not much ado about nothing

This morning I woke up (too) early due to street sweeping from a poignant dream, which is to say that I rarely remember my dreams at all. I dreamt I was riding in a car with my dad - to an unknownst or unclear destination - with spotty conversation - listening to Barry White and Christmas Classics cassette tapes because it was all we had. We were going to stop at a Piggley Wiggley or a such and such supermarket, but that's when my alarm attacked the settled white noise blanketing my ear drums and ripped away my pleasant nothingness with uneducated urgency, the way a child tugs at his mother's blouse, screaming and crying, just to show her a bug he found.

Stupid, loud alarm, pulling me away from nowhere.

Then again, even in day I'm going nowhere slowly, sans enthusiasm or intention. My workless days drag on and stretch out as if time was molassus taffy and I'm a fly stuck to it all. I wake up early, kill the buzzing machine and go back to sleep til 10 or 11. From then til 2 I sloutch at the attention of my computer, reloading and refreshing Facebook to ensure I am as in touch with the people I never talk to as I possibly can be; and then after 2 or 3 games of Freecell, I begin to beg my online friends (who are diligently pretending to work) for suggestions on how to waste my day with valour - at their tips, I shrug and "meh" and deny ability. Proceeding all this, I might go for a brief walk and accomplish one errand on an unending to-do list; read a few pages of a book; take a nap; desire a workout that my aching back would prohibit; refresh Facebook.

I've seen so much empty time in the last week that my introversion has morphed into an unbound social monster that attacks anyone with a screenname minus away message. I don't know enough people in this city without jobs, so in concoction with the coast's gray and depressing weather, I have no reason to do anything but sit and prune from my insides out.

I revamped my bathroom though- tried to paint out the boredom in my fingertips with white wash and two coats of Kittery Blue- yet the craftiness escaped with ease, and now even my dreams are transparent and dull as though my subconscience has nothing left to leave to mystery.



Nothingness, as defined by Dictionary.com, means:

4. unconsciousness or death

According to the ever-faithful wordnet, it's described as:

1.	the state of nonexistence
2.	empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk; "that's a lot of wind"; "don't give me any of that jazz" [syn: wind]

Sounds about right. But wait! WIND is a synonym? to death? to void and emptiness and senseless blog-blabber? Now that's somethin'!

...Because today, my boring-lazy-nothingness-day, I sat at the fat, gray ocean and listened to the waves, and soaked up the cool wind through a loose knit sweater that matched the sand. I was ipod-less, bookless and phoneless, and for that brief, escapable stretched out time, I became an ocean of alive.

So I thank GOD for my boredom and for going nowhere fast, even in slumber.

In Sight

Two years she walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped... Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage... No longer to be poisoned by civilization she flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.

-Alexander Supertramp / Christopher McCandless (by his rightful name), slightly amended
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And then she returns. And escapes again. And again comes back to an imaginary, manipulated, carved-out-of-nothing habitation, creating chores for herself and fostering a sense of responsibility that builds like fragile match sticks stacked upon one another. One slip and she'll go into blazes, the true fire-sign that she is, only to pause, embrace the beauty of her recycled embers, and go on to use the scraps and rubble as fertilizer for her next grand adventure, whether it's an adventure found in the wild, The City, or lost wholly within the mind's abyss.

The world we all know is recycling. AM/PM, 24 hours on repeat. Feed the kids, feed the pets, feed yourself and work it off. Take out the trash. Favorite weekly sitcom on Thursdays, watch the reruns on Tuesdays. The seasons - see the fog roll in, roll out, roll over, and the cherry-blossoms morph throughout the year, the years. Grow up. Grow strong. Get tired. Shiver in your ever-present adolescence beneath your certain tears, and let your fears lay down to die. Reabsorb the wet salt on your cheeks so you can get the glimmer back in your eye, and live on.

When I was a child, a narrow minded, bread on Catholicism child at that, I always felt intuitively certain of life recycling. I learned as a young adult that many people understand the concept, or at least know of it, in terms of reincarnation. There's so much energy and life and spirit within our bodies - it doesn't make sense that just because the equipment we've attained will get weathered and tired, the operators within would expire as well. No matter how exhausted or wise with age your engine driver may one day become, how could it/you (the you of you's) leave this beautiful world indefinitely? That's irrational, illogical, impossible in my mind. Life is recycled.

And since there are so many cycles within our present lives, it only makes that much more sense that we sprout and bloom and burst, exist, weaken, disconnect and surrender back into our hosts like flowers on a cherry blossom. We are born into someone new -something new- all the time, every decade, 2 years, day, or millisecond depending on your soul, and we stretch our arms out wide along side of our ever-yearning, craving, desirous minds; we LIVE, in the truest, most passionate sense of the word, like Jack Kerouac said, as "fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..." and just like wicks, we can grow short and dim, we can burnout within our careers, our relationships, or whatever interest we are captive of. When our energy for one thing withers, it is not WE who are withered, not entirely, but it is a moment when we can reflect and redirect all the love within us onto something more deserving. The suits our minds were wearing are expired, and we can try on something new for size. A new life, a new direction. We are reborn within our bodies, witnessed by no one else but our own witness, our own engine driver...

Many many times, much more often than not, I forget who's driving my body along the roads. I assume I have control, I'm encompassed by my frontal lobe consciousness, my ego, which can be all together very empowering in an era of independence. But when crap happens or things change, my ego yelps and grasps at anything it can by it's fingernails in order to maintain it's power. I hate living in a state of powerlessness. I get depressed. I lose hope in civilization and I crave removal from my environment.

All this is the result of being governed by my smaller self, my temporary and finite sense of life dubbed Meredith. This is the self that burns so fiercely and can burn out just as fast. It's the suit my bigger Self wears just for appearances. Who's really in charge? Big Self. Always. Always way back/up there in my mind, resting in observation and smiling.

I believe there's a Big Self in each of us, and although we are each separated by bodies and experiences and interests, etc, the Big Self is but one. It's the earth our cherry-blossoms are born from and wither back into. When I'm very very lucky, my smaller self takes a break from burning and reaching outward, looks around, and stretches inward towards this great seer. When I get this chance, my small self obtains invaluable lessons and understanding, and I'm absorbed in a sense of peace that cascades through my veins like a much needed drink of water during a drought. My small self calls these rare moments "insights." In sight of the big picture where you, me, and the whole gang are united and never die.

When I'm looking inward like this, and I see the roots of our beings, I have achieved the Ultimate Freedom that Alexander Supertramp craved from the Alaskan Wilderness. Like him, I often ache for a change in scenery, an open and natural environment where the Big Self would seem to be more apparent. I can't lie, the wild does help. But it's not essential.

Looking for escape? Looking for understanding? Trying to grasp control and stop the pain of your internal rebirths?

Look no further.

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.)

I always cry at endings, except today

Ooh! get me away from here I'm dying
Play me a song to set me free
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it may as well be me
Here on my own now after hours
Here on my own now on a bus
Think of it this way
You could either be successful or be us
With our winning smiles, and us
With our catchy tunes and words
Now were photogenic
You know, we don't stand a chance

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so naive!
They always reach a sorry ending
They always get it in the end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the poor boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried
I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Falling against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye
Said the hero in the story
It is mightier than swords
I could kill you sure
But I could only make you cry with these words...................................................................................................................

(Sebastian, & the Belle)

closing time

It's been a long day. I didn't run or meditate or do anything of personal power except clean my room and eat half a chocolate chip muffin. Underneath the surface-layer-nothingness the past 24 hours have provided, it has yet been an intense day. A second to last day. A goodbye day. A day of reading thank you/congratulations/ see you later cards. And for all these reasons, I need the monotonous hum of something... be it my breath or a mantra or the slow guitar picking from the Be Good Tanyas on iTunes... just to get me back to a baseline from where I can think clearly.

And so I type.

"Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are all multivolume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste our time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on."

And then the mmhmmm's start within me, and pulse from my diaphram past my heart and out my closed yet relaxed mouth - all inbetween great sighs.

The quote is from Women Who Run with the Wolves. It's the book that's saving my soul right now. Without these very fine words, I'd be swimming in a pool of bitterness, fear, and an overwhelming feeling of failure. It's a book about insticts. About following my wildish nature. About allowing my soul to cast out and see what it grabs without hooking onto a poisonous lure leading to questions of value and worth. (see previous posts.)

So I hum.

Tomorrow is my last day of work. I'll be packing up my files and closing up shop, leaving only what I can for the next lost soul to take on my position, if there ever will be such a person. No one but me will be in the center tomorrow, and it's procuring a profound memory of packing up my belongings in Michigan before I squeezed in my car and drove to the unknown. 2 years later, look at how things have changed.

In the last two days, I've confessed my departure to all the youth I've worked with in the past year. It's the kind of closure these young people deserve - and suddenly I realize why so many men never gave me the obvious gift, seeing as it is so hard. For one of the first times in speaking to these teens I had an impossible time looking them in the eyes. I had an even harder time keeping a steady voice with a simple sentence. Time stopped and shook like an earthquake, and my old-soul confidence fell to the floor as their faces drooped down with some tears.

They love me, and they hate me for going, and in my going I am taking away their programs, their efforts, their dreams and experiences of Home. And I hate reality. But the funds are cut. There's nothing else to do but say goodbye...

"There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them."

I'll lean on that for a bit, with one arm stretching south and embracing the space between me and my youth's tender, thoughtful hugs, and the other arm reaching to the future to a new position, with new youth and a level surface to build upon. So with these open arms, my heart calls out, "Would you rather me a hammer or a nail?"

I'm a nail. Not crushed. Used for a cause and a much bigger purpose. And I will go on humming, learning, casting myself out to a senseless and tempting world all in the name of getting to the next episode.

My my, July, July.

I might have to move my bed to a different position in my room. As it is now, cornered against the south-western walls, I can only wake up on one side of the bed. I think it's the wrong side.

So here is where the bitching and tilted head rambling of my ebbs and flows are poured out for your visual delight... it's a day where I can't pull myself far enough out of my own subjective experience to create a solid story line, so you'll have to deal with my mindless journaling, if you don't mind.

My my, July, July...

*crashed and burned with a douche-bag (#15,632?) all for the very best of course, but skid marks do take some time to heal.

*lost funding for my job. Although I'm young and trying to catch up with the rest of the world, I found being treated like a runt - fed from my agency's unreliable money trough until they could figure out what to do with my skills and assets - a little inhumane.

*3 weeks of back spasms.

*voyage to the motherland: a lot of reading, sun bathing, fishing, tv, drinking and eating, and conversing with my mother like 2 flint stones rubbing together.

*hired! Call me Teen Programs Coordinator. I'm a big shot. goodbye commuting, hello huge responsibility.

*backpacking Sierra National Forest, Lake Lillian Trail for 8 days. Holy.

*speeding ticket in Modesto.

*reading Women Who Run With The Wolves. Best book ever.

*fainted hard-core during acupuncture today. The practictioner thought I was having a seizure, so that's cool.

*caught by the MUNI police for having an expired transfer today.

*locked out of my apt today. I knew I was forgetting something.


Elliot Smith is telling me the worst part's almost over now. But that's what the MUNI cop lady told me too right before she handed me a $50 piece of paper. It seems the world can't decide if I should live happily ever after or rot within my sagging skin and bones. I wish it'd make up it's mind soon.

And I wish I could stop collecting my experiences in life by adding them to a list labeled "why my life is shit," but that is easier said than done. Perhaps it's time to overcompensate, get heavy into spiritual guidebooks and rediscover where I am in my Life/Death/Life cycles. I can lean a little harder on the advice my own students give me about growing up and moving on. I can cry, but cry passionately, which is the only real way to live.

...dadme la muerte que me falta...

...shatter my heart so a new room can be created for a Limitless Love...

.so I'll sing and shout and pray and hope. My, my, July, July. Bring me an August to get lost in.

last goodbye - Jeff Buckley

this is our last goodbye
i hate to feel the love between us die
but it's over
just hear this and then i'll go
you gave me more to live for
more than you'll ever know

this is our last embrace
must i dream and always see your face
why can't we overcome this wall
well, maybe it's just because i didn't know you at all

kiss me, please kiss me
but kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation
you know it makes me so angry 'cause i know that in time
i'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

did you say "no, this can't happen to me,"
and did you rush to the phone to call
was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind
saying maybe you didn't know him at all
you didn't know him at all, oh, you didn't know

well, the bells out in the church tower chime
burning clues into this heart of mine
thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories
offer signs that it's over... it's over

[.it all had to be said. so leave a message. i'm no longer here.]