by way of distraction

Hello, my textual life's companions,

The last two days have been difficult; I had a very promising job interview on Friday (the only promising thing to crop up on the job-hunt-front in the last month) and was told that I would be contacted with a verdict by Tuesday afternoon at the latest. I've been trying to do things that will keep me distracted but still within hearing range of my phone. I went to the bank, got groceries, made a hearty lunch, and watched a few choice episodes of Six Feet Under (showing more restraint than is typical for me, I might add), but nothing took away that nervous jittery feeling from my lungs. Each passing minute only served to convince me further that I had come up the loser yet again, having been led into false hope by the God I just learned to trust again.

But narcissism is transfixing. I find it the most effective of all those bittersweet distractors. It was only when I retired to my study and opened up Tink (my laptop) that I was able to vanquish my squirrelly anxiety for more than five minutes. As I write, it has returned, but I look forward to it dissipating again for a while when I return to the activity that first served to alleviate my feelings of powerlessness in face of uncertainty. The activity in question: reading over all my old top-secret creative writing. All my experiments with stream-of-consciousness and free association. All my nauseatingly self-obsessed contemplations of pain and past and friends and men and boys. I like proofreading my literary spontaneity. I like amending my effusiveness. But most of all, I like being surprised by words I forgot I ever wrote, even if they're not in the greatest combinations and most inspired arrangements imaginable. It's not often that I open a document that is absolutely unfamiliar; I frequently find myself surprised by my forgotten writings, yes, but usually they feel at home in my mind once I've read two thirds of the content. I found a short piece today that I still can't remember writing. None of it sounds familiar, even though its tone and style is unmistakably my own. Even the characters it addresses eluded my recollection for about fifteen minutes. Eventually I had to check the document's info to see when I wrote it so I could put it in the emotional context of my calendar.

It's basically just the weirdness of this memory situation that has compelled me to share it with all y'all. That, and sometimes I just feel the need to put very personal sentiments in very public places. I suppose it's a way of pushing myself out of the reclusive pattern that I find so flattering to my complexion.

So play on, player...

the days are so long when you don't look at me like you used to. the wise man says I don't want to hear your voice, but as everyone knows I am fortune's fool. you know this but you pretend not to for reasons beyond me. if you loved me when I'm sad like I wish you would it would all be better, but you only love me when you laugh. you only look at me then, only write to me when we feel the sadness making waves across the space between us. and every moment I think without thinking of the endless possibilities of my life, what would have been if his family didn't have a history of alcoholism so I could've seduced the experienced older brother. would I feel shame or disillusionment or confusion or confidence or anything at all. would I be able to look you in the face and know you want me. would I be able to look myself in the mirror. I'd go without makeup for the rest of my life if you would still turn your face to face me. I can't stand another sedentary day with grey over my shoulder in every direction.

Horchata, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fall

Poverty blows.

As much as I appreciate the way that my lack of financial resources has strengthened my character over the years, at the end of the day I can't help but admit that "insufficient funds" is an embarrassing phrase. Moreover, it is a cause of huge stress. That stress is what has been bringing me down for the past month- no, wait, in all honesty, the summer as a whole was rife with nothing but insufficiency. Life looks pretty bleak when you're worried about making rent and can't eat any of the groceries in your pantry because your recovery from (two words:) oral surgery makes consuming non-puddingified foods painful at best.

This money-stress-hunger-sadness that's been weighing on me was made worse this morning while I was reading newspaper articles about the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The magnitude of the Middle East's volatility hit me in a wave of despair. I considered- surprisingly for the first time- that if the violence that extremist groups are threatening should these talks produce an unfavourable outcome for them actually comes to pass, I might not get back into the land where I left my heart. I realized that most of the factors that will determine the possibility of my return are absolutely beyond my control. That probably sounds silly. It was heartbreaking.

So there I was, silly sad hungry Nans despairing on her olive ultrasuede couch. I decided I had to do something to yank me out of the groove I had made in my mind and my living room seating. I gathered up all my overdue documentaries, got dressed, and set off down the road to the library. And waddayaknow, it was gorgeous outside. After days of dreary grey and the rain I love to romanticize but hate to walk through, the golden leaves were glistening in the sun and crackling with the crisp autumn wind. For the first time in a long time, I noticed a bounce in my step. My feet in their hot pink shoes kept pace with the beats of Vampire Weekend as I turned the corner and let my eyes catch up with the view in front of me: happily stout white clouds rounding their way down to the peaks of half-frosted mountains seemingly vaulted up by a base of gold-and-green-speckled hills. There in front of me, a portrait of what I love best in the world. A free joy: an autumn landscape. A death necessary for new life, a stop on a never-ending cycle. And I remembered other joys. I remembered dancing to music in my head. I remembered the many autumns that never died in my mind's eye. I remembered the immensity of feeling that summer's end always brings. And I looked forward to future falls in new places that I can only envision with the help of my desperate imagination.

This is autumn for me: the beauty of the unknown that is to come, and the heartache of that same unimagined world. A whole sea of deserts and baptisms that are impossible to predict. Such poverty, such wealth. Such unmapped possibility.

(Here comes a feeling you thought you'd forgotten

Chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on

Oh you had it but oh no you lost it

Looking back you shouldn't have fought it)

Life is still sufficient when it is lived with insufficient funds. It's just not enough to know that in theory.

too much 'burban calls for self-assertion

Good morrow m'darlings,

I haven't written in such a grievously long time because I've been consumed with all the little tasks and concerns that go along with relocating. I've moved into a house with two of my friends, and we're slowly but surely settling into life in the straight-up 'burbs.

My internal compass has been slow to adjust to my new northwestern orientation, and sometimes I feel as though my personality is also taking its merry time catching up with me; it's hard to write when you don't feel like yourself. I sit and look around my room and wonder when its rightful owner will show up to oust me from my roost on her eggplant-and-robin's-egg bed. My essence has been supplanted somehow; I feel young, aimless, naive, boring... these are not good things to feel when in truth you are a passionate, interesting person who has recently celebrated a birthday. The worst thing is that I am unable to pinpoint the cause of this feeling. Even decor-wise, I can't solve the mystery of my missing person. Is she hiding in a different colour scheme? Would she feel more comfortable in a messy, haphazard living space? Has all my uncharacteristic laundering and organizing and cleaning caused her to fear that she too might be scrubbed away or hidden at the bottom of a deep drawer? I'm thinking yes to all of the above.

I've been watching a lot of Ally McBeal lately, and let me just say, I wish they still made shows like it. Fantastic! But here's my point: in an episode I watched this morning, Ally turns 29 and delivers a great closing argument in court that revolves around her recurring birthday sentiment of being an underachiever, and how her hopes for life and the actual life she is living never quite reach alignment. Maybe this is what I'm feeling. Maybe I have the extended birthday blues. After all, here I am sitting alone in a big house, wondering why I haven't yet found a job or love or friends who stick around or the strength of will to shed all the things I find embarrassing about myself. For the majority of the past year, I have been blessed to feel like my soul has got it together; that makes it all the more unfortunate that the rest of me hasn't caught up.

Just because I think this entry could benefit from further disjointedness, I'm going to transition to another topic right now. Thanks for your cooperation.

It was exactly a year ago that my life changed. I still can't quite assemble the proper words to describe what happened in any way that doesn't sound like a wheel of cheese, but I will say that when my heart and priorities got all shook up by the Almighty, I took hold of a magnitude of freedom that had previously been unattainable to me. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I am free, hard to accept that I have accepted myself. Sometimes kicking at the darkness takes more energy than I think I can spare. But it's been a year. A year. As the world remembers the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 that brought destruction and grief and terror, I simultaneously remember the first anniversary of the 9/11 that brought repair and joy and hope, albeit to but one person. So when I think of my birthday blues, of my rejection from the world of the outwardly admirable, of my rejection by the male population, of my restlessness in face of the future, of my unadorned walls, of my well-made bed, of my recently-laundered wardrobe, and all the numerous unnamed things that make me feel not at all like I am used to feeling, and not at all like I would hope to feel, I find I must also think of of the baptism and temptation of Christ. One year ago I was baptised by the Spirit. In February the Spirit sent me out to wander in the wilderness to be tempted with hatred and disgust and fear and faithlessness and lack of compassion. In May I felt the renewed presence of the firey Spirit at Pentecost on Mount Zion. And now, in September, I look around me and find that I am in the wilderness again, although I am painfully far from Judea. But what is necessary in the wild is to remember the water and the flame. To be reminded of fulfillment's reality. To be reminded that fulfillment is always beneath the surface, waiting to be claimed like an inheritance.

And so, there could be no better time for me to reach down, take hold of what is still mine, and fling it across my bare walls with reckless abandon. A Jackson Pollock painted instead by asserted freedom.

To quote Anne Sexton,
"Darling, the composer has stepped into fire"-
again.