Everything Was Going So Well: The Morning From Hell

Everything was going too well. I was content with my classes, I was on track with my work, I was meeting interesting people, I was really connected with friends, I was in control and I was having interactions that I would classify as wonderful. So naturally, smiling to myself in bed two nights ago, I thought: something bad has to happen.
Monday started with stress: I saw the pile of work that would need to be accomplished by Friday that hadn't really been tackled the previous weekends because of awesome Cultural Rhythms shows and a great night out dancing. Up until this Monday, I have felt in control, as if no amount of work could sway me, as if I were sitting on top of the world ready to tackle anything no matter how difficult. But that all changed, stress kicked in this week. I will accomplish everything by Friday, I know that. But something loomed.
There is a natural order, a karma, if you will, that flies high and sinks low in the ritualistic ups and downs of life.
And that happened today.
I usually wake up and turn on my computer to check my email, the weather etc. This morning pushing the little power button proved useless. Thinking that perhaps the battery had run out, I checked the AC adapter attached to the computer, switchted the power cord on and off, and tried again.
Nothing.
So this is the point where I started to panic. This week, work has piled up and I depend very much on my computer. A non-functional computer was not an option. After a quick phonecall to the parents for moral support, I went to Staples in the early morn to buy a new adapter no matter the cost. I walked into staples looking like a stressed out parent caring his poor infant suffering from croup or colic or something bad. The salesman tried to help me, but after disappearing behind a wall to scurry around I heard him talking things over with someone on the phone asking what should be the best solution for me. Great. I didn't need incompetence this morning. He returned saying that the store was going through some sort of restocking and they didn't have any universal adapters for my ancient computer (really, not that old.... ol' reliable). My first bastion of help had failed.
Luckily Radio Shack was just up the street. But unfortunately, it was before 9am. So I went to have breakfast, nursing my child to my breast as I walked in the cold to the closest dining hall and had a nervous stressed breakfast. It's difficult to relax and you know your work, your life is in peril... well at least your life on your computer.
At 9am I was at the door waiting for the lights to flick on and the door to open with another anxious customer. The minutes ticked on and as the sales lady tried to open the door it was stuck. It was pretty cold and the door pretty flimsy that I couldn't help laugh. What else could go wrong today. Today had to end, I had to start over tomorrow. Just call it quits, end it early. But of course, one never can.
In the end, I found an adapter at Radio Shack, my computer is working, the battery is shot, life is fine, and I am now relaxed again.
Let this be a lesson to all of you: back up your work and let your battery run low, run low, run low, run low.... or else you might kill it, and your sanity.

Intersection

I love Sunday, the intersection of one week gone, and one in the making; a point full of movement and motion. Like my friend Bryanna, we've resigned our weekends to hard work but I often find myself chilled out on Sunday night, leaving the work aside and sitting in front of the TV for Grey's Anatomy.

I come home from yoga, floating on a cloud, feeling like my entire body is breathing through its pores. Yoga, for me, is so intense- stretching my body, pushing my limits. Shaking muscles. Going back to the breath. Gillian tells me yoga makes her cry, and she leaves feeling angry at the world. I can understand because the intense stretches push you, make you vulnerable. But I love it, my whole body works, in a way that I can't make it any other way.

Sunday stands as a vantage point, one week gone, and a new one ahead. This week, for instance, is insane. Math, Art History, Italian, all coming together in an unpredictable way. I've got two assignments, midterms in the distance, more grant applications blah blah blah. But I can see the week ahead, I can plan, relax, feel settled knowing I will be back at Sunday next week. Mwahaha, the feeling of control... it really is empowering.

And so from my beacon, I rest settled...
and watch Grey's Anatomy.

What a show. It's fun. It's moving. It's tense. It's poetic. And it is wonderfully written. A show like this renews my faith in scripted television and perhaps going into script-writing. I am so wrapped up in the lives of these interns. Every week I see the drama of each of the characters, I laugh, I tense. Meredith expresses herself with such succinct poetry. There's a charm that overpowers the show. It's full of reality, ups and downs, wonderfully realistic (and almost too well packaged) but still wonderful. Ultimately, I'm drawn in. I latch onto lines, storylines, dramatic buildup. Really the only show worth watching on TV. It's got it all: poetry, drama, comedy, hotness, interweaved stories. What an end to the week (and Nadira phonecalls :P).

last night

You're too good
Too good to let slip into the velocity
of anonymous nobody
Too good to be left to fumble
in midnight anxiety
As much as I want to make this happen
I've got to stand off
and let things build
Unless, together, in the throes
you can stabilize my doubts

Wait! Wait! Wait

So, yesterday, I exploded.
Vented because I thought I couldn't express myself openly on this thing called a blog, out in the freedom of the world wide web.
But, today, I say: fuck it. That age-old motto initiated by me and Susie a short two years ago (but how long it now feels).
The words I write here aren't perfect, the ideas are raw, the subject matter is, thus, bound to be rough. But it is also liable to be pure, hard, appealing. It could be violent, calm, sexual, senile.
So I start again, to write like never before (though I know I'll go through times when I don't write) and let it all hang out, because too often we seek to cover up, hide, change, brush off who we are because of others.
Now, this doesn't mean that I'll be writing spectacular nonsense, laced with malicious intent and sexual fantasy. No. Just pure feeling, more of what I am. So I'll let it go. If you're offended, let's talk. If you think it's about you, let's talk. If you think it's wonderful, let's talk. If you think it's horrendous, let's talk. If I've learned anything about people, family, relationships, it's that talking about things, calling to simply say good morning, running into a friend and sharing genuine feelings, is all the brick and mortar that builds real bridges between people.
Ugh sap.
Bring on the misery.

Note: I draw inspiration from torment, questions, injustices.... happiness, while present in my life in ample amounts, doesn't oft find venting through my words.

aftermath

Get out. You broke somebody's heart, so now you have to leave. It's been six weeks since we spoke real words, not simply online IMs or cellular feelings. But still, you won't leave. You've coloured in a part of my brain- how I wish I wouldn't continue tracing the outlines of memories we created. Slowly the colour fades but it pulsates back to life at the quietest whisper of connection. And you send blank emails, call in silence, log on and never speak. I wish that you would just fade more quickly. Probably I should fill in that space with another, shove you further down to burning inferno- all the better for you to incinerate, my dear. All the better so that song lyrics don't colour me blue and your passing image doesn't make me fall apart. One day you shall pass. One day you will be that long-ago memory I can't recall. Only the foggy semblance of a colour. In this silence, while the echo fades, I wonder, I replay; moments shift their meaning now that you're gone. I should just let go, forget you. Fill the void with shallow meetings, meaningless contacts and eventually another. For now I can't stop thinking of you just like in the beginning I couldn't. But, now, I don't exist to you. You've moved on, soon to forget. I wonder if we were ever together, if your eyes wandered, if your heart fled, if your body lied. I was left building a bridge connected to no other side, bricks falling into the river. And I, blinded, deaf, continued working, ignoring the mighty jets of water as it swallowed my work. I remained enraptured, mixing mortar, laying bricks, thinking I was getting close to connection. And the bricks continued to collapse with a crash until I started to hear the boom and started to feel the water's spray against my face. Standing on my side of shore, looking across and seeing vague figures in the distance. Possible only imagining, what I wanted to see but couldn't.

---

And I saw you, not recognizing at first. Your hair shorter, your face sadder than I remember. Perhaps I preserved and retouched the past and placed you in another space thata did not ever exist. And here you are in profile, walking, staring, head unswivelling. And you sai nothing. I said nothing too. In our dialogue of silence we communicated, leaving everything to possibility and out imagination. I fell apart, if only on the surface. You made no effort to say hello or even acknowledge my presence. It was as if you were making a conscious effort not to. And I watched you in your inertia, walking. I too said nothing.

You aren't worth it. I had forgotten that since the end of you and I, I have had memories not involving you, or word of you. You have not contaminated my life. In fact you've made me grow, and now, I am much happier.

But still I cannot let it fall to break and fall to silence without understanding. It will be up to me to ask you why and just to say hello. Not out of need to feel a bridge between you and I but to look at you from a distance, just out of touch and not exchange meaningless concluding phrases. It will be to understand- even if I pretend to hate you I find you fascinating- entranced by the glinting steel and vermillion as it exits from my fresh wounds.

Out! Out! Out!

I find myself imposing censure on my writing out here in the free, cyberworld... because I know that close friends and family have access.
This sucks.
Writing should be limitless, an exercise of all your muscles without worries of how those motions look. I've started tensing up, watching the faces of those who read. So I stand still, mistyping, cringing away from this stage I've built. Too many eyes, too many faces, too many individual thought spaces.
Beware, it may just spill over very soon. Prepare.

...

A large part of who I am is quiet, contemplative, listening. Sometimes you can call me on the phone and all I'll do is listen...
....
.....
......
.......
.........
..........
And you miss so much that is me
You miss all my physicality
The wandering path of my eyes
The smile grows with calm surprise
I miss the experience of you
in flesh, in laugh, in smile too
I start to forget and lose that part
that had you placed right close to heart
Some days I wish that you would be
flown fresh from memory here to me

Information Central

Somehow, wherever I am, whether walking down the street, or waiting for someone at the T, people stop and ask me for directions. Do I look like I belong? Do I look like I can help? What is it about me that pulls these people in to ask me their questions? Perhaps I should just where an encircled 'i' on my hat and claim I know all. Really, I am convinced I know nothing. How are these people to trust me of all people? Will my finger point them in the right direction? Perhaps, I seem like a genuinely honest person who will say "I don't know" if indeed I do not. Whose to say my that way, turn left, turn right, cross the street will lead to their final destination. I guess they just have a feeling.

Limbo

And I find myself with 20 minutes until class time not knowing what to do, what to write. I never write in the same notebook twice. Can you let me speak? And can you reply? I don’t what you want from me, I can’t make juice, I don’t make conversation. I’m systematically useless. Want to have some? I think I may have a few standards. I’ve not been sexual lately, that switch has been flipped down I want you to help me. You, who? I don’t know you, the person I’ve stopped looking for. When I look you disappear. When I don’t there you are. And somehow I don’t understand how the universe works but somehow inside my head it is marvellous. It works in wonderful ways, bringing people together tragically, making meetings randomly. I’ve decided it’s chaos and continuous change. Any attempt to make it clean cut and orderly is stupid... make the earth untilted and you’ve eliminated the human race, good job. I’ve started posing nude, bearing all, caring none and all of a sudden I am much happier. Somehow being in constant flux with a few changing elements of consistency, it all makes sense. Sense – why should we try and make sand castles out of it when its only grains in the wind, broken down, undefined, no, a point.

And people think I am insane and that makes me happy. To be eccentric to not be an ordered one is to be one with the universe. All I ask is for returned phone calls and correspondence and love. Without them, lots of angst, crumbling facade of my body, uncontrollable bits of flesh writing on the ground, wounded. It’s just a feeling- can’t stop the feeling. It happens, without ever wanting it, without looking for you, there you are.

Intersection

I love Sunday, the intersection of one week gone, and one in the making; a point full of movement and motion. Like my friend Bryanna, we've resigned our weekends to hard work but I often find myself chilled out on Sunday night, leaving the work aside and sitting in front of the TV for Grey's Anatomy.

I come home from yoga, floating on a cloud, feeling like my entire body is breathing through its pores. Yoga, for me, is so intense- stretching my body, pushing my limits. Shaking muscles. Going back to the breath. Gillian tells me yoga makes her cry, and she leaves feeling angry at the world. I can understand because the intense stretches push you, make you vulnerable. But I love it, my whole body works, in a way that I can't make it any other way.

Sunday stands as a vantage point, one week gone, and a new one ahead. This week, for instance, is insane. Math, Art History, Italian, all coming together in an unpredictable way. I've got two assignments, midterms in the distance, more grant applications blah blah blah. But I can see the week ahead, I can plan, relax, feel settled knowing I will be back at Sunday next week. Mwahaha, the feeling of control... it really is empowering.

And so from my beacon, I rest settled...
and watch Grey's Anatomy.

What a show. It's fun. It's moving. It's tense. It's poetic. And it is wonderfully written. A show like this renews my faith in scripted television and perhaps going into script-writing. I am so wrapped up in the lives of these interns. Every week I see the drama of each of the characters, I laugh, I tense. Meredith expresses herself with such succinct poetry. There's a charm that overpowers the show. It's full of reality, ups and downs, wonderfully realistic (and almost too well packaged) but still wonderful. Ultimately, I'm drawn in. I latch onto lines, storylines, dramatic buildup. Really the only show worth watching on TV. It's got it all: poetry, drama, comedy, hotness, interweaved stories. What an end to the week (and Nadira phonecalls :P).