Tuesday, August 31, 2010

I am the new genetics office babe, I haven't had a chance to think, which is a little bit good, because mostly I have too much time too think, but I have letters to write and heart things to sort out and people to miss until I make myself sadder than sad. I suppose a bit of that person is lost. I am settling into my madison life quickly, and maybe I can actually settle anywhere and everywhere. I feel like I should be more freaked out, but I'm not, and I don't feel like I have time to be. I want to write everyone letters. Everyone everyone. I think they help me sort out how I am feeling, like a slower stream of consciousness and I don't want to confuse anyone, and I mostly don't want to confuse myself but I think I am. confused yet? I drank too much coffee, I have to pee, and I want to go gawk at the new rushes on Frat Row.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

oh god, i love it here. i don't want to leave, though i know i could be happy anywhere, and will be happy once i get nestled into madison. tonight, we were in the basement yelling for a song and we all had a moment, or maybe i just made the moment up in my mind, but i feel like it was a real moment. these kidz make me happy, i will miss them more than i can even imagine.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Everything is a little bit/a lot bit fiction.

I am reading the Maytrees, it is beautiful. It is a book about love and really nothing else, about the type of love I don't believe in, not because I am a cynic, but because something about this sort of love is tragic and heavy, humorless. But I like to read about it.

"She lacked a woman's sense of doom. She did what she wanted--like who else on earth? All her life she found dignity over-rated. She rolled down dunes."

"Once, while he slept on his side, his legs thrashed and he panted. She pressed his shoulder. Chasing a rabbit? He exhaled and said, tap-dancing." (Remember when Grandma told me she woke up sore because she'd been figure skating in her sleep?)

Is it Saturday? Is my heart broken? I love Paul Simon, but lack the same affinity for Art Garfunkel. It is Saturday. My heart is no more or less broken than it has been any other day this year. It's in pretty good shape. I have one more week here. I am scared to leave, for the same reasons I am always scared to leave. For the same reasons my Grandma is afraid, always. We don't want to be forgotten. We try to prove that people don't forget by pushing ourselves to remember. All this really does it make it hurt a little more when we realize we're not being thought of. We want everyone to be like us, but the precise reason we love them is because they aren't. I am learning to be better, to not ask so much of other people, to not ask so much of myself, but just to let things unfold naturally. Maybe the beliefs I root myself in aren't the right things to be stuck with forever. I am letting myself fluctuate but to not be completely flakey. I am scared, a little bit always, but never as much as I used to be.

Friday, August 20, 2010

"this summer has been a firefly" I am sitting in Alterra teary eyed, because my cousin can do this to me. We had two very different summers but we are ending them the same way, with the same sort of denial and excitement for what is coming next. Summer's end crept up on me, and so did another sort of ending. I've been waking up afraid again.
It's not fair, really, that we all have to dance around in these jagged spirals, and last night my friend asks me "Will any boy ever like me as more than a friend?" and i tell her yes, because YES, but it's funny how these things bring us down and we have been walking around the city, trying to come up with resolution that doesn't exist. I've been struggling with my place in the world as a woman, because I want to believe there is no such thing. Is there any sort of balance? Can I be one of the guys while still being a charming sort of gal that someone might like as more than just a good pal? I used to have full faith that this was possible, but this summer has got me wondering. This sounds like some shitty Carrie Bradshaw article, I haven't found a way to make it poetic. And if I have to choose, I know I'd choose to be a spinster with lots of close pals rather than work on becoming a more feminine sort of woman with lots of tricks up her sleeve. Nothing about me is a challenge, and maybe that is a disappointment. I don't know, and I suspect the boys don't either.
I've been reading fragments of Sappho, which were recovered after being half destroyed and translated, and Anne Carson took lots of liberties, but they are short and sweet and fucking great, because there is so much missing.

#26
]frequently
]for those
I treat well are the ones who most of all
]harm me
]crazy
]
]
]
]you, I want
]to suffer
]in myself, I am
aware of this
]
]
]

#52
I would not think to touch the sky with two arms


I should be more disappointed and discouraged, but mostly I just feel a little confused and worried and always, a little bit desperate. This summer has been perfect, I got just what I wanted from it, including a new family, whom I love as much as mine blood relations and whom I will work hard to keep in tact through out the years. No matter how much I change, I'm never that much different, it's a comfort. I am in my twenties, I am working on loving where I am more than where I am not, I am learning to "watch the donut, not the hole" (as mom told me once, when I was in the depths of despair, and which has stuck with me, even though it's pretty stupid. I told her this, and we laughed and I can't explain why I love my mother, but she is funny like I am funny, and sometimes, only we think we are funny and that is ok) and I am happy, with full faith in what I like to call "da charmed lyfe".

I have been writing nothing but run-on sentences for the last three days, regular sentences aren't long enough.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Tonight reaffirmed what I had already expected, that I have made myself a home, or that a new home has made me, that I have created a family that is not mine blood relations, but has the same spirit as the Welch's. I want to call Grandma and tell her, I am not sure why precisely but I just know that her reaction will be right. Sometimes, most of the time, I get caught up in our latest family politics and dramas and forget, but I know that my Grandma is the person who taught me to love fearlessly and fiercely and thus understands this fierce love the best, and helps me harness it, by letting me gush about the strange strength of my connections with people. I will miss it here like I miss everything else, but it is all about learning to love where you are more than where you are not, and I suspect my Madison love nest will be just as fulfilling and then Kenya and how much space is there inside my mind/heart to hold all of this and what is the connection between my mind/heart/stomach?