“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.

Written on a pillar in an NYU classroom at 194 Mercer street:

1. PKE...are weenies
2. Ruben St. Awesome was here
3. Listen to Neil Young....he knows
4. Where can I go to get away from these ghosts inside my head?

All seemingly written at different times and by disparate pens...all having stuck out in my mind, bugging me until I wrote them, list like in my journal, and acknowledged them as a funny and oddly poignant combination.

The Cheese Stands Alone.

I’m sitting in Bobst, around 6pm on a rainy Monday afternoon, reading about Keith Harring and waiting for a friend. I’ve lucked out, landing myself a spot in one of those big blueish grey armchairs with a bonus round end table for a footrest.

I’ve barely noticed the girl sitting next to me, not until her seat is approached from behind and a big pair of hands clamps down upon her shoulders. It’s her boyfriend.

He asks how she is, about her exam and whether she’d been napping or reading before he arrived. In a moment, and quite surprisingly, I felt myself a little drained, deflated by their affection and my solitary spot beside it. Most times I think I am not the girlfriend type, particularly because, thus far, those who wanted to match me were not the men I hoped would try.

So maybe the right fit just hasn’t come along yet, or maybe he never will. Maybe it’s all just as much of an illusion as I’ve worked to convince myself it is. I’ve never played pessimistic for long in my life, but I’m feeling it now. Or just hopeless maybe.

My old flames have now all settled comfortably into facebook photographs of them with their significant other, while I, the cheese, still stand alone, with a foot on each side of the great optimism/pessimism divide.

This weather reminds my heart of so much. Like getting off the bus in Walpole at four o clock on a November afternoon, rushing into barn chores until 6:30 before getting gas for the black Volvo at the Texaco in Bellows Falls and picking up Chinese take out from Joy Wah on the hilltop. Heading home, smelling like horse, Dad in the drivers seat and darkness closing in over the valley. Rolling uphill, a long ascent to the big house on valley road, zipping fast around the road’s curves, the smell of Chinese food wafting from behind the passenger seat.

I wish I could remember arriving home but my memory stops on March Hill road, right at the dip in the asphalt where we speed up and for a moment, my breath catches in what dad calls a “thank you m’am”
After that, the screen goes blank, and like a poorly spliced reel of film, my memory skips ahead, passing over years, denying me the scenes of my mother in the kitchen, unpacking a paper bag of Chinese food as I know she must have done.

A Memory Found Amongst Red Leafs....

Tonight, chopping up a carrot, I found myself momentarily transported to my New Hampshire home circa 2003, when I would sit at the kitchen counter, working on my algebra homework and listening to my dad make one of his signature salads, a series of concentric clonks as his knife cut through veg and hit upon the wooden cutting board. He does this all the time, carelessly brandishing large bunches of carrots, red onion and celery, chucking them into a huge black bowl that will sit in the fridge full of red leaves and veggies and covered in saran wrap. We’re big on greens in my family and when I lived at home, every few days my dad would make a salad, sliding chunks of carrot my way while I home-worked, popping a few in his mouth, while he talked, chewed, worked on a beer and listened to XM radio.
Making my own salad tonight, I went to cut up some cheese to go on top and saw my daddy, lopping of lumps from a big chunk of cheddar effortlessly. I remember once, trying to do the same with similar ease and struggling against the resistance offered by the door stop sized wedge. Dad knowingly tilted his head and watched my progress from over his drug store brand reading glasses. “Cutting cheese is a delicate task” he said.

Here on the upper west side autumn has arrived in full force.
Night rolls in by seven, couching my evening time walk to the park in navy blue and lamplight, illuminating only the silhouettes of the people I pass by. It is cold and crisp and the neighborhood itself seems to have grown into a warm and amber orange, perhaps in place of the leaves that it lacks. I’ve never felt fall so deeply in the city, perhaps because there’s never been the space to. But there’s kids up here, and with them comes a mentality that refuses to take itself too seriously. As a result, I’ve slowed down considerably and feel like I am living my life in the moment, rather than in anticipation of it.

My body is taking a deep breath and re-booting, the change is in my skin, my blood cells, and my ability to find peaceful sleep. The change is also one of space and how my body occupies it, a transition that is accented each time I go downtown for class and am tossed about and rattled by flocks of people, all on an individual mission. I used to walk Calvin on 10th street and find myself plastered up against a building, pushed aside by a throng of speed walking hipsters, their skintight jeans pushing all the blood to their loins, and giving them a slouchy and determined walk in the direction of alphabet city.

Up here it’s kids who fills the streets. But they are wide streets, with room for Calvin to walk way out on the end of his 16 foot long leash, for me to run alongside him, and for the kiddos to pass us by, or stop us to ask for Calvin’s name. These youthful west siders are out each night in droves, skipping down the street or perched atop their parents shoulders, flocking to one of the many candy stores that litter Columbus Avenue, nestled in between chic little bistros strung with the white twinkle lights I so adore.
Somehow the kids really bring to attention, not only the availability of space and the change it has affected in me, but also the change in the seasons. Fall excites them with its newness and the promise of an onslaught of holidays to come: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas…all of which translate to candy, stuffing and presents respectively.

Despite a bit of baggage that keeps me from joyously bounding towards the holiday season in full out childish abandon, in my heart, I too associate the entry of autumn with the excitement of Halloween and the like. It has shifted a bit though, and this year, I find myself perfectly content just to watch the kids tear towards home on a chilly evening, brandishing a newly purchased light saber and laden with plastic bags full of the makings of Luke Skywalker’s garb.

This essay is rambling, but full of the feelings of warmth and belonging that the upper west side has settled into my soul. I passed this place tonight, Alice’s Tea Cup…if I were tea spot, this is what I would look like. A purple painted nook on the corner of Columbus and 73rd street, glittering with warm and welcoming juju and bedecked in little white Christmas lights.

Tomorrow I will go have a cup of tea there. And I will walk Calvin the three blocks over to central park where we’ll take the path we’ve made routine, crossing the wooden covered bridge and passing through a small crop of wood that opens up onto the horseback riding trail. From there we’ll head over to the turtle pond, where older women set on the grass and read novels and couples make out on the dusty rock that juts into the water and offers a fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline. I’ll stop many times along the way to let passing kiddos pet my dog. I’ll breath in the moment, and think it sharp and obscure all at once, like it was as a child, in a world where the only anticipation was directed towards the turn of the season and the next celebration.

(FYI- the images above are photographs of a series of collages created by my mom, artist Mary Fussell)

Where’s the inspiration?
I am wondering this, looking for this, and doing so actively from a passive place on my couch.
My creativity is often spurred into life by another artist’s work, but nothing I’ve seen of late has really lit my fire. Well, maybe Julie Taymor’s film, Across the Universe. Although it was certainly not core shaking, the music brought to the forefront of my mind a musical influence I’d deeply loved in my younger years and hold close to my heart in the present.
Or maybe Joni’s new album, which I got my hands on earlier today. It’s subtle, like the lady herself, and needs space and time to sink in.

Time and patience are pivotal to inspiration, but I’m trying to push myself into it. I feel like I am wasting time, that my nights should be filled with hours of painting or poetry instead of trying to read Freud and ending up making booklists on amazon.com instead.

My mom has found inspiration in nature, using it to piece together a series of collages that are understated, organic, and altogether beautiful (see above) She gets in the flow with them and the art just pours out of her. I write a sentence of my story a night, before leaving it to tomorrow and turning on E! news. It’s awful to own up to, perhaps it's my hope that by doing so, I'll help things to shift.

I’m not sure if I know how to write anymore. Somewhere deep in my body is buried a trove of words that the past five months have rendered inexpressible. I’ve been in survival mode, and as I begin my re entry into the world of personal time and space, I find myself a shell shocked shell of the self confident self I left behind at the end of spring semester. I’m afraid to write honestly about what happened and I’m not sure I even know how to…or if I even want to. In fact, all I seem to want to do is to sit at the end of a long boardwalk, where it meets a set of steep stairs that lead down to cold water. Just set out like a lump and staring, maybe with a cup of coffee in hand, for however long it takes to reel in the magnitude of what has come and gone and how it’s left me changed.

Everything happens for a reason- I believe that, but I wonder if everything happens to make us better, wiser, stronger than we were before. My optimistic side says unequivocally yes but then why do I feel less peaceful than ever before. I feel disconnected from myself, like the stormy gray sea that my body is watching from the top of a boardwalk set staircase. And I’m frightened. Everything has gone so far the opposite from what I pictured. If I pictured it at all, which at this point, I cannot recall. How do I trust myself again. Forget about trusting other people, forget about men. But me, myself, how do I trust? How does one trust a stormy sea? The water is all around, encircling, embracing, holding. So who supports the water?
All around me encouraging eyes speak of how much I’ve learned, how well I have done.
And all I can think is how cold that steel gray water was, when I plunged on in.

I dreamed I rode a blue bicycle,
Hair streaming out behind me,
I dreamed Apollo was flying above,
And that you were there beside me.

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me

It amazes me the extent to which my dog stands epitomizes the visceral need we living things have for physical contact. He would sooner sleep in my lap, or curled up in the small of my back than any other place. It honors me so when he displays this unfiltered and absolute desire to share space, sleep and dreams. Partly because I need it too.
My current life schedule sees me spending around two hours a day in transit and as such, I have sufficient opportunity to people watch. It’s one of my favorite things to do, watch people. But somehow, on the subway such observation can become disheartening. I guess that’s why so many New Yorkers seem permanently plugged into various and sundry electronic devices.
I love my Ipod, it is a treasure for its ability to inspire the choir of my mind. But its knack for connecting me to myself also results in a disconnection from those around me and I often find myself floating through the city, detached from the beautiful mess surrounding me…which can get rather dangerous.
Indeed, I’ve been so overwhelmed lately that I’ve opted to leave out the earphones. This conscious choice invites a degree of unwanted attention from people who can be sure that I can hear them. What’s most interesting however, are not the random comments (though they can get quite intricate) but the very real emotion that walking through my day without distraction can incite. Not only am I more vulnerable to the ideas of others, but I’m more receptive to my own as well. The more I ride the train, the more obvious the unnatural detachment of the average new Yorker becomes. I’m frightened to end up permanently cut off from everyone around me. I fought so hard today to keep from spontaneously hugging the man sitting next to me when just hours earlier I had been exasperatedly elbowing my way through the morning rush hour. So I’m either bi-polar….or the dualistic blessing/curse of New York City’s anonymity has caught up with me after the three plus years I’ve called myself a Manhattanite. Maybe it’s time for a break…or maybe it’s just time to throw in the towel and fucking hug the random dude perched beside me on the evening express train home.

Now, I don't think I've ever posted a link without sufficient essay-ing to go along with it.
But...I think this one stands on its own.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

Kundalini

I came here to find you, Kundalini,
And in looking, lost myself.

This cycle, a serpent's tail,
A tale of love lost, of life, and this path I choose.

Of my own mouth over my own skin,
My own body eaten,
And digested in my own gut.

Spit back up for you,
Regurgitated in a form I imagine you will like.

Perfect and pulled together,
and masking the mess
The thrown up bits and pieces,
Of yesterday's consumption.

You’re in trouble now, mister.

I’m gonna hold you down, no mercy.

You’re gona flip me over,
Lay me out,
Give me deep kisses,
And short-sided sighs.

You’re gonna chew me up and spit me out.
Because for all my armor,

I’m a Lima bean beneath your boot heel.

Mental check, is there anything I need?
What am I missing or is it just me-
Why did he choose her what was it about her,
That made him forget me, his own little daughter.

Years later these questions I pose,
The answers to which I guess nobody knows.
I look for them anyways, coming up dry,
And so I keep after unreachable guys.

Oh daddy, talk to me more,
Give me the meaning that I’m looking for.
Don’t know where I’m going,
Don’t know where you’ve been,
But I don’t want to lose myself over again.

A hallway of mirrors,
Purple painted stairs,
I think I can fly them, I wonder who cares,
I know that you want to; I know that you do,
But I don’t want to lose myself,
Looking for you,

It takes something visceral,
Rarified access to some deep seated pain,
To make me sob the way you do so freely.

Take it from me,
You take your tears for granted.

You can tell a lot about a person by their hair. It somewhat reflects their personality, I think. Mine's always been curly. When I was a little girl, it hung around my head in a fuzzy halo of golden ringlets. Usually, I quite like it, and enjoy with a rebellious lilt a hair do that's divergent from the blown-out masses.

That is not to say that I haven't oftentimes gazed longingly at the silky smooth locks of other women’s hair. Somewhere along the line, I came to equate straight styles with a certain type of person, one who carries the expensive handbags I peruse on ebay and goes on real dates with the guys I just hook up with.

Last week, I borrowed my friend's ceramic iron and straightened my hair.

Maybe I thought the change would make me one of them. In actuality, with straight hair, I felt invisible. But the ritual of it felt calming and sure, a solve-all inspired by a flat iron and the satisfaction I felt from watching the kinks flatten and the frizz become smooth. It was as if, by straightening out my hair, I was straightening up my life.

I recently remarked to the amazing Ariella, "When the going gets tough, the women in my family do our hair"

Twelve years ago, in the midst of familial turmoil, my mom went off to Washington D.C. for a weekend with some friends. When she returned, it was as a white suited businesswoman, with shockingly straight hair, highlights, and high-heeled shoes of python printed patent leather. The transformation was especially drastic as her free spirited artistic nature was usually mirrored by her appearance. But gone was her long and curly hair, her paint stained button ups and her red converse high tops. My mom suddenly looked like everyone else's.
In retrospect, it is clear that she was trying to be seen, controlling the only thing she could in a fucked up environment. It’s funny though, I think that the changes she made to her hair and her clothes, struck at the core of who she is and what makes her stand out, and erased it a bit. She became less noticeable to my father, to the community, and more blended in with what she sought to separate out from.

This morning, on the subway to work, I sat across from a window that the dark of the tunnel outside had tuned into a mirror. A week ago, when I’d done the same, I saw myself reflected back as foreign, a distant stranger with the straight hair that, to my mind, gives the impression of a simple lifestyle. Today I looked in the window, saw a curly haired girl, and breathed a sigh of relief, for in her eyes and unkempt curls I saw an acceptance of girlhood, an affirmation of my own curious playful soul, and an accompanying ability to accept the intricacies of my life. I am a corkscrew curl of a woman, one who loves to dance, dream and play dress-up. It is my hope however, that I’ll always return back to myself, to my mother’s arms, to my father’s laugh, holding the memory of each next to my curly, complicated heart.

These dreams of the seaside.
This west coast wanderlust.
Maybe they’re just another way to wonder where HE is,
The mythical one and only whom I’m afraid does not exist.

I dream myself a poet,
Twisting words with the waves and the sunset shadows on Santa Monica sidewalks.
But I’m afraid of course,
And wake up worried that he won’t come,
And that my wave worn words are nothing by fluff and foam,
The washed up remains of another artist’s mind

My mom and I went tonight to see Joan Didion’s play, A Year of Magical Thinking. In my mind now, I am dead. A part of me is grey and dried up. Perhaps like leaves do, growing stale steadily, green only at the tip and wilting everywhere else.

And then, the feelings the play provoked are the same that keep me breathing and alive. I just don’t know what to do with them.

Around me, people are putting themselves to good use. My roommate is reading Joyce and Keats with genuine interest. The magnificent Lady J is giving wings to the children of her creativity, and I...don’t know what I am doing. Of course, there are always those people who seemingly do nothing but go to work, or sleep around but I try to pay the passionless little mind.

Anyways, I write…these little ditties all day long, scribble down feelings, sentences, and I don’t know what they mean. I set around and think about writing…or painting. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t…sometimes I start and get so antsy that I leave in a flurry and wander around Manhattan for hours. Or run out to Connecticut, set on the beach, and stare at the water.

I get this crazy urge to go. I want to sail and drive and move through space.
I dream of California and open water.
I dream of a childhood I can’t remember and wake up rushing to write it down before it slips away.
I want to write a great novel but I don't know my own story yet.
I wonder if I have to.

A couple walking down 10^th street late on a Monday night, she in a summer shawl, and he holding her waist. They stroll from restaurant to wine bar this way and I watch them, thinking how comfortable they seem.

Man in black with a beret perched sideways on his bald head. Taking steps towards his tidy apartment on Avenue A. His feet turn outwards at the toes when he walks, and give him a long stridded, lumbering gait.

Dishboy, emerging from the basement of a nearby noodle bar, carrying a bag of trash and pausing to let me pass before heaving his load onto the sidewalk.

Monday night, East 10th Street, walking the dog.

These things that I want you to know.
Who I am, what holds me,
What I hold – I clutch.
Tea rose and good luck charms,
Fear and the past,
And this navy blue hole in my rose petal heart.

In the summertime there is a distinct breeze that floats along when the weather is just so and the sky is a hazy shade of blue. It is a soft, scooping wind, one that’s smooth like the inner crevice of an ocean-licked seashell. This breeze is the kind that cups your skin in the palm of its touch, and feels effortless and loving. It’s difference from other winds is like the distance between an intent and heartfelt kiss and one that is pushy and lustful. This breeze shakes only the tops of the trees, and but flutters through your hair, never shaking it loose or mussing it up – it is a lazy breeze from across the bay, the Summer Wind sung to by Frank and felt in this moment by my pen and my skin as I sit out on the porch and watch green leaves dance lackadaisically.

I’m glad I’ve slowed down enough to see this, feel this, because so often I forget to. My writing repeatedly takes the form of analytical exploration and as such, I am always hashing things out in my mind in order to cogently connect them into strings of sentences. But right now I’m right here and have only the power to write of what I see and who I am in this very instant – girl set out on a blue porch, pink sneakers up on the railing, and ice cubes clacking in her glass.

Everyone seems to be settling down and into a relationship. And I…well I am lying on my bed with my little dog, listening to Robin Thicke (don’t tell anyone) and wondering what I want. Someone smart once remarked that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Wise words that are worthy of some serious note each time we start to feel sorry for ourselves. Everyone has their weak points, insecurities that oftentimes seem to be couched in the areas in which we appear to be the most confident.

From time to time, I myself tend to slip into waxing woeful over my independent status, glumly eyeing the sexy couples at the Madison Square Park dog run whilst feeling like a boob sitting there alone but for an iced coffee and a little dog who won’t move from beneath my bench. But then I think, who knows what’s really going on with those pretty pairs? Very rarely are our assumptions of others anything but reflections of our projected perfections. It’s not hard to think you want something because you somehow learned you are supposed to. Maybe that’s just my way of brushing off romance as pheromone based hormonal surges, but then again, maybe I’m on to something. I guess I’ll keep trying to figure it out and in the meantime, suck it up and walk my way into the dog run brandishing my plastic coffee cup and feeling as secure in my silent self as possible.

Besides, technically I don't sleep alone...I got a little black and white fluff ball streached out beside me each night...and he never ever snores.

I’m watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan from a hunkered down perch on my mother’s sofa, out in Connecticut, miles from New York City. The town I love has exhausted me, first with its bedbugs, then the apartment search. All day long I’ve been funky, mulling over my impending lease signing, the audacity of our realtor, the price of my realtor, and most of all, the magnitude of Manhattan’s monthly rent. Last week, I looked at apartment after apartment, from the Upper East Side to Alphabet city, none of which fit my price limitations in anything but a disappointing way. 2, 600 dollars a month for this!? A dirty matchbox, blocks and blocks from public transportation, 20 flights up and full of roaches? What is more, they might not accept me! I roll my eyes as my agent disapprovingly runs her eyes over my mother’s bank statement…if this is par for the course, what is to become of my Manhattan? If we fast-forward twenty years into the future, will the great cities of the world be owned only by the rich and famous? What will New York be like without its crazy kids, its starving artists, its students, its starlets?

Well, I guess there's always Brooklyn...

My life right now is:

Work in Chelsea
Walking Calvin and willing him to pee
Luna Bars
The sunset by the Westside highway
Tompkin’s Square Park and the regular’s on Avenue C
Coveting this: http://www.ravinstyle.com/shop/productDetail.asp?p=3529
Tired feet shoed in pink Keds
The feeling of sweet satisfaction as I turn the key of my very own apartment

It's a Wonderful World~

Curled up next to me and sleeping soundly is a bit of warmth and rising breath. I’ve dubbed it Calvin in honor of my favorite cartoon character, whose perpetual six-year-old state meshes with his mischief and big heart to create an endearing and familiar kid. At this point, I feel somewhat like Calvin’s unnamed mother, exhausted for having run after my charge all day, picking up after him, spending money on him, trying to concentrate as he pestered me with unbelievable persistence. At times I’ve wondered what I have gotten myself into, questioned my carpe diem standpoint on puppy raising and potty training, doubted my intuition and natural predisposition to do away with all leashes and accompanying accessories.
Indeed, today flew by with the same kind of scattered energy associated with having a child. The combination of this rush and a single slippery sock misplaced found me falling on my ass, hard upon the hardwood staircase, shattering the painted popcorn bowl I was carrying and bringing about a big purple bruise on the left side of my lower back. I know the bruise will fade and with it, these feelings of frenzy, but I also worry that the coming weeks will slow that process. In the next fourteen days I will start a new job, move to new apartment, and travel to Springfield for the Vermont spring classic horse show, Calvin in tow, reclaiming the grooming position I swore never to return to, all so I can be close to Ham and coach the little girl who will show him in my stead.
It all feels hopelessly overwhelming when I venture too far from the present moment. Luckily, I am calmed by the words of my little buddy’s namesake, who wisely stated to his best friend Hobbes, “We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are.”… Maybe tomorrow I’ll be mopping up after Calvin’s inability to control his bladder, or coaxing him into his carrying case despite his adamant protestations. But all that effort means nothing in this moment, and here, I am at peace.
Throughout the day, I’ve weathered the fluxuation between feelings of utter adoration and absolute frustration, ending up here, on the sofa with a helpless little lump of love and the knowledge that I’ll never be alone again. As I bid a piece of my independence farewell, I welcome in a friendship I am sure will be a core shaker, an inconvenience and a distinct blessing.

Mirror Mirror of my Mind~

For all the fabulous experiences I find in my New York home, it also seems that it is when I am outside of it that I slow down enough to experience another kind of encounter. Where in Manhattan, I often happen upon surprisingly inspiring people or places, in my Connecticut or New Hampshire homes, I knowingly create them.
Neither mode of stimulation is better, but there’s something to the intentional manifestation of inspiration that really stays with a person, perhaps more than the revelatory quality of magical Manhattan’s many mysterious characters and the lessons they regularly offer up. Or maybe it’s just that New York is in such a constant site of meaning and motivation that such becomes old hat and commonplace, impersonal for it’s ever-constant flow and impartial impartment.
Perhaps I’ll never work it out, doesn’t matter really…what does matter are the experiences I find in each place and the cultivation of my capacity to tell their stories. Today has yielded one such story, with many parts and no real point, aside from the peaceful easy feeling it has left in my heart.

This morning began blustery and with bursts of rain, splattering drops upon the windshield of my mom’s hybrid as it whirred along on the way to Weston CT, carrying myself, my mom, and two of the people who’ve known me the longest, characters I call my family. We were on our way to a memorial service, a gathering of friends at the home of one of the decade’s most noted architectural talents. I wandered through his family’s home, a house of many windows, each of which ushered in light, despite the dreary day. In each pane I saw myself reflected and as the afternoon wore away, full of tears, wine spritzer, and mini quiches my mind became another mirror, at times reflecting reality from the perspective of someone looking at me, a vantage from which I saw myself, sitting in my steam pressed suit set, and watching people feeling the inevitable loss that life entails. I watched my mother’s best friends, people I love, stand up and speak about someone whom they had loved. I saw that person’s thirteen-year-old daughter stand there with them, in front of fifty some odd people, all of whom had loved her father. I furrowed my brow, wondering if she knew, wondering how she could know, that her father was gone and her life forever changed. In that moment, I was an absolute observer of unfiltered life, and in that moment, I felt myself more alive than I had in some time. I touched my own fears and felt myself a woman, and I know now, that no matter what, I’ll be all right.

Later today, after the service, after we’d driven home in a fog of four o’clock traffic, I had to get out, had to move. Emotion was clustered in my core, not uncomfortable, but congealed and in need of some shaking up. I drove fast and with the radio loud, window down and cold air on my face. From time to time, I watched my eyes in the rear view window and smiled at the light that danced in their blue reflection.

I went to a movie and was one of two people in the whole theater and found it fun.
I went to the beach long after the sun had set and the Moon sat almost full in the night sky.
The clouds had cleared and several stars stood out so brightly that I wondered if they were planets, or moons, or just sparkling reflections of my own eyes in a much larger mirror. The high school sweethearts cuddled in their cars watched as I sat myself on the abandoned swing set and pumped my legs till I flew towards the Moon, laughing for the perfection of the moment, and my capacity to feel it so fully.
I am exhausted, the day has passed, and with it, a myriad of emotions, all of which I’ve allowed to flow through me, watching them just as I watch myself reflected back by multiple mirrors, each of which changing the way I look at things, and by extension, the very things I am looking at.

When I was a little girl, the Sun seemed to stream into my family’s house from every window, casting wide and asymmetrical squares of light onto the Oriental rug and embracing my little body in warmth and protection. That rug saw a continual parade of action, like my daily dress up parties during which I flip flopped across its surface, decadently dressed to the nines and toting along the family dog on a leash. Or each night’s bountiful dinner, be it between my parents and I, or including the bouquet of boisterous characters I called family.

When those days disappeared, so too did the sunlit squares, replaced instead by rain streaked window panes, slamming screen doors and angry voiced against a background chorus of chirping peepers, singing me to sleep from the woods just outside my bedroom window.

But when I wondered what would protect me, there was always the Moon, the feminine. She who rode alongside me through the darkest of nights when I couldn’t sleep, and through the long car rides home when I leaned my forehead against the cold window of the family car and found her peering over my shoulder, keeping me company as my family tensely traveled through time and the silent spaces of dark winter nights.

Tonight I lay on my back on the same Oriental rug that served as stage for my childhood theatrics. Out the glass doors of my mother’s house I saw the moon. She is there for me now, and in her nurturing, protective gaze, I think I have found the Sun.

Perhaps nothing is ever truly lost so long as you can hold it in eyes of your heart and mind.

Watching raindrops fall down the windowpane and splash upon the sill
They are a tease to the tears I can’t shed
Droplets onto the sizzling hot heart of my pain

I crave crying and cannot muster it
My tears are displaced and turned into resentment of laughter
If I can’t access pain, why can’t others feel it for me?
Take my pain; take it from me, please, as I have always done for you

We are in one room, one conversation, and worlds apart.
And I wonder, who is stronger?

I find myself frequently comparing the men in my life to characters from Sex and the City…is he a Richard or a Smith? A Steve or a Big? Which category he falls into somehow seems to dictate how I treat him. Oversimplified? Perhaps, but certainly a fun way to weather the constantly changing climate of my current sexual storm. So as long as we’re playing this game, where do I fit? That was always an easier conclusion to come to, simple really. I place myself somewhere in between Samantha and Carrie, a fusion of one character’s curious and questioning approach to herself and her relationships and the other’s uncomplicated independence. At least with the close of the series, all ends well because of not despite each character’s respective trials and tribulations, mistakes and moments of happiness. I can only but trust that my fate will be similar and venture fearlessly into the future…

After a few months apart, my dad and I met up today. Finally. We walked for a few hours on a windy Connecticut afternoon, over the terrain of our mutual past, getting ourselves on the same page, and turning a few in the process. Our relationship is one of extreme closeness and too long away from dad’s conversation and company leaves me feeling stuck and unsure of my purpose, a sentiment that has felt somewhat exaggerated of late. Codependent? Maybe, luckily, we talked about that too.

The older I get the closer to my past I become. I am aware now of emotions that I have never before been present enough to feel, a testament to a tumultuous year full of change and courageous confrontations.

But it’s also painful. I watched my dad pull away today in his company car and felt cold with the knowledge that I have no idea when next we’ll meet. Almost instantaneously my mom arrived home from a daylong artist’s workshop and I turned my eyeballs skywards, thanking the great whomever above me that my parent’s paths had not crossed. My reaction to her return felt out of my control, as if I was watching myself become angry and withdrawn in response to her presence, a default response of pure emotion with little else to back it up. For years such was normal protocol in all areas of our relationship, and is thankfully no longer so, but transition between my parents still incites irritation and impatience.

Attempting to dispel the frustration I felt with my own anxious anger, I went out for a long drive, flying down 95, listening to Hartford’s number one for hip hop and R&B and watching the sun set like a blood orange in the sky, spilling it’s juicy soul all over the blue shoreline horizon. I shifted into the soft blue of the evening, and drove long into darkness. When the radio went fuzzy, I put Mariah Carey on my Ipod and shamelessly sang along, slipping over back roads, and past the landmarks of my childhood I once thought gone forever.

Funny how one can learn
To grow numb to the madness
And block it away
I left the worst unsaid
Let it all dissipate
And I try to forget

As I closed my eyes
Steadied my feet on the ground
Raised my head to the sky
And the time rolled by
Still I feel like a child
As I look at the moon
Maybe I grew up a little too soon

As I sang, as I related to the music of a much teased lady songstress, I eased myself into acceptance, and thought a lot. Not the conscious sort of consideration, but the kind couched in music and in the speed of the car through the moonlit darkness of a starless night.