Ode to an Owl~

Tonight I did a month's worth of laundry, loading up several washers, feeding my ten dollar bill into the change machine with chagrin. I cleaned three sets of sheets, twelve pairs of panties, my favorite jeans and, for the first time ever, my long standing stuffed animal, Mr. Owl.

He is small, Mr. Owl, and speckled grey. His furry feathers, once fluffy, have become matted with time’s passing, with each hour spent pressed into my sleeping chest. Lately, my dog Calvin has taken to removing Mr. Owl from my bed and dragging him down onto the floor. Covered in slobber and looking rather bedraggled, it seemed to me that Mr. Owl was finally in need of a bath.

So into the hamper he went with the laundry, down to the basement, and into the wash.

When I transferred my wet clothes, by the armful, to the dryer, I checked him over, ensuring that the rinse cycle hadn’t done him in. He was soggy, but markedly cleaner, smelling less of slobber, sweat and tea rose, and more like Mountain Breeze detergent.

I shuffled downstairs on the last leg of my laundry chore, arriving seven minutes early. So I sat there, perched on a washing machine, and watched my clothes circle round, tossed in concentric cycles of color.

And then, there was Mr. Owl, pushed to the forefront by a wad of bedsheet, flying around the dryer, wings flapping and squat form flipping himself over and around. It was a comical sight, to see how freely he bounced, reverberating off walls of cycling clothing. I laughed at him then, sitting alone in the laundry room, Indian style on machine number four. Me and Mr. Owl, old friends.

“I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke lose on the wind” – P. Neruda.

I think of what you’ve left us
Bright greens and pristine waters
Crisp breezes
And clean all around

Nothing but clean
And this cabin on a lake

If you had left us nothing but this
It would have been a world of enough
It would be just right
But you didn’t
Couldn’t
And in trying to give it all
You poisoned it at the roots.

I rode the train home
Up from Fulton Street
Late
One New York City night.
Across from me
Sat a mother and daughter
Dreadlocked
And embracing
Sleeping
And a portrait of love

Their entwined arms encompassing
Inclusive
And me across the car
Hungry
And made safe by their circle

This legacy
This land
This intersection of skin
Your body into mine
The planting of this seed

And the circle
The inherited repetition
Of these days
Reflecting back to me
In a blur.
When, in times to come,
I look for them in memory’s mirror

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21369007/wid/11915773/

totally my style.

Soon I will be twenty two years old.

That sounds old.

I feel young.

I am numerically advanced, but have yet to have a boyfriend.

I’ve yet to…well I can’t think of anything else that I’m “supposed” to have done by this point, but somehow, the perpetually single thing feels like a big one.

A big glaring sign, broadcasting my freak status to the rest of the committed relationship settled world.

Thing is, when you’re single, and the rest of your age group isn’t, it can get lonely. Which is maybe why a myriad of successes, accomplishments, and personal growth spurts are easily eclipsed by said singleness.

Or maybe it’s just the sadness one feels upon realizing that they can’t remember when the last time they really liked someone was. I don’t mean the “yea, why not? I sort of like him,” reaction, but more like the stomach flip, face hurts from smiling, can’t stop thinking about that person, I want him so bad and not just because I can’t have him, kind of like.

I certainly don't deign to believe that a significant other makes one's life worthwhile, or even fun...such has most definitely not been my observation. But it's sometimes hard not to slip into believing oneself less whole by virtue of a single status, simply because everywhere you turn, there's another couple, or another commercial featuring couples, or another chick flick toting an optimistic happy ending embodied by formerly single people becoming a couple, or another billboard with two entwined people, 100x their actual size and, surprise surprise, a couple.

Maybe my angst has nothing to do with all that, maybe it's just the fact that another year has passed and I'm still writing these whiney blog posts bemoaning single life. Fast forward fifty years....will it be the same? Will it even matter?

Hopefully not. I mean, it's usually the single ones we remember once they're gone...probably because they have the time and patience to produce what people in relationships miss because they're too busy having sex or fighting. Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson...single and brilliant, here I come.

Spring in New York is an incredible contrast of the old and the new. On the Upper West Side, this change is complemented by a community comprised mostly of the very old and the very young.

Today, Calvin and I walked for an hour in Riverside Park. There we saw children playing, moving in energetic bursts over the newly grown grass.

We also watched the groups of old people, set out on park benches beside their caretakers, soaking up the sun their younger counterparts sprout and bloom beneath.

One gets the feeling the day rolls pleasantly by for these park go-ers. For the children, I imagine time flies…particularly because they aren’t aware of its existence. For the old folks, I would think the day is short and filled with long periods of day dream.

Perhaps this is wrong of me to say. Perhaps I am mistakenly interpreting the long and displaced stares characteristic of the very old, but they seem to me the gaze of someone who’s slipped away. I hope for their sake that they’ve gone somewhere with tulips just as yellow and breezes just as sweet as they were in Riverside Park just this afternoon.

You.

I sat next to a man on the plane tonight who looked like you.
Like you will someday.
Someday, with your wife and a blonde haired baby boy
Who sits on your lap.
Who looks out the window.
Who says, “Look daddy, clouds,” and points.

The You I sat by,
The father, the boy,
Had hands like yours.
Bony and pale,
With wide veins that ran atop them like roots.
Like gopher tunnels atop the skin.

The You I sat by
For those few small hours,
Held his son.
And later on,
Slipped into half sleep with the child in his hands,
And picture books balanced atop his knees.

And this You had a wife who was fresh and plain
And pretty.
She held her son and said, “I love this boy so much,”
She was like yours will someday be.
Will someday be fresh and pretty.

And will not be me.

The Push Pull Phenomenon~

Don’t get me wrong, I love my dog. But sometimes, he positively epitomizes typical characteristics of the male sex (evidence to the argument that gender roles aren’t solely socially constructed…but that’s another essay)

I’ll be sitting at my desk, settled in my chair, typing away and Calvin will come sit right at my feet to stare up at me imploringly with beautiful black button eyes.

Because we are so well acquainted, Calvin and I, I know this look is not asking me to feed him, or to take him out but is more a “let me curl up in your lap to love and be loved” look. For Calvin, life in a human’s lap is a deeply embedded biological desire. He’s bred for it. His ancestors adorned the laps of everyone from Marie Antoinette (who supposedly gave the breed it’s name…girl was good at turning phrases) to King Henry III (yikes) to Madame de Pompadour (probably the best choice of the three). I love that in my wanderings round the Met, particularly through the Robert Lehman wing, I’ve come across several grand accounts of royal family life, complete with little Papillions seated demurely in their ladies laps.

In short, in Calvin’s rather limited world, my lap represents a certain fulfillment of his life’s purpose. So it really makes sense that he so ardently desires to be in it. Which gets me back to the point that I started out with--the way in which my little dog behaves in a similar fashion to other, human, males in my life.

When Calvin sits there, on the floor, staring up soulfully at me, I smile down and ask, “Do you want to come up?”…he keeps staring. I reach down to lift him into my lap and what does he do? He scampers off, turns around, looks at me, and scampers in the opposite direction. “Fine” I say and turn back to my work. A few minutes later, however, he’s back to staring. The process repeats itself. “Fine”, I say, and turn back to my work. Tired of playing games, when he again comes and sits at my feet to stare, I ignore him. When he realizes his attempt at my attention has failed, he hops from the couch to the bed and sits on the edge of my mattress, right behind my chair, and stares some more. If you’ve ever tried to work with someone looking over your shoulder, you’ll understand why this absolutely doesn’t work. So I cave, I give into the request on his terms and turn the chair to face him. Only then will he hop from the bed, onto my lap, to curl up and snooze contentedly for a while.

It’s the old “push pull” syndrome worked out in canine form. He does it with his own kind too. We’ll be walking along, and towards us will come another canine-human pair. If the other dog perks up, interested and alert, Calvin feigns indifference. Once that dog has passed by however, Calvin does a complete 180, intending to follow the now disinterested animal down the street. Likewise, should another dog seem disinterested in him, Calv is all ears and eyes, fixated on the elusive other.

Let me paint a parallel situation for you, just to exemplify the connection my little dog’s actions have to those of his human counterparts. This is a fabricated example, although, one that is assuredly well founded. Girl and guy are in class together. Guy thinks to himself that girl is hot. Girl thinks guy is hot and suspects he thinks he is as well. As such, she warily and wisely ignores him. Guy’s interest grows, fueled by the girl’s indifference, perhaps because it poses a challenge of sorts. She notices him noticing her so is unsuprised when he finally gets it up to comment on her outfit, or something smart she said in class discussion. Girl is glad…everyone wants to be appreciated. Guy and girl strike up a conversation and leave class together. Girl gives guy her number. They part ways. Girl waits and wonders. Guy waits until the next day dawns before sending a text...nobody wants to seem desperate. Girl receives and is excited. She checks the clock, counts ahead four hours and decides that she will text at that point….again, nobody wants to seem desperate. As this dynamic goes on, and as the two get to know each other and eventually begin to hook up, one of the two, the girl most likely, starts to like the other, or to think she likes the other, more than the other wants to reciprocate. Once the more interested party feels this increase of emotional attachment, waiting the requisite four hours before returning a text becomes much more difficult than before, as does wondering for days on end when next she will hear from the guy whose attention she’s now invested in. On the flip side, the less interested party, having now solved the mystery of what the other looks like without her clothes on, is demonstrably less interested in the mystery of the back and forth text messages, when they’ll arrive and what they’ll have to say. What is more, because the other is more interested, the aforementioned texts come more often. Suffice it to say, the relationship fizzles, leaving the female party upset and feeling vulnerable for having put herself out there and undesirable for being rejected. These feelings are strong at first, giving way with the passing of a few weeks, to anger. This anger causes a cessation of all contact between the two, be it telephonically or in class where the girl ignores the guy with a nonchalant air of indifference, smiling and talking with other people, making clear that the hooking up that once was, really meant nothing at all. This lull in contact between the two goes on for a while before the guy finds himself wondering where the “other” went to. Ergo, he sends a text. The recipient of said text is at once satisfied, angry and intrigued by the reinstatement of contact. And so the process starts again.

In the same way that Calvin is invited into my loving lap only to run, the guy in the above situation balks at the girl’s attention and the attachment it alludes to. Once she seems less invested however, he becomes more. Push pull.

A marriage to myself in a wedding gown made of bloodless white veins,
The insides of an orange,
Laced about my skin.

Deep blue outside my body, my chapel,
And dark blue of my pen,
Pulling itself in concentric circles over the orange peels wrapped around my wrists
And tattooed in their place.

Dark blue henna, by my pen,
In preparation for a marriage to myself

Tonight the sun set like a blood orange in the sky, bleeding red and rusty over the blue. I saw it out my kitchen window while I washed a head of lettuce, red leaf and dirty. This house, my life, is set on a hill, deep seated in a long row of other beach cottages, ornamented with sunburnt front porches and unkempt lawns. But we all overlook the water, a wide California sea whose waves hold together the seam of earth and sky, stitching the two into one at the horizon line and adorning their union with layers of sea shell pink clouds.

At first this place…was like he was, soft and fluttering in my mind and in my body, like a warm yellow washing over me, each time lasting long after he closed my door behind him. It was a crazy love, one that swallowed me whole. And I'll never know if I was in it alone, even if I asked him, I'll never know.

People wonder what I do here all alone, how I spend my time. It seems inconceivable to them that I could have things to do. Maybe I don't, maybe I'm still doing nothing…but it doesn't seem that way. I go for long walks and let myself sink into the sand. I spend silent evenings on the front porch, cool and blue in the twilight…just like I am.

And I look at myself differently, settled in my solitude. My body is beautiful for it, glowing in its owner's recognition and undivided attention. I still shave my legs, all the way to the dips before my hips, even though I know no man will feel their softness, even though I can't remember what it feels like to want one to.

I've been here for a year, the most of which has been spent coming back to life, feeding my brittle body with ocean water. The third night I spent in this house, I walked down to the water and waded in, sitting heavily at first, where the sea meets the land. I let it caress me then, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head and everywhere in between. It was a surrender, sexual and serious, but effortless, the way it must be for animals, the way it can't be with a man.

The difference between us is embodied by this place, this California so foreign to Manhattan, so spacious and so soft. The change is in my body, in the muscles in my back once as dry and knotted as the roots of New York's sidewalk planted trees.

We had met in the springtime, as stereotypical lovers do. I'd overlooked his failings accordingly and likewise, he had put me up on a pedestal. I fell hard into a love I thought could hold me, sinking down deep into hope like one falls into a hammock, fully and with an entirety of form. And then, the hammock gave way and I landed hard on my ass where I stayed a while, shocked and windblown, before picking up and moving forward.

So here I am now, standing over the kitchen sink with a head of lettuce, a setting sun and Joni Mitchell singing For Free somewhere in the background.

Joni Mitchell, you've been on my mind.
Opinionated and opal,
Free where I am not.
Where I am stuck with this anger, growing in my bones,
Growing in this body, this space that I take up,
This protest I can't quite mount.

The semester is slated to start on Tuesday and for once, I find myself unexcited. The thought of new books, new professors and the accompanying ideas encompassed by both, is somewhat uninspiring, a point that is quite unusual. I’ve been cuddled into New York for the past few weeks, going out, staying in, and partaking of happy hour…it’s been great and I don’t want it to change.

My friends are gearing up to graduate in May and I am worlds away, knowing I have at least another summer session to go in order to make up those credits I lost upon transferring into Gallatin. Perhaps such is why I’ve blissfully banished all thought of the post graduate career hunt.

I’m starting to get curious though, wondering what I’ll do when I’m done at NYU, wondering who will hire me and whether I can weather Manhattan’s job market. Part of me wants to give it a try and part of me wants to hunker down for another four weeks of hibernation. Maybe I’m so adverse to yet another semester of study because it’ll bring me that much closer to an entry into “the real world” or maybe I’m burnt out on theory and ready for practice.

Ever since our respective birthdays, my best friend and I have been relishing our “old age”
With every high school posse I pass or each fake id carting college kid, I feel myself somehow superior, in years at least. But lately, given the proximity of the colloquium, the diploma, the dates, the dog and their culmination in a continuing march towards maturity, I somehow feel myself more infantile than adult. It seems to me this insecurity shines through, although no one seems to notice…perhaps the truth of it is we all feel rather childish underneath it all. Perhaps that’s more a natural state than hyper maturity anyhow.

I won't grow up,
I don't want to wear a tie.
And a serious expression
In the middle of July.
And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,

I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me,
Not I
~Peter Pan

Doubt
Fear
Fear of doubt

Trust
Lack of trust
Fear of lack of trust

Men
Sex
Wanting ache
Fear of ache makes for fear of men
Fear of men makes for fear of sex
Fear of sex makes for fear of self

Afloat on a sea of unknowing
Bobbing as a buoy in unsure waters
Expectation like an urchin
Suctioned to my mind

Unacknowledged
Undesired

Persistent barnacle on the back of my brain
Secreting doubt with each ring of his phone call
Each raise of his eyebrow
Each word from my mouth.

These perceptions of perfection,
Pieced together by memory,
Tied up with heart strings and laced by movie scenes-
Like loops of smoothly cut splices,
Knotted together to know what fits without seams-
They way ice cream is spooned in the smooth curve of a stainless steel scoop,
And just as a woman’s hand holds the face of a man, cupped perfectly in her palm,
Mirroring the fit each person finds,
In the bones of another’s face.

The one train has been crawling lately, dripping along its tracks and moving in slow motion from 50^th to 42^nd street as olive oil slides down the face of a wooden spoon. Where usually, train delays incite outrage and exasperated snorts from manhattans myriad of MTA patrons, through this particular passageway, there is little complaint. Along this line, there is an air of awestruck admiration seemingly inspired by the illuminated passageway that takes the train to times square after making its fiftieth street stop.

Once we’ve all stood clear of the closing doors, after the quiet has settled in the car and the train has lurched forward, the usual passage into darkness is unsettled by a series of white bubble-like lights that hang from the scaffolding to help construction workers repair the express train tracks. The effect is less perfunctory than magical however, and it transforms a habitual trip downtown into a near adventure. Perhaps that’s a bit of an extreme assertion but given a personal affinity for white lights and an adoration of all things New York, the combination of the two is enough to make me pause in admiration of the city that never fails to inspire a smile alongside a little bit of fairy tale tinted wonder.

What does cold feel like?

I thought about that a bit today, sitting in the 86^th street station, waiting for the one train and freezing my little tush off. Creating a definition provided a few minutes distraction from the prickling numbness in my fingers and toes and I settled upon the establishment of the feeling of cold as frustration. Yes, it's the annoyance that goes alongside the ability of an exterior force to touch below your skin and penetrate places that you yourself cannot. That’s what cold is to me anyways, a ripping through my external cells that I oftentimes find quite angering and inspiring of angry yells at oncoming winds, or a propensity to burrow beneath the many layers of scarves and shawls that I am prone to piling atop myself when winter weather strikes, showing only my eyeballs in an attempt to preserve the bare skin beneath from the forced caresses of oncoming wind

Addendum:
I am a firm believer in the power of intention and also believe that I wrote the below post in a spirit of authenticity and positive intent. As such, the next morning, I found myself the recipient of what is oftentimes referred to as the law of attraction, the reverberation of my positive energy out into the world and back to myself, a point evidenced by the two party invitations I received for New Years Eve as well as the Sunday night dinner date I was asked to by a charming person…and all that within a day of having wrote the below post, discussing loneliness and single life. And now, off I trot to put on a pretty dress, tie up my hair and strap on my favorite pair of high heels. Happy New Year.

I’m about to get really real here so brace yourselves.
I’m lonely. Maybe it’s just tonight that I am feeling so isolated, nevertheless it feels deeper seated and longer lived. I don’t know why, but I’ve often found feelings of loneliness particularly difficult to own, like they are some sort of failure. I pride myself on my independence and self sufficiency; I go to movies alone, I live alone, I walk into parties alone…and I’m ok with all that. But I won’t deny that it’s oftentimes difficult. New Years is fast approaching and I find myself, yet again, dateless and without dependable plans.
I know it’s not so simple, but I just want to pose this singular, self pitying question to the void – what is WRONG with me that I am dateless on New Years, and coming up on yet another Valentines Day spent on my own watching rom coms and eating popcorn?
Alright, I know it’s not so uncomplicated a situation…but it feels that way in my weaker moments. “It’s not you”, say my girlfriends, “it’s the plethora of retarded and indecisive guys out there”….or the fact that Manhattan houses an unlimited quantity of beautiful women and homosexual men, but few single, attractive and somewhat kind heterosexual men. Most of the time I believe this, but in this lonely late night moment, I feel like I’m the un-desirable actor here.

I’m not one for labels, or rushed commitments, but I do like to sleep beside another warm person’s body, or feel the pressing and reassuring weight of strong arms around my small shoulders. It saddens me how constantly I’ve ached for those things in my life and how simultaneously seldom I have been able to depend upon them with any consistency.

This all sounds rather “woe is me,” and it is to a certain extent, but pointed at the fact that, despite my adamant assertions of indifference towards the opposite sex, I care. And despite my course of study, so steeped in critical gender theory, I feel like a little piece of myself goes missing when I don’t have a date to get excited for or an interesting guy to sit next to in class. I resent the idea that a woman is completed by a man, and yet I subscribe to it on some unconscious level, I must or I wouldn’t be writing this.

Christmas in Connecticut~

I left my New York last night, finally finished with finals and free to trot off to the country for a double hitter holiday, first with my dad in New Hampshire and then in CT with mom. I’m sitting on the sofa now, twenty to twelve on a Tuesday night with nowhere to go and no homework to do, and trying to de-activate the critically conditioned lens that my course load last semester demanded of me. Normally such is easy, as this sofa is a judgment free zone, a place where I am wholly myself, at liberty to sit around in sweats and stuff my face. But not so much tonight as with the onset of Christmas comes the arrival of family...which is fine but also feels a little like a real life reflection of a semester full of the judgment I've read, responded to and yes, even made myself. Where the opinions and critiques I encounter in an educational environment are limited to the page, or contained by the classroom, the perceptions, comments or raised eyebrows of certain Christmastime company are less easily controlled.

It feels to me like the more criticism I am around, the more I apply to myself and that makes me uncomfortable. Last night, before I jetted out, I met my best friend for a quick cocktail at Coffee Shop. We laughed and swapped stories about final exams and the men who distracted our attention from them. The personal quality of our conversation was effortless and based on an unspoken trust that is rooted in freedom; the freedom to be oneself, to have independent thoughts, and to do things knowing that the other person will support you, regardless of whether they would do the same themselves. Not so at Christmas in Clinton CT where, “now why did you do it that way?” is a question commonly posed in accordance with a seemingly curious facial expression that belies the certitude of the inevitable explanation as to why whatever you are doing is being executed inefficiently, and is therefore proof positive of your utter incompetence.

If that last sentence sounded like a lot, it was meant as a mirror to the overwhelming nature that constant critique of one's actions, be they spoken or just implied, can incite in an otherwise relaxed person such as myself. Makes me miss New York, where everyone is their own little island, affixed to an Ipod and intent upon minding their own business.

I just saw the movie, “Waitress” and loved it. If you haven’t yet seen the film, watch it. The main character is, not surprisingly, a waitress. She has, however, a special talent for making spectacularly unique pie, creative expressions of her inner angst, joy or any combination of the two. Our waitress, Jenna, is married to a complete doorstop of a man who is narcissistic, jealous, and whose face resembles a giant potato. Jenna is therefore despondent when she discovers herself pregnant. Luckily, she meets and falls for her adorable pediatrician who is as earnest and sweet as her husband is a boob. He adores her and they begin a springtime affair.

At one point in the film, writing a letter to her child to be in reference to a particularly tender moment with her lover/doctor, Jenna writes,
“Dear Baby, I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms without an ounce of selfishness in it.”
As she said that, I began to sob, slowly at first and then dramatically, so much so that I grabbed my notebook and wrote the following:

My heart is thawing now,
And it hurts like a dry sob.

Where before it had settled into a dull ache, frozen over and forgotten,
It’s crying now, deep tears I can’t stop.

I’m scared of this impossible heartache,
I’d rather the chill of indifference, I have so recently felt so close.

I’m afraid I’ll never fall in love,
That no one will love me, even if I do.
I’m afraid that no one will hold me,
That I won't feel peaceful in their arms, even if they do.

I'm afraid that my heart will be stuck forever in this fear,
half cooked and always in want of a warm skillet.

It’s cheesy but it’s true. I had a date last night, my second one with the same person. The entire process exhausts me, beginning with an anxious battle between my rational mind and emotive fears, all leading up to my walking out the door. It gets easier in the moment, when I'm actually sitting with the person. But I can't keep from looking for the spark? Did I feel it? Or was that just the rum and coke?
And when did this ever get so hard?
Somewhere between love, disappointment, and the illusion of both.

Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Baby don't be blue,
gonna make for you,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.

Gonna make a pie from heaven above,
gonna be filled with strawberry love.
Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
and hold you forever in the middle of my heart.