I'm not sure if I'm bored or just growing up, but I've started craving time by myself more and more lately. I am decidedly NOT cut out for the restaurant industry...looking back, the only reason I liked working in a restaurant in high school was because I really liked my coworkers, and other areas of my life were kind of crappy, so comparatively, work wasn't bad. Nowadays, I have other fulfilling areas and so work is just work.

Anyway. Here I am on the dividing line of my past and my future (as Jack Kerouac calls it) and I am not sure whether it's the most comfortable place to be. Application deadlines, and then hearing back from these things...it's a lot of waiting. Teetering on the verge.

Here's the quote: I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

I'm sure I've used this quote before...but it's a good one nonetheless and particularly applicable to my situation.

The sun today was glorious. I didn't have to wear my coat that I am SO tired of. Or scarves that I can never get to match with what I'm wearing. Wearing flip-flops would be optimal, but there I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

I went for a run and it felt oh so good. I think I lost my ipod, so I didn't have any music, but I think I was a lot more aware of the sun and how good it felt to be outside and not have to tense my body up against the cold. Then I came back to the house and sat on my porch. And just sat. I looked around, and everything is still dead, with the brown leaves on the ground, and the dull, yellow grass and all the sky you can see because there are no leaves to obscure it. But I can feel it all about to come back, slowly.

Anytime I think about prayer or growing closer to some sort of spirituality, I immediately want to consult a book. But this is the easy solution, to adopt someone else's spirituality, as opposed to looking inside myself and coming up with my own answers. I am a big fan of learning from those who I believe are smarter than me. But with spirituality, I think it's gotta come from within. I also feel like yoga will help me to get quiet and at least try to feel something out there. I think I have a large capacity for spirituality, and love and things like that, although I guess everyone feels that way. If I could only find where I'm supposed to be, who I'm supposed to be with, and what I'm supposed to believe, maybe I could be incredibly happy.

I'm beginning to feel more and more like all I really have, when it comes down to it, is me. I've got to become better friends with myself and learn to love myself more. Next to myself, I suppose, is family, but even that is not entirely reliable. Everything else seems to fall away. I'm not whining, I'm just stating what I've learned.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
-Thomas Merton

When I think sometimes about how life is all in those little gestures, it makes me realize that when you fall for someone, it's always because of those tiny quirks you notice. And those little things make you more intimate with that person than any physical thing (except maybe for holding hands--something that seems so simple and unobtrusive, but is actually the most intimate action there is).

When you look back on it, even when you aren't in love with them anymore, that's what you remember...the way they look when they're driving. Or a certain mole. Or how they always sneezed multiple times in a row. Inside jokes. It's never "oh I loved them because they were sincere, kind, intelligent." It's because of some sort of chemistry that happens when you mix these little pieces of who someone is, their gestures and their handwriting and the line of their jaw.

There is this book called The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and I lent it out and haven't gotten it back. But part of this quote stuck with me...it's something like how the character "didn't understand how I could miss the way someone holds things."

Occasionally

in this wintertime, where my life feels frozen and my body seems to freeze with it, I get a reminder that I am, in fact, very alive.

For example, today in yoga. It was a hot yoga class, which was exactly what I needed, and it was the sort of class where you basically get to rest in just a few long poses. And breathe. And be aware of your breath. I feel like I'm closer to the point of being at peace now.

And then, earlier this weekend, there was the sort of reminder of my aliveness in the form of Beale Street and the music and alcohol that comes with that. Oh and my not giving a shit what I'm doing. Wonderful wonderful wonderful, and I believe I have perfected the art of learning to be casual with boys.

Outside the street's on fire
In a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night
They reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded
Not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland

-Bruce Springsteen

Aaaaand for my fourth post of the day (my GOSH!)...

I haven't had time to write, let alone think, as I have been working/going to class/etc almost nonstop for the past week or so. But here I am, enjoying a lovely evening, doing nothing but watching Weeds, being on Facebook, reading random poems online, and writing. I needed this, bad. I have gotten very accustomed to my time by myself at night. This is a good thing, I think.

I was feeling sort of anxious. For one, I'm graduating, soon. This is incredibly exciting and also very very scary, obviously. I just want to do something that makes me so ridiculously happy. This grandness is all I want. I'm afraid I won't end up where I want to be, that what I really want to do will be pushed to the wayside in favor of what I should do.

I don't know what I want!

And--I don't know if you ever feel like this, but I've been feeling inadequate lately. Like my life isn't good enough, like I don't have it together, like I am not as badass as I normally see myself. I guess this is normal. I've just been second-guessing myself, being sort of inside myself, if that makes sense, instead of being focused on all that is out there. It's tiring. I think we all need reminders that our best is good enough. That you--just you there, without making an effort--are more than enough.

Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.  

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:  

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.  

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.  

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.  

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,  

A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.  

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, --  

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled  

Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.  

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.  

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,  

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;  

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.  

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

What snow means

at age 21

A bit more careful, a bit more cautious, I was no longer ready to wreck everything. I thought I had lost the urge to tear across my backyard destroying the smoothness, as I was curled up, there in the center of my big bed, surrounded by other rooms with similar beds, nested comfortably in the center of my world. My life was neatly organized, as I had learned the effects of letting in something or someone who might rearrange what I had built up so carefully. When I did, it felt a lot like falling. I know now that you never do learn.
This organization, tidiness never lasts for long. I am pulled out of bed, come outside! It's snowing! So I went. Destruction of our collective college backyard ensues, the sort of destruction only possible at age 21, when I am at the peak of my being (or at least this is how it feels). I could feel myself growing down, shocked by the sudden coldness, the sudden energy of becoming that seven-year-old kid again who is so excited to be up and about at 3 in the morning. And then, eventually, retreating in happy exhaustion, peeling off the layers. Back to my tiny room and crawling back to the familiarity of my bed, with the covers around me and my window at my head, a little fogged up from the cold outside and warm inside. I couldn't sleep as I became aware that I had knocked my walls down, and I had let myself be rearranged.

I haven't seen the sun for approximately three days. It starts to take its toll on me. It's only January, but I'm ready for something besides these layers I wear over and over again. I want sundresses, shorts, flip-flops (especially). I want to swim!

Spring is never uneventful. I don't know if it's just coincidence or something else, but things happen in the spring. I am ready for things to happen. I'm ready to peel off all the layers and hopefully be something new.

I am

here, at my house, happily exhausted and drinking a beer after a loooong day at work. This weekend was hard, but I feel like a badass because I've gotten through a lot and I am owning that. I am on the other side (I think, I hope), I have my moments of weakness, but I'm realizing that these are only moments, temporary and to be expected because of the smallness of my world.

I'm feeling tons and tons and oodles and extra helpings of hope lately. I was smiling for no reason at all today. Of course, this same sort of hope ends up making me want to bash my head up against walls when all is said and done. I ain't dead inside yet, is the point.

There may be a reason.

I've been having to work extra hard to keep the crazy in lately. I apologize.

I think we are all a bit crazy, some people in more obvious and glaring ways than others. I am definitely oftentimes more than a little crazy.

The fault lines

But if the world could remain within a frame
Like a painting on a wall
Then I think we'd see the beauty then
And stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges
Like a story told
By the fault lines and the soil

What Snow Means

At seven

I can remember waking up and feeling a stillness running all the way down to my seven-year-old feet. I would know it was snowing before I even opened the blinds. That's what I remember best--the stillness. Because, for once in a long while, no cars were rolling down the suburban streets, carrying lunchboxes, grammar workbooks, and Capri Sun. The minivans had all taken a day off, resting in the two-car garages, for once without caffeine-spiked drinks in their cupholders.

And we were on the couch, pajamas on and breaths held nervously in anticipation of seeing "Christ the King School" scrolling across the bottom of the screen. They couldn't possibly make us go to school, we thought, just look outside at those three inches of snow that coated our lawns like God himself had come down from upon high and spread the world with complete and utter joy.

So, boots on our feet and mittens on our hands, we went out. The only sounds we could hear were the soft crunching of the snow beneath our feet and the ice groaning heavily on the trees. A cold clarity bit at our ears and hurt our eyes. Our goal, looking back, was to destroy, to gloriously violate this peace, this purity, like pirates or Vikings. Raping and pillaging. Except, instead of pirate weapons, our ammo was snow angels, snowball fights, footprints and sledding.

Sledding. That was the best part, the possibility of real danger and the rush of adrenaline we felt as we were going slightly out of control, at the mercy of the snow gods.

A fever and a childish wish for snow, again

With all this applying, I've come to realize that "Will you serve as a reference?" is my code for "I think you're a really awesome teacher/person/I have an intellectual crush on you/you are one of the main reasons I want to teach/please be my friend or at least think I'm a good student/please let me come to your office and tell you about my life and let me hear about yours."

I am focusing on this, my future, so I don't have to think about how I felt during snow last year versus how I'm feeling this year. Why is it that snow means so damn much to me? I am ridiculously sentimental.

I am so READY for just about anything new to happen to me. Today I was on the Lasallian Volunteer website looking at the various places I might be sent...I'm really hoping for Oakland, CA teaching ESL. That or Chicago working in a high school, most likely as a T.A. I can't wait to explore a new city! (If I get it, that is...)

If not, I'll find something else. Ugh, I hate how I'm getting my hopes all tangled up in this. Makes me nervous.

The other day, I was just feeling down and couldn't think of the reason, and a friend of mine correctly identified the source: I'm bored. I think that starting this next semester will give me something to be somewhat passionate about for a minute or so. But I'll get tired of that soon because I am just so done with college. This year has been weird. I had a feeling it would. Most of my friends graduated last semester, and CBU really just hasn't felt the same since. I've gotten to know a lot of the freshman and sophomore chillens, but it still is sad that everyone kind of has gone their separate ways.

My epiphany

Aaaahhh I just had such an epiphany and I think I always realized it, but right now it's just hitting me.

I know I'm always writing about my love life, or lack thereof, and I apologize for it, but it's my blog. And you'll listen, right????!!!!!!!

Haha anyway. I think that certain things had to happen this semester so that I would be fully ready to take off and do things far away from home in my future. I'm applying for this job teaching English at a camp in Italy, and I want to do Lasallian Volunteers, both of which will take me to far away places.

Now, I am realizing that part of the reason that I did not jump on the Barcelona stuff sooner (like making every effort/making it work SOMEHOW) was because I had certain distractions. If you know what I'm saying. Love (or whatever) makes me do things I wouldn't normally do, or rearrange and change my plans.

So now, here I am, wonderfully unattached and I think I'm gonna be QUITE ready to go to Italy/wherever LV sends me. And if somehow that relationship had held out all year and we went our seperate ways at that end of this coming semester, I think I would have been recovering for months and months, and I don't think my heart would be in this program in Italy/Lasallian Volunteers/both. So, it's good that it happened, and it's good that it happened when it did, although it's been hard to see that through the fog that was this past semester.

Also, who knows, if that relationship HAD held out, I would have been even further into it and less likely to leave. More likely to stay in Memphis/make decisions based on what someone else is doing, and now is the time for me to go my own way and do things for myself. I have lots of time for compromise and taking another person into account.

since feeling is first by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e. e. cummings

The previous entry is evidence of why I shouldn't drink and stay up late. I feel fine now.

"You can't get away from yourself by moving from place to place. There's nothing to that." -Jake, The Sun Also Rises

I had to memorize that quote for some dumb IB essay test way back in the 11th grade, and it has stuck with me. Right now, I'm wanting to move...get away from the messes that these past years have created, what a tangled web we weave. Well, I guess I created the messes, they didn't just happen over the past years.

So, in light of this quote, it's still fun to entertain the idea of becoming someone else in a different place. In a way, I think you do really become someone else to new people you meet. The people who have known me for four years, or longer, know me as me presently, but also as me when I was a freshman. I am an entirely different person now than I was four years ago. But you are your past as well to those who have known you for a long time. If you want to escape your past badly enough, sometimes you want to escape those who see you as both your past and present.

I was looking back on my blog entries from the beginning of 2010. And I remember having such a good feeling about the semester and the year in general. Butterflies, I called it.

This year...I just can't seem to muster that same kind of good anticipation. I hate this huge transition, and the little transition between semesters I'm in right now. I hate this time of year. I hate that I feel like I don't have any daily things to look forward to. I hate not knowing where my place is, and the general feeling of losing it these past few months. I feel like I've lost awareness of myself and the world, like I'm just passing through the days, I can't focus.

But I have to remember that just because I'm feeling cynical about this year doesn't mean it's going to be bad. We gotta stay positive. I'm sure it isn't all going to be good, but I'm also sure that 2011 will have its moments, if I can just get the energy to create them. I've gotta find something.