On Happiness, and Eyelid Movie Theaters

Happiness is not leisure. Nor is it upward mobility or delivery sushi or blushing Instagram photos of every day life made to look more beautiful and interesting and more like art glowing from an Otterbox frame. Happiness is not a sparkling ring or a sparkling kitchen. It is not bragging rights. It is not sepia. It is not the perfect man or the perfect woman sitting on a teetering white pedestal. It is not butterscotch chips or snowglobe mornings, it is not Christmas, it is not the warm smell of bread baking in your own bread pan in your own oven in your own house. Happiness is none of these things.
Happiness is reality, and the acceptance of it. Knowing what you can change, knowing what you can not and driving with the map that this information draws for you.

This quest that I have been on- the search for the perfect place or the perfect feeling- is wholly, entirely useless. Useless. Perfection, as it is now, does not exist in the long term. Virtually nothing exists unchanging. The trick to sanity, I am finding, and to the truth of happiness, is that nothing will ever be exactly what we had hoped. Dreamers' eyes are closed, playing sweet, flawless movies projected on the insides of pink eyelids. The vice is not the dream. The vice is the alarm clock wake up, when you are not ready to give up what you have spent all this time seeing because now you have to see what is actually there. The vice is the distraction of the dream. The pursuit of it to the detriment of your current experience.


I have much more to say about this, but I also have wine and that shiny glass just took all my attention away from intellect.

I can only think clearly when I do it for the sake of someone else.

I wrote an e-mail to one of my best friends today, and this came out. Which is about the closest thing to my brain that I can come up with right now...



As for me. Oy, life. It is giving me a big stress fracture in my heart right now. This is a weird feeling! Like I said, I wish I could start over. I would not have bought this car, would not live in this house, would not have this life. It's strange to wish that almost EVERYTHING were different. Not that it's awful. It's just not sustainable. I am beginning to realize that people in this real world do not value "down time" as much as they maybe should. What they think is boredom is really just, you know, time. To think or dream or just be. St. John teaches this to people. But only people who maybe stay for too long and are then faced with life afterwards. There are things I love. I will list them now so as to remember myself:

-I finally have a very good relationship with my sister. We still drive each other batty, but we each see the value in having someone who really gets it. All. Of. It.
-I love my boyfriend. He is patient with me when I don't deserve it. He is uplifting and smiling and thoughtful and seems somehow immune to my crazy. And I have a lot of that. I go to bed every night wishing we were in the same place, when I have wished for space from so many others. Thinking of being farther away from him than I am makes me consider staying in one place. What?
-SEASONS! I loved watching the leaves change. I love seeing my breath in the morning, even though I sort of hate that it feels like my ears might freeze off of my head. There are changes here from month to month. In mood, in music, in food, in shoes. I love change.
-I can drive to see any number of family members whenever I want. I don't have much time for that, but if I really needed a grandmother fix, I could have one.
-Denver has potholes that gush steam. Driving through them feels like a movie. Or like an episode of Law and Order. Whatever.

Ok, those are some things. There are more things. It is ridiculously hard not to miss my old life, so I have to remind myself sometimes that unhappy is not what I am. There is no rut here. I am not stuck. I am in a weird place that might take some awkward wiggling, but there is happiness to be found here. Plenty, actually, and I don't even have to search. St. John was just so....comfy.

Girls Who Press Flowers

I used to press flowers into books. When I was young, the natural, wilted death of a wildflower seemed so unjust. Purple petals to gray. Dying in the sun. We never came to the mountains in the fall- only in the green summer and the blue silver winter- and so I had no understanding of the cycle and I never saw the golds. Just gray. Though I was mostly right, wasn't I? Wildflowers do not get caught in the fall.
Now I come here as an adult. Alone, if it can be done, and I sift through the same books that have sat on these same shelves for nearly twenty years. They are my grandparents' books, conservative and a little stuffy with titles like, "The Libertarian's Bible," and in them, in many of them, are my tiny, flattened wildflowers.
I do not read these books, but I search them for the petals and smile when I meet my ten year old self. Knobby, with ears that my head had not yet grown into, who dreamed of becoming a singer of commercial jingles and having a roly poly farm.


Thus far, most of my adulthood has surprised me. Not much has happened that I can say I saw coming. A too thoughtful girl who ran away to the Caribbean, where she lived in the trees, got to understand creatures, almost grew into her ears, decided along the way that she really only wanted to eat plants, and dreams of living everywhere else. Where did she come from?
And then I find these pressed flowers and realize that people don't actually change at all.

ReBlogger. For lack of current original thought.

I wrote this yeeeeeears ago. Approximately five of them. They were five big years, but it seems that I have landed in roughly the same place.




I'm sitting at my desk right now. My own desk. In an office, and I'm wearing heels and slacks and my toenails are polished. I just stuffed, stamped and licked about 30 envelopes. I've got what seems like millions of file folders and paperclipped pages waiting to be set inside them covering said desk. Over and over again, I said that I never wanted to do office work. I never wanted a 9-5. In fact, the idea scared the hell out of me and I couldn't think of anything I would more passionately avoid. And now look at me.
There's that movie, "Say Anything," with John Cusack. At one point, he's having dinner with Diane's family and her dad asks Lloyd what he plans to do with his life. To which Lloyd replies with something along the lines of "I don't want to process anything bought or sold. I don't want to buy anything sold or processed. I don't want to sell anything sold, bought, or processed...." And so on. And that pretty much sums up what I've felt the last couple of years.
So, what am I doing? This is how it happens, you know? This is how free spirits and tree huggers and flower children ended up being corporate heads and other general business exec bastards. It starts as a job you don't love but don't mind and ends in a vacuum where your not-too-terrible job and your life have become the same thing.
Are people really ok with this? Does the cycle not bother them the way it does me? I understand that restlessness is for youth and maturity triggers some need to settle. Am I really the exception there or is the entire thought bogus and people are just too comfortable to realize how uncomfortable they really are?
Introspection is overrated. I've just been struck with the idea that if I'm not careful, I will be the kind of person I don't ever want to be.
I just got a spam email that asked me if I'm a real man. No, generated and randomly distributed email, I am not a real man. And it's not something I'm so interested in, so if you would take a second to think about the gender to which you are advertising and kindly take me off of your big huge list, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Jungle Hammock Head

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.

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.

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.