Monday, September 6, 2010

Hesitant Reflections

As the prospective new season approaches (the approach of which I think upon more often than I care to admit), it occurs to me that I have changed completely from who I once was, and certainly not into the person I intended to be.

In 2006, I made myself up, approached things to come with a newfound balance and wisdom, and decided, once and for all, that things would be different.

2007 began in a dreary haze of bittersweet happenings and intentions. My sore heart in a trying state of constant consolation. "Things will be as they are meant to be" instantly comes to mind as the words I said then, and even now they are the words that I always turn to for comfort. Reliance is a sickening thing, in a way, trusting upon the seemingly abstract, that which is greater than one, to look after one, to truly care. And He does, I know He does, but in the mean time, it does seem increasingly easier to forget.

2008, an up and down whirl of the most surrealistic teenage experiences I think I've ever had. So much to think of, I could simultaneously combust. Moments of tenderness, moments of split decisions, rash thinking, eating cream-filled ginger snaps without care, letting my short locks curl near my ears, beginning "higher education" with soaring hope, wiling days away at his house between classes, until fateful events led to the perilous infrastructures, infatuations boiling and breaking, losing hope and hair, falling marvelously into the pits of the deepest lows I have ever known.

2009 was characterized by multiple meager attempts at friendship, yet these meager attempts led to a more full-hearted satisfaction than I could have ever dreamed for myself. We mended the broken, stuck through the good and bad, grew closer, treated each other as well as we could. It was the year I had my first art class, my first surprise party, the year I graduated and saw myself as being all that I could. Ended not with a bang, but a very high juxtaposition of the right and the wrong melding into as-right-as-they-could-possibly-be.

And now, 2010, it's a funny, strange, meticulously unmeticulous thing. My brain goes through blurs of intense satisfaction, blurs of fast forgetfulness, blurs of unwellness, unknowingness, unsoundness. I am afraid I have let myself down as that person who I so terribly longed to become. I have my first job, I go to school, I take walks (and sometimes run), I eat in accordance with my emotions, I wash my hair as I feel led. Sometimes it's all so beautiful I can't take it, I am grateful and I would not want to be anyone else, in any other place. Other times, I am seething with the intense vigor of a spirit supressed, I long to be anywhere but home, or at least closer to knowing, closer to where I shall eventually find myself. The days grow impossibly warm and I find myself longing for the acute comfort of the cold, telling myself that as soon as it begins to storm and I have a grade on my paper and stockings on my legs and tea in my hands, things will be well, things will be as they are meant to be.

I am not incredibly courageous or productive, and I've fallen back on my bum a million times, and so many days, SO many, I tell myself, "Tomorrow you will start anew, and it will be the first day of the rest of your life, and you will grow and become exactly who you are meant to be." And then tomorrow never comes, and I find myself reflecting every afternoon, and every night, that perhaps it isn't that life is supposed to start tomorrow, perhaps it is supposed to start today, right now, this second, even though I only have the half of it done and even though I don't know what to do in the mean time. Why is it that I have a million things and nothing to do at the same time? Why do I kill myself over silly artifacts and neglect the big picture? Why am I so human and why must I always say I, I, I?
Caring, crestfallen, hopeless and helpful. I am a picture, all at once, of exactly that which I hoped to be and did not want to become.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Comme des Fleurs


Gathering up the last remnants of summer, burying my nose in all that happened, and finally releasing the scent into the coming autumn with arms opened wide.

Lillian and Dorothy Gish

Because, dear sister, I already feel somewhat lost without you,
but I know that this too is a season which is to be appreciated before it has passed.

 
Like Flowers, that heard the news of Dews,
But never deemed the dripping prize
Awaited their — low Brows —
Or Bees — that thought the Summer's name
Some rumor of Delirium,
No Summer — could — for Them —

Or Arctic Creatures, dimly stirred —
By Tropic Hint — some Travelled Bird
Imported to the Wood —

Or Wind's bright signal to the Ear —
Making that homely, and severe,
Contented, known, before —
The Heaven — unexpected come,
To Lives that thought the Worshipping
A too presumptuous Psalm —

Emily Dickinson
 
All photos This Fabulous Century Vol. II 1910-1920, Time-Life Books, 1969

Friday, August 27, 2010

&

Waking from a dream of walking hand-in-hand, but not before he touches my cheek.
A restful nap, a step outside, a "return-to-sender" in my mailbox.
The day grows somber, shrouded in literature, working through numbers in my head.
Carving memories from glimpses of the past and traces of the future.
Hopes spanning wider than the sky for all that is to come.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I reach that place
All there will be left to say is
I love you and I know
That You've always been there.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Tier One, Tier Two, Tier Three


It's a trying week that I've found myself in, and with that, a trying heart.

Abandoning dreams, sorting through losses, a quick incompetence followed by immeasuarable relief.

I feel weight lifted, a light merriness as I go through these motions. Up and down, swinging myself dizzy on the pendulum of what life is and what I hope for it to eventually become.

Spending time, spreading it between that which matters the most and that which matters not at all.

If I keep myself on the perimeters, eventually I must indeed find myself at the center. But no.Whistle this way and that, try as I might, it will never bring a balance until I find the correct tune.

Knowing, truly knowing, what it must be like, to be in the ever-surrounding grace of a hole in the ground, surrounded by grass, surrounded by trees, surrounded by sky. Pin-pointing that which is usually only seen through the wrong end of my little telescope.