The day has thus far been undone. It's been sweet, alive, and far from shallow. It's been insightful. Bubbles are billowing within me and brimming at my fingertips which propels me to write, as nothing else but a distraction from my flushed, windblown reflection I see when I dance with joy in the mirror. Tis a titillating Saturday. Shall I tell you more?
Until recently, I've felt like a puzzle with missing pieces. I've been all laid out on the table, looking the best I can with what I've got, which was clearly not enough. As a result, I sensed some puzzled looks from friends as they've thought, "Amy is not her self." (I know this because I can read minds, you know.) But I think I've found some pieces to my self lately, and they've fallen into place. I feel whole. And tho I'm in tact, I do not feel "complete," or finished, like there's nothing more to add; I feel like the jagged space between the puzzle pieces are being hugged... and that is a wonderful feeling. I don't want to identify with the image on the puzzle that you see when you step back, but rather, I am the space within the image - the little cracks and curves and dips; I am a puzzle without corners or edges, not a picture, and it is particularly possible I'll be taken apart and be put together again on an other day, on a Sunday, or attached to other pieces that seemed disjoint before. Who knows? But today is Saturday, and today I'm together looking pretty swell.
I went sailing today. Nothing is cooler than putting up an away message that states "AmyMeredith is sailing on the San Francisco Bay." I rock. I took the helm and the wind was tossing my already wrangled hair towards Oakland. Why does the wind make me feel so brave and beautiful? Not that I regret it, it could toss my hair with reckless abandon and I will walk away smiling. This must be why birds dance at the shore.
Bob, my fatherly department supervisor, spoiled me silly out there. Back at the yacht club, he dotted me with his children's homemade brownies and banana bread, and he bought me a beer. In shooting the shit about work and budgets and our complete disdain for political bureaucracies, he turned to me and suggested I take some time off. "Spend as much time as you can with your friends," he explained, "jobs, homes, things... they come and go. Good friends though, those are the things that get you through. You need to focus on them." His wife recently passed. He continued, " And write as much as you can, polish that. You have an amazing skill." I smiled inwardly. "It's like music, don't you think? When you put the pen in your hand, a rhythm starts to move through you, and you're just a tool for it to come out... do you feel that way at all?" "I feel like a vessel." "YES! It's going to get you somewhere." It was wisdom, flooding my consciousness. Bob's a nice friend.
It's still overcast outside as I look westward from my apartment window. It's breezy and a little colder than San Franciscans hope for the day before June. Some people call this adversity. SF is the Midwest on the bay and all the footloose hippies wear a layer of thick skin, repeating the mantra, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But today I don't mind the gray chill sifting in. It's not killing me, and it's not what pushes my endurance to new heights at all.
Today is a fantastic Saturday, where the wind is a disguise for the birds dancing on the shore who whisper words of wisdom that stretch out to me, all the way to a second floor apartment on 16th avenue, and it fills the space between my pieces like a knowing hug. The breeze is a solidifying agent. The space I have within me is getting so filled up that I could simply burst. And when I do, it'll be fun to put the puzzle back together.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
I'm afraid of numbers
I heard on a movie once that life is like a box of chocolates. It was cold here last week, I wore a pretty blue scarf and it blew in the wind, but today it was 97 degrees fahrenheit so I'd have to agree that you never know what you're gonna get. When the night time comes I listen to my roommate party with her friends in the living room - it's her birthday so it's ok - but there's a hole in the wall that lets the sound come straight in and I have to listen to Wilco with my iPod turned up high against my eardrums so I can sleep without laughter. It's kinda funny. I'm afraid of numbers. I used to have panic attacks whenever a big math test was coming up, and the school nurse wouldn't let me go home because, she said, it was good for me. I'm still afraid of numbers, like the ones I see when I step on a scale or when the ATM machine shouts out how much money I have left in my account. Then I miss the good old days when I was a little younger, a little smaller, and a lot more taken care of. No one ever said that becoming an adult would be hard. Sure I can vote and buy cigarettes and use as many credit cards as they send me in the mail; but what happens when my vote is over ruled by super delegates and I cope by charging a pack of menthol Virginia Slims straight to my athlete-induced asthmatic lungs? Maybe I'll eat some popcorn. I'd like that. But I also heard on the news about 'popcorn lung' from the microwaveable bags that contain too many chemicals so I'm scared I'll end up like those gray middle aged people with their throats cut open so they can breathe. I don't think I'd like that. I wish Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman still played on TV. She was always able to figure out a cure for all the cowboys and indians. My family used to sit down and watch that show together, mostly because my mom liked it and my dad was too afraid to tell her it wasn't his taste. I'm proud to be an American when my childhood memories consist of doting upon Hollywood impressions of genocide, giggling at other people's blunders on America's Funniest Home Videos, and tapping off every Sunday night with my entire family's attention to the Simpsons, when Bart would write something new on the black board. All this was done with a big buttery bowl of popcorn in front of me, and people wonder why I am this way? I don't wonder, but I shrug when they ask. Growing into this age has been like having a very elegant carpet pulled out from under me in a swift and sudden motion. As I fall, the air dances across my face and plays with my hair, twisting it into ringlets as if it were long and curly, like Shirley Temple when she'd take a bow; the air feels good, a little warm, like driving along the coast with the top down good. But then my body comes to grips with reality and I'm flat on the floor by myself without cushion. Now they say 'that's life.' Coulda woulda shoulda wish I'd known. And no, you don't know what you're gonna get. When I was a kid I had a healthy imagination, which I think is pretty good and normal. In third grade I was walking home from school, down the little hill past the hedges that lined the sidewalk and perfect shingled houses peaked out from behind them. I used to talk to myself about the boys I liked and what I'd say to them in a fit of passion, and sometimes I'd talk out loud. It seemed okay because I was 9. One day a neighbor girl walked up from behind me and asked me who I was talking to. It was embarrassing. I didn't say "Landon" because I knew he was only in my mind, so that's the day I stopped imagining things and I quit believing in love. I smiled in a way and kept walking a few steps ahead of her so she wouldn't see me blush, or maybe so she wouldn't see me cry, I can't remember. It was warm that day, I remember that, but there was still a little bit of melting slush in the gutters. It looked like wet cement from all the car exhaust that attached to it, but I hardly noticed. That's how things are. Snow melts. It gets hot. And dreams meet the cold hearted death of reality. But it's ok. I'm 24. That's how things are.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Weather Report
Thunder crashes - I sense lightning
the sharp light presses through my window blinds and sivs through my faded red curtains
it bounces off my bedroom mirror for my eye lids to absorb
and I awake holding myself in unmentionable crevasses.
I'm holding back a down pour.
Blindly, I stumble to the bathroom.
It's two hours too early and my alarm clock is still sleeping
Awake pre-sound, pre-light, pre-city hustle and bustle
car horn all the way down 19th avenue coffee brewing and latte foaming
quarters clinking into the laundry machines
man driving man crazy,
I'm pre-cognitive in the black, thick silence so I get back in my sheets.
There's rolling thunder in the distance.
When the rooster crows dim light begins to flood
breaking levies and crashing into my 2nd floor apartment at unpredicted speed
Storm warning, grab the life vest
get running. There's some saving to do.
By 8 the day is only getting colder and lonelier in the dense morning dew drop intensity.
High pressure zone, the barometer is pointing a stern finger to my location
as I cut through the stifled highway air with a metallic blue cobalt racing time.
I hear cymbals crashing straight ahead, I'm going south in the sunny northern California morn.
Emergency broadcast system interrupts the early May winter of my discontent.
Bridge may be icy. Tornado watch around the bend.
It arrives with twists and turns of my emotion in every which when where and what direction
papers flying, piling recklessly in every corner
red light flashing with 10 calls waiting, people dooming,
and a sea of teens ebbing in and out and in and out and in and out and...
I use them to measure my breathing.
I put a sign on my office door: "closed due to bad weather storm"
power lines are down, fire is spitting out the ends and there's little chance to connect
but the wind forces the door open anyways leaving me near frozen,
mind barren, shuttering and blind sided.
A demanding inhale, it takes full seize and carries me away through a stomach panging, inside empty afternoon.
High chance of precipitation by the evening.
The light levels are still rising through 2pm and the sea is pulsing, splashing over the last-hope barricades I made of paper clips and surrendering white-flag sticky notes.
The more time passes, the stronger the day becomes
as it taps at my guarded energy like a penetrating breeze.
Temperature is rising and I'm colder...
More chaos, more questions, more ceaseless ever flowing unfailing push and pulling
my hair is frazzled and on end but the river never stops.
Big gust. Inhale.
"Amy, I need help."
I'm a stallion is a rainstorm running wild - bucking - crazy - and then it stops.
The sky a greenish gray and calm.
and then it echoes, "Amy... I need help... Amy..."
Woe there, easy, easy, just relax, girl, woe.
It's placid, quiet, pressure's dropping.
"Okay. Let's see what we can do."
And as the last unbent vowel coyly dribbles from my tongue,
levitating in the innocently distilled space round the ear of a child,
as I ney and sigh and stamper,
the shivering breeze brings back its clenching fist to wince the eye of the cyclone.
The day is not yet done.
In and out and in and out and in
a whirlwind undying fury fear striking case of reality
I fight the relentless wrath wearing sunglasses down the El Camino Real.
You push? I pull panic ridden but collected, like putting on goulashes already filled with rain.
It pours some more and I absorb. I left my sunroof open.
I take the wheel at 10 and 2 and arrive at 10 to 7
wearing nothing but my windblown exhaustion and the fear that this days forecast was a link in a chain fourteen miles longer than necessary.
In my room I spill out across my milky white comforter made of down
...with a spoon full of sugar, I'm Mary Poppins laying down on a cloud,
Hiding - recovering from my internal volley dark and dreary as the sun sets after a clear skied day.
Extended forecast's not so certain. 50% for all conditions.
My eye lids, like windshield wipers that stopped working, drop hard upon the upper crescent of my cheeks and do not move, for me and no one.
My mind tinkers on - tick - tock - tick - tock - like an unwound grandfather clock before it's last farewell chime
and my hand instinctually reaches up to a little gray box on the window sill before I turn off the light...
the Brookstone white noise maker 3000. 60 minutes set for "thunderstorm," as I drift away again.
the sharp light presses through my window blinds and sivs through my faded red curtains
it bounces off my bedroom mirror for my eye lids to absorb
and I awake holding myself in unmentionable crevasses.
I'm holding back a down pour.
Blindly, I stumble to the bathroom.
It's two hours too early and my alarm clock is still sleeping
Awake pre-sound, pre-light, pre-city hustle and bustle
car horn all the way down 19th avenue coffee brewing and latte foaming
quarters clinking into the laundry machines
man driving man crazy,
I'm pre-cognitive in the black, thick silence so I get back in my sheets.
There's rolling thunder in the distance.
When the rooster crows dim light begins to flood
breaking levies and crashing into my 2nd floor apartment at unpredicted speed
Storm warning, grab the life vest
get running. There's some saving to do.
By 8 the day is only getting colder and lonelier in the dense morning dew drop intensity.
High pressure zone, the barometer is pointing a stern finger to my location
as I cut through the stifled highway air with a metallic blue cobalt racing time.
I hear cymbals crashing straight ahead, I'm going south in the sunny northern California morn.
Emergency broadcast system interrupts the early May winter of my discontent.
Bridge may be icy. Tornado watch around the bend.
It arrives with twists and turns of my emotion in every which when where and what direction
papers flying, piling recklessly in every corner
red light flashing with 10 calls waiting, people dooming,
and a sea of teens ebbing in and out and in and out and in and out and...
I use them to measure my breathing.
I put a sign on my office door: "closed due to bad weather storm"
power lines are down, fire is spitting out the ends and there's little chance to connect
but the wind forces the door open anyways leaving me near frozen,
mind barren, shuttering and blind sided.
A demanding inhale, it takes full seize and carries me away through a stomach panging, inside empty afternoon.
High chance of precipitation by the evening.
The light levels are still rising through 2pm and the sea is pulsing, splashing over the last-hope barricades I made of paper clips and surrendering white-flag sticky notes.
The more time passes, the stronger the day becomes
as it taps at my guarded energy like a penetrating breeze.
Temperature is rising and I'm colder...
More chaos, more questions, more ceaseless ever flowing unfailing push and pulling
my hair is frazzled and on end but the river never stops.
Big gust. Inhale.
"Amy, I need help."
I'm a stallion is a rainstorm running wild - bucking - crazy - and then it stops.
The sky a greenish gray and calm.
and then it echoes, "Amy... I need help... Amy..."
Woe there, easy, easy, just relax, girl, woe.
It's placid, quiet, pressure's dropping.
"Okay. Let's see what we can do."
And as the last unbent vowel coyly dribbles from my tongue,
levitating in the innocently distilled space round the ear of a child,
as I ney and sigh and stamper,
the shivering breeze brings back its clenching fist to wince the eye of the cyclone.
The day is not yet done.
In and out and in and out and in
a whirlwind undying fury fear striking case of reality
I fight the relentless wrath wearing sunglasses down the El Camino Real.
You push? I pull panic ridden but collected, like putting on goulashes already filled with rain.
It pours some more and I absorb. I left my sunroof open.
I take the wheel at 10 and 2 and arrive at 10 to 7
wearing nothing but my windblown exhaustion and the fear that this days forecast was a link in a chain fourteen miles longer than necessary.
In my room I spill out across my milky white comforter made of down
...with a spoon full of sugar, I'm Mary Poppins laying down on a cloud,
Hiding - recovering from my internal volley dark and dreary as the sun sets after a clear skied day.
Extended forecast's not so certain. 50% for all conditions.
My eye lids, like windshield wipers that stopped working, drop hard upon the upper crescent of my cheeks and do not move, for me and no one.
My mind tinkers on - tick - tock - tick - tock - like an unwound grandfather clock before it's last farewell chime
and my hand instinctually reaches up to a little gray box on the window sill before I turn off the light...
the Brookstone white noise maker 3000. 60 minutes set for "thunderstorm," as I drift away again.
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