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.]

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.