the state of my personal agency

My state of things: I returned from Tahoe yesterday. Now I'm back in the civilized world where clocks hold significance and to-do lists decorate my refrigerator stationary in all it's entirety. I'm overhearing my roommate's music from the living room; the sound of her chopping, dicing, and processing food in attempts to make dinner is the sound behind that. Fog has been pressing against my windows all day, and off and on, with curtains drawn, I've slid open the glass frames to let the clouds in. I guess I feel that it will give me better appreciation for when the sun and warmth rarely hit the San Franciscan atmosphere. The flux in temp has caused Waldo, my fish, to dance in his bowl, and after a year he is finally following my finger when I take it for a walk around the glass. Which reminds me - I got a new book today. "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" by Henry David Thoreau. I'm excited... only 3 books to read before I get to it!

So that's now. That's the moment. As they say, that's all there ever is, and I try to believe them. Yet I was raised on opposition - a way of being that was quite literally addressed in countless family discussions at the dinner table... Me: well it seems like... Everyone else: well you're wrong. And at else times, it was subconsciously absorbed as I prowled through a jungle of parental love/hate to suddenly emerge into the land of independence with mere and delicate scars to show the ever-lonely, ever isolated track it took to get there. It would seem that with a privileged, do-good Christian family I'd have felt supported in my opinions, choices, actions and the like; but opposition always had a seat at the table, and rather than be silenced by it's presence, I learned to debate and argue the defined order, even if it was set in stone. Question authority! That's the game. And I guess that's why I'm wondering now if Now really is all there ever is.

The past is on my mind for good reason. For starters, I'm drawing very near to my two year anniversary living in San Francisco. It was two years ago that I made the rash, instinctive decision to make the change in location - change in total being quite frankly. And it was two years before that when I shifted gears and moved to Ann Arbor from Holland, to reroute my university experience with entirely new people. It was exactly two years before that in which I flew from my parents' nest to a different flock at Hope College. So now, now now, conditioned by time, I'm starting over again with a new job and a new network of life-giving Californians. I sense a pattern of some sort... must be something to do with August on even years.

Other bits to brain about: I left dear Michigan with a soulless, empty home and a car brimming, then I arrived to a new home on August 18th. This year, I left my dear agency (and I use "dear" without a smidge of acidity) with a soulless, empty office and a box of files brimming. My first day at the new org will be August 18th. Hmmmmmmm.

Some other tads to tinker: July 2, 2007 - my grandma died and a boy broke up with me. I couldn't make it back to MI for the funeral because I had to work. July 2, 2008 - a boy broke up with me and I left work early for an interview and to fly back home. I'm learning that lessons repeat themselves, and in baby sets I'm putting the lessons to practice.

I could go on with things about October 12th and 412 and deep trips to the woods and tales of long lost friends calling me just as I was thinking of them, and you could say, "Great job, Mer - you've produced a mad list of coincidences that don't hold any significance in the scheme of it all. Guys are always breaking up with you so the dates don't matter, and the 8th month of every even year thing is complete paranoia!" (You thought it, didn't you?!)

"There are such things as coincidences" - I <3 Huckabees

But I wouldn't be acting as my self if I didn't oppose that, too. And there really is something acting in my life on a certain time table that is independent of my control. Now I know how my parents must feel.

I am profoundly grateful, however, that I have recognized these coincidences. I feel that I've learned more about life and who I am from these subjective main points than I have from any book or essay I've read, or any professor, parent, media, or art.

I can only conclude my thoughts by saying that it's exciting to start a new cycle and see how similar or different my future life will become to it's past. I still want to believe that the feeling of my fingers pressing into the keyboard is the only true thing to be had, just as you reading these words on your screen is the only thing you have now; but there is no denying that I'm caught in the eye of the past/present/future cyclone, on the verge of a Life/Death/Life transition, and there is something to be said for where I've been and where I will be and what I am living for.

I may be opposing the common and agreed upon order of things here... and I think that's okay! I'm happy to spout my truths a tid and a bit because the truth is all any of us will ever have. (For now.)