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...

Do not curse the day

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.

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.

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.

a dollop of daisy

And I quote:

"INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people -- a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world. On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious "soul mates." While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible as inherent "givers." As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character to outsiders, and hence the most often misunderstood -- particularly by those who have little experience with this rare type."

All of this (me) is a multi layered bean dip, most certainly. From an areal view, from way up high on your floating ego, I might look like a casserole dish filled with cheese.

I am not merely cheese.

So for everyone out there who doesn't quite understand my quick and poorly thought out analogies, I will dissect: Underneath the the surface layer - where I smilingly go to work and get things done and no one's got a clue - there are beans. B-b-b-beans. Yes, the magical fruit where the more ya eat the more ya toot. I gots em. And my frank beans (puns are always intended) want to let you in on a secret... they're trying to hide! If you saw refried beans at the surface of everything you wouldn't want to eat ever again!!!

Spread a little thinner: I'm a natural born introvert. Not even one of those born again kinds. I need alone time all the way from my skin down to my marrow. Alone time is my beans. It might not look like a main ingredient, but I come a whole lot better if it's there. So forgive me once in a while if I run and hide. I'm just making myself taste better for the next time.

What else is in my dip? Mmmmm, guac. Those great green gobs of avocado, smashed up with some onion and tomato, plopped into the mix before and after the beans, oooooooo-eeeeeeeeee! I'm takin' you all the way to #2, babes. I know how to get you digestin, jumpin, pinchin, squeezin, runnin, (waddlin if you're not fast enough), droppin, sighin and relievin. They call it the magic trick.

Spread a little tinner: I'll lay it right out here - I'm a survivor of hereditary bad mood. My dad has it. He got it from his mother. My brothers have it too. My mom's a circumstantial bad moodian who's circumstantially dealt with it my entire life. Thus? Be it learned or genetic, guac is my depression. It lays low. It's mushy and green. It smells bad and turns an even awfuller color if you unearth it for too long. It's best to keep it hidden for a special, sultry surprise cuz without it you'd be disappointed. Oddly enough, my guac makes the whole package just that much more appealing. Though, you can have too much of a good thing. It's a balancing act; best let me have my small quantities tucked away below the surface.

Cheese, beans, guacamole. Multi layered, INFJ, me.

I'm pleading with my inside outsiders now. Please understand what a bean dip is! Look at me from a different angle if you have to. Get a chip and dive right in if you're daring. I've got some ingredients working for me that, lone, are not necessarily crowd pleasers. But like it or not, it's all a part of who I am.

If you don't value my alone time... if you can't handle my occasional bad mood... don't touch my bean dip.

No, plain ol' bean dip doesn't often give back much in the way of friendship. But that's where my INFJ skills come in handy, with a sprinkling of cheese (corny jokes and laughter), a dollop of Daisy, and a pinch of "olive juice"...

...hopefully I'm making friendship with bean dip a bit more worthwhile.

love is a cannibal

This was bound to happen. For days upon weeks upon four months I've been expecting this very thing to happen, and I've told family and friends and coworkers to watch out for this day... this day I am sick.
One of my favorite songs (of all time, history of the world kind of thing) is by Emiliana Torrini. "Heartstopper":

You said I began
This messy state of love affair
And I drink too much and smoke too fast
And this city's cleared my innocence

Coffee is pouring out my ears
It's the only thing they have in here
And my heart stops beating...

Well. I gave up the coffee this week, and now the only thing I've left to pour out is snot - to the nth degree. I've been waiting for this to happen! yet I'm frustrated... poor, sick little me.

My head's been falling heavy on my pillow. The sickness in me has forced my already top heavy stature straight to my head and it's become hard to - as they say - keep my chin up. What's prompted this inevitable infection? Has it been my apathetic approach to health and nutrition? The extra 20 hours of work I drag through weekly? The 5 hours of nightly snooze? The 13.1 miles I raced in the hills of Santa Cruz? The 6 crisises I diverted in suicidal teens? Do ya think this is adding up for me???

When it comes down to it, I'm not even sure that the above poisonous concoction is what's putting me out. Work and running, saving lives and enjoying a chocolate shake from Burger King once in a while... these were all things that used to make me feel alive. And now, ah yes, now. Somewhere in the line from past to present there was a shift in tolerance. Suddenly I can't handle the adversity that life naturally provides. The result? Drum roll anyone? Sinus implosion.

But I think I know what has happened here. My chaos is a four letter word that started with pink and red crayons in kindergarten, attached with sparkles and glitter and whimsical delight; and it'll ends in death. I'm talking about LOVE. --such a bitch.

Things were going really really well for me a while back. I was promoted at work, picked up a few projects, felt the grace of success with intermittent appreciation from others. I had a boyfriend (and a few on the back burner) and I was contented in a nice house with a parking space... La de da and me oh my, life was pleasant! I loved it!

I loved it too hard!! That's what happens to the brave and open. Folks like me are drawn to reckless love with our open hearts like a shark is to a pin drop of blood in the ocean. When you love - you become vulnerable to all of life's miseries. In reverse, it seems, when you're sheltered and a bit more cold... cautious... it's easier to get by sans emotional agony. It's a way of life I wish I could try on for size, but it'd be silly to, it's much too small.

I've had an open heart in a couple of recent (bad) relationships, and I've certainly had an open heart for the young people I work with. I've moved to a new apartment and had an open heart towards the girls I've lived with... Anyone could find me walking through Golden Gate Park or riding the N (or as I normally am, plum in my car to and fro the RWC), and no matter where I am, I'm being there vulnerably. Openly. Lovingly.

It's gotten me this far. My love has been pouring out, and organically, life's made it scab and try to heal; me being so effervescently rash, I've been picking at it and opening love up again. I've made my wounds visible, and in backlash, love's let in some harsh realities... which are now eating me from the inside out. I didn't quite expect love to look so indistinguishably like mucus trying to escape, but life is tricky like that. In the end - assuming this moment is all there ever is or will be - the sticky love I've tried to give is trapped within me, and will soon consume me whole.

From the book/film Feast of Love, a woman answers a man the question, "Why are you smiling?":

Looking out the window, an unusual man, an innocent man, an open-hearted man. Someone who has given tremendous love, but never had it returned, not in the way he deserves.

Regardless if I'm man or woman, love is feasting on me.