears.  one i realized on the way to work this morning is that i’m afraid of the “friend zone.”  i think it’s an after-effect of one of the most favored relationship cliches:  “i think we’d be better off as friends.”  shudder.  what an awful thing.  of course, i’ve always been of the mind that the best relationships are passion rooted in very deep friendship, so hearing “we’re such good friends” as a reason to not be together is really counter-intuitive for me.  but maybe i’m weird.

on that note, and just because i thought of it, i’ve been thinking about just how many relationships begin about 2 seconds after meeting someone new.  you meet, you date — with dating as the way to get to know someone.  i’m a pretty picky person, so the percentage of people i like after a couple dates is pretty dismally low.  i think that’s one of the reasons i kinda hate dating.  i mean, face it — how often do people meet someone they really click with enough to have a relationship?  and i mean not just someone they can stand to be around for a few months — i mean someone who they genuinely like enough to get serious about.  that doesn’t happen very often.  and i see a lot of people who do the former and try to force it into the latter, which usually just makes a big, big mess.

maybe that’s why i’m so happy right now.  i’m in a relationship with someone i’ve known for almost a year and a half.  we didn’t start anything till now because of distance, but it sort of forced us to find out how we worked together.  and we work rather remarkably well.  i could get into this fully because frankly, i already knew that we still liked each other after over a year had gone by.  more, even.  i don’t have to worry about what i’m gonna think of him next month, and even better, i don’t have to worry about what he’s going to think of me.  he knows me pretty damn well, and he’s quite fond of me just as i am.

anyway, my current happy place aside.  i’m just sort of rambling.  i think i had other interesting things to say.

oh, right, that.  i remember now.  i wanted to talk about my fascination with preternatural critters.  you know, the ghoulies and ghosties, long leggedy beasties, things that go bump in the night, etc.  those ones.  (after seeing paranormal activity, “things that go bump in the night” take on a whole new level of yikes, by the way.  sheesh)  i have always, always, always liked the supernatural.  anything weird or creepy, gimme fangs and a full moon over sleepless in seattle any day (seriously, see above, re: sleep.  sleep > sleepless, hands down)

first of all, we’ll start with vampires.  and for the record, i’m not really that big a fan of the tragic vampire character.  you know, as in interview with, or angel from buffy.  or, *gasp, egads, the horror*, edward cullen.  i’m a big fan of the self-actualized vampire.  gimme a fanger who is quite fine and reconciled to her or his situation in unlife.  those characters are much more fun, because they’re just not so goddamn whiny.  “ooh, poor me, i’m beautiful and immortal and virtually indestructible, i don’t want to drink blood, call the waaaaambulance, wah.”  stake me now, why don’t you?

obviously, vampires in general are a rather interesting concept.  first of all, it’s not so entirely out of the ballpark of the conceivable.  there are plenty of critters on the planet who sustain themselves fully upon the nourishment of blood.  even some mammals.  so why not vampires?  plus, they’ve been so sensualized that they’re just so sexy.  vampires are irresistible.  even the ones who are supposed to just be ravening monsters (what you’d expect from say, 30 days of night if you only saw the movie and weren’t awesome enough to read the graphic novels).  they have an allure about them.  maybe it’s the fact that they almost always go for the neck, and that’s an erogenous zone for most people.  yep, i said it.  i think that might actually be one of the biggies in terms of why vampires rock people’s socks.  sexy little bloodsucking bastards.  bite my neck.

next, i’ll go onto witches.  i’m also gonna say here that they are not entirely out of the realm of possible.  who hasn’t looked up at the harvest moon in fall and felt that something magical could exist? there are plenty of unexplained phenomena out there that we don’t understand — not that they’re conclusively and ultimately unexplainable, but it’s usually enough to make you wonder on occasion.  witches are interesting as hell, because they can control things.  sometimes thoughts, sometimes manipulate the physical world or create something ex nihilo — all of which are really quite nifty tricks.  plus, they make great scapegoats.  someone in your village got cholera?  that’s because that grouchy old lady put a hex on her!  cows not givin milk?  damn witches must have spelled those titties.  better use them for combustibles.

which brings me to my main point about witches (not that they are flammable, weigh the same as a duck, or float).  witches are intriguing because they have power that allows them to change what is into what could be.  and we all know that human beings covet power.  that’s probably why witches have been both the subject of extreme interest in all of the literature, films, etc they have spawned/inspired and also got the whole short end of the scapegoat stick.  personally, i like them because they gots some shiny shit.

now for the furries.  and no, i’m not talking about people who strap on tails and perform bizarre sexual rituals (hey, to each their own.  if you wanna get some tail in a real and literal sense, at least it’s attached to a human and not something of the bestial variety.)  first of all, how freaking awesome would it be to change into another animal at will?  i can’t say i’d really enjoy having the moon dictate when i got furry with it, but if i could shift on command, that’d be sweet.  plus, the lycanthropes usually end up with the animal magnetism goin for them as well.  notice a trend with that?

on a very basic level, i think that psychologically, the furries represent the primal animal nature that we’ve (mostly) learned to eradicate in our oh-so-civilized culture.  the draw is about surrender to the instinct, surrender to the id.  (go, freud, go.)  so go for it.  take your tail and howl at the moon.  of course, lycanthropes are probably the most far-fetched of our preternatural critter zoological journey.  while you can stretch to think that psychic activity and bloodsuckers are within the stratosphere of the quasi-believable, shapeshifting is something that is like taking macroevolution and turning it up to eleven.  but they’re still fun as hell.

so that’s that bit.  now, since it’s about 2:23 am, and i’m wide awake, maybe that’s something to write about.  i really like nighttime.  first of all, i like the dark.  i have a hard time sleeping unless it’s as dark as possible.  cave-like, if at all feasible.  second, it’s peaceful.  maybe that’s the introvert in me; there are less people around after midnight.  i like the quiet of it, the serenity.  i also like stars, and i’ve always been fascinated by things in outer space.  nebulae and star clusters and galaxies far, far away……….. 🙂  ………..but really, there’s plenty of light when the sun goes down — it just doesn’t seem like it because it’s farther away.  i like night.

i think i’m kind of a weirdo.  i can’t help it, i suppose.  i like all manner of odd things.  i’ll go out of my way to step on a crunchy leaf in fall (look out, cos here they come).  i like looking at animals.  i’m very fond of tea.  i like books, movies, and videogames when they come with creepy crawlies and lots of blood and guts i can squash or shoot or pummel (or watch).  one of my favorite things is when someone brushes my hair back from my face.  i like the word “marmot.”  i cry when i think about world war ii.  i love all things celtic and handmade leather shoes.  i mostly don’t care for fashion, cos most of it doesn’t seem to really be me.  there’s an awful lot more to me than just that, i suppose.  when i read over that, it doesn’t sound all that weird, but i still often feel like i really don’t fit in.  i’m not sure what the reason for that is.

it’s another quiet night after a long sort of day.  my whimsy seems to have deserted me, and at the moment i feel sort of…lost and alone.  somedays the world seems so small that i can reach out and touch every part of it — see the rolling highlands of scotland with their heather and gorse, feel the grass of the planty under my hands with wawel castle in the distance in krakow, smell the olive trees in spain as the rainclouds roll in over the hills — but right now the world seems very vast, very much bigger than a very small me, with only a void slipping between my fingertips.

up too late, no sleep in sight

i’ve just teared up for the second time in a few hours.  the first was because i watched the bucket list, and aside from the point the movie was trying to make, i couldn’t help but be moved by ray’s wife.  it shows in the movie that theirs was a love that had fallen into ruin over the course of years.  yet when he came home finally, she lit up like a young girl.  she was ready to put on her sexy lingerie and make love to her husband…only to have him collapse on the floor and then die days later.  my heart wrenched for her as she came out of the bathroom glowing.  and saw her husband’s twitching legs on the other side of the bed.  to see her smile change to absolute agony was really…affecting.  she’s a secondary character in the film, and i felt like her story was tragic and painful.

i teared up again tonight talking to an old friend.  i’ve known him since 2006 — we were in poland together.  he told me the story of how his girlfriend and he got together.  it’s a beautiful story — they met four years ago and had a summer romance and never forgot about each other.  she found his number last november, and now they’re together, although they live three hours apart.  that’s not what made me teary though…sweet as it is.

karsten told me that i am strong.  he was the second person this late night to say that to me, and it kind of got to me.  today was a surreal day.  got up, was going to go to the arboretum, ended up doing paperwork for tfa and then going to see star trek…in the midst of the hum drum, i got a friend request on my second facebook account from an unwelcome source — a source i blocked on my normal account months and months ago — and a package of very odd easter trinkets from my dad, from whom i’ve barely heard in months.  he called me literally about 20 minutes after i got picked up at the airport last week here.  add to that a couple other slightly odd (but not bad) happenings and a bout of my chronic insomnia, and i was feeling a little less than strong.  karsten went on to say that he’s always thought i was a very strong person.  maybe i am, but i don’t feel like it.

a lot of the time i’m confused.  i don’t know what is expected of me.  i tend to be so blunt and candid that i forget that most people aren’t used to that.  there are all these nuances of human interaction that escape me.  i feel unsure of myself and nervous about how i’m perceived.  and i hate that something so arbitrary as a facebook friend request can send my heart into flutters and tie my stomach into knots.  i hate that i get nervous and a bit tongue-tied and shy.  there is so much to my personality that a lot of people never get to know because i’m afraid to let it show.  it’s stupid.  i’ve come out of my shell a lot, and i really like myself, but even when i feel strong, i never think of others seeing me that way.  not sure why that is.

so i teared up at that.  karsten told me that he thinks it’s amazing that i live my life and do what i need to do, wherever it takes me.  i always figure that people just see me as flighty.  i spend so much time trying to…i guess offer up what i have to give and wanting so much to share myself that i think i’m afraid it falls by the wayside.  not so much that it goes unnoticed but that it goes noticed and unwanted.  it’s almost five a.m., and i’m really not sure what i’m trying to say here.

i guess that…after an odd sort of day…watching a new day dawn from my own bed, i feel strangely hopeful.  maybe there’s hope for me after all.  so many things in my life right now seem to be falling into place.  some neatly with virtually no effort, others that will take work.  right now, at this moment, i feel like every one of them is worth the effort.  so i’ll keep moving forward and see where i end up — with teach for america, with washington dc, with people.  everything right now is the product of months of striving, toil, wondering, planning, hoping, working, and waiting.  and i’ll see it all through to the best of my ability.  maybe that’s strength.  if it is, i’ll take it.

“i’m looking for a new love…”

“…not just someone who loves when she’s drunk and fucked up…”

words by parachute musical, quite possibly butchered by me, on account of the fact that i’ve only heard that song a couple of times played live.  i’d definitely like to track it down.  but that’s digressing before i even get started.

this blog might get down and dirty a bit, in terms of personal.  i’m often willing to get personal on here–i’m a pretty open person.  but just…be warned.  i’m feeling a bit melancholy today, at a loss.  unsure of myself.  this is me at my not so hot.

“i’m looking for a new love.”
i don’t know if that’s true in a literal sense–meaning i’m not actively looking.  searching, maybe, on a philosophical level.  i’m someone who is pretty afraid of commitment.  if i think someone is more interested in me than i am in him, i get panicky.  i think it’s at least partly because i’m always afraid that if i’m interested in someone, he’ll be scared off.

i know where that comes from.  everyone has hang-ups–that’s one of the cool prizes for being human and interacting with other hung-up humans.  that’s one of mine.   and i know the source.  i waited seven months to tell my ex i loved him.  i waited until i was sure.  and he wasn’t.  sure, that is.  he left me a month later.  well, officially–he left me a lot sooner than that.  there was a lot more to it than that, but that image pretty much sums it up.  i told him how i felt, and he bolted.

i was filling out one of those stupid myspace surveys the other day, and one of the questions was, “do you think relationships are ever really worth it?”  my answer was an unequivocable yes.  i do think they’re worth it.  but it requires a lot of self-awareness and a willingness to battle with whatever baggage we have from previous encounters.  that’s what i’m doing right now.  battling.

everyone has issues.  the important thing is to recognize them and try to work them out–and to be open about them.  you can’t expect others to understand what you’re thinking if you don’t tell them.  i’m working on mine.  unfortunately (albeit as per usual), circumstance isn’t making it easy.

“…not just someone who loves when she’s drunk and fucked up…”
chemical intoxication aside, my thing here is that i want something mutual.  i’ve wasted far too much time in the past on people who just weren’t quite sure.  it’s exhausting, and i’m weary of it.

people are fickle critters.  emotions are seldom constant.  and it’s impossible to interpret silence.  relationships are such a mess.  and yet.

“will i have to spend this life alone?  where is my companion?”
words by catherine maclellan.  it’s been a long, long time since i’ve wanted a relationship.  i’m very gunshy.  i’ve fled relationships for the last year and a half.  but now…there’s a longing here.  i miss waking up in the morning and finding someone there.  sleepy smiles and starting the day together.  i miss hearing someone’s breathing as i go to sleep at night.  i miss sharing this life with another person.  sharing struggles, memories, present.  laughter.  i’m tired of the dating world.  i don’t even understand how it works.  the terminology is confounding to me.  when are you dating?  seeing someone?  where do other people fit in and how?  or do they?  when is it exclusive?  i don’t understand what the fuck all of it means.  it’s too much for my head, and i’m sick of trying to understand it.  i’m also semi-convinced it’s a crock.  dating is supposed to be, at its root, a way to get to know someone, right?  what if you already know them?  do you skip that part?  call me cynical, but i almost think it’s just an endless distraction.  when people find something special, they usually just go for it.  it works because it works, without the mind-numbing confusion.  dating’s just a way to pass the time till that comes along.

now i’m just ranting.  i suppose i’m lonely.  that’s the common word for wishing there was someone there.  i miss the companionship, the intimacy, the sex.  all of it.

“love never finds you when you want it to, it waits till you’ve stopped waiting.”
i know this is true.  and so i suppose i’ll just chill out.  i made the mistake once of trying to be with someone i knew wasn’t right for me.  biggest dating mistake of my life.  i know two things.  one, i don’t want to settle for someone who just isn’t sure if he wants me.  two, i don’t want to settle for someone anything less than extraordinary.  the trick is to find those things at once. and when you do find that, knowing enough not to let it slip away.  to be brave enough to take that risk.

waiting is hard.  hoping at all on some flickering spark of a chance is hard.  it hurts.  it’s messy.  wondering what will happen–or if anything will happen.  that is where i am right now.  stranded in the realm of “we’ll see,” where anything is possible.  i don’t even know what to think.  maybe i’m stupid to hope for this.  i don’t want to let it slip away, but i’m only half of it.  it’s not all up to me.  and i guess, at the end of the day, i’m afraid that he’ll let me slip away.  i don’t want to get away.  i want him to keep me.  but right now, i just have to wait and see.  be happy if something happens and if it doesn’t, be sad and then go on with my life.

lonely.  yeah, that’s it.  i don’t just want anyone, either.  i want the chance for something really special.

“all these things i can’t figure out alone; they don’t matter with someone.  maybe i should learn to let it all go and just have some fun.”
catherine maclellan is probably right.

oddity. shooting stars in february skies. eat with chopsticks, hear their sighs.

comfortable.  soft cushion milkweed tuft sheets and shirts and pillows.  quiet hums and electronic gurgles beyond the raindrop pat of keys.  thoughts ripple, curl and stretch.

a star fell thursday in the southern sky, a blazing trail that lingered frozen in time then slipped away like a pebble into a pool.

coolness of fabric on too-warm feet.  rushing air into lungs can’t fill it all before the end of a breath.  silk skin, wrists, hands.  bones and blanket.  all there, all remains.  warm satin haze.  night and stars, glimmer of orion’s belt outshines casseopeia’s throne.  no trail before them, simply stasis– they will shed light long past the bowman’s funeral pyre.

smile, laugh, mirrored eyes.  shifting, slanting, stay.

fork in the road–one path interstate, one path cul-de-sac.  spun round, blindfolded, pushed toward the break, but already a block’s been placed.

waiting, watching stars go by.  epmtpy places filled.  eyes pass and look but do not see.

hands itch for brush of heather-covered hills, toes dipped in peat-washed waters.  rare as diamonds, sun shining through drops of falling rain onto gorse and grass and oak.  rowans whisper in the grove.  pulse.  heart.  drum.  breeze embrace, leapt from the sea.

circling now, soft exhale.  waves and ocean colors shine but not far from sugared dreams of warmful wakings after cradled contented night. ceruleean nd ruby movings now wonder wander through.  deeper chord carries the path to rest.  curled in clouds and sweet caressing nest.   sleep beckons and tomorrow waits in the wings to follow  stars through the skies.  eat  with chopsticks, hear their sighs.

I want to wake up with the rain falling on a tin roof…

Maybe “roof” isn’t the right word, but I surely woke up to the rain.

It’s 5:45 AM.  I never see the day dawning from this side–If I see 5:45 AM, I’m always looking at it from the other side, from the staying up all night side.  It’s a bit odd being awake right now.

I’m not entirely certain why I woke up.  The rain is sort of loud.  But it’s pleasant.  It’s been sunny and hot lately, and I was due for some rain.  All in all, I’m not overly impressed with Tennessee’s weather so far.  I hate being hot.  I’m quite happy to wake up to the rain this morning.

The sound of rain always contents me.  I’ve always been a water person.  Whether hearing droplets fall from sky to earth or simply washing my hands, I always pay attention to it.  When I was younger, I always used to play with the hose out in the sunshine in Montana and watch the sparkling fat drops glitter like diamonds as the rays hit them over the backdrop of the Northern Rockies.  I’ve never seen the point behind buying diamond rings when you have water.

I wanted more.

Things never work out the way you expect them to.  I certainly didn’t expect to wake up so early this morning.  I was exhausted when I went to bed at 12:30 AM, mainly because I rarely make it to bed before 1 or 2 on weeknights, and around 3 – 4 on weekends, if not later.  Night owls are always condemned to less sleep than their daywalking counterparts–I’ve become accustomed, if not resigned, to that fact.

Waking up to the rain is pleasant, however.  It made me want to write.  Pretty soon, I wil have to get up and go to work, but for now I’m here.  My bed is that perfect warm, the cool outside air and the breeze from the fan have placed me into a coccoon of gentle morning bliss here sandwiched between my nest of pillows and my down comforter.  There are worse ways to wake up.

How do you ask for what you want if asking comes at the possible expense of losing it?  How do you know what you want, even?

I hate playing games.  There is always this balance game, this highwire act that women and men play together when they are unsure where they stand.  Are they on the platform, safe?  Or are they perched precariously on the edge of a line, suspended over nothing with no net to catch them if they fall?  I kind of feel like the latter.

It’s self-preservation at its best.  Don’t put yourself out there.  You’ll get slapped against the pavement, dropped from the heights of your hopes and/or expectations.

I was told last night by a good friend that I am too cynical.  Am I?  She was being fatalistic to an extreme, and I’ve never done well when people tell me things will work out if they are meant to be.  I think that’s a cop out answer because people don’t want to admit that things rarely work out.  Meant to be.  I see more sense in the thought that relationships are the Elephant Dance.

This is a concept that I came up with at a songwriters’ group here in Nashville a few months back.  Someone threw out the title “The Elephant Dance,” and the songwriter there, Kirsti Manning, asked us what that song would be about.  Some people thought literal.  I thought about couples.

We meet.  We either click or don’t.  You’re either attracted to someone or you’re not.  Sometimes there’s enough there to make you at least curious.  More rarely, there’s an instant zing, and within days or hours you find yourself plunked directly into a new life.  But then comes the problem.  People are terrified of getting hurt.  Because all of us have a lot of pain that we carry around with us like we are some sort of pachyderm.  Two people trying to interact with all that baggage is like an elephant dance.

How do we do it?  Put out your trunk, poke at them a little bit.  If their trunk meets yours, you might move a little closer to them.  If they slap it away or stomp on it, you run away.

I’m the last person who could explain why sometimes it works.  Why two people meet and click and bam, find themselves drawn to one another.  That lil spark.  Most people seem to go about their lives–this is my thought based on interactions with friends, etc.–content without that spark.  They find the vaguely curious and pat them with their trunk until the other elephant pats them back.  Then they try to be together.  Those usually don’t work.  In fact, they have a tendency to fall apart rather spectacularly.

It’s the inexplicable connections that have the most potential.  But they are scary as hell, and more often than not are met with remarkable obstacles and barriers, so people just let them go.  With risk comes the possibility for great gain, but when do you decide how worth it is?

I sure as hell don’t know.  It’s a gamble that could pay off, but dancing with elephants is a good way to be trampled.

The last time it happened to me, I ended up…well.  Heartbroken.  In the meantime between then and now, I’ve tried the other way.  Some spluttering miniscule spark that both people try to fan because they’re just so damn lonely, even when their elephants can barely fit in the same room with one another.  The Elephant Dance has caused my world to be wrecked–two giant pachyderms can cause a hell of a lot of destruction when they’re not careful.

So when you do find a spark that doesn’t seem to splutter but grows itself larger, that feeds even on distance and time and blossoms into a warm blaze when given even half a chance, what do you do?  First of all, you better hope it’s mutual.  That’s the scariest part…but if it is, then what?  Because those ones have mandatory roadblocks, and sometimes the price is just too high.  Even if you can see some of their baggage and have some idea what you’ll have to dance with, even if you saw it and want nothing more than to help heal it, to fix it, to remove that haunted look and tone–even then, they might not want you to.

This is a “what now?” sort of week.  A lot of things from the past few months came to fruition in a variety of different ways.  But even though I’ve resolved some if-onlies and watched hard work pay off in huge and historic proportions, I’m now left sitting and writing at 6:20 on a Friday morning, listening to a harmony of rain in key with some truly great music, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

There are a lot of options, and none of them seem safe.

I think I will write that song after all.