Here is to 2008

So this was yesterday's exercise, I wrote some copy for the collage I made I ages ago :)

Its a actually a postcard template..

Front:



Back:

Rain Strom

The rain was coming. He loved the rain, said it brought peace. More than rain, he loved the storm. I like to think it was because he had so many storms in his mind, it made him feel better to see some of that manifested on the outside. I, on the other hand, hated storms. I hated to hear the sound of thunder, hated the lightening that was so shocking. I mean he did know that people die by lightening, right?! But that was us, I said go, he said stop. We weren’t total opposites but we were different enough to be ying and yang. I guess that is the way it always is though…

726 and I were different in that we actively tried to merge with each other, to quell the differences between us. I don’t think it was conscious, but it was something that happened to us on every level that I can think of. To this day, I notice myself climbing stairs like him, making jokes like him, arguing in that take zero-sum killer method I developed by fighting with him. I think because of our tender age 726 and I became one person, more so than the average serious couple. I also believe that’s why I miss him so much, he is in so many ways (except the traditional) my other half.

I digress though…

It was storming. The air was electric, the way it holds a charge before it rains. He was excited and I groaned internally. I knew what was coming.

“Come sit in the rain” he said. He was light up like child at Christmas. He eyes were filled with excitement, with joy and with the hope that I would go with him.

“You know, I hate the rain, it’s cold and thunder means there is lightening.”

“Exactly” he replied. His smile widened into a grin.

He grabbed my hand and drug me outside. The truth is, I always wanted to go with him, wherever he went, I wanted to go.

We raced down the stairs and up the driveway. When we got all the way out into cul-de-sac before I halted.

“ I am not going out in the open.” I said with full pout, and a tinge of my fear.

“Please.”

“It’s not happening…” there was more fear in my voice now. Even my pride couldn’t hide that fact that I was scared.

“Ok, just the edge then”

So we sit under the tree on the sewer drain at the edge of the cul-de-sac. I try to convince myself that the lightening will hit the trees before me. I try not to think about how much sitting on water will increase the likely hood of a strike. He, however, is completely joyful, the rain is coming…

We sit there until we are soaked and until I can’t take the idea that being wet is greatly increasing our death wish.

But before we go in, he stops and leans down to kiss me. The water runs down our faces, he smiles and says, “Thank you, I know you hate the storm. I love you.”

We walk back up the house in search of towels, but I don’t really care about being wet or being cold. This is the best storm of my life.

Jackie Onassis Reservior

by Joyfulgyrl

Spring came this weekend. It is hopeful and full of life. I felt the peace wash over me, with the wind blowing in my hair. I remembered, although i'm not sure i ever forgot, how much i love the open air on my toes, and breeze on my skin. I discovered the Jackie Onassis Reservior and it is like standing on the lake and being at the ocean all in one. The wind blows over the freah water, and if blows from the right direction you get the slightest bit of salt, reminding you that this behomoth of a town, with all its concert and glass is only an island. There is sound of gulls in front of me playing near the water, but the the smell of pine trees behind me. It felt very much like childhood. Days on the lake out the boat, hearing nothing over the roar of wind from the speed of moving over the water. Memories of running through the woods with McGee barking along, out on a some secret avdeture. Finally, the cool air, the tiny bit of salt reminded me of Christmas in Florida, where we rolled down the windows in the car some my mother could smell the salt again, and hear the gulls.

It was a good find. Important for my soul. I'm longing for people to share these things with, but i have faith, they will come. Untill then, I am learning to love the scilence, learing to love myself and grateful that my love of water is only a few blocks away.

"She was dreaming of me, and it wasn’t even a nightmare. She wanted me to stay
with her, there in her dream.

I struggled to find words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had
no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them.

When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been.

My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be
midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my
midnight?" - From Stephanie Myer's Midnight Sun

I Miss feeling in love

on crack

"Ms. L" work therapist (wt) said. "You are on crack"

A little indignantly, I reply:

"You 've been saying that for quite some time now, like two weeks. Don't you think, maybe, i'm not 'on crack' I've just established a new sense of normalcy?" ( or maybe- i think quietly- you don't really know me)

"No" WT replies matter-of-factly

I pout.

"You are on a journey and you're not there yet"

I pout more.

"But being on crack while being on a journey is not so bad"

Live high

Today was Tedious.

All day i couldn't help but feel annoyed, grumpy and wholly uninterested in work. Sigh. I hope I learn to control that.

Last night,one the other hand was glorious. I was happy after writing posts and readings M's musings on life as Dorthy trying to make her very own oz.

I trod off in to the burning cold and snow to dance which was, as it frequently is, an instant burst of contentment. I don't know if it is because it is social, or if it is because it doesn't matter, in the sense that no one cares how good or not good i am, or if it is just because it is as close as i can get to my skating days, but it makes me joyfully, wonderfully, happy.

I practically skip home, singing out loud to with my ipod on the abandoned New York streets. I decide do a little leg work before I shower singing along to Jason Mraz

Live High, Live Mighty

Live Righteously, takin' it easily

Then i curl up with my laptop and read a chapter of Midnight Sun, for the umpteenth millionth time until i decide i should sleep before tomorrow. Today I am tired but i'm selfish too and i cherish the hours when i return, however late and feel that the pressures of adulthood simple do not exist.

Well I'm already off the Wagon

Photo credit: Max Z

Life has a funny way of making you prove things.

I wanted for Lent to write everyday. As a matter of focus, a matter of making time for me. Last week wasn't having any of that. I worked late everyday, and each day was filled with not only stress of projects undone, but the growing intensities of corporate grown up life. By Friday night, i could not even be tempted by food, i only wanted to go home sit in the silence and read. Eventually i ate some yogurt, happy in my living room like it was the finest of restaurants.

If I didn't know i had a work/life balance problem, it's only becoming more clear. The problem is, How do i make it better? To be sure, i don't know and i only hope that is a product that comes with patience, time, and prayer.

As is, i am apparently quite loopy and unpredictable. As if something in me has snapped and all i have left is wacky, sarcastic and creative. I rather like it, but my co-workers seem to think i'm on crack or that i've cracked up. Honestly i'm not sure they are wrong, but i don't think i mind either. I recognize that mind is seeping some, but it makes me feel so much better to dream a little and take time apart to draw comics and make delivsh remarks of my superiors.

I've also been rereading Twilight. I never used to reread things, ever. Once i knew what was going on I simply didn't care anymore. But with twilight, its not that i know what going to happen - becuase in a certain sense you always knew what would happen, but rather that i like feeling with them. For most of my life, i have been in a relationship. Now that i'm not, and haven't been for nearly a year and half, i've found i miss that part of me. Not all of it, becuase in some many ways i'm not really ready for it all agian. But i miss being in love. i miss wanting to deperatly to kiss someone, to stroke their checks, to come up behind them and wrap me arms around their neck. When i read, its like i have some of that. It reminds me and gives me faith (although i know this is a silly fear) that i am still me, a lover, a sentimentalist even though i'm with myself. Secretly I'm terrified that when it is time to date agian, that i will have forgotten how to love, how to make love, how to be coy and cute. I have no fears that i can be patinet and trustworthy, that i can be solid and resound, but i do fear that i will not know how to be vulnerable and weak, not to how to cry and allow myself to be held.

For those of you who know me, these seem like such silly fears, they are so very unlike how I have always been. But when we grow up- when we intentionaly grow, Do we grow away from who we have always been. In part that is our hope, becuase undoubtly we did things that did things that were childish and foolish, but do we also lose our ability to love like a child; have faith like a child?

Loving the Flare taught me that i could love like i had with 726, but i still got burned. Faith is difficult in the fire, even though we have been told that God purifies in the fire, that he forges us. Its still scarey.

Take My Life, and form it
Take my mind, Transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, yours, Oh lord.*


*While I've nevder wholey subscribed, and still don't, to the full meaning of this song. I can't help but admire the faith. Life is something we form, we make and when we do, we have to potential to be anything we are brave enough to become.

So Take this Life and Transform It