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the morning fog is pulling everything together. the storm, my dreams, the ride to work. a long-gone song in the distance and its teary laughter. the grinding ache in the back of my skull. milk instead of half and half.
i woke up to the rumble of far-away thunder last night and went downstairs. the flashes were bright, lighting up white squares on the walls in the living room through the skylights above. i counted to 11 before the boom came.
i couldn’t sleep. i listened as the tap on the windows above became a steady knocking and then an insistent pounding. i thought about the tin roof from my house in Eugene, and the pure sound of water on metal. only rain makes me miss Oregon (which is funny–i left the northwest because i missed the sun). it was always green there, even in the winter, but the sky was always gray. always.
i couldn’t sleep. a pain gray as the Eugene sky was spreading millimeter by millimeter into the back parts of my head. maybe it was the heffie at Prime 16 earlier that night. maybe it was the Sam at the Q Club before that. or maybe it was just a headache. i dropped an Advil with some cold water and set my head down again. i can’t be sure, but i think it was awhile before i finally drifted off. the rain was still coming down.
the dreams came soft but fast, like the mist rolling off the Northwest coast in the morning. there was water everywhere. streets were replaced with rivers, and we swam everywhere as if to stroll. the air was hot and sticky, and the city was a giant, intimate party–a maze of houses of rooms like peep shows on an assortment of activities–people on couches sipping beers, sweaty folks banging on hand-drums, and other sweaty folks whose doings were not so innocent. i watched, floating from scene to scene, my eyes like a camera slightly out of focus. pictures of so many colorful, chill indiscretions–mine and yours and everyone’s. Read the rest of this entry »
i’ve lived through so many patches of weakness in my 30 years. through failures in (or total absence of) confidence, through white-knuckled clutching to fear, through blind spots in reasoning, through simple ignorance. i’ve lied and cheated. i’ve cried behind the locked bathroom door at work, and i’ve punched cinder-block walls. i’ve hurt and been hurt.
but i have not one ounce of regret for any of those moments. not for the two times i cheated on the people i loved. at the time, they were brief lapses of judgment, the succumbing to the thrill of someone else hotly pursuing me in a haze of alcohol and other clouds. in retrospect, though, it was my cowardly way of punctuating struggling relationships, my way of pushing through the dirt to the surface. i am so sorry for the pain i threw around so carelessly, but i wouldn’t do it differently if i could.
not for the times i was cheated on. it’s one thing to be devastated by betrayal, and it’s the next thing to realize that, had the relationship been open to honesty and trust going in two directions in the first place, things might have gone differently.
not for the months of insomnia that filled my nights with a blinding pulse and my days with ghosts. i broke it down a thousand ways, stalking its shadow across the pages of health magazines, through friends’ advice, inside slow songs, within meditation and finally to surrender. in that, i learned the difference between wasting time and paying better attention to empty time. which is when i started sleeping again.
i read recently that growth requires tension. it’s why we lift weights to build muscle. it’s why we tend to like the teachers who are toughest on us.
people always say, “if i knew then what i know now, i’d…” the thing is, we know what we know now because of what happened then. would it be worth losing that knowledge to go back and prevent the struggle?
if you haven’t checked out Helen Philpot’s blog posts, you need to right now. she’s an 82 year-old woman from Texas who spends her time calling bullshit on John McCain and Sarah Palin. here’s a sample from her last post, called Maverick my ass!:
You just can’t teach an old dog a new trick… even if you put lipstick on it. Change is needed. I know because I am a fat, old dog. For too many years I’ve been eating more pie than I should. Jenny Craig had me doing pretty good for a few years but eventually I started eating pie again. John McCain has been part of the Republican party in Washington for 26 years. It doesn’t matter what he has been saying the last few months, eventually he’s going to eat the party pie again. He’s old. I’m old. That’s what we do. We don’t suddenly switch to salad.
other posts include:
Sarah Palin is a bitch…there I said it
and
Yep. I called her a bitch and I am not taking it back.
even if you are sloppy in love for the McCain/Palin ticket, at least go and check out the header photo.
i turned on Monday Night Football last night just in time to watch Philadelphia Eagle DeSean Jackson toss the ball away in celebration of a touchdown he had not yet scored. i left the tv on for as long as i could say, “what a moron!” and turned it off.
i’m so done watching overpaid athletes over-celebrate. i’m not talking about Jason Varitek tackling John Lester after a no-hitter (a rare event) or Brandi Chastain ripping her shirt off after shooting the championship-winning penalty kick at the World Cup (the biggest soccer tournament in the universe) or Michael Jordan nearly taking Larry Bird’s head off when he leaped for joy after a buzzer-beater (a shot to win a big game).
i’m talking about Shawne Merriman doing a little jig after tackling an opposing running back when his team is down 10 in the third quarter or Shaquille O’Neal thumping his chest after blocking a shot in the first half or Joba Chamberlain pumping his fist madly after striking someone out in the third inning.
i don’t stand on my desk and thump my chest every time a new donation comes in from someone i’ve been working with. i don’t chest-bump my boss when a corporation awards us a grant that i helped write. why? because that’s what i’m supposed to do. it’s what i’m paid to do.
these guys are paid to play a game well. draining a lay-up for a professional basketball player is the equivalent of my making a courteous phone call.
sure, if one of my prospects gave $1 million after a few good conversations, i’d be dancing in the hallways. if a big company decided to fund enough supportive housing for every person we served after i gave them a compelling presentation, i might even thump my chest and yell booyah.
but not before the check came in and the contracts were signed.
because it’s alright to get worked up when something extraordinary happens when you do your job exceptionally well. not when expected results occur when you do the job you’re supposed to be doing.
or, as in the case of DeSean Jackson, the extraordinary is ruled a fumble because you couldn’t wait two steps to celebrate doing an exceptional job.
[related reading: The Day Cool Died]
perusing The Cigarette Smoking Blog–the best damn conservative(?)/feminist(?)/intellectual(!) blog i’ve ever come across–i stumbled upon this little ditty on rejecting rejection from Brian Doyle at The Kenyon Review.
A rejection note sent by the writer Stefan Merken to an editor who had rejected one of his short stories. “Please forgive me for not accepting your rejection letter,” wrote Merken. “At this time I cannot accept a rejection of my short story. I accept more than 99 percent of the rejections I receive. Many I don’t agree with, but I realize that accepting a piece of fiction for publication is a very subjective judgment call. My acceptance of your rejection letter is also a subjective process and therefore I am returning your letter to you. I did read your letter. I read every letter I receive. Your letter was well-written, but due to time constraints from my own writing schedule, I am unable to make editorial comments. I do make mistakes. Don’t you, as an editor, be disheartened by this role reversal. The road of publishing is long and tedious. You need successful publications and I need for successful publications to print my stories. I will expect to see my story in your next publication. Good luck in the future.”
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for one another exceeds your need for each other.
Lauren updated her Malawi post with some words to go with the images.
[My original post is here. Or you can just scroll down.]
Lauren and i spent the weekend at her family’s amazing cottage on Highland Lake in Winsted where there is nothing to do but read, write, swim and eat. i forgot to bring my phone and there is no computer connection, so the rest of the world was silenced for awhile. for two full days i wandered around in my swim suit top and a pair of baggy shorts, sunk into my dorky Lord of the Rings, dove off the dock when the sun got too hot and snacked on fruit salad. no showers, no chores, no rain.
highlights included (chronologically):
- cruising down Rte. 8, blasting my love mix for Lauren that goes from Gwen Stefani to Brandi Carlile to Death Cab for Cutie to Sufjan Stevens all in the same 80 minutes (and it works!).
- Lauren’s octogenarian grandfather calling me his partner in calimari.
- using the word eyrie in a game of Scrabble that i lost because Lauren hit a triple letter score with the word zit. i would have rocked that game otherwise.
- night swimming by myself during the boat parade. my cannonballing silhouette could be seen against the dark water lit up by boats decorated in the shape of Christmas and Margaritaville. or so i’ve been told.
- Sunday breakfast at the Winsted Diner, home of the Ra-Doc-A-Doodle sandwich. one long bar, 12 stools, one waitress, and one cook who fries eggs, potatoes and pancakes on a griddle you can reach out and touch. all in one boxcar.
- the arrival of many friends. within five minutes, we were cannonballing into the lake each in our own fashion.
- the friends brought guitars and a djembe drum. the impromptu lawn concert came right after the food. the whole crew bellowed a very messy version of the Piano Man followed by everyone singing their own wrong lyrics to 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up.”
- my favorite song came towards the end of the afternoon, though, right before we all packed up to leave. i closed my eyes and just drank in the moving air as Tiff strummed and sang.
I feel home when I see the faces that remember my own
I feel home when I’m chillin outside with the people I know
I feel home, and that’s just what I feel
Cause home, to me, is reality and all I need is something real
