-schlafzeit-

I have gotten bad at sleep again.

It comes in waves.

Sometimes I arrange my pillows in my bed so that they are like another person under the blankets with me. 

I snuggle the crap out of them.

Sometimes I get scared that it will always be pillows and never a person (this is a confession).

Also, there is a cricket who lives a few millimeters away from my window, who likes to watch me sleep and really likes to whisper the sweetest nothings to me all night long. I hope she doesn't die when it gets too cold out there.

honest

For the first time in some time tonight, I was completely honest and up front and open. And it felt completely terrifying and scary and vulnerable-making.

And I cried harder and more than I have cried in some (great) time.

But it think things are going to get better.

I think I am going to learn how to be more deliberate.

Some few people whom I have loved in my life told me that they loved how I "live deliberately". I never knew what that meant, and I have to confess that I wasn't really ever living deliberately; rather I was living insecurely. I was living so that things appeared deliberate. In actuality, I was mostly scared that people would see that I was scared of not-belonging, that I wouldn't feel loved, that I wasn't smart, that I wasn't right, that I was ugly or that I was needy or that I was weak. I was scared that I needed too much validation and that I needed too much love. I was scared that I wouldn't be forgiven.

I got really good a keeping that to myself.

But tonight, I was really honest, and I really cried, and I really said all of the things that needed to be said. And I'd be lying if I said that I felt great after getting it all out. In actuality, I think I will just go to sleep now and probably cry some more, but it's a start. It's a cleansing. I remember in some movie with Nick Cage (ummmmm...), where he is talking about how it's remarkable that humans cry. And yeah. It's super cheesey, but it's maybe also true. Also, Nick Cage. Anyways- maybe it's the first step to let some of that go.

I am going to congratulate myself on expressing my needs and my expectations in a really grown-ass way. I am not going to feel bad for crying. I am going to feel proud that I respect myself enough to say what I need and to explain where I'm coming from. And I am going to feel good about being vulnerable. I am honest. Sometimes that hurts the worst, but I find solace in believing that it's for the best. I promise I'm not trying to be mean. I am learning to trust, and I am learning how to have faith. I am learning about love and about how sometimes, it's really, really hard to do love things. It's hard to be in a family. I don't really know how to not, though, so here I am.

Friday Night Lights

 

It's a Waning Gibbous Moon tonight. This happens after the moon is "Full", and has just begun to turn its face away from the Earth's in its rotation, relative to ours. Sometimes the Waning Gibbous is mistaken for a "Full" moon because of how large and tangible it appears in the night sky. I feel like I am a Waning Gibbous tonight: tangible and big, but not really filled.

  

   There are kids outside playing night games right now. I saw them on my drive home, catching fireflies and holding them like secrets, close to their bantam, pounding chests. It's 1:16 on a Friday night in June, and their older cousins are still in the bars two miles away, hoping that someone will think they are worth some heightened breathing. 

    I almost convinced myself, today, to purchase two things: A beautiful Schwinn Varsity bicycle in space-age sparkle green (you know the type that looks like it's brand new, even though it's probably older than my own parents). The other thing was a baby's high chair. It was wooden and obviously had seen the feedings of many, many children over the years, most of whom are now wizened old timers themselves. What a heritage. Neither of these two items would actually fit my (financial or emotional) budget, and neither of them was a real match for my life, but I spent a substantial time talking myself down from the nerves of walking away from them. I'm still thinking about them at 1:19 on a Friday night. They seem, somehow, to represent more to me than just objects.

..................................................................................

    There is a house up the block from mine where very fat women live. They wear boldly colored frocks and seem incredibly sweaty and full. They aren't particularly smart or friendly, except with one another. There are probably eight of them crammed into that tiny space that was built by and for small, malnourished German refugee immigrants in the early 1910's. That's what this place looks like with its history. 

     

    Every day, the fat women come out to their porch and sit for a few hours in the late morning. They always get hungry around 1:30, and they always convene in the shade of their fledgeling Chinese Maple that grows in the patch of grass between the road (which ends as a dead end at the railroad tracks two houses down). They have a picnic table set up there for their lunches. They are never outside after 3:00, unless it is after 6:30. They are usually back by then, all sitting around again, wondering aloud about the moon and their old stuffed animals. I have heard them. They seem to be extravagant women whose lives revolve around one thing: joy. It is remarkable to see such a gathering, really. I used to hate them for their bonds. Tonight, though, as I drove past the fat women's street, I saw those firefly gatherers on the other side of the road, and felt happy for them all. I looked down to the fat ladies' table, hoping (as I always do when I pass their street) to catch a glimpse of their clown-car life. They had apparently all gone to bed (afterall, it was 1:04 on a Friday night). But set up and gleaming on the table was a single, long candle set in a candlestick. It was miraculously lit, and blowing gently in the constant breeze that seems to be pregnant with impending storm. I was reminded of the advice that I was given about buying candlesticks, and then was forced (again) to re-revisit my thoughts about that baby chair and the bicycle. A professor told me before I went to Europe, to invest some substantial money into some fine Italian silver candlesticks, and that I would thank myself when I was an old lady with children who needed something to remember me by.

  

    But I don't want to be remembered for candlesticks. I want to be remembered for chasing fireflies at 1:16 on Friday nights in June with little legs, and for that well-worn chair, and for wanting to bike everywhere I could desire to travel.

    And then I let myself cry for the first time in too long to this song. I wasn't really sad, just sort of whelmed and needing to let something go. At 1:10 on a Friday night in June.

    And the crickets and cicadas have begun their music again for the summer.

Letter to My Future Child

Letter to My Future Child


The way you don’t exist is remarkable
When I have been hotwired, cobbled from
Spongy tubes specifically to birth. At least to bud

Would be preferable, shedding a child
Like petals drooping from a center.
I apologize profusely to you,
But I am content in my selfishness and
My love of this girl I’ve created.

Today I watched the bees graze,
The perfect mix of threat and song and binge,
And I felt I, too, could bob and maneuver.

I guess they reminded me of you:
Your toddling bumble, your absent suckle,
Your mere addition to the swarm.
You would be a plump grub in honeysuckle
Were you to be anything, but you will not

Be. This is something I’ve decided.
There is only so much life to go around; I’ll take
Two rations. The petal and the pistil.

And, hey, the calyx. The ability to share is mythic,
Like you, and who needs another creature,
Another sea monster? I already have the
Swooping vertebrae of my back, I have my bones

Diving above and below my skin
Filled with just the right amount of people:

One. How could I bring a child into this world
When I want it all to myself?
Life is that right and full of love, flowers, et al.
I’m sorry for me, sure. But most of all, Little Bee,
I am sorry for you.
-Megan Amram

 Heironymous Bosch

Beehives and Witches

ca.1515

Pen on Paper

The Big Three

Remember this?

Well today I am feeling grateful for prophets who answer my questions and try to push me to meet my needs. Yep. Grateful.


Jeffrey R. Holland | How Do I Love Thee? | February 15, 2000 | BYU Broadcasting

sometimes i go

to parties and give mathletes my number when they ask me for it.
and sometimes i get texts which simply say the word "TITS" while at those parties.

and other times i am pretty sure that I will end up like this guy, minus the "flakes".
my skin is very soft and well- moisturized, don't worry.

A Little Bit About

work and life and stuff: (assorted notes). These are things that I want to write so that I will remember them someday when I am old and too tired/busy/scared/forgetful/ashamed/hopeful to remember without aide (possibly very soon).

My job is really cool. Today I spent the morning from 10-2 divided between placing images (paintings and photographs, mostly) and artifacts (old stuff, you know) around in the museum I work at. I took a break at one-ish to get a smoothie. I think my boss likes me. She spends a lot of time every day giving me compliments, which are mostly about my dresses, but almost as often they are about my work and ideas. I feel successful in business. (Mostly I think in terms of True Stories).

I share an office at school (I have one at work as well) with seven other people. They are nice, and I think I am starting to feel comfortable enough to let them know me. We talk about poop and real life things that require trust to discuss. I have a real hard time doing that sometimes... I protect myself too much. Trying to work on that.

I have spontaneously hung out with three new people this week, and have made plans to go out with four other new people in the course of next week. It is not easy for me to be sociable in large groups, so I feel good about these small, one-to-one activities. I get scared when there are a lot of people.

Thursday nights are my favorites. Class and work and social obligations are minimal; potential for relaxation is maximal. These are the nights when I bake bread (every other week), think about babies, and let myself be calm. I think about bread and babies so much probably because I have spent the balance of the week engrossed in discussions and debating marxist- feminist- post-colonial theory. It seems in some way, that I am making them real and giving practical application to theoretical models on Thursday nights. I used to think these thinks were dangerous thinks to think, but anymore, I take comfort in them like old friends. I think we are finally getting comfortable with one another in real ways.

I listen a lot throughout the week. I don't talk as much as I used to.

Tap water here is NOT delicious, unless it is refrigerated for several hours. I try to be sure to have at least one bottle in the fridge every night before I go to sleep, as a gift to myself when I wake up in the morning. I miss mountains and their reserves of things (including, but not limited to water). 

I am learning that I need a lot of validation every day, and am trying to listen to what my body wants more. Today, it wanted water and steel cut outs and hugs. It got all of those things, and so maybe it will tell me more soon. Learning to trust better/more.

I almost always run out of money before the month is out, but this month is different.

I feel very selfish and self-absorbed much of the time. Trying to learn to be more than that.

You'd know it if you saw it.

Also!

(Apparently I have a lot to say today...)

This poem PERFECTLY describes a lot of my feelings of late.


Click to listen and read along!

DTRs

On a long drive recently, I came into a conversation where a friend recounted an episode where two male friends (hers, not mine) engaged themselves in a contest to see who could have the most DTRs  (click the link if you are confused. Only read the top five definitions.) in one month. It began as serious, and then turned into a joke where they were eventually DTRing with people they just barely met just to rack up their numbers. I was struck at the idea of DTRing everyone... probably fueled by an overpowering sense of insecurity and desire to receive some feedback. With the story and high hopes in my pocket, I set off to DTR with as many of my friends as possible. I figured that I am leaving this place in a little over a month, so it would be nice to have the tablets of my heart inscribed with a discussion of where our relationships stood.
Some of these conversations were horrible; others beautifully enlightening and heartwarming; a few were surprising. From the various reactions, I earned a few things about friendships, and mostly a few things about myself. Perhaps I will write more on that last it later.
For now, though, I have learned that:

1. relationships are sacred
   For most people, the beginning of the DTR was impossible, because the things we value about each other are deeply held beliefs and they are difficult to access because there isn't frequent discussion of this sort. Once that place was accessed, however, what spewed forth was tender and moving. This usually accompanied the realization that there are many things that are, in fact, indefinable about relationships. 

2. defensiveness is counterproductive
   Of the DTRs I had, a few went like this:
 me: So. What's going on between us? Like... where do we stand?
 them: Uhm... i don't know. what do you mean?
me: I am doing this project where I DTR as many times as I can. I was just wondering how it is that YOU define our relationship, I guess.
 them: I don't know. Is there a problem?
 me: I don't think so, I was just thinking it would be nice to talk to you and see where we stand. I really value your friendship, and I feel like it would be nice to see how you felt.
 them: oh- I don't know.
 These were rather unfulfilling, and helped me see more clearly that defensiveness is counterproductive... to everything. No progress was made in our relationship(s), and I extrapolated that there cannot be progress made in any realm if defensiveness is keeping you back. I myself am guilty of this, and perhaps can use this example to correct my folly in this area.

3. i need people, and people need me
  I learned this from so many of my friends. Many said it to me in telling me about how we improve one another, and how we build one another. I have long believed that the reason we have friends is to see the goodness in our own selves. What a marvelous blessing.

4. i can be good at listening and asking the right questions.
 This is becoming an increasing skill. I am working on it, and I can feel myself improving.

DTRs can be powerful good.
In other news, I sent a letter and told someone that I might love them.