Down by the Water, Down by the Old Main Drag

Alone on a train, aimless in wonder, an outdated map crumbled in my pocket.

I didn’t care where I was going ‘cause they’re all different names for the same place…

I’ve been thinking a lot of big thoughts lately, and I don’t quite have the words for them yet. Attempting to clear my head I braved the weather (rain, sleet, snow and hail all in one hour) to gain new perspective. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Seaside, Oregon watching the rain through the foggy window and trying to find something to tell you.

Today is my last day of unadulterated freedom. Tomorrow I start my new job and consequently my new future. I know I should be excited, revel in the security of a steady paycheck, but I’ve been enjoying unemployment. I’ve taken long walks with nowhere to go and no time to be there. I’ve spent entire days reading next to a mug of hot tea, listening to the rain and the wind in the trees. I know a job is a necessary evil, especially if your spending habits run as rampart as mine, but I wish I could have lived like a bohemian a little bit longer.

The coast disappeared when the sea drowned the sun
and I knew no words to share with anyone.
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed 
and all the different names for the same thing.

My brain feels thick today; the words won’t fall into place the way they’re supposed to. Even in a new town I’m still me, and today that is less than exceptional.

I’ve been thinking about growing up, growing old. I wonder if someday I’ll look back at these words and laugh or cry for this innocent self. I was talking to my mom the other day. She said the funny thing about getting older is that you will always still be you. Your mind never perceptibly changes. There’s no earth-shattering Moment of Realization when the fact of adulthood suddenly becomes real to you. Suddenly becomes you. The secret is that there is no secret. It’s disheartening to think that in twenty years I will most likely be saddled with the same insecurities, the same fears and flaws and disappointments that shadow me now. How much do we really change over the course of a lifetime?

This week has been full of ups and downs, like I’m riding a roller coaster but forgot to pull down the safety bar. I’m fighting gravity with every plunge. But that’s not quite right either. I’m already falling and I don’t know when I’ll stop. I’ve been taking long walks. I’ve been walking until my feet hurt more than the traitor in my chest. You guys, this city is absolutely beautiful right now! I’ve seen tulips insisting it’s spring, their yellow bulbs hanging heavy with rain. I’ve seen children playing behind picket fences like pictures in a flip book, their cartwheels and somersaults alarmingly fractured. I’ve seen the clouds roll in slow and silent, blanketing us almost tenderly. I’ve stood on the street corner, traffic grumbling; wheels on pavement like the city’s heartbeat.  

I’ve been thinking about love, but those thoughts aren’t ready to be expressed yet. They still hurt too much. Lucy, I’m recording our history now on the bedroom wall.

Take it from me, I’ve been there a thousand times You hate your pulse because it thinks you’re still alive, and everything’s wrong. It just gets so hard sometimes. Be calm.

I’ve got to get back over the pass before the roads are washed out! I love you all, and I’m thinking about you.


-b

The Dog Days Are... Probably Just Beginning.

[Note: this post is brought to you by cheap wine, clear skies and the letter b…]

Monday night Friend, U.L.O.L. and I traipsed over to North Bar for trivia. Turns out we were whizzes (pardon the pun) at Toilet and Beekeeping trivia. Unfortunately, our general knowledge, and definitely our current events were a little weak. But you guys! North Bar is the sort of establishment that celebrates mediocrity! Since we were “rounding out the scoreboard” at last place all night, the Trivia Master let us pick a category for next week. Obviously, my knee jerk reaction was to choose Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not taking into account the fact that U.L.O.L and Friend have never in their whole lives seen a single episode.

Buffy is incredulous

Whoops. Clearly the only remedy will be to watch every single episode of all seven seasons in one week. If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I've been sucked into the Hellmouth.

Between episodes I have managed to do semi-productive adult things. These include laundry, feeding and bathing myself… oh yeah, and applying for jobs. Wednesday I got callbacks for not one, but two interviews! After scheduling both, it occurred to me that everything in my closet looks like it survived the zombie apocalypse. Barely. The weather was beautiful and I had planned on squandering another blissful day of funemployment wandering aimlessly (AKA “getting acclimated”). When faced with Grown-Up Responsibility, I’ve found you have several options:

1. Ignore it until it goes away

2. Suck it up and do what you need to do, grudgingly

3. Concoct a freakish, hybrid itinerary which includes simultaneously shirking and embracing said Responsibility.  

Obviously, as a perpetual over-committer, the latter was my only option. So I resolutely tightened my Chacos and set out for the nearest department store (about two miles away). I figured I could save myself time by walking instead of going to the gym, get my daily dose of Vitamin-D and still have plenty of time to purchase interview-worthy duds.  

On an unrelated note: does anybody remember Vitamin C? Whatever happened to her?

So much for that whole put-a-smile-on-your-face gambit

Several obvious flaws to this Frankenstein plan: trusting myself to voluntarily enter a department store after experiencing a glorious spring afternoon, relying on only one store to assemble an entire professional wardrobe and believing whole-heartedly that I had any idea of how to combine “professional” and “fashionable”. I encountered the first glitch when I got “lost”. Seriously, this store is right next to my gym so it’s the only route I’ve driven daily since moving to this city. I could have driven to this store with my eyes closed. But somehow my mutinous feet dragged me down side streets and alleys before I even knew what had happened. After a stern talking-to, they got us back on track. Serious uphill battle.

I made it to my destination before encountering the second glitch: every pair of dress pants in the store fit my body strangely. To be fair, most of the dress pants were more of a faux-professional slip-on type deal by “Flirtatious” brand. Obviously I am not a 13-year old anymore, and these were not designed for me [Note: they probably wouldn’t have fit me when I was 13 either, but I would have worn them shamelessly]. Furthermore, my 24-inch inseam makes buying pants in the best of times a trying ordeal. These freakishly short legs are my blessing and my curse. They’re excellent for the running/jumping/sprinting, and they afford me a considerably low center of gravity on the pitch. But let’s face it; they weren’t designed for office wear. By some miracle, after about an hour of frantically pawing through the racks, I found a pair of pants that fit well and were only about 3 inches too long. At this point, sweaty and starting to mumble to myself, I probably would have settled for anything.

Third disappointing and predictable glitch: there was not a single vest in the entire store. By this point in the day I was thoroughly convinced that the only possible way I could get hired would be whilst wearing a stylish vest layered over whatever other boring clothes I found. I was literally distraught about the absence of vests. I trudged home dejectedly. I didn’t even enjoy the sunshine. Luckily, when I got home there was a care package from Lo! She baked me a batch of what she called muffins and I determined to be cleverly disguised cupcakes. Let’s split the difference and call them muff-cakes. When I went to bed last night there was a single muff-cake left… it never saw the light of day. Lo, roomies and I are eternally grateful. Also, I am currently drinking wine out of my commemorative glass. 

After several muff-cakes and a sandwich I was ready for my vest quest. You didn’t think I would give up that easily, did you? After some legit sleuthing, I determined Maurice’s was the only store in this town that could guarantee me stylish vests. I’ma spare you the details of how lost I got, how many children I nearly mowed down trying to read street signs, so on and so forth… Suffice it to say I eventually made it to my destination. Maurice’s was like a vest utopia. I swept in there, a force to be reckoned with, scooped up all of the medium sized vests in the whole store and disappeared into a dressing room before they could say “20% Off”.

Let’s get real for minute, guys. There are very few things I get legitimately excited about, especially in the fashion realm. To-date I have fallen deeply in love with Chacos, bandanas and rugby jerseys. You guys. Trying on those vests was like babies discovering the existence of their own toes. I was enchanted! I was unstoppable! I had to buy one in every color!  

Me: I just compulsively spent $75 on stylish vests…

Friend: I’d say that’s a good inVESTment!

I spent a whole hour getting ready for my interview this morning. Keep in mind this is the longest I’ve taken to get ready any morning in the past… 1,825 days. Give or take. Slet.

[Note: “slet” is an inside joke I would like to invite you all into, but it really wouldn’t be funny if I tried to type it out here with no context. Suffice it to say after approximately 10 hours of drinking at the Silvertip Casino, J-bot coined a term. Imagine if you smooshed the phrase “She’s let herself go” into a single word and then extracted the “s’let” portion and verbified it. To slet is to become generally disinterested with the basics of being socially acceptable (ex. bathing, exercising and brushing one’s teeth). 

I ended up looking like this...

My thoughts from 10:40am: I’m sitting in the parking lot of my Potential Job, about 20 minutes early for my interview. I’m sweaty, I haven’t had any coffee (although I did swill down two mugs of green tea, attempting to preemptively kick an oncoming cold) and I can feel my heartbeat somewhere deep behind my eyes. I. Am. Ready.

I’m not going to bore you guys with the rambling details of how I potentially charmed my way into a kick-ass job. About 7 hours later I was finally headed home. Last obstacle is tomorrow’s drug test, and a background check. I’m 99.9% sure I’ll be ok on both of those fronts. Side note, not a single mirror in this house is conducive to taking pictures of oneself. This is U.L.O.L.'s mirror. She is a tiny human being.  

Anyhow, this post got considerably longer than I expected it to. I hope I didn’t bore you guys too terribly. Wish me luck; I may soon be gainfully employed.

Lucy, I had a dream that you’ve been touring Australia and Europe. You called as soon as you were back stateside. It may have been a dream, but it was damn good to hear your voice.

As always, I love and miss you all.

-b

Little Darling, It's Been a Long Cold Lonely Winter

You guys! We’ve made it two weeks! And hopefully at least some of you are still with me...  

Today is an incredibly lovely day. The sun is shining, the wind is quiet and the temperature screams “Spring! It’s spring bitches!”. It’s the sort of day that makes me want to longboard, or run barefoot through mud, or nap on the steps to the Jeanette Rankin building. Days like this remind me of frisbee on the Oval with TR and Bub, long walks by the river with Lucy, clutching lukewarm coffees because otherwise our fingers might fall off. Pretending the cold doesn’t bother us, ignoring runny noses and goosebumps. Winterskin desperate for sun. Basketball shorts and chacos, despite the snow. I can picture the remnants of snow back home, heaped in the shadows and gullies like deflated blimps after the parade. There’s something sad about springtime snow. The novelty is gone. It’s dirty and tired and ready to sleep it off, like a hungover prom queen (or something comparably cliché).

[Note: when I was eighteen I had a lot of feelings and I wrote things like this poem…]

March 9, 2007

Pale spring sun on paler winter

shoulders. Barefoot gliding through

green space, kicking up gravel. Dust. Trouble.

Losing myself in that

chigga-chug rhythm, the

squelch of cold mud between bare toes,

the ring of unfamiliar laughter.

Some days restless is appeased by

the smell of wet grass or a stranger’s

handshake. Some days I just miss

the birds.

Open my body, let the sunshine bounce

off pale ribs, fill me up until there’s no

room for stupid head tricks.

Take each second as I can, losing

myself in the open corners of your kiss, the

warmth I’ve found curled up in your arms.

Is forever always, or no time at all?

[Note: It’s like baby emo b took the words right out of my mouth and injected them with a little extra dash of angst!]

Sticking with the alcoholic food theme, Friend and I soaked gummy bears in vodka for 5 days… They swell to about three times their original size and burn the roof of your mouth. Really it was easier to just swallow them whole, because then they burn in your stomach instead. I ended up feeling a lot like this:

Hogan wasn't actually drunk, just sleepy

 Never again. Next on the agenda (if I ever fully recover from the last experiment): vodka skittles. I’m hesitant to tackle any more fruit-flavored candies, but I’ve heard good things about this one.

“Hello, it’s me again, it’s three days now you’ve been in my dreams…”

Lucy, you’ve been on my mind a lot lately. I hope you’re happy. I’m glad to hear the butterflies are back. I wish you would call… No other bookend feels quite right. I still crumble at your name.

“I know I’m to blame, but it kills me that I made you hate me. Like you’ve erased me and now, I know what they say, they say that you’ll be happier. Better off without me.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about control (mostly because I feel like I have very little of it). Is it arguably as courageous to forfeit all sense of control as to maintain it perfectly? Throwing ourselves to the wind, committing whole-heartedly to the unknown… There is some degree of bravery in every gamble we make; tumbling down the rabbit hole without stopping to consider how deep it goes.

Sorry guys, my adventuring has been limited the past few days so I don’t have much to tell you. Not to mention the weather is driving me to distraction. So! I’m going to leave you with this poem about spring…

“Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window,into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old thing,while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything”

             -e.e. cummings

E, 26 more days! I hope you’re excited (and yes, of course I’m counting too…)

Update: This afternoon after “studying” (code for drinking a lot of coffee and working on my blog posts whilst reading Autostraddle) I decided to walk home. But as I mentioned, the weather was absolutely beautiful. So I found myself traipsing around town instead. I think I ended up walking about 7 miles. I stumbled upon an Art Walk over on Hawthorne. A short list of the things I saw:

1.      A man dressed as a pirate buying yellow flowers from a street vendor

2.      A girl chalking a neon hummingbird onto the sidewalk. She may have been high on something (or multiple things), but it was really beautiful

3.      Darth Vader. Riding a unicycle. Playing the Star Wars theme song on bagpipes. Seriously, I couldn’t make this shit up.

Sometimes this city is like glimpsing a familiar feature in a stranger’s face, making alone seem less lonely.

Until next time, I love you all.

-b

Falling is Like This.

"It feels like reckless driving when we're talking. It's fun while it lasts, and it's faster than walking. But no one's gonna sympathize when we crash..."

The problem with throwing yourself headfirst into everything (literally and figuratively) is that you never know where you’ll land. Sometimes you’ll fall. Sometimes you will hurt/break/bleed. But in those ephemeral moments before the crash, you’re as close to flying as you’ll ever be. I want to land solidly with both feet in this new reality. I want to open my veins to this city, let it seep into my bloodstream. I want to swallow it whole, feel it pulsing and alive under my skin. Glowing hot and heavy inside my ribcage. Because the alternative means existing neither here nor there. Because I can’t walk forward, looking backward, without tripping over my own clumsy ambitions.

“Well, one of these days is gonna be right soon, you’ll find your legs and go and stay gone.”

I keep expecting to wake up and be immersed in somewhere truly other. Instead I repeatedly encounter the realization that this is a new place, but still a place. I still have to eat and sleep and pay my bills on time. I still have to drag myself out of bed when the big heavies come crashing in. The big heavies still come crashing in. I’ll fall onto my bed, clothed in the sunlight that bleeds through my dirty window, feeling lost, my body curved like an open-ended parenthesis around nothing.

“Sometimes you are winter sunlight,

chasing away the shadows but leaving me

so damn cold”

The best cure I’ve found for the big heavies is walking. Hauling myself out of bed and forcing myself out into the rain/wind/sleet. Feeling the world in this most primitive sense, trying to become part of the texture that keeps rubbing me raw. Because eventually the rain stops. The sun splits the clouds, illuminates all the suspended drops caught in bare, wintertree branches. It lights them up like Christmas morning. Sometimes I wish I were a camera, because my eyes can perceive beauty but my words are incapable of fully embodying it. I can’t explain to you how green everything is here, how the moss grows like a thick, soft carpet, or like a blanket inviting you to stop and rest awhile. How it spills down the steps to my front door like a welcome mat.  I can’t capture the exact shades and tones of sunset when I feel purple heavy in my dreams. I can’t, with any aptitude, explain why a stone garden wall stopped me in my path. It took my breath away.

“And language just happened it was never planned, and it’s inadequate to describe where I am in the room of my house, where the lights never bend. Waiting for this day to end…”