Oooh, I found a big intense entry in my travel journal. I didn't date it, but it was definitely written while on some other land mass. Probably Dominica, since I talk about climbing waterfalls. In fact, it must have been Dominica. I think I was sitting in the hammock outside our room at the Hibiscus Valley Inn drinking a Kabouli while Erin took a mostly cold shower. We had just come back from one of our waterfall days, bruised and muddy, exhausted and exhilarated. Jack and Scottie, our puppy companions, were under the hammock, keeping watch and once in a while getting up for a pat on the head. It's the same rambling as always, but it doesn't sound like my inside voice. Must have meant this one, and I'm kind of into it...
I am tired of writing on purpose now, and want just to write. We'll see if my brain and hands want the same thing.
To want to explore, one has to have explored. Ignorance is bliss and all of that and you will probably be perfectly content with all that you are handed if you never look up. If you never look out. So, record setters are always looking to break their own records. Scholars are always looking for another degree. Travelers are always looking for the next place.
What the hell does "contentment" even mean? Is it more admirable, more attractive to want exactly what you have? As you climb, do you forget to look down? It seems that wanderers often land in soft places and find refuge alone. Many age in gardens by the sea, or on white beaches and dune grass. And alone. So often alone.
The more things a person sees, the fewer people there are to relate to. "I have been here. And also here. There as well." "That's fascinating. Did you see what is on TV tonight?"
And so it goes. Many people's minds can only travel as far as their arms have stretched. This is not a rule, certainly, as daydreamers still stare at desktop globes, but it might be fairly safe to call it the norm.
So you can tap the brakes a bit, and hope to the clouds for someone else to catch up. But you could wait forever, fidgeting, restless and wondering about what more there is to see and the time that is being wasted.
Or you see only green lights and you rip out the rearview. Slowing down for very little. Stopping for nothing. And the hairs gray, and the skin wrinkles. And old, well-worn knees can only handle landing in soft places, can't they? And no one ever caught up.
If you had never climbed to that first waterfall, you would not be obsessed with climbing another. Pushing is not a stagnant act; it comes from momentum and spine strength. Movement begets movement. If your spine goes out in the middle of a push, you fall backwards. If you overestimate a push, you lose what is solid and steady and you fall face-first with nothing to hold on to, as you have shoved it all away from yourself.
And how can you expect anyone to catch up to a fall? Maybe the best you can hope for is someone to be there at the very end. Not to catch you, but to pat you on the back for landing mostly in once piece and then to reacquaint you with firm ground; to teach you how nice walking in a straight line can be.
And you still look up, but less, maybe. I am left hoping that eventually, looking at what is in front of me will be all that I want.
I don't even have a bad case of it, to tell you the truth. I am not sure that I've got the stomach for it, nor the guts. The threat of addiction is often good motivation for moderation (I liked "tions" in this sentence, huh?). And to venture more deeply into this likely means leaving most everybody behind, and maybe not being able to stop. I love to love more than that would really allow. Closeness, affection, depth of relationships. Things I think I have chosen. I don't want to be seventy, living in the rainforest alone. Even if I am happy that way, and even if it means getting to have a mango tree.
Tapping the brakes.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Convenient Definitions
You know, I tried to read a Tom Robbins book once. I can not recall which one, but it couldn't hold my interest at the time. A few paragraphs in, my restless mind wandered away from the page and it never got a fair chance at a comeback. But today, while looking for a quote I had heard somewhere about love (“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”― Still Life With Woodpecker), I found a bell, and it will ring in my head until I write about it.
In some book that I have been so careless as to have not yet read, he says, “Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered and free than captive and comfortable.”
Ah. There it is. An impressively simple summation of nearly everything I struggle with, and this guy has never even met me. The statement is true to me, though I can't speak to what it means to Tom Robbins or to anyone else. It is at least mostly true of at least most people I know. Captivity has deserved negative connotations, and I just don't think that the word comfortable is feared enough. Complacency is stagnation is boredom is lifelessness, if not quite as dramatic as actual death. To be scared is to really feel. We should be in a semi-constant state of tightrope walking; holding our arms straight from our sides, teetering and thrilled and wondering if we are going to make it across shaped the same way we were when we started. Hoping we won't. Fear is growth, isn't it? Uncertainty has the ability to promise that you will end the trek surprised by your own ability to make it work, whatever that it might end up being.
This has always been my big advertisement for travel, I suppose, and for gypsyism. Go! Be uncomfortable! Revel in the conscious expansion of your own mind and your heart.
But what is captivity? In my little commitmentphobic mind, captivity is born of roots. Of love, and the anchor that love can be. Of fluorescent lighting in supermarkets and shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond. Of all the things that have become boring because I have expressed my fear of them so many times without even trying to come up with different terminology. But I am beginning to feel that I have been captive to those thoughts and comfortable in that life. The two things I regard as soul crushers, as dulling agents, have weaseled their way into my own life disguised as a manifesto of unfurling. I am comfortable with moving, and uncomfortable with staying. I am held captive by my unwillingness to fall in love with something without the guarantee of falling back out. I have managed to define my fears by the world's version of them, instead of my own.
How sneaky.
In some book that I have been so careless as to have not yet read, he says, “Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered and free than captive and comfortable.”
Ah. There it is. An impressively simple summation of nearly everything I struggle with, and this guy has never even met me. The statement is true to me, though I can't speak to what it means to Tom Robbins or to anyone else. It is at least mostly true of at least most people I know. Captivity has deserved negative connotations, and I just don't think that the word comfortable is feared enough. Complacency is stagnation is boredom is lifelessness, if not quite as dramatic as actual death. To be scared is to really feel. We should be in a semi-constant state of tightrope walking; holding our arms straight from our sides, teetering and thrilled and wondering if we are going to make it across shaped the same way we were when we started. Hoping we won't. Fear is growth, isn't it? Uncertainty has the ability to promise that you will end the trek surprised by your own ability to make it work, whatever that it might end up being.
This has always been my big advertisement for travel, I suppose, and for gypsyism. Go! Be uncomfortable! Revel in the conscious expansion of your own mind and your heart.
But what is captivity? In my little commitmentphobic mind, captivity is born of roots. Of love, and the anchor that love can be. Of fluorescent lighting in supermarkets and shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond. Of all the things that have become boring because I have expressed my fear of them so many times without even trying to come up with different terminology. But I am beginning to feel that I have been captive to those thoughts and comfortable in that life. The two things I regard as soul crushers, as dulling agents, have weaseled their way into my own life disguised as a manifesto of unfurling. I am comfortable with moving, and uncomfortable with staying. I am held captive by my unwillingness to fall in love with something without the guarantee of falling back out. I have managed to define my fears by the world's version of them, instead of my own.
How sneaky.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Sometimes I can't think of a title.
Oh, I suppose I am getting used to things, aren't I? Am I? I went for a run today. The air smelled of pine and every sense is used to salt water wind. The evergreen air is a mile nearer to the sun than my dear seaside route. My lungs feel it, and so does my skin. My heart has to work more. In more than one way, I think, but we are talking about running now. I am talking about running now. After three stunningly long miles, I landed in the grass. It's brown still, and coarse. It crunches a little and I had to avoid pine cones, but I was determined. I will lay here, look up at the blue sky, cloudless in the way that Colorado tends to be, and be happy.
Offices are the lowest depth of misery. Basement offices about two levels below that lowest depth. And I get it. People do this. Most people do this, if we are going to talk percentages. It's the real world that I never wanted to be part of.
I am used to weekdays that blend into weekends with few seams and no bumps. The fact that you have to work does not particularly matter, unless it's on a boat trip day. You are in the sun. That same sun will still be out when you leave work. So when my roommate and cousin asked what I am doing on my Friday night, he thought it strange that I am not, in fact, doing anything. It never would have occurred to me that this was strange. But I'm getting it, I think. People live for their weekends in this life. Maybe they haven't figured out how to live their weekdays all the way. Or, more likely, I just haven't figured out the rest of it all the way. But there are parks to run in. And the sun is here, too.
The walls are still up, I am finding. I am beginning to understand that everyone does this. It is not necessarily some offset consequence of the way I have been living, which was my theory for more than a while. People protect themselves. In my case, it is because I assume that everyone is going to leave. Or that I will. So getting close to someone is baiting heartache, which I have certainly done my share of. Anyone here ever start seeing someone when you know you are leaving that particular land mass in a month or so? I have. More than once. More than twice. Anyone made a best friend knowing that you probably won't ever see them again past a named, ticket-purchased date? I've done that, too. More times than will fit on ten fingers.
The assumption is that everything moves more slowly in the islands. Island time, they call it-- a term I have always found irritating. We walk slowly there. We breathe a little more deeply. The Post Office is in far less of a hurry, and you can stand in line at the bank for more than an hour if you go at lunchtime on payday. But friendships in places like that are speed trains. There is simply no time to waste, and no need. You are unmasked at hello. Every weirdness, every neurosis, every tic. They all come out and shake hands. When no one is permanent, there is no reason to hide. It is an etch-a-sketch life. Nine months, one quick shake, and most of it falls out. Why bother with small talk?
It is different here. I am slowly learning this. Everyone is guarded a bit, I think, not entirely willing to be exactly who they are. Here, there is time. And there is permanence. So what, really, is the rush? There are stigmas and social norms, none of which exist in St. John unless you are a tourist, in which case you are inevitably judged as such and therefore not given any investment. The thing is, you can take your time here. Patience has different meanings in different places. Steps towards others are timid and small, as you watch yourself and you watch everyone else and make sure that the conversations are taking place as they should, with no intrusions or overreaches. I have to keep myself from jumping in with my eyes closed, as I usually do. Asking questions you're not supposed to ask yet. Coming off as nosy when I am just interested. And uninterested in wasting time. I need to work on my small talk, and how to tread lightly.
For now, I will continue being the weird kid. Until I figure this place out.
And I will sleep, because tomorrow will be my first full day in the sun since October. Maybe I can get those tan lines to come back.
Offices are the lowest depth of misery. Basement offices about two levels below that lowest depth. And I get it. People do this. Most people do this, if we are going to talk percentages. It's the real world that I never wanted to be part of.
I am used to weekdays that blend into weekends with few seams and no bumps. The fact that you have to work does not particularly matter, unless it's on a boat trip day. You are in the sun. That same sun will still be out when you leave work. So when my roommate and cousin asked what I am doing on my Friday night, he thought it strange that I am not, in fact, doing anything. It never would have occurred to me that this was strange. But I'm getting it, I think. People live for their weekends in this life. Maybe they haven't figured out how to live their weekdays all the way. Or, more likely, I just haven't figured out the rest of it all the way. But there are parks to run in. And the sun is here, too.
The walls are still up, I am finding. I am beginning to understand that everyone does this. It is not necessarily some offset consequence of the way I have been living, which was my theory for more than a while. People protect themselves. In my case, it is because I assume that everyone is going to leave. Or that I will. So getting close to someone is baiting heartache, which I have certainly done my share of. Anyone here ever start seeing someone when you know you are leaving that particular land mass in a month or so? I have. More than once. More than twice. Anyone made a best friend knowing that you probably won't ever see them again past a named, ticket-purchased date? I've done that, too. More times than will fit on ten fingers.
The assumption is that everything moves more slowly in the islands. Island time, they call it-- a term I have always found irritating. We walk slowly there. We breathe a little more deeply. The Post Office is in far less of a hurry, and you can stand in line at the bank for more than an hour if you go at lunchtime on payday. But friendships in places like that are speed trains. There is simply no time to waste, and no need. You are unmasked at hello. Every weirdness, every neurosis, every tic. They all come out and shake hands. When no one is permanent, there is no reason to hide. It is an etch-a-sketch life. Nine months, one quick shake, and most of it falls out. Why bother with small talk?
It is different here. I am slowly learning this. Everyone is guarded a bit, I think, not entirely willing to be exactly who they are. Here, there is time. And there is permanence. So what, really, is the rush? There are stigmas and social norms, none of which exist in St. John unless you are a tourist, in which case you are inevitably judged as such and therefore not given any investment. The thing is, you can take your time here. Patience has different meanings in different places. Steps towards others are timid and small, as you watch yourself and you watch everyone else and make sure that the conversations are taking place as they should, with no intrusions or overreaches. I have to keep myself from jumping in with my eyes closed, as I usually do. Asking questions you're not supposed to ask yet. Coming off as nosy when I am just interested. And uninterested in wasting time. I need to work on my small talk, and how to tread lightly.
For now, I will continue being the weird kid. Until I figure this place out.
And I will sleep, because tomorrow will be my first full day in the sun since October. Maybe I can get those tan lines to come back.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Make Up Your Mind
Big thoughts always seem to happen when I am doing small things. Saying that I have epiphanies is horrendously self-important. They are not epiphanies or revelations or even eureka moments. But it seems that my best bet for wrangling the honest, real thoughts out of my spiderweb head is doing the dishes. Or blow drying my hair. Or, as was the case yesterday, driving myself out of the parking garage after a day at work. In some instant between the subbasement and the basement levels, I finally realized that the life I am looking for--not the vacation life or the pretend city girl life-- might not even exist. And that I feel like I'm running out of time.
The thing is that I want two distinct lives. At the same time, please. I want the one I have been living; filling my passport, refusing to commit to anything more than impermanence, saving money for plane tickets, toting around journals and cameras and making sure my iPod is always charged for those train rides and air hours. Granted, I lived in St. John for almost three years the second time around. That doesn't sound impermanent, does it? But it was, really. Because the entire time I was there, I was not sure how long it would last. I knew it wouldn't last. There was no way to make plans for anything more than about 6 months out. St. John is also the place where I was able to decide to go to Europe and buy that plane ticket within two weeks of said trip. Without planning, without much thought. Just to go. Living that way would have landed me in Oregon about two months from now. To another seaside place, which I would have loved for a while and left eventually.
And then. Then there's this life. Here, I am surrounded by true, good friends whom I have known for so long that everything is comfortable and nothing is new and it is wonderful that way. I went on a "How I Met Your Mother" kick when I lived in the islands, and I remember envying the characters. I was jealous that they got to hang out with each other in a normal life. They had all known each other for most of their adult lives and were past the small talk where you ask where people are from and what they did there and how long they've been doing what they are doing. I have probably had a thousand conversations in the last six years that never went beyond that. Not that I didn't make best friends in the islands. I did. But I have desperately missed the people who know my whole history because they were there for it. We have all loved each other through every phase, every boyfriend and girlfriend, every bump in the road. We have loved watching each other grow and morph. There will not ever be a time in my life when can't I fall into these friends.
In that vein, my family is here. I can see them any time I want to. Holidays and birthdays. If I need to snap out of it or if I need advice or if I just need to give my heart a break, my grandmother is a fifteen minute drive away. My mom and dad are another 45 minutes away. My cousin lives in the room next to me. Where I miss the beaches or my wine drinking tent friends, there are people here to fill those spaces.
I love that at 10:00 last night, I got call from a friend demanding that I meet her at a bar I have never been to, and that I could go. I didn't need a cab. It didn't take thirty pain in the ass minutes to get there. And it's refreshing to know that there is a whole city full of places like that.
There is comfort in deciding to live somewhere, isn't there? You can settle in. You can invest in things and people. The wall that I have spent so many years building can come down now. I do not have to distance myself from anything, knowing that attachment is suffering that everyone (including-or most of all-me) leaves eventually. I even bought a vacuum. Buying a vacuum means that I own something that won't fit in a flat rate box that I can send to my some new home. Weird. I might even date someone with whom there is an actual future and maybe no expiration date. Ok, I won't get ahead of myself. But I could.
So, I like this life. There are things to like about this life.
But what I want is both. When I think about Oregon and the girl who didn't have any intention of staying here more than six months, I get itchy. What if I do settle here? What if I never make to Oregon? What if I can't find anyone who will decide on a whim to go to Greece and stay on stranger's couches? The meter on those days is running out, as the life and friends I am investing in are not necessarily conducive to the kind of adventure and spontaneity that I crave. The older I get and the longer I live a conventional life, the less likely I am to be able to escape that way, or to find other people who feel the same way.
I want something normal. A boy I won't run away from. One I will eventually go grocery shopping with. Kids, probably, at some point. I have never been in a hurry to find "the one" and I think that minivans are dreadful and I don't want a picket fence. But I am almost thirty and not even close. And then, I am almost thirty and haven't traveled as much as I want to. There is more to see and do and there is nothing out there that I am not curious about.
One life is inevitably going to get in the way of another.
I am not the only one with wanderlust like this. So, where is the middle ground? Or do people just give up one dream to live the other one?
I feel like a puppy chasing my tail.
Maybe I could live a double life like those guys in Lifetime movies.
The thing is that I want two distinct lives. At the same time, please. I want the one I have been living; filling my passport, refusing to commit to anything more than impermanence, saving money for plane tickets, toting around journals and cameras and making sure my iPod is always charged for those train rides and air hours. Granted, I lived in St. John for almost three years the second time around. That doesn't sound impermanent, does it? But it was, really. Because the entire time I was there, I was not sure how long it would last. I knew it wouldn't last. There was no way to make plans for anything more than about 6 months out. St. John is also the place where I was able to decide to go to Europe and buy that plane ticket within two weeks of said trip. Without planning, without much thought. Just to go. Living that way would have landed me in Oregon about two months from now. To another seaside place, which I would have loved for a while and left eventually.
And then. Then there's this life. Here, I am surrounded by true, good friends whom I have known for so long that everything is comfortable and nothing is new and it is wonderful that way. I went on a "How I Met Your Mother" kick when I lived in the islands, and I remember envying the characters. I was jealous that they got to hang out with each other in a normal life. They had all known each other for most of their adult lives and were past the small talk where you ask where people are from and what they did there and how long they've been doing what they are doing. I have probably had a thousand conversations in the last six years that never went beyond that. Not that I didn't make best friends in the islands. I did. But I have desperately missed the people who know my whole history because they were there for it. We have all loved each other through every phase, every boyfriend and girlfriend, every bump in the road. We have loved watching each other grow and morph. There will not ever be a time in my life when can't I fall into these friends.
In that vein, my family is here. I can see them any time I want to. Holidays and birthdays. If I need to snap out of it or if I need advice or if I just need to give my heart a break, my grandmother is a fifteen minute drive away. My mom and dad are another 45 minutes away. My cousin lives in the room next to me. Where I miss the beaches or my wine drinking tent friends, there are people here to fill those spaces.
I love that at 10:00 last night, I got call from a friend demanding that I meet her at a bar I have never been to, and that I could go. I didn't need a cab. It didn't take thirty pain in the ass minutes to get there. And it's refreshing to know that there is a whole city full of places like that.
There is comfort in deciding to live somewhere, isn't there? You can settle in. You can invest in things and people. The wall that I have spent so many years building can come down now. I do not have to distance myself from anything, knowing that attachment is suffering that everyone (including-or most of all-me) leaves eventually. I even bought a vacuum. Buying a vacuum means that I own something that won't fit in a flat rate box that I can send to my some new home. Weird. I might even date someone with whom there is an actual future and maybe no expiration date. Ok, I won't get ahead of myself. But I could.
So, I like this life. There are things to like about this life.
But what I want is both. When I think about Oregon and the girl who didn't have any intention of staying here more than six months, I get itchy. What if I do settle here? What if I never make to Oregon? What if I can't find anyone who will decide on a whim to go to Greece and stay on stranger's couches? The meter on those days is running out, as the life and friends I am investing in are not necessarily conducive to the kind of adventure and spontaneity that I crave. The older I get and the longer I live a conventional life, the less likely I am to be able to escape that way, or to find other people who feel the same way.
I want something normal. A boy I won't run away from. One I will eventually go grocery shopping with. Kids, probably, at some point. I have never been in a hurry to find "the one" and I think that minivans are dreadful and I don't want a picket fence. But I am almost thirty and not even close. And then, I am almost thirty and haven't traveled as much as I want to. There is more to see and do and there is nothing out there that I am not curious about.
One life is inevitably going to get in the way of another.
I am not the only one with wanderlust like this. So, where is the middle ground? Or do people just give up one dream to live the other one?
I feel like a puppy chasing my tail.
Maybe I could live a double life like those guys in Lifetime movies.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Red Wine Blog
Everybody has had different lives. Who you were in high school is not who you were in college. Who you were in college changed, and then changed again, and who you are now is very likely different than anyone you have been before. For most people, it might be a little difficult to distinguish the lives. They have all run together and the lines are blurred, and you can't tell the real difference unless maybe you sit down and write it onto paper and give names to each person you have been. I wish for such ease. Nostalgia, which has become a great vice of mine, has no place in the minds of people who do not see their lives changing as they change. For those people, nostalgia is saved for photo albums and reunions. It is not a part of daily life.
And this is my latest issue (there is always something, isn't there?). I can not seem to reconcile my past reality with my current one. They do not connect. It feels like I walked through the wardrobe into Narnia, got a great tan, and turned right around. Walked back through the winter coats into the real world like the one I just stepped out of never really existed. The friends there, the pictures, the feeling of my cold shower mornings and the scent and warmth of island rain all seem like they never even happened. I had dream. And then I woke up.
Part of it is that I have no one to talk to. My sister is the only person on this Earth who gets it, and we live apart and work different hours and never get a chance to talk about how fucked up this is. How it can be the right thing to leave a place you love so much. How you spend days wondering why you left or maybe wondering if you had ever actually been there. So, since we are not in the same place, we don't talk about it. We are the weird kids at work; the new kids who won't fit in anywhere except a little Ewok village in the middle of the Caribbean nowhere which might not even stand beyond the next year. And we just go on like that. Knowing that even our closest friends have no hope of understanding what we are going through. That the adjustment is more than grocery stores and driving on the other side of the road. That we are trying to learn how to let go of the people we loved to be in a life we loved living.
And now we are in entirely different lives. I have divorced friends, and friends who went back to school after years in one career. Friends who have moved from state to state. Friends who have moved from boy to boy. From one life to another, as I did three and a half months ago. So, I have to wonder if it is this hard across the board. Do other people have an easier time dealing with things like this, or is it always difficult?
Acknowledging the past as the past isn't easy, is it? I mean, you can completely recognize the future as progress and be glad for the shift, and still be devastated at the loss.
Is this what happens at every turn? Maybe this is why I have opted for such sharp corners in my life; they limit your ability to look back.
Oh, man. I have had too much red wine.
And this is my latest issue (there is always something, isn't there?). I can not seem to reconcile my past reality with my current one. They do not connect. It feels like I walked through the wardrobe into Narnia, got a great tan, and turned right around. Walked back through the winter coats into the real world like the one I just stepped out of never really existed. The friends there, the pictures, the feeling of my cold shower mornings and the scent and warmth of island rain all seem like they never even happened. I had dream. And then I woke up.
Part of it is that I have no one to talk to. My sister is the only person on this Earth who gets it, and we live apart and work different hours and never get a chance to talk about how fucked up this is. How it can be the right thing to leave a place you love so much. How you spend days wondering why you left or maybe wondering if you had ever actually been there. So, since we are not in the same place, we don't talk about it. We are the weird kids at work; the new kids who won't fit in anywhere except a little Ewok village in the middle of the Caribbean nowhere which might not even stand beyond the next year. And we just go on like that. Knowing that even our closest friends have no hope of understanding what we are going through. That the adjustment is more than grocery stores and driving on the other side of the road. That we are trying to learn how to let go of the people we loved to be in a life we loved living.
And now we are in entirely different lives. I have divorced friends, and friends who went back to school after years in one career. Friends who have moved from state to state. Friends who have moved from boy to boy. From one life to another, as I did three and a half months ago. So, I have to wonder if it is this hard across the board. Do other people have an easier time dealing with things like this, or is it always difficult?
Acknowledging the past as the past isn't easy, is it? I mean, you can completely recognize the future as progress and be glad for the shift, and still be devastated at the loss.
Is this what happens at every turn? Maybe this is why I have opted for such sharp corners in my life; they limit your ability to look back.
Oh, man. I have had too much red wine.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Adulthood is a Crock.
At some point, we are all supposed to become adults. We outgrow our stuffed animals and then we outgrow diaries with locks on them, and then boy bands and eventually, we outgrow friends we always thought we would have and the accountability-free lives we thought would last forever. Some people reached this far before the geriatric age of 28. Most people, I suppose. I have posted about all of my friends living in what is generally referred to, with fear and distaste, as "The Real World." Definitions of this Real World vary from person to person. Some think it starts with a family. Others, a salary job. For many people, it is not anything they have ever had to think about. They walked through that entrance fresh out of college, bee-lining into their career path and probably won't look back until years from now, when they are watching a college football game, thinking about glory days or when their kid studies abroad and they wonder why they never traveled. Ah, there I go again. Regarding the concept with contempt. And yet...
Last week, I accepted a job. A real one. I am second in command of a forty person staff, and I make an actual salary. I brew coffee and grab a protein bar in the morning, and hope to get out of work before dark. That never happens, and I find myself flipping through radio channels in my car, and condescending those rush-hour drivers whom I deem unworthy of the downtown streets. I wear slacks to work. I wear lipstick. Who am I?
Honestly, I love this job. I am happy and lucky and pinch myself every single day to make sure that all of this is really happening. But wait a minute. Pinch myself to make sure that all of what is really happening? My apartment. With its fireplace and hardwood floors and long panel curtains. My commute, the one that drives me through downtown Denver where I get to look at the early morning Rockies and all the interesting souls that find themselves in a city. My new job, where I walk carpeted halls, keys jangling from inside my pocket, answering a Nextel phone when it beeps at my hip. I pinch myself to make sure that everything I did not ever think I would want is happening.
When I took this job, it was a career move. I knew that going into the interview. This is not the kind of job that you leave in six months. Maybe not even in a year. This is the kind of job you get and keep. My goodness. I have never had one of those. For the first time in years, I can get a good look at the road I am on. It's a fairly straight path, it seems. The end is not necessarily in sight, but it is not curving ten feet ahead of me, either. An attempt at planning is no longer futile, as it has been. My friends ask me if I want to do something in April, and I can say yes. Did you read that right? Did I say that right? Is that right?
The other night, I went to a company Christmas party at one of the most exclusive apartment buildings in Denver. It was beautiful and there were hors d'oeuvres and the dress code was "Business casual." I drove there straight from work, which means that business casual is how I dress daily.
Last night, I realized that I haven't looked at the stars since I moved to Denver.
Therein lies the challenge. The challenge is in the balance, isn't it? The girl who loves soap bubbles and still plays in the sprinklers is wholly confused by the one who oohed at a glass-walled apartment and its view of the city. We're not getting along all the well right now, me and me. Back to the challenge; Be both. Too many people lose the glitter of being a kid. Being an adult is supposed to mean that you arrange and adjust and schedule the sprinklers, but that you do not run into them any more. Well. Whatever. It's not about holding on to your youth, necessarily, but to lightheartedness, whimsy. Keeps you nimble and smiling. Keeps you from feeling bogged down by anything at all. Go outside, look up at the stars, and try to feel nothing. When the air warms, go to a park and run in the sprinklers. Stretch your arms out from your sides, spin around in a circle. And then try to be bothered by something that is happening in your life. Youthfulness is the ideal, and not aesthetically. Earn your wrinkles through smiles. Reach for deep crows feet. It means that you didn't let the real world get you. Showing age and showing years are very different things, and my newest feat will be to remain during progress. I don't mind getting older, but it should not mean that I have to grow up. Not all the way.
Last week, I accepted a job. A real one. I am second in command of a forty person staff, and I make an actual salary. I brew coffee and grab a protein bar in the morning, and hope to get out of work before dark. That never happens, and I find myself flipping through radio channels in my car, and condescending those rush-hour drivers whom I deem unworthy of the downtown streets. I wear slacks to work. I wear lipstick. Who am I?
Honestly, I love this job. I am happy and lucky and pinch myself every single day to make sure that all of this is really happening. But wait a minute. Pinch myself to make sure that all of what is really happening? My apartment. With its fireplace and hardwood floors and long panel curtains. My commute, the one that drives me through downtown Denver where I get to look at the early morning Rockies and all the interesting souls that find themselves in a city. My new job, where I walk carpeted halls, keys jangling from inside my pocket, answering a Nextel phone when it beeps at my hip. I pinch myself to make sure that everything I did not ever think I would want is happening.
When I took this job, it was a career move. I knew that going into the interview. This is not the kind of job that you leave in six months. Maybe not even in a year. This is the kind of job you get and keep. My goodness. I have never had one of those. For the first time in years, I can get a good look at the road I am on. It's a fairly straight path, it seems. The end is not necessarily in sight, but it is not curving ten feet ahead of me, either. An attempt at planning is no longer futile, as it has been. My friends ask me if I want to do something in April, and I can say yes. Did you read that right? Did I say that right? Is that right?
The other night, I went to a company Christmas party at one of the most exclusive apartment buildings in Denver. It was beautiful and there were hors d'oeuvres and the dress code was "Business casual." I drove there straight from work, which means that business casual is how I dress daily.
Last night, I realized that I haven't looked at the stars since I moved to Denver.
Therein lies the challenge. The challenge is in the balance, isn't it? The girl who loves soap bubbles and still plays in the sprinklers is wholly confused by the one who oohed at a glass-walled apartment and its view of the city. We're not getting along all the well right now, me and me. Back to the challenge; Be both. Too many people lose the glitter of being a kid. Being an adult is supposed to mean that you arrange and adjust and schedule the sprinklers, but that you do not run into them any more. Well. Whatever. It's not about holding on to your youth, necessarily, but to lightheartedness, whimsy. Keeps you nimble and smiling. Keeps you from feeling bogged down by anything at all. Go outside, look up at the stars, and try to feel nothing. When the air warms, go to a park and run in the sprinklers. Stretch your arms out from your sides, spin around in a circle. And then try to be bothered by something that is happening in your life. Youthfulness is the ideal, and not aesthetically. Earn your wrinkles through smiles. Reach for deep crows feet. It means that you didn't let the real world get you. Showing age and showing years are very different things, and my newest feat will be to remain during progress. I don't mind getting older, but it should not mean that I have to grow up. Not all the way.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Happy in the Meantime
It is no secret that I'm happy in Denver. Living in a city (a small, manageable city, to be precise), is completely fantastic and every day I discover new things to be excited about. Some of my best friends live right here, so I didn't even have to work at getting a social circle. My family is in Denver. I had a job lined up before I even moved. It's like I flew up into the clouds for six years and, though I anticipated a hard landing when I fell back to the Earth, a big group of the people I love the most were stretching one of those giant canvas sheets that a cartoon lands on when it jumps out of a burning building. I had a very soft landing. There is not much more that could have gone right.
But there is a catch. No doubt, some of my elation at being inside this brand new life is a defense mechanism. My blinders point forward, and they are decorated in fireworks of my own making so I don't even wonder about what is going on beyond them. What I know for sure is that St. John exists outside those blinders. The Horseshoe, my tent at Maho, sits in the periphery, breathing the breeze, the roof gently lapping at the ceiling beams, nestled snugly in the trees, waiting for me to remember that it's there.
In the life history of me, I do not process anything important until long after the event happens. Good things, bad things, break-ups, rites of passage. Anything that means anything gets pushed into the back of my mind, as if I am so saturated by what is in front of me that I shut down and things begin to run off of my skin like water droplets from duck feathers. In that malicious moment of fate when you have three too many windows open on your poor, overworked computer and the whole thing crashes, taking your twenty page term paper with it, I tend not to scramble immediately to save the term paper. Priorities forever crossed, I spend time going back to Facebook and Twitter to re-save passwords. The important thing gets overlooked. And months later, I am faced with Monster-fueled nights, face streaked with sleeplessness, eyes and mind tired because the time has come. It can't be put off any longer.
Anyway, that's what I do. And that's what happens. Eventually, I will smell a jasmine candle or hear a tree frog on television and I will be sent reeling, unable to keep myself from missing that gorgeous, simple little place that cradled my heart in its suntanned hands for a while.
So, here is what I am going to do. In an effort to avoid that kind of crash, and in a separate effort to write a well-deserved love letter to my first real object of unmatched affection, I am going to compile a list. Of all the things that made my heart swell there. Of all the things I do not ever want to forget. This will likely be edited, as I will come up with more as the weeks and months pass. But I have to start somewhere. An admission of pining, and of loss, which I have not allowed myself before.
So, here's the thing. I sat down to write this about a week ago. I had just seen some beachy, sunny picture of friends sitting on the sand that I spent so much time on and it seemed like I should have felt something. Since then, I have reopened this post probably 30 times to try and figure out how I was feeling about the whole thing. About the mental and emotional process of leaving a place and a family that sparkled and made me find my own smile. I thought that sadness was in order, here. That moving on is always hard, that you're always left with some residual regret, that you are supposed to wish, at least some of the time, that you were still living your past life. It's true that I generally do not allow myself sadness at the break, and am therefore fated to deal with emotional burdens only when they get so heavy that they can no longer be carried. It is not unreasonable to be worried that this is what is really going on. The unloading of such burdens tends to happen at the shifty hands of whiskey or red wine, and never when I'm ready. It never goes well. So, I thought I would force a purge. Write down everything that brought the corners of my lips down a little. Everything that should hurt to think about. There were visions of a grand list; one full of ambitiously written descriptions of the friendships, the winter swell, the boardwalks, the flowers. My heart would fracture slightly just thinking about all of it. And then it would be lifted. It was a decision to be proactive about mourning, and to kind of just get it out of the way. Because who wants to be sitting there, waiting for something like that to kick in? Not this girl.
But I couldn't do it. I can't do it. Obviously, there are lovely things to be said about that island, and I could certainly come up with an essay that outlines all of them. But I guess I don't really want to. This is weird for me, a girl who generally loves to live in the past and wonder how life might be different had I done this instead of that. Well, let me be more accurate. I like to live in the past in a way that allows me to live in the future. If I had done this, then in a year, I would have been doing some other this. As a rule, the present never factors in much. There is no evident reason for this. It's just the way my brain works. Even at my very happiest, there has been some itch in the corner of my head forcing me to wonder what I could have done differently and where I would have landed then.
But something seems to have shifted a bit. For the first time, maybe in my entire life, my thoughts are not shaded with nostalgia, nor any want for the hypothetical existence I think I could have maybe had.
I have had fights with myself about living in the moment and my maddening inability to do so. I mean, what kind of person can sit on a beach that is used as a Microsoft screen saver and think, "Hm. Would I be happier elsewhere?" Super annoying. Self-consisting conversations have often gone the direction of the hippies that say Namaste and tell you to live in this moment. This one. Right. Now. And there is no telling exactly why, but I'm not sure that I have ever done that.
Until--maybe--now. It does not seem to be an issue of escapism, even though most things do turn out that way. I can look at the pictures that people put up on Facebook and not start checking out plane tickets. The first time I left, I couldn't even look at the pictures. I went so far as to delete friends because it was too difficult to see their constant Caribbean propaganda. It was pretty extreme, to tell you the truth. So extreme that I ran back to that island, needing so much to live in the past that I actually returned to it. But this time feels...not like that that. When the pictures come up, my heart stirs and wiggles a little bit, to be sure. But now, it is a lot like when I look at old pictures from college. I think, "Man, that was a lot of fun. And I could never do it again." It seems that life at Maho, just like another past life in Ft. Collins, has snuggled into the category of bygone days. Once in a while, I expect that it will peek its head out at me. With a timid knock on my door, it will look at me with sad eyes, worried that I have forgotten about it, feeling neglected and cast aside. And I will not be angry when this happens. It will not make me slam the door in St. John's face, which is what I did to Ft. Collins. Nor will it make me want to nod and take it by the hand and go back. It will simply be exactly what it is; a place and I time that I loved desperately, and grew because of, and from which there is no more learning to be done. A past life. Looked on with affection and maybe a little pining once in a while, but with no regret.
And for now, I get to understand the feeling of being content with where you are. A whole new thing to learn! I wonder if this is how people usually go through life. It might be. I have taken part in frustrating conversations, and even frustrating friendships, where the other party seems not to live in any tense but the present. This is usually thought of as good, I understand, but to me...to me, it is just a way to quash dreams. To refuse them air. Living only in the moment also seems like the best way not to acknowledge the things that have made you who you are. Admittedly, I am drawn to, and often distracted by introspection. Too much time spent in my own head searching for my own soul has likely kept me from finding what I might be looking for. Those fireworks-covered blinders keep the periphery out of sight, and I find that much lies in the sidelines.
What is the balance? Maybe that is what all of my searching is for. Level ground, as opposed to the hill I feel I've been standing on, pulled by gravity either to the past or to the future, never comfortable where I am. My great achievement might just be figuring out how to love where I was, wonder where I am going, and remain happy where I am.
Oh, man, I've been rambling for a while. I have had three cups of coffee too many this morning, and my fingers don't seem to want to slow down. Neither does my brain, but I'm used to that part.
In conclusion, yay Colorado! I don't have any answers for how things are supposed to feel. Most of us are blind, I think, putting out sensors and trying not to run into anything or stub our toes. I can not be the only one who doesn't really know what she's doing.
But there is a catch. No doubt, some of my elation at being inside this brand new life is a defense mechanism. My blinders point forward, and they are decorated in fireworks of my own making so I don't even wonder about what is going on beyond them. What I know for sure is that St. John exists outside those blinders. The Horseshoe, my tent at Maho, sits in the periphery, breathing the breeze, the roof gently lapping at the ceiling beams, nestled snugly in the trees, waiting for me to remember that it's there.
In the life history of me, I do not process anything important until long after the event happens. Good things, bad things, break-ups, rites of passage. Anything that means anything gets pushed into the back of my mind, as if I am so saturated by what is in front of me that I shut down and things begin to run off of my skin like water droplets from duck feathers. In that malicious moment of fate when you have three too many windows open on your poor, overworked computer and the whole thing crashes, taking your twenty page term paper with it, I tend not to scramble immediately to save the term paper. Priorities forever crossed, I spend time going back to Facebook and Twitter to re-save passwords. The important thing gets overlooked. And months later, I am faced with Monster-fueled nights, face streaked with sleeplessness, eyes and mind tired because the time has come. It can't be put off any longer.
Anyway, that's what I do. And that's what happens. Eventually, I will smell a jasmine candle or hear a tree frog on television and I will be sent reeling, unable to keep myself from missing that gorgeous, simple little place that cradled my heart in its suntanned hands for a while.
So, here is what I am going to do. In an effort to avoid that kind of crash, and in a separate effort to write a well-deserved love letter to my first real object of unmatched affection, I am going to compile a list. Of all the things that made my heart swell there. Of all the things I do not ever want to forget. This will likely be edited, as I will come up with more as the weeks and months pass. But I have to start somewhere. An admission of pining, and of loss, which I have not allowed myself before.
So, here's the thing. I sat down to write this about a week ago. I had just seen some beachy, sunny picture of friends sitting on the sand that I spent so much time on and it seemed like I should have felt something. Since then, I have reopened this post probably 30 times to try and figure out how I was feeling about the whole thing. About the mental and emotional process of leaving a place and a family that sparkled and made me find my own smile. I thought that sadness was in order, here. That moving on is always hard, that you're always left with some residual regret, that you are supposed to wish, at least some of the time, that you were still living your past life. It's true that I generally do not allow myself sadness at the break, and am therefore fated to deal with emotional burdens only when they get so heavy that they can no longer be carried. It is not unreasonable to be worried that this is what is really going on. The unloading of such burdens tends to happen at the shifty hands of whiskey or red wine, and never when I'm ready. It never goes well. So, I thought I would force a purge. Write down everything that brought the corners of my lips down a little. Everything that should hurt to think about. There were visions of a grand list; one full of ambitiously written descriptions of the friendships, the winter swell, the boardwalks, the flowers. My heart would fracture slightly just thinking about all of it. And then it would be lifted. It was a decision to be proactive about mourning, and to kind of just get it out of the way. Because who wants to be sitting there, waiting for something like that to kick in? Not this girl.
But I couldn't do it. I can't do it. Obviously, there are lovely things to be said about that island, and I could certainly come up with an essay that outlines all of them. But I guess I don't really want to. This is weird for me, a girl who generally loves to live in the past and wonder how life might be different had I done this instead of that. Well, let me be more accurate. I like to live in the past in a way that allows me to live in the future. If I had done this, then in a year, I would have been doing some other this. As a rule, the present never factors in much. There is no evident reason for this. It's just the way my brain works. Even at my very happiest, there has been some itch in the corner of my head forcing me to wonder what I could have done differently and where I would have landed then.
But something seems to have shifted a bit. For the first time, maybe in my entire life, my thoughts are not shaded with nostalgia, nor any want for the hypothetical existence I think I could have maybe had.
I have had fights with myself about living in the moment and my maddening inability to do so. I mean, what kind of person can sit on a beach that is used as a Microsoft screen saver and think, "Hm. Would I be happier elsewhere?" Super annoying. Self-consisting conversations have often gone the direction of the hippies that say Namaste and tell you to live in this moment. This one. Right. Now. And there is no telling exactly why, but I'm not sure that I have ever done that.
Until--maybe--now. It does not seem to be an issue of escapism, even though most things do turn out that way. I can look at the pictures that people put up on Facebook and not start checking out plane tickets. The first time I left, I couldn't even look at the pictures. I went so far as to delete friends because it was too difficult to see their constant Caribbean propaganda. It was pretty extreme, to tell you the truth. So extreme that I ran back to that island, needing so much to live in the past that I actually returned to it. But this time feels...not like that that. When the pictures come up, my heart stirs and wiggles a little bit, to be sure. But now, it is a lot like when I look at old pictures from college. I think, "Man, that was a lot of fun. And I could never do it again." It seems that life at Maho, just like another past life in Ft. Collins, has snuggled into the category of bygone days. Once in a while, I expect that it will peek its head out at me. With a timid knock on my door, it will look at me with sad eyes, worried that I have forgotten about it, feeling neglected and cast aside. And I will not be angry when this happens. It will not make me slam the door in St. John's face, which is what I did to Ft. Collins. Nor will it make me want to nod and take it by the hand and go back. It will simply be exactly what it is; a place and I time that I loved desperately, and grew because of, and from which there is no more learning to be done. A past life. Looked on with affection and maybe a little pining once in a while, but with no regret.
And for now, I get to understand the feeling of being content with where you are. A whole new thing to learn! I wonder if this is how people usually go through life. It might be. I have taken part in frustrating conversations, and even frustrating friendships, where the other party seems not to live in any tense but the present. This is usually thought of as good, I understand, but to me...to me, it is just a way to quash dreams. To refuse them air. Living only in the moment also seems like the best way not to acknowledge the things that have made you who you are. Admittedly, I am drawn to, and often distracted by introspection. Too much time spent in my own head searching for my own soul has likely kept me from finding what I might be looking for. Those fireworks-covered blinders keep the periphery out of sight, and I find that much lies in the sidelines.
What is the balance? Maybe that is what all of my searching is for. Level ground, as opposed to the hill I feel I've been standing on, pulled by gravity either to the past or to the future, never comfortable where I am. My great achievement might just be figuring out how to love where I was, wonder where I am going, and remain happy where I am.
Oh, man, I've been rambling for a while. I have had three cups of coffee too many this morning, and my fingers don't seem to want to slow down. Neither does my brain, but I'm used to that part.
In conclusion, yay Colorado! I don't have any answers for how things are supposed to feel. Most of us are blind, I think, putting out sensors and trying not to run into anything or stub our toes. I can not be the only one who doesn't really know what she's doing.
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