A Winning State

I was in preschool when my mom took me to my first gymnastics class; the decision was made after I tripped over my bathroom stool one night, which instigated an unstoppable yank from gravity and the raised tile floor, causing my freshly brushed pearly whites to meet my upper lip in violence and shock. I didn't cry until I looked in the mirror and saw the blood all over my cheeks and my Light Bright, yellow like a daisy night gown. That's when my mom and dad looked at each other exasperated, determined to find their daughter some balance.

First came the rec classes at the town's middle school where the instructors laid out wrestling mats that smelled like prepubescent male angst. The tumbling and twirling came natural and untamed - I was a rare spark plug who could perform the stunts with equal precariousness on either foot or hand - a young ambidextrous who leveled things out with long, blond pig tales that spout out the sides of my head from behind my ears. I was everyone's favorite, and fed off their gleaming hopefulness and wild woman confidence...

Then things progressed to Gym America, where I earned a full wardrobe of colorful spandex leotards and my first pair of grips. I skipped Levels 2, 3 and 4, the skills were trivial and as my tight young body developed - teeth falling out and being replaced with a fatter, bucked variety, and my hair chopped to a short, flippant style - I jumped at the chance to show off my abilities in Level Pre-5. Through 5th grade I competed and performed, conditioning my muscles with dubious routine and challenging my bones to brace impact from frightening new jumps and flips. At least 20 hours a week after school and on weekends, I leaped uninhibited.

But when the gym owners requested I start owning my assets by working out 25 hours a week, I hopped to a new facility with more reasonable ideals - Michigan Academy of Gymnastics. There I was able to reel in my frantic energy and perfect each lift, turn, and pointed toe. Leotards switched to technicolor and velvet, and the grips took on new form with dowels and durability. I excelled through Levels 5, 6, 7... I won medal after medal, one handstand contest after another, and eventually took the cake at the Early State Meet with the All-Around gold.

The summer that followed took me to the chalky gym 30 hours a week, with 5 hour days starting early Saturday mornings that removed any chance for a pre-teen social life. Regardless, my priorities were to my sport, and I effervescently took charge of my apparatuses - the floor, the beam, the vault and bars - like a young love without boundaries. Way under my expected weight and height for my age, I had the ability to soar and still land gracefully, so anyone who dared tease my child-size clothing, I dared to a back-flip show down followed by a limbo contest.

Ambitious, boundless, and reckless, I built up everything I had. My muscles and mind were lean, focused; my palms were rough with abrasive calluses I wore like armor and pride. When the thick skin pealed off in chunks to unearth the more fragile me, which would happen from time to time, I'd simply purse my lips, grunt inward, wrap my hand in athletic tape and hop back up to complete my workout as if nothing happened. My teammates and I called them "rips," and we'd use them as boasting rights to our non-gymnast friends who knew nothing of our painful lives.

Gymnastics taught me a lot, if not everything, considering I practiced it more than I did homework or spent time with family. I learned endurance and courageousness and eloquence and determination and flexibility and self control and tolerance...

But most of all I learned how to pick myself up from a fall or a rip. *Dust it off, wrap it up, layer it with more chalk.* In this way, I learned to layer myself internally as well. Calluses were great things to have, they helped me keep a grasp on things, and when they tore it was merely a reminder to get a little tougher... mend it the best I could and quickly grow some thicker skin.

It's been 11 years since I practiced the sport. I've had a long time to learn new lessons and use my body/mind combo in different, always profound ways. Still, I will never let go of that high bar. In downfalls, which will indeed happen from time to time, you can guarantee I am only taking a pause to adjust my armor and pride.

In the Spirit of Adventure and Self Renewal

He was the immigrant, a tourist who'd gone to a foreign country, met a local woman, and decided to stay. The point wasn't to make her more like him, to fill her head with the same crap that cluttered his own; it was just the opposite - for him to become more like her, to leave the old country behind so he could create a newer, better version of himself... (The Abstinence Teacher)

My suggestion is to replace the pronouns with their equal opposites. Then you'll have my state of mind today as I skip work and drown my insides with soy chai latte and a creamy gray fog on my outsides. So far, in spite of my tramping wanderlust mind, Friday tastes good. Or good enough. Okay for now.

I'm relieved that in a week I'll be laying in a hammock on the forested shore of Perch Lake. Michigan is calling me home, and as long as my eyes are closed I can smell the Maple and Pine and touch the humid air the way you delicately hold an old friend at arms length, by the shoulders, as you breath in their strange, missed existence. I'm restless for ancient familiarity. It's not as much the people that I'm desperate for - I'm confident in the connections I've maintained through long distance phone calls, snail mail pen-palling, and shared dreams - but it is the actual place, the reminders of so many good times (only some bad), and all the loose associations the Midwest atmosphere provides that is tugging on my heart strings. I used to think you could only find love from a few rare and special people throughout your life... Mom and Dad, siblings, the BFFs and significant others if you're lucky; but I've never been certain of love from any of these sources, it is truly just the air - the earth - that gives me the most contentment. Michigan, surrounded by HOMES, Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Eerie, and Superior, has cast out a precious bait and I'm fighting the world to get back on dry land.

1 year and 10 months I've lived in this foreign place of milk and honey, soaking in it and absorbing the lessons and values in order to develop and be reborn. In this expansive time I've felt my body and mind shudder in a few of life's contractions, but still I'm stuck within myself. I'm screaming in pain and I need to get out!

I came here to find something... attached to simple instinct and good faith, the world really did cast me out. Since, I've been waiting for something even more grand to get a bite of me and wiggle me off the hook so I can be fully taken in, but so far all I've been able to tempt are a few uncommitted nibbles. My worth is coming into question. If I don't find something or someone to hold onto, is my adventure worth anything at all? Am I learning? Am I creating a better version of myself?

To be evermore honest, in the past 2 years minus 2 months, I do feel like I've learn more about myself and the meaning of things than I imagined possible. I've recognized my bravery, my compassion, and my immortal ability to find then overcome profound difficulties. I've lived in unsafe and unhealthy neighborhoods and apartments with unsuitable people. I've fought the law. I've sued. I've won. I've been beaten down by relationships, broken and worn to mere marrow, and then I've picked myself up, shaken off the dust and walked on with my chin irrationally high in the air. I've got no family. No long standing friendships. No glue to hold myself together or my feet to this great city. En lieu of self-definition and cohesion, I've stacked my experiences on top of each other to gain height and a fresher perspective. I'm bigger than I used to be, perhaps a little unstable at times, but youthful and daring and nearly ready to fly. This, I think, really is the meaning of life. For now.

As I'm reeled back into the homeland next week, I expect I'll refuel and find some solid ground, re-rooting myself to all the wonderful things that matter. When I'm charged, I'll cut myself out again and throw myself back to the wind. I'll come back to SF and I'll continue to scout for new realities. My past gave me strong, enduring wings... you can bet I'll use them, always. Always stretching out, expanding, taking in a whole lot and giving back as much as possible, and creating a newer, better version of what I was and whatever I will be.

I sum with Modest Mouse.

"Florida"

Although we often wondered
It was no thing of wonder
The shit that flew from our minds
Grass stains and fresh fruit
Reminds our shoes of horse glue
On this ridiculous climb
With great tall vision
We built ourselves a mission
To ride out motives decide
Oh, with vague description
Of what we have been missing
So why would anyone try

It was always worth it
That's the part I seem to hide
And the busy ant empire
Put all your clothes inside

I wasn't always cargo

I guess I'll pack up my mind
It took so much effort
Not to make an effort
Oh, what a flawless design

It was always worth it
That's the part I seem to hide
And the busy ant empire
Put all your clothes inside

Even as I left Florida
(yee-ha)

It was always worth it
That's the part I seem to hide
And the busy ant empire
Put all your clothes inside

Even as I left Florida
Far enough, far enough
Wasn't far enough

Couldn't quite seem to escape myself
Far enough, far enough
Far from Florida
We were all drowning in cruise control
Far enough, far enough
Wasn't far enough

I stood on my heart supports thinkin'
"Oh my God, I'll probably have to carry this whole load."
I couldn't remember if I tried
I couldn't remember if I took my brain out, threw it so directly a the goal
I couldn't remember if I...
I could have my mind erased
And still not know exactly what I don't already know

Even as I left Florida

Gravity

Wednesday.
I had a thirteen hour work day: 3 presentations starting at 8am, 1,088 surveys entered for 1 of my 4 presentation topics I covered this year, 73 miles in the Chevy transporting girls from Redwood City to Oakland and back for a rock-climbing 'gateway' adventure, 1 cover letter/resume flung out to the cyber gods, $834.76 charged via the visa for a new - hopefully functioning - laptop, all on a mere 2 cups of coffee. My shoulders are imploding into my lungs and my spine is contorting into unnatural, rather spontaneous angles as gravity pushes my fightless body evermore closer to the center of things. I'm operating on 5 hours of sleep, yet my eyes are wide open and drying out, fixed to the neon glow of my computer screen - the cocaine to my visual cortex. This has been a day, oh what a day!

Tuesday.
My department had our biweekly meeting. A year ago you could have interrupted our meetings by seeing a dozen youthful souls in a tight room, eating bananas and muffins, lighting a candle in some unpretentious, ungodly, unassuming hopefulness, cracking jokes on each other and generally oozing pride and validation for our not-for-profit work. Back then we only held meetings once a month - there wasn't any damage controlling need for anything more frequent. Present day remix: staff of 4 (one of whom is leaving in 3 weeks) plus 1 new program manager and a phony clinical director. Bob? Sacked two days ago. Jennifer? Bought out by a competing "collaborating" agency. Tim and Amanda? MIA. Danielle? Quit. Maria? Quit. Caroline? Quit. Me? ...me... Those who remain, I dub them Resilient, say, "Hang in there, Meredith!" and the only image that comes to mind is the 70's cartoon kitten who's grasping to a thread at some anonymous height, and only I know that there's no way that kitten can hold on without opposable thumbs - it's gonna fall nine flights, losing a life every level it plummets until it hits unsurvivable rock bottom. Call me Felix, my destiny is inevitable, yet still I hang.

Wednesday.
As I continued to process my misty future as a dead cat, my Merry-Go-Round coworker huddled over my desk and pressed his voice into my conscience with such assertiveness that I could only tear in response; he said, "Meredith, my dear, YOU need to find a new job!" My own supervisor was standing to my left and only nodded and patted my back in foretelling support. And just then an email from my papa popped up, reading, "Leaders stay calm when there is chaos around them. Stay the course." (Is that the new, slightly more prophetic "Hang in there Kitty"?)


The consensus in all this is simple: I'M FUCKED.

Tuesday.
After my 50 minute commute and a quick and dirty chiseling to my cover letter template, I took a 1.8 mile stroll to Significant Other's casa, with ipod in ears and Starbucks' toffee almond bar in hand, but of course. Through the magical, wondrous Golden Gate Park, the blocks too few and brief, it dawned on my just how incredible my life currently is. I have the One Thousand Acre Woods in my own backyard, and I can walk and jaunt and skip and fly on the multi-specie tree-lined sidewalks whenever I please. My eyes have been open all this time that I've been here, striving for independence in an era of dependence, but it wasn't until approximately 7:14pm that my eye of eyes woke up. 32 shades of green! That's what it saw! And little Robins bopping in moist earth, and leaves dancing recklessly in the eastbound wind, and runners siving though my existence, seemingly without any effort at all, but illustrating all the while the delicate sway of their polyester, dry-wick shirts as they bound from left foot to right, their lungs pumping inward and out. The sights called for my ear of ears to wake, opening to the sounds beyond my streaming mp3s and letting the music of my feet sliding across the cement flood my awareness, the distant birds chirping, the chains of a passing bicyclist shift gears, the grass bending over to tickle itself, the runner's fragile pause in mantra-like breathing as he swallowed and tred on. And naturally, in combination of all this sudden sensation, my nose of noses carved a clear path which allowed a scent of warm Eucalyptus and soil and sweat and buttery summer-time pollen to invade the life so deep within me that the "hanging in there" me seemed like nothing more than a shadow.

All at once and out of nowhere I became alive.

I was so happy, so optimistic. I was brimming with awareness, and the joy of it all shot out my fingertips and smile without the slightest inhibition.

Wednesday.
I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember where the center of things is, while it feels like inertia is pulling me in it's opposite direction. I'm tipping sideways, my head is pulling closer to my pillow as my memory begs to rest. In a few minutes maybe things will make sense again; gravity does have a way about it.

One Youth or Another

It was a magical Thursday afternoon in the park. Mom took me and my brothers after lunch and the orange cream popsicles that we begged for and received from the man with the cart at the gate entrance. It tasted like joy and peaceful fireworks when I bit into the frozen sugar, and the orange pooled at the corner of my lips and dribbled toward my chin as I gazed up at the cotton candy clouds in youthful distraction and awe. We hadn't a care in the world.

I skipped with the delicate remains of the popsicle in one hand, my brothers strode with premature confidence and my mother led us from behind with a watchful eye. She hadn't a care either, only true love and belief in us, which was a look I became fascinated with and I turned in circles as we journeyed just to get an occasional glance. It was natural to be loved, but even at that small age I knew it was unique - special - to be given unconditional smiles while recognizing their significance. Skip, spin, smile and repeat; I was an addict.

When mom wanted to stop and read her romance novel in the row of lawn chairs the park set up for tourists, my brothers and I took delight in a drooping tree where the branches got too old and spilled over themselves back to the ground. We used our popsicle sticks as guns and swords, and we weaved in and out of the branches screaming "pop - pop - pop, gotcha!" and killing each other again and again until our giggling exhausted us. Under the tree, the light poked in and found us as if God, Himself had ex-ray vision and was checking up on our innocence. When my brothers discovered their second wind and jolted back out into the open park, I took an extra minute to embrace the sharp ray of sun within the cove. The light tickled me. I let out a "rah!" and felt a zest rush from my toes through my legs and up to my chest, forcing me to take a mighty breath before jumping and racing out to meet my brothers again. My middle brother, Jamie, pounced on me in the grass and enticed Franklin to join for a two-on-one wrestling match in which we all ended up twisted and tucked into each other, laughing hysterically. Our teeth were still orange.

The tree and our antics were my favorite things on Earth. I would have played there all day and night, always disregarding the American tourists who paused to take pictures, and continuously finding new strength from the juxtaposed shade and light. The moments there were all mine.

I miss the days of youthful abandon. No responsibility, no concern... we were there, together, full heartedly taking in every small morsel of love that life could provide; and when I think back to those times, I realize how much the buzz is still ingrained in my skin and my blood and my soul. I have to shake my head in a shiver, scream even if only into myself with tight lips, and open my self with a "pop - pop - pop - RAH!!!!!!"

conjunction junction, what's your function?

What a strange strange place I live in... I think I inhaled some harmful material from a broken lightbulb tonight- it was hanging dead and tired in my bathroom, probably years longer than I've lived here, and in a spontaneous fit of anxiety sanitation I decided to climb upon my countertop and remove the medal shards with pliers and diligence. Now, as I attempt the settling-down phase of the evening by watching *Reality Bites* with this overheating computer on my lap, I feel the pangs one gets in the stomach before full blown nausea propels the head into the toilet. Correlation? Cause and effect? Who cares? I'm dying!

It's no coincidence I'm watching this classic 90's documentary. (Did you know that Evian is naive spelled backwards?) 20-somethings discovering themselves- their sexual identities, their careers, their values, their favorite songs in gas stations... God it's so real! If only I was a 20-something 10 something years ago, then I really could have escaped into the flickering TV screen with a stronger sense of support, understanding, and true freedom.

Reality Check. I change lightbulbs and clean fishbowls for fun on Wednesday nights. Stomach pangs still present. Sugar belly is rolling over my boxer shorts. Left shoulder is more tense than the right without just cause. I've been exhausted all day and when the stilled, dark night breaks through my blinds my eyes pop out of their sockets with youthful and ridiculous zest. Hormones? Raging but stifled like a lion in a San Francisco zoo. Emotions? Mississippi flood: daunted, frightened, hopeful, content, mournful, scared shitless, fearless, and blindly infatuated in no particular order. This is a grand imploding explosion internal commotion. (Laney you are IN the Bell Jar.)

I never knew so many things could happen at once, or so many states could collide into one present mind. It seems like I've had scarier times in my life, but none of those memories are popping out and all I can see is a right now in your face like it or not ever changing brutal and silent, raw hysteria that is living as an independent, open young bloke-dame in a detached city. Yeah, I've got some issues tonight. Reality really Bites.
...I'm nervous and pensive, and I still can't wait to break out of my shell...

"For fiction dies faster and truth just survives"

Stickshifts and safetybelts,
Bucket seats have all got to go.
When we're driving in the car,
It makes my baby seem so far.
I need you here with me,
Not way over in a bucket seat.
I need you to be here with me,
Not way over in a bucket seat.

Setting the mood - my nails have a fresh layer of clean, clear gloss upon them, the cd I purchased at Amoeba of my friend's band is to my left, atop my next library read, "The Abstinence Teacher." Perrier with lemon is bouncing in my belly, like the butterflies that have taken displaced residence there are playing volley ball with the carbonation. I'm feeling quite bubbly.

Generally, writing is my friendly outlet for the confusion that life provokes in me. Around this time of night, I usually sit at my fossilized Compaq Presario 700Z and sing a little song about the day - where I been and what I done - which beyond bringing closure, helps digest the rare emotions of a young midwestern transplant. Today I'm sitting here in deeply rooted thought, my fingers are turning to stone the longer they rest on the keyboard, and my mind is jumping with feelings that seem to be untamed, unrecognizable, and evermore indescribable. This is an unfortunate state for a writer. If happiness takes permanent hold, my dreams will certainly come crashing down and all the little chickens across the land will be screaming, "THE SKY IS FUCKING FALLING! ARMAGEDDON! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" And I can't decide if this is good or bad.

I've been crossing my fingers with the desire to be a full fledged author since I was in high school. Not because I enjoyed my English classes... no no... I stopped at English 101 section 13 once I was in college; but the thought of absorbing some big psycho mumbo jumbo and spitting back out with a pretty cover and a dedication page has been unrealistically appealing for days upon years on end. So, what if I woke up one day (let's call it D-Day) and that far fetched dream meandered it's way into reality? Magically and without warning I'm published outside of a backpacking organization's annual report and a push-button blog. Let's say I've got the most amazing, glossy hard covered book of the bunch; it's got Oprah's book club and Nobel Peace Prize stamped all over it. People are waiting in lines for days to get an autographed copy from yours truly. What would you say to that? Even if I paid you, would you believe me? Does anyone deserve such remarkable fortune?

I don't know exactly how long I've had to sleep for this dream to come true. It feels like I've been unconscious forever and ever, and all of a sudden I am awake facing a world of candy and technicolor. This reality outdoes all the dreaming I've done and it's forcing me to squint, scratch my head, and raise my shoulders in wonderment. I want to tape my eyelashes to my eyebrows so I can't blink - not even dare close my eyes long enough for my incredible life to fade away into a foggy memory. It's hard enough to believe as it is, I don't want to believe it as a lost moment in San Francisco's history. I want to be as present and close to this truth as one could possibly get. No more bucket seats. No safe bubble space. No holding back.

Watch me hold my breath and dive into life.

well that's a punch in the throat!

At last at my avenue, I fiddled angrily with the key and forced the gate to my apartment open with aggressive loath, then stomped up the stairs with a pug-faced scoff. Straight to the peanut m n' ms. "I'll never write again."

I'm pretty sure he meant well; I mean, obviously he liked me so why would he be an intentional dickhead idiot? Some people are just bad with words unless there's a pen in their hand. I could probably conjure up a few fair explanations for his bumbled display, but I was much more disappointed in my own actions, my own attempts. "Wow, time flies!" and he agreed. "I gotta get going. Thanks though - really - for your thoughtful attention." He smiled and leaned down and out for a hug, which I trepidatiously returned before running in the other direction. 16 blocks walking swiftly into the ocean breeze, I processed my regret and critical disgust. I tried to distract myself with firey indie rock songs from my ipod and the lyrics I had not yet learned, but it still wasn't enough to pull my attention away from the echoing clang of his effortless animadversions to my typed and printed words. "Who does he think he is?"

After a nurtured period of silence, he flipped over the final page and returned the stapled packet of 5 pages to its original placement on the restaurant table. I looked up from my reading poignantly as a way to disguise that I'd actually been watching him the whole time, his eyes darting from right to left, his left to right, as he noted my pathetic-isms and poor word choices in the margins. I raised one eyebrow in delicate inquiry. He said, "I like your necklace." Then my other eyebrow shot up, passing my forehead and gathered itself at my hairline. "Are you being sympathetic?"

I sensed he wanted to chat for a while. I hadn't seen him since the infamous "didn't know this was a date" date, and the last time we spoke I made up the excuse that I wasn't interested in dating at all. (Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.) He thought we had a spiritual connection that deserved to be explored... I thought he should stop pretending he was still in his 20s. So I nodded and grinned, then pulled out my professional looking trapper-keeper that bound all my whimsical bursts of prose, and I redirected his intentions back to the point: it's Wednesday night writing group. "Hmmm, I wonder if my voice is redundant. Can you help me mix it up?" and I extracted chapters "negative 1" and "1" from my shambled binder, letting the papers nonchalantly plop in the uncertain space between us. "This'll keep him quiet for a few."

Walking into Crepes On Cole with my earphones still in place, I spotted a familiar face and a girl sitting next to him. Always calm in crisis, I put on a relaxed smile and tugged my earphones out by the lower end of the chord which made the separate ends dance and swing in front of me as I approached the corner table. "Whew!" I thought as I tossed my bag onto an empty chair and started taking off my jacket, "It would have been awkward if no one else was here!" As a sat and extended my hand to shake that of a stranger's, Rebecca was her name, she urgently reciprocated the gesture then pulled her coat around her chest so the buttons could get snug in their holes and she'd be warm again. "Well I just wanted to stick around with Jim until someone else got here. I'm tired," she explained, "and my priority goes to that." And just like that, I was left face to face with tense familiarity, sans excuse or escape. "Be cool, be cool. Hey! So how was your weekend?"


And now I'm purging angst onto a blog that no one reads because apparently I "have a lot to say but have novice ideas on how to say it;" because I "have some powerful images that could be put in fewer words," and because after opening up to someone and fostering my vulnerability, all a fellow writer can say is, "I like your necklace."

I'll try giving this up starting tomorrow.

Going Home

It was as soon as I left Redwood City on my drive home from work today that I found the fog. It was lying there, just where I had left it, on the 280 hugging San Francisco. Those two... can't seem to pull them apart some days. Ain't it cute? I was happy today as I crept through the gray bubbly mist, for reasons beyond the weather which will have to be detailed in the paragraphs that follow, but not now. And perhaps it's best not to reason one's way out of contentment. I was smiling and that is nearly the end of the story.

I cracked my windows open to the dropping Fahrenheits as I climbed north - how dare I open my transporter, my vessel, myself to such penetration?! No comment. But it felt so good. It was like I was breathing with my full lungs for the first time. The oxygen was rushing through my veins and limbs with gusto and adolescent exaggeration. My body was living. And in my deep inhales I could taste the scents swirling around my car from all abouts the wide highway. The Eucalyptus Trees rimming the road were being milked by the fog as the traffic eased to and fro, letting the green, sugary smell pour out from the roots and become absorbed in my nostrils. It tasted warm and sweet; like hot chocolate on a summer day, it wasn't needed but it made home feel a lot safer with its presence. And even when the fog let out its droplets of moisture, I left my windows down so I would not forget where I was.

Home. It's the ultimate place, concept, and feeling. It's a buzz kill for some, the some who overlook the specific capitalization and melodic hum it brings when it's said with intention. To many, home is where your parents live, and where you still have a bedroom closet crammed with worn out jeans, shoe boxes brimming with high school pictures, and boxcar derby trophies. Home is where people beg you to come back to as often as possible - at least once a year. Home is where there's one bar (Dan's Tavern) where you know every karaoke song as a number and the owner will jerry-rig the pinball machine so you don't have to pay. And when you bring all of this up in conversation, it's pretty natural to feel the pat of nostalgia on your back before shrugging and moving onto more valuable topics. "Did the Tigers beat the A's? Damn I hope so."

If or when you're lucky, home can be a much larger discussion... if it can be captured with words at all. When it hums like the mantra "om" so soft in your inner ear and you can start to hear your self - your body and the life around you - without your conscience, that is when you can put on a big H. That's when you can smile throughout your entire body, and when keeping the windows down in the fog-rain is the right thing to do. Home is being exactly where you are, unabashedly, with the certainty that it will travel lightly where ever you go.

I was Home for a moment today somewhere between Millbrae and San Bruno as that Eucalyptus streamed into me. It escaped when my mind came back into the game, but for a moment I was truly there and living more than I have ever lived before. And the justification?

Credit should go to the details of the day; let us never forget the piddly shit we murk through morning to night:
*Yoga at 6:30 am. Instructor was a penguins fan. When she said how pleased she was that they beat the Red Wings, I'm not kidding, I lost my balance.
*Breakfast donut. $1.50
*Data entry for 3 hours. Tears of blood.
*Supervisor told everyone she was leaving the organization. The directors teared the real ones while I, corralling my hopeful anxiety, envisioned my strategic plans to take over the world.
*Department director called me and asked if he could take me out to lunch on Friday to discuss my assets and my future in the agency.
*Social arrangements were put into place for the rest of the week.
*Taco Tuesdays; 2x $1 tacos + 2x $2 coronas + Marina district company = $5.98
*Muni; 28, 22, N. cold waits and a sunset by the Golden Gate Bridge.

In sum, it brought me to and through a state of Home that cannot be forgotten or replaced. Sometimes my independence is staggering. Sometimes a lukewarm hot chocolate from the Safeway brand is the best I can do for myself. Today, I guess with all that has happened, I am cozy inside myself knowing, knowing, knowing...