Where is the curve, anyway?

Ohhh, goodness, here it comes again. I can feel it rising to my surface like a million pin pricks. Not painful yet. Not aching. Not intense in any real way, but certainly not willing to be ignored. It's restlessness. Dissatisfaction with the level of comfort that I have reached. It's wanderlust in its raw form; the very feeling which got me here and then got me out of here....the first time. I don't want this. Stagnant is stagnant, even if it occurs in the most perfect place I have ever lived.
I am looking at plane tickets right now. Round trip. Two friends whom I have known for pretty much as long as I have known anybody are getting married in June, and I am flying home (I use the term loosely) to celebrate with them. To walk into their new, expanding world for a minute and retreat slowly back into my ever-contracting one. I never know if I'm behind the curve or in front of it.
There is something to be said for living in a place where every day is essentially the same. You have no choice but to live for today, as there doesn't seem to be a rear-view mirror to look into or a future to contemplate. You have to figure out how to be happy rightthissecond because the second after that will be a spitting, glaring image of the last one. That said, I am tired of my days melting into one another.
A friend of mine recently commented on how nice it is to have so much free time here. No dishes to wash. No groceries to shop for. We even get to skip the drive to and from work, which takes up much more time than you may realize. She said that it's great to work and to live and only those two things. I nodded, and thought to myself, "What? No!" The best way to live is to have days teeming with beautiful to-dos. The seams at dawn and at dusk shredded with energy and fullness. No room to spare. And absolutely no time that could ever be called "free." Of course, this is all from my current state of excuseless boredom. The grass is always greener, isn't it, and begging to be explored?

rainy days and bacon feet

So, let me tell you about Sundays. I work on Sundays, as I don't have a three day weekend worked into the 35 hours a week that my salary says I should work. I COULD have a three day weekend, but Maho doesn't quite work like that. So, I work on Sundays. There is nothing to do on Sundays. Every vendor or distributor or random human whom I do business with is off on Sundays. Every single one. So, any call I make will be made to voicemail. Any e-mail will be responded to tomorrow, when the masses return to their 9-5 jobs. Miss Emily works the counter this particular morning, which means the store looks awesome and is running perfectly without my constant supervision. Basically, I have nothing to do on Sundays except get paid to sit at my desk and surf the internet. I peruse the cyber world looking for cool t-shirt designs or touristy tropical knick knacks. I hate Sundays and I question the logic of Maho Bay sometimes...
In short, I'm bored. In other news, I have a tiny, jagged bit of glass in the heel of my foot right at the moment. It is inhibiting my ability to run (my genius brain figured out how to beat 5am Jamie. Drumroll, please….run in the afternoon! What a concept.) In my net-surfing stupor, I have looked up a variety of home remedies for splinters, glass shards and the like. The most popular and sworn by method seems to be putting a piece of bacon fat over it and then covering that with a band-aid. Apparently the fat draws the sucker right out. I have my doubts, but I'm willing to give it a shot, as I don't love digging around inside my appendages with sewing needles or tweezers. I guess I’m just worried about the critters that might be involved once I secure the scent of their wildest dreams to my foot. I’ll let you know how it goes.
It is a rainy, rainy island day. Strange for January. It’s been rainy for a while now, but as my manager curtly pointed out, “With all the earthquakes and hurricanes going on, I’m not going to bitch much about the fact that it’s raining a little bit more than it usually does this time of year.” Good call. Besides, I love a good rainy day. With my laundry done, my room clean and my toenails painted, I have nothing to do when I go home except sit. Read. Do crossword puzzles. Interesting, the kind of chill that is reached with no choice.
My sister just brought in a tiny branch full of mini-air plants. She said “I thought you would like these.” She’s right. I have the best sister ever.
Ugh, I need to get out of this office. Time to go eat junk food and affix pork to my heel.
Yum.

I'm in a fight with my running shoes right now. The funny thing is, we both have the same argument. They want to be used. They miss the road and the sand and they miss the way this island feels at 6 in the morning. I, too miss the road. And the sand. And I miss how the island feels at 6am way more than those stubborn shoes could ever understand.
Come to think of it, maybe it's not the shoes I should be angry at. It could just be my sleeping self, content to close her eyes to the awesomeness that is the early morning Caribbean. The one who groans when that wretched alarm clock goes off at 5:00 and moves barely the bits of herself required to change the alarm time to 7:00. That's right. Asleep enough to only manage a groan, but passionate enough about being asleep to stretch her fingers more than just "snooze."
I would never hire a personal trainer. The thought of paying someone to tell me what to do (in some cases, shout at me what to do) is laughable. In my day to day life, someone has to be able to pay me before they can try and accomplish such a frustrating task, thank you very much. But maybe I could stand to have more than the non-threatening beep of my cell phone alarm clock telling me to wake up and get off my lazy butt at 5:00am. What I need is the 7 year old version of Alley, my kid sister, on Christmas morning. I need that every day. There is no way any human could possibly sleep through the kind of noise she was able to produce on that particular morning. I probably shouldn't limit that to humans. If I remember correctly, whatever variety of dogs, cats, hamsters, fish and birds we housed at the time were no more immune to the shrieking wake-up call of a little girl waiting to open gifts than any of us were. Oh, tiny Alley. I will invent a time machine and bring you to 2010 just for your incredible 5am lung power. And then maybe I'll be able to stick to that already-forgotten resolution to run at least most mornings. Maybe.

Let us toast

But it don't snow here. It stays pretty green. Gonna make a lotta money, then I'm gonna quit this crazy scene...

Oh, Joni. I heart you. So here we go, Christmas. Colored lights inside palm trees and if I close my eyes tightly enough, I can pretend that those are snow clouds outside. Tonight, I will go home and rock around my mini-tree. My counter is piled with presents from one home and presents from another. I have about 15 Christmas songs on my reggae-riddled iPod, which will play and play and play until the holiday ends unfairly and abruptly and we all go back to our white sand weekends like nothing ever happened. The reality that Christmas day is, in the end, a day, is weird no matter where you are. It almost seems like an island Christmas is a perfect way to acknowledge that. There is no Santa sitting in a mall, as there is no mall here. We put lights up in our tents, but then, we always put lights up in our tents. It would be hard to bake Christmas cookies on a Coleman stove, and pine trees are a little hard to come by. Unlike you statesiders, we are not bombed with the holidays as soon as Halloween passes. I would like to see the shops in Cruz Bay trying to pull off Christmas music in November, when the weather is just clearing up and the hibiscus printed tourists are pouring in. Nope. It just doesn't work.
Don't get me wrong; we try. It's just that forcing Christmas doesn't feel right. And forcing anything does not get you far in the islands, anyway. So, we watch Christmas movies at a friend's house and then climb back into our open-top jeeps and talk about how we're losing our tans and which beach we're going to tomorrow. If we are on the schedule, then we go to work. If we happen to have the day off, we do not treat it much like any other day off. A Friday is a Friday is a Friday. And then it's Saturday. And that's all there really is to it.
I've come to prefer Christmas this way, I think. Where it actually sneaks up on you. Where you do not even realize what day it is until it's here. And then you look around, quietly and without show, and thank the universe for the people around you and the life you live. Do I wish that I were somewhere else this time of year? Sometimes. But I have a family here whom I am infinitely happy to spend this time with. And besides, it's not that Christmas makes me miss people. It just reminds me that I already do.
On that note, Merry Christmas, all. Be happy, drink egg nog, sing Christmas songs and breathe in the cinnamon and cookie scented Christmas air. Breathe it in as deeply as it will go. Before you can even exhale, just like for me, it will be summer again. It is, at the end of it all, just a day.

I'm ending this with a Hunter S. Thompson quote, which has nothing to do with Christmas at all. But I love it.

"Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives...and to the "good life," whatever it is and wherever it happens to be."

I am glad that clouds are rounded at the corners. On a 6am run today, the world said good morning with clouds decked out in cotton candy trim. I needed rounded corners this morning.
It's time to get off my butt again. I can feel it. I wish I was back in housekeeping, but I'm not, and I need to do something different with myself before I go crazy. A good long hike. A midnight skinny dip. One of those small things with enough bite to kick you back into being thankful that you get to live here with the tree frogs and katydids.
I seem to be thinking a lot lately about what I'm going to do in the store next year. Which means I've been thinking a lot lately about being here another year, without really giving credit or weight to what that means. Maho again? Another year? Do I mean that? In an effort to not get too comfortable, I am going to compose a list of all I still want to do in life. All the things I can't do if I stay on this easy island for too much longer. Because I am not done yet. My curiosity about every place and every person I don't understand has not been squashed. This is a beautiful life, truly. Fairly simple. Plump with cushions and padding...and rounded corners. Nothing too sharp or harsh. No reality to face. But when does a place stop being virtuously comfortable and start turning into an enabler of sorts? I need to be scared again. Bumped and scraped and torn down by a new situation that I have to figure out on my own. I want another fresh, frightening start. Another new thing.
So. A list. This is what I want. This is why I'm not done.

-The thrill of being really, really lost
-The sky in Montana
-Christmas in New York City
-A tiny coffee shop full of overstuffed couches and overexpressed hipster poets
-Mud football
-A big city life, if only for a few months
-A sweet small-town life, if only for a few weeks
-Museums and galleries and theaters
-Fresh oysters
-Learning a language through immersion
-Toy stores
-The Tattered Cover
-Music festivals where you sweat all day and sleep in the cool grass
-Red mittens
-Farmers' Markets
-The way Christmas lights look under a new, thick layer of snow
-Every ocean and every sea
-A little fishing village
-A beautiful running route (I have this now, but I want to see a new one)

Oh, there's more. There is much more. I envy people who are happy enough here to want to stay indefinitely. They are done exploring. They wanted their perfect place and they found it in the still sea and the slight breeze. They want nothing more than this coconut life and don't feel the need to look any further.

Alas, the more you see of the world, the less you feel you've seen.

By the way, I am madly and wholly in love with Owl City right now. I wish their songs never ended and they could be streamed directly into my ears all day and all night. It still wouldn't be enough.

Gonna read through some of my old ramblings from back in the day and see if I can remember how to write...

For further review:

Sept 8th, 2008

So....here we go. It's been about a million years since I've written one of these and I figure that now--as I sit in a dark room babysitting a sleeping infant--is a good time to pick back up.

I've been on Martha's Vineyard for a good long while now. Since the middle of May, actually. All summer. As it turns out, I am doing what a lot of East Coasters wish they could do for a whole summer. Which is sort of funny, since a lot of Westies thought I was going to turn my toes purple with smashed grapes for 6 months. No one even knows what "The Vineyard" is out there. Not really. So here it is..here is my take on this particular sandbar.

It has been a few sunny months of orange toenails, white sunglasses and boys of summer. My skin is still fond of tanlines and my hair still turns gold on the edges when I've tortured it with too much salt water. There are lilacs here, and roses that peek through white picket fences. Long blades of grass dance on top of sand dunes. The beach is filled to the edges with colored umbrellas and pastel bucket hats and people flock to the water like it's actually warm. For the record, the water is not warm. Rather, you hop in and hope you turn numb quickly enough that you don't notice how painful it is when hypothermia sets in. If my toes are purple, trust that it is not from smashing grapes. It is because I have lost the circulation to my extremeties. I think it's somewhere in the Atlantic ocean.

It's beautiful here. It doesn't hurt the way St. John - or even Colorado - does, but it is beautiful. Everything is tiny and gingerbread. I have never seen a place so intentionally perfect nor so well maintained. It's an interesting way of life, and one I am trying to stay outside of enough to appreciate it.

For some reason, I am not feeling like I can reflect very well right now. If I kept writing, I'd just be trying too hard.

So...I'm out for now. More later, surely. When my head isn't so wrapped up in other things.

April 6th, 2008

A major life change warrants a blog, no? I’m not sure if I used the correct form of "warrant." It could be "warrent." Maybe one of those is the name of an 80s hair band and not actually a different form of the word. I have got to go back to school. My neurons are way out of practice.

Anyway, back to the major life change. No Alaska. No Washington State. No Spain, either, though most don’t even know that Spain was an option. I’m not dumb for opting out of Spain. Trust me.

Drumroll, please......Martha’s Vineyard will be my official place of residence for the next six months. I leave the big CO on the 29th of this month. Wow. Is that real? Sometimes having a fire lit underneath you leads to nothing but frustration. Sometimes it burns you and you’re still stuck where you are and you can’t for the life of you find your way out. But sometimes it works, doesn’t it? Sometimes everything falls into place, even if it’s not exactly where you thought it would all fall. It’s nothing like I thought. The only constant between what the plan was and what I’m doing is that I’m leaving. But that was always the most important part, wasn’t it?

And now the sad part. The goodbyes. I spent months trying not to make any friends. That sounds depressing, doesn’t it? I wasn’t depressed. It was an exercise in self-preservation. It didn’t work. I have friends now. I have a crew that I hang out with and stay in with and have really fallen in love with. Despite my best efforts, there are people here I will miss tremendously. So I take the same position I did when I left Maho. I just thank the universe for having met people I will miss. Sounds backwards, but I think it’s better that it hurts to leave. It means I had something good while I was here.

Off to Denver now. More later, I’m sure.

The title is from "The Middle of Nowhere" by Hot Hot Heat. In love.

March 10th, 2008

So....Martha's Vineyard? Got an e-mail today from a resort there. Sent my resume yesterday and got a reply this morning, which is encouraging to say the least. And if that wasn't sunny enough, she's calling me tonight for a phone interview. Already? Is this real?

I don't know if I will end up in Martha's Vineyard this summer. I don't know if I'll like the job or like the resort or if I'll even like the island. I don't know. There's no way to know any of that yet. But it's something, isn't it? There's something there. There's finally a way out. The light at the end of Colorado Springs. And it's just the beginning.

Home sick today. Blech. I think it's been years since I actually called in sick. Years. In fact, the last time I was home sick it was because Papa Joe walked down to the housekeeping office and told me, with my head on the desk and my body telling me to eff off, to go home. And then he brought me homemade chicken noodle soup. Have I said that I miss Maho? For the record, if I don't make it past today it's probably because I spontaneously (I'm sure I spelled that incorrectly) combusted. I feel certain that the inside of my chest is actually on fire and I can not promise that it won't engulf the rest of me. Just so everyone knows what happened when they find a charred desk chair and not much else.

Yesterday started out gloomy. I woke up and thought that, in this the land of perpetual sun and blue skies, I should thank the universe for a gloomy day. And then the sun came out. Of course. Maybe that's the problem with this place. Not enough rainy days. I am not normal.

Cape Cod? Or Alaska? Or Washington State, with Kirby and Sarah? Finally I feel like there are places to go. And maybe not overseas. Maybe not that yet. Maybe I could stand to be accessible for another year or so. I love to disappear, it's true. I love that I left and felt really gone for two years. But disappearing is most attractive to unhappy people, I think, and I can't classify myself as that anymore. Antsy for sure. Stir crazy and wholly taken over by that wanderlust I always refer to. But not unhappy. Not like before. I can wait little while and wait until I have a little more money saved up before I really take off again. There's nothing wrong with a mini-escape after all.

It was so good to see Kirby and Sarah the other night. So, so good. It's amazing what good talking to a couple of nomads can do for a wanna-be gypsy. Just that tiny touch of restlessness and I'm reminded that I can do this. I have to dig deep and look hard and keep my eyes and my mind open, but I can do this.

Also good to breathe the same air as someone who has lived in the treehouses for a little while. A common thread in the spirits of all of us, I think. Besides all of that, I really just love them. And I miss them.

I miss all of you.

I love Jimmy Eat World and will now retreat to my messy room and listen to their new CD as I remember what it was like to be tan and live with sand in everything I own. And maybe dream about a summer filled with bonfires and the ocean.

February 6th, 2008

"Careful....we don’t want to learn anything from this."

Not sure what to write now. Not sure why I'm writing, seeing as how that is the case at the moment. But I tend to want to write when I feel like I don't have anything to say, so here it goes.

Big changes in the last week, It's been a while since I've been single. It's been even longer since I've really felt single, though I'm not sure I feel it so much right now. Has not sunk in yet. I think I will be glad for that until the second it does sink in.

My mom asked if it was temporary. First words out of her mouth. Only words out of her mouth, if I'm going to tell the truth. She still hasn't asked if I'm ok. Still. So at least I know that I have my family's unrelenting support, which is always nice. That's not fair. I do have the support of my family. Just not all of them all of the time, I guess. Which I did not know until now.

I must say that I have spectacular friends. From every tip of every corner of the country I have the open arms and open ears and open hearts of people who know me well enough to know that maybe I'm not ok and maybe it's not temporary and maybe I don't need to talk about it, but maybe I need to know that I could.

Oh, how I love to complicate the simple things.

In other news, I figured out how to get stuck in a snow drift this weekend. I didn't figure out how to get unstuck, mind you, but I've got the stuck part down. So if you ever need to be stranded, I'm clearly the one you need to call (loaded statement?). A twenty minute walk uphill in knee deep snow with an overpacked duffel bag and a couple of grocery sacks later, the car is at the bottom of the hill that I've reached the top of. Two seconds after that, the plow guy knocks on the door. "Hey, if you wanna walk back down to your car and follow me in the plow, you'll be able to get up the hill." Such was the start of my weekend. I could bitch about it, but bitching would be lying. To be honest, I was laughing the whole time. The best part of a good story is knowing when you're inside one.

In addition to the my newfound talent at getting cars stuck, I rediscovered just how terrible a skiier I am this weekend. It didn't register as I put the skiis on, since that went just fine. It didn't register as I skiied down to the lift, which was fine as well. It didn't even register the whole 15 minute lift ride up the mountain, which was much slower than I had remembered. No, it didn't kick in any of those times. It didn't actually kick in until about 7 seconds before I realized that skiing entailed getting off the lift and then getting myself back down the mountain. What? How did I forget that part? As bad as I am at skiing, I am most bad at the lift and found out quickly that linking your arm into the arm rest of the lift chair like it's going to save you from the imminent disaster you're about to inflict upon yourself is not the best route. All it does is rip your arm out. And you still have to get down that damned mountain.

It was somehow fun. I avoided death a number of times, though I'll never be sure how. No major catastrophes, which means I was not trying nearly hard enough. I'll work more at it next time and see what kind of bruises I can show off afterward...

Skiing is kind of silly, isn't it? Who thought it would be a good idea to get towed up a super slippery hill and see if they could make it down with some sharp, waxed, pointy foot extensions? And then who expanded on that? People are so strange. Also, my toes were cold the whole time.

If gas wasn't so expensive, I would make myself a mix cd of singy songs and find somewhere that it's raining, even if it took hours. Especially if it took hours. But I think that might break me, and I have to save until I figure out what rainy place I actually want to stay in for a while. I hope I find it. I hope it exists.

I mostly hope that Plan B works out. Plan B being my winning Powerball ticket. I have decided that independent wealth is the answer to the vast majority of my problems. Plan B.

The title of this blog is from Calvin and Hobbes. And it seems painfully appropriate right now and kind of always.

Goodnight, all.

January 22nd, 2008

Cursed with an unerring sense of directionlessness even when things are going well

Today, one of my bosses asked if I would go back to Maho. I was telling stories about William Shatner and clumsy iguanas and the way water stars trail your moving fingers when the night is darkest. "Would you go back? Would you want to work there again?" Yes. Sweet Jesus, yes. Let me clean tents every day. Let me roll out of bed, put on my green sneakers and have coffee with Madre while ML draws the breakfast board. Let me go back. If fate has any mercy, let that be the place I am supposed to be.

Alas, fate is nothing but a question mark. And if the question mark exists, it has no patience for a confused girl. But what if I said that a confused girl has no patience for fate? What then?

Damn it. All.

Maho is not the perfect place. It is not where my path ends. It is not where my happiness sits. It's just the closest I've found so far.

Compounding the feelings I'm having for my current condition is that my fingers never seem to get warm here. I do hate that.

I spent the day renovating a locker room downstairs in the hotel. Nasty work. Dirty and sweaty and I felt like an hour long shower wasn't long enough. I miss physical work. Maybe housekeeping is my calling in life. That's not true. My room is a perpetual disaster and I was far more adept at playing with tree frogs and splashing in rain puddles than I was at making beds. Still. Is it weird to miss physical exhaustion?

I spent the weekend in Denver. At a boat show, randomly, and it was supposed to be my escape. I was so excited get out of the house and out of this city and out of almost everything for two and a half days. Know what happened? I realized that I'm still here. I'm making new friends, which I'm conflicted about. It is not supposed to be hard to say goodbye to Colorado Springs. I've been looking forward to the goodbye since I stepped foot back here. It's getting harder to stay here, yet, somehow, it's getting harder to leave. What is going on?

Really, what it all comes down to is that I need another place with warm rain showers where I can run around like a crazy person in front of people who like me that way. That's probably what it comes down to for everybody. Different versions, maybe, but the same feeling.

Ok, my fingers really are freezing. That's all for now.

Some story people quotes to end this ramble:

Most people she never tells about the tightrope because she doesn't want to listen to their helpful comments from the ground.

She saw herself reflected in the store window & then the sun changed & she disappeared & all she could see was her eyes & she remembered thinking, I make a very nice floor lamp & that was the day she decided to quit her job.

I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely one night & found it had wheels & moved easily in the slightest breeze, so now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing

She's not sure if she's ready for the whole world, but not sure if she can take another minute cooped up in that cage either. She is leaving the door open so if she has to come back she can do it with a minimum of anxiety

Of course I hang on tight, she said. You can't believe the kind of stuff that happens when you let go.

January 13th, 2008

So, here's a blog to tip the world over on its side. My world, anyway.

I feel....wow. What do I feel? My fingertips are shaking with the excitement of emptying all that is swirling around inside them into the open air. Maybe the shaking is making it hard to concentrate enough to actually let it go.

I'm in circle mode. I've been having intense conversations with myself for the last two days and I've found that I disagree with myself a lot. I realize how little sense this makes. I realize that my sanity might be called into question at this point, by myself and by whomever might read this. I realize that the question is a valid one.

For the last six months (ten months?), I've had a plan. The flow chart hadn't quite been constructed and the details of everything were a little undecided, but I had a definite plan. The plan, to nutshell it in a most extreme way, was the real world. Life and love and rent. The plan was to finally feel like something was permanent, instead of relishing in the perpetual transience that has been my life for the last....forever. But what is the real difference between growing up and letting part of yourself become something else? I don't want to lose myself in this. I worked so hard to become something I am happy with and now I am trying to turn around and change things that have barely been fixed long enough to be stable.

Some of my friends keep feeding me the "why not?" line. Why wouldn't I just go? It's new, it's different, and if it's adventure I'm looking for, moving somewhere with him would be the perfect adventure. If for no other reason than because I really do not know what the outcome would be. But what's adventure for one is hope for another, and the questions I am having right now would hurt us both a lot more if the adventure ends up being something I never wanted.

I guess some of the issue is that I feel like the real world will always be there. When i am actually ready for that life, it will be waiting for me. That's kind of how that world works. But impermenance, by nature and definition, won't last forever. I have a finite amount of time to be responsible for no one but myself. I have probably already bypassed the amount of time that is appropriate for that particular lifestyle. I did it for two and a half years. I ran away just like I wanted and stayed as long as I wanted and did pretty much as I pleased the whole time. Should that be out of my system now? It's not. A bigger problem still is that, as impermenant as impermenance is, and as little time as I feel I have to get to that part of myself, this boy is even easier to lose than that. The real world might be there forever, but he will not. He will move on and find a better girl than me and live the life he wants with a girl who wants the same thing. Right this second. Instead of me, who feels this nagging need to be absolutely sure of what I want before I do it when there is no real way to know.

I can give the plan up. The flow chart, the real world. Rent. But the life and love part is trickier, and I don't want to lose him. So what do you do? When you're chapters apart from each other and a decision has to be made? Resentment is a poison, and something that can not be reversed and does not go away. I want to save him from that. I have resented myself before. More times than I can count, really, and I can handle it. But the last thing in the entire world that I want is to to hurt him because I didn't figure myself out when I needed to.

He is the most perfect person I know. If I were to sit down and write a list of every single thing I want in a person, it would turn into a picture of him. This is the kind of thing screenwriters drool over. Soundtracks have been written to this story. A perfect pair, except that one half of it isn't sure what she wants. So she wanders and he doesn't and she regrets it for the rest of her life. Sometimes, with luck, you get a Great Expectations ending. A lot of hurt, a big dramatic kiss in the rain and everything works out the way it is supposed to. Sometimes not.

I am not ready for the life decisions that accompany my twenties. Or maybe I am just not ready for the life decisions that accompany finding an amazing person to make them with. In my head, I am still 14. 14 year olds don't have to think about the realities of the future.

I think this is crushing me.

He's going to read this, which is probably unfair. But I write so much better than I speak and the journals aren't in obvious places around the bedroom for him to figure out what's really going on inside of me. This is all I can do. For some reason, a journal feels different than a phone call and different than a letter. It feels like air. It's the best I can do right now.

This is how I feel. Modest Mouse tends to sing my soul when my soul doesn't know which song it's really looking for.

"Missed the Boat"

While we're on the subject,
Could we change the subject now?
I was knockin' on your ears door
But you were always out.
Lookin' towards the future
We were begging for the past
Well we knew we'd had the good things
But those never seem to last,
Oh please just last.

Everyone's unhappy
Everyone's ashamed
Well we all just got caught looking
At somebody else's page
Well nothin' ever went
Quite exactly as we planned,
Our ideas held no water
But we used them like a dam.

Oh, and we carried it all so well
As if we'd got a new position.
Oh, and I laugh all the way to hell
Saying, "Yes, this is a fine promotion."
Oh, and I'll laugh all the way to hell.

Of course everyone goes crazy,
Over such and such and such,
Well we'd made ourselves a pillar,
but just used it as a crutch.
We were suddenly uncertain,
At least I'm pretty sure I am,
Well we didn't need the water
But we just built that good goddamn!

Oh, and I know this of myself,
I asume as much for other people.
Oh, and I know this of myself
We've listened more to life's end gong
Than the sound of life's sweet bells.

Was it even worth it?
Was there all that much to gain?
Well we knew we'd miss the boat,
And we'd already missed the plane.
We didn't read the invite
We just dance at our wake.
All our favorites were playin' so we could shake, shake!
Shake, shake, shake!

Tiny curtains opened then, we heard the tiny clap of little hands,
A tiny man would tell a little joke and get a tiny laugh from all them folks,
Sitting drifting round on bubbles then (thinking it was us that carried them),
When we finally got it figured out that we had truly missed the boat.

Oh, and we carried it all so well
As if we'd got a new position.
Oh, and we owned all the tools ourselves
Without the skills to make a shelf with
Oh, what useless tools ourselves.

My handwriting has become unbearable. Truly. It is frantic and runs all together and reflects far too well what is going on behind the hand holding the pen. But, for the sake of my sanity, I do need to write. Blog it is.
Another one bit the dust recently, and it has made me feel like I need to think about what I've learned from all these failed endeavors. Maybe failed is the wrong word. But maybe not, so I'll stick with it for now. You think you're learning something. You hope so, anyway. You hope that for every heart broken, whether it's yours or not, some tiny piece of light might come from it and that somebody somewhere comes closer to "getting it." I am coming to see that that's not entirely the case. There are universal truths that you come to understand only when you have lived them. Honesty is the best policy. Always be yourself. Keep your head on straight even when your heart has suddenly grown wings. But aside from those, every time is different and you can no more apply the lesson learned from your previous heart crumble than you can apply what you learned in math class to what Plato was talking about.
It's not hopeless, of course. I will probably look at this twenty years from now and say to myself, "Well, you learned this and that and blah and blah." And then I'll know that it all made perfect sense. But not yet, damnit, and I am not known for my patience with introspective epiphanies.

On a cheerier note, Hootie came on the radio today.

Also, welcome to Christmas time. I don't remember missing Christmas in the islands, yet I'm strangely glad that I'm here. Probably because I am finally where my sister is. Finally.