In Which the Body Says: Cool It

Woke up with a sore throat today. Achy. I drank a lot of hot tea and water, and then did what my body wants as opposed to my mind (which yearns for greasy french fries, preferably waffle fries smothered in daiya cheese and jalapeno peppers and vegan ranch dressing, and god, do I ever miss REAL bacon), which was to go to Whole Foods after work, buy a shitload of beets, carrots, and apples, juice them, and then make a rather macrobiotic dinner of mashed yams, brown rice and roasted brussel sprouts. With chia seed chocolate pudding for dessert, and a few crumbles of buckwheat groats with white chocolate peanut butter/raspberry agave nectar.  Maybe this food diatribe belongs in the other blog. But I feel like writing about it here.

Walked through the graveyard instead of ran, and will forgo my new grueling sit-up regime for tonight. No writing of my 1) new short story, 2) last few chapters of my new novel or 3) my new cycle of poetry. No looking for agents. I'm going to lie down and read, and hope for the best in the morning.

It's been so long since I've been sick, sick enough that my body runs out of juice before my mind does. It feels infuriating somehow. Like progress is being stopped, all my forward motions temporarily halted. 

So yeah. I do this every night while running. I make lists of what I'm grateful for, whizzing past gravestones and gazing up at the sky. It's important to include gratitude in one's life, I feel. Just as long as it doesn't slip into complacency.

I'm in a sharing mood today, so here it is. Off the top of my head.

1) Reading three good short stories in a row (in the Ray Bradbury-inspired collection I recently bought. This is supposed to be spontaneous, so I can't get up to find the title).

2) Cats hiding in Whole Food grocery bags, with just their ears poking out.

3) Raspberry flavored agave nectar. 

4) There is no part of my body currently flaking, oozing, or requires shielding from the sun. Healed tattoos are lovely.

5) Passing the weirdly demonic elderly woman (think: Rosemary's Baby) in the graveyard, who is always carrying a giant tape recorder/cassette player, wanders in at dusk, and says something to me that sounds remarkably like curses  (it's hard to tell, my ipod is always on really loud). But with a lovely smile on her face. There's a short story, right there.

6) Catwoman played by an actress channeling Audrey Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn Catwomans are sexy! Smart catwomans are sexy!

7) That I get to see DKR again this weekend. :) 

8) It no longer freaks me out to meet new people. 

9)  I joined a book club. I've never joined a book club before. Much less one discussing sci-fi at seafood restaurants. Sci-fi and seafood go remarkably well together.

10) Every day. Really. I'm grateful for every day I get to breathe and wake up and be who I'm supposed to be.

No Need for My Own Words Today

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily delectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment take place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.

Anais Nin's Diary, Volume One (1931-1934)

Strength

Hello, you.

The you you denied yourself when you were seventeen and listening to "Crucify" on your Walkman, and thinking complicated thoughts that remained on infinite lockdown.

The you wanting to leap with five young deer over crumbling gravestones into the twinkling night.

The you yearning to decorate your body in the lights of the universe and the bright gleaming hope of the solar systems, all of them, real & imagined.

The you who wants to live dangerously/hard/fully, and then have the tenacity & cold steel will to sit down and write it all down, and write it well.

The you pounding your fist, demanding to live beyond the ether of thoughts & dreams.

Salt in My Mouth

Tumultuous. When I was a kid, I'd wade waist-deep into the ocean and face the approaching waves. It seemed necessary that I do this, that I let myself ride alongside the cresting sea foam, to give in to the rhythmic pull of nature. But sometimes a wave would rush in, too large for my skinny little-kid body, and I would tumble feet over head into the current, salt rushing into my nose and mouth.

I never learned how to swim. For those few seconds I lost myself in the wave, lost sense of gravity and the sun and the comforting tug of earth, I thought I might drown. Each and every time. It was terrifying. 

Don't ask me why I kept doing this to myself.

I'm tumbling through a gigantic wave as I type these words. My heartbeat caught in my throat.

I want to know where the goddamned ground is. That soft layer of sand, solid under my feet. Right now, life is uncertain, stormy, and scary as hell.

I feel a confession coming on.

There are things that haunt me. I know I intended trying to live without regret. I'm working on it. But I still have some. Old ones, fading thin-white like scars. New ones, crimson and wince-painful.

Everything I didn't say. The courage that slipped out from under me like an unreliable Peter Pan shadow. Walking away when I shouldn't have. Or staying when I should have walked away.

Just. Know that I feel more strongly than I let on. Sometimes feelings rush and burn through me like a brilliant summer day. I'm afraid of getting hurt. I'm afraid of letting other people in. 

I used to like the idea of pretty little vignettes, with a beginning and an end. I wanted to keep my life contained in that way, compartmentalized, without messiness or drama.  To keep people at arm's length. To say definitely to myself: and that's the end of that.

Just. Know that I meant to do things differently. There are so many yous I'm speaking to right now. So many invitations I should have accepted, or extended; eyes I should have looked into; notes/emails I should have written; phone calls I should have made; people I admired who I let walk out of my life without a word. A casual "hey, want to get dinner sometime?" is so hard for me, even in the most innocuous of situations. I don't remember the last time I asked anyone to lunch, or coffee, or just to hang out in a smoky bar.

Just. Know this. Even if you don't read this blog, or know I have a blog, or that blogs even exist in the world, because you no longer exist in this world. Know this somehow, anyway. That I wish we had that lunch/dinner/coffee/drink. That I could have known you better. 

And if once I tumble out of this wave, I will reach out and tell you this. And I will try not to be afraid. 

In the Thick of It

I hate this groggy weather. I wanted to walk down Murray Avenue, for a bagel or a movie or at least a few distracting minutes of people-watching.

Instead I stayed inside. Where it never got cooler than 79 degrees, even with the air conditioner on full blast. My dog is weary with panting. My cats lie on the kitchen floor as if comatose.

There's so many things I want to write right now.   Let's start with what I can write.

Saturn was colored in, along with a bonus surprise of the milky way perched on my shoulder blade. I love my finished robot tattoo. It's colorful and vibrant, and I can't help but smile when I see it (which is every time I look down, hee hee). That said, some part of me mourns the fact that it's finished. I enjoyed my sessions, despite the moments of extraordinary pain. It feels like something good has ended. 

Here's wishing for a lot more color in my life. Not necessarily in the form of tattoos, but that might be okay too, once my life settles down and my skin has had time to heal/forgive me. Wounded and healed three times since the end of the May -- I don't blame it for being pissed.

I haven't written anything except three pithy paragraphs of my novel yesterday morning. This is unforgivable. I have a draft of a poem over a week old that still doesn't have a satisfying ending. Also unforgivable. Instead I have to deal with "life." For over four months, I've been living in the ethereal space of art/exploration/beauty/thought.

Eerily, my novel has become an exploration of my day-to-day existence. Right now, my characters are preparing for an epic battle. This is not a coincidence. Sometimes the momentum drags, just so I can keep working through issues via my characters. I do feel sorry I'm using them this way. My characters should be independent entities that spring up and surprise me with their autonomy, not pawns in my personal psychodrama. I'm going to have to do some serious editing, once I'm done with this first draft. 

Random things I learned today:

Nine hours of Netflix instant and computer searches turns an ordinarily sharp brain into oatmeal-mush. 

Spring mix salads taste superb with low-fat ginger dressing, and nothing else. Sometimes, just sometimes, it tastes better than anything else in the world. 

I wonder what will happen next. My eyes are wide open. In wonder. In disbelief.

Bombs

I keep bombs in the fridge.

My stereotypical weaknesses infuriate me. Food is such a girly weapon of choice. 

One piece of apple pie = 411 calories. I don't know this intrinsically, at least. I googled it.

It wasn't even a good piece of pie. It was Giant Eagle variety, complete with a horrible sugared crust. I ate it anyway.

At least I didn't buy the whole pie.

There's that.

Why punish myself? Is it because of the looming storm of change/the unknown/loneliness/freedom? I had a relatively good night, at first. I went to the movies, and then to the grocery store. A small child made me smile outside the theatre. "Mommy," he said, "Why is the sidewalk sparkling? Is it magic?"

 

I liked his mother's response considerably less: "Don't be stupid," she said.

I wanted to tell him, "It's not stupid. You're right, it's wonderful that the sidewalk sparkles."

Instead, I walked silently to the car. And I found myself shaking. The wave of sadness is overwhelming sometimes. It's exactly things like a sparkling sidewalk that matter right now. Those small things. A pretty girl riding a red bicycle in Shadyside. A kind friend's text message. A poignant line of poetry, which I run through my mind like a strand of jewelry. Solace can come from anywhere.

And that, I suppose, is how I wound up with the pie. I'm a fragile little eggshell. Even a stranger's comment (and not even directed at me!) has the power to make me shatter, just a little.

I need to be stronger. My bones filled with titanium, my skin sealed with diamond. Impervious.

When I look in his eyes, I feel ??

Too much? Too little?

Ten True Things About Today

1) My co-workers are passing around a smutty book (aka erotic fiction). It was recently handed off to me, and I have learned that a) I don't harbor secret fantasies about young CEOs (or CEOs of any age, really) with expensive tastes and b) there are way too many young women tripping over themselves into traffic or in the path of runaway cars. That said, I'm still reading the book.

2) Graveyards are really the best places for running and thinking. Also listening to music really loudly on your ipod. Today was the Black Keys with a short interlude for Rasputina's "Doomsday Averted."

3) I pissed off a waiter at a Korean restaurant today for redeeming a gift certificate. Normally I might have felt slightly upset/offended by this. Today, not so much. There are bigger things to worry about. Anyway, if a restaurant doesn't want you to redeem gift certificates, maybe they ought to stop offering them for sale. Just a thought.

4) Waterproof mascara is really the way to go. Also, waterproof eyeliner. And what the hell is in mascara anyway, to burn your eyes so much when you're crying? Horrible, evil chemicals.

5) I got a haircut. It was painful, as usual. Not physically painful. Just socially awkward. I had to endure some "robot" comments. My bag, tattoo, and earring appear to attract a lot of attention. Also, I want to know why the guy next to me was allowed to swivel his chair around to stare at me the entire time he was getting his buzz cut or whatever. His stylist just shifted around to accommodate him without a word. Isn't it proper protocol to stare straight at the mirror, not at other customers?

6) I don't know how to move forward with my novel. I have no idea what happens next. I keep writing, and hoping something will come to me, but so far -- nothing.

7) I ate way too many peanut products today. Peanut butter, beyond my normal oatmeal quota. Some salted peanuts too. This is nervous eating, which just makes me even more nervous, so it's got to stop. 

8) I don't have any inkling how my life will be six months from now. Yesterday, I heard a coworker say that Christmas was exactly six months away. It's so weird to think about. My life is morphing so rapidly, day by day, almost hour by hour. It's overwhelming to imagine the future, even six months into the future. I can't even think about August, or the middle of July.

9) I really need to clean this apartment. It is getting critical. 

10) I don't have a number ten.