I'm pulling whelks (which in the dream look precisely like giant prawns) and bakery-fresh bags of croissants from the sand at the water's edge as my father has taught me I could. there's a seaside town, all wooden walkways and jetties full of small watercraft– I walk the boardwalk for hours, all the way down the length of it and back again, stopping along the way for little tangential adventures– one of which involves going through racks of old clothing with a longlost college friend, making stacks of things to donate but still loathe to lose the memories they hold. along the way we run across a charming irishman who won't reveal his name but induces us to steal a boat with him, some fascinating and graceful contraption in which we flow out across the water silently and swiftly. a dog comes with the boat, a sweet old girl with silky fur, whom I carry in my arms for much of the later walking. we steer the boat out a ways to avoid traffic and detection and ride along a distant sandbar with standing skeletons of an old forest and cows and an occasional white horse ghostly among the trunks and branches. I flirt with the irishman until I realize everything I say is further convincing him of my rudeness– and then lapse into silent unhappiness, feeling dreadfully misunderstood. just before the dream ends I'm asked by an artist what I do and tell her that I sculpt the negative space around trees.
saturday morning
yesterday was in the low 80s here in chicago, and last night we slept with the windows open, breezes pushing dreams around, snagging them in giant-size tree branch shadows playing across the grey-white wall. this morning the apartment is full of songbirds’ trills and clucks, the occasional crow calling out in passing reminding me of iowa, and chris’s rhythmic sleeping breaths. we’ve had the flu here this week– hours and hours of bone-deep aches and oceans of fever sweats. the sky inland from the lake is a low slate promising spring storms to wash away the grit of winter. the neighbor hound bellows beautifully down the block at some squirrel or human passer-by. if I keep to sheer description of things in the world out there, perhaps I can circumnavigate that infernal pit of perennial and unanswerable questions, second guesses, equivocations, and self doubt. birds and weather are kinder.
more about me me me
(after LaidOutInLavender and kitty— thanks, both)
100 101 navelly descriptors:
1. human
2. cluttery
3. nostalgic
4. warm
5. halting
6. intense
7. phlegmatic
8. stubborn
9. incendiary
10. hypersensitive
11. walker
12. untidy
13. visually oriented
14. verbose
15. longing
16. occasionally ebullient
17. reader
18. watcher
19. quippy
20. solitary
21. romantic
22. irritable
23. ticklish
24. genuine
25. snorer
26. baker
27. putterer
28. friend
29. little sister
30. depressive
31. diligent
32. unrooted
33. sneaky
34. gluttonous
35. covetous
36. shy
37. fearful
38. ardent
39. geologically slow
40. right-handed
41. undecided
42. baffled
43. wide-ranging
44. sincere
45. solicitous
46. self-doubting
47. avoidant
48. overwhelmed
49. morning person
50. quick & dirty
51. plodding
52. tippy
53. loyal
54. resentful
55. forgiving
56. inclined to hum
57. ageing
58. hermetic
59. cuddly
60. rural
61. costuming
62. competitive
63. disliking ambition
64. ambitious
65. short-tempered
66. communal
67. thoughtful
68. at home with animals
69. resistant to routine
70. worrisome
71. finder of lost things
72. partner
73. grateful
74. unpolished
75. grey
76. sparkly
77. female
78. insecure
79. clever
80. underachieving
81. diversely experienced
82. linguaphile
83. poignant
84. playful
85. smoldering
86. uncoordinated
87. apt to make sloppy pirouettes
88. dreamy
89. impatient
90. dire
91. independent
92. capable
93. empathetic
94. persistent
95. creatively diffuse
96. associative
97. synthesizing
98. responsible
99. tardy
100. intent
101. (!) writer
Doctor Who
My darling, whose mind works in weird and delicious ways, grew up on episodes of Doctor Who, which surely contributed to those thinking patterns I adore–and which I’d never seen until he introduced me to it just this week.
Last night we watched the episode “Blink“, which scared the bejebus out of me, delightfully. So great. What a treat to discover something new to enjoy.
C-word
sometimes a stray comment will lodge in your head, stick there, grow nodules and loopy tendrils, wrap several times around your spinal column, and shoot out the window, through the attic and into space.
the other day someone at work made a comment about “my second-favorite C-word”, alluding obliquely to one of those words we don’t utter in polite company. I wasn’t even involved in the conversation or paying strict attention, but the next morning while driving to work, I found myself listing good words that begin with C– good for various reasons ranging from subjective personal association to outright yumminess, the conglomeration of which ends up saying something or other about the one who compiles them. and with that…
compilation corduroy cupcake charcoal christmas crescent candyland crushes connecticut civility cabernet cyclone chimney children cranky clocks carnival cushions canine calliope columnar chocolate castanets car criminey chinchilla chuckling cousins cranberry confidence cinnamon crickets cookie caldera crepuscular certitude curvilinear candor calypso curtains cockeyed community couch corridor comforter calling card california crucible contagious crockery crass celery caustic cornichon celebratory crest colloidal curl crimson coastline
out like a lamb my arse
truth telling
I can’t do anything about the ambivalence but acknowledge it. maybe I am too old. maybe too irresponsible or neurotic, too self-involved, flawed in a thousand, a hundred thousand ways. maybe I will worry myself to death. perhaps 100% of me is not entirely convinced that parenthood is the best course– no more staying up late noodling just for the hell of it, no more morning lassitude or wide open spaces of minutes to ponder the dilemma of self– god, I want a baby. it’s that bald, at times. at times, it is that basic, the desire to grow beyond the self, to forge a family alongside another thinking/feeling favorite person. it’s ridiculous, really– I can speak blatantly about my desire for a dog, but to admit my yearning to be a mother feels somehow unmentionable, awkward, at this point, in some lights, pathetic. it is a lot to admit. so dreams have spoken the truth I cannot utter for years– the fears and desires. I can’t bear witnessing my changing, aging body, because it heralds the passing of possibility. it’s not all I’ve ever wanted, and honestly many days I fear I’ve accomplished so little– but this one thing, on the verge of being taken from me, seems regrettable, if missed. I know there are a lot of ways to parent, many many valid ways. I have considered several of them, as alternatives. but the chance may not yet be gone to carry my own child in my body, concocted from parts of both of us– what a wonder! brilliant. I want that. I don’t want the opportunity to pass, in the course of things.
I realize this is a lot. I struggle with knowing I’m inclined to say too much, so I say nothing and end up feeling unbearably lonely and unconnected. I must write my heart or risk falling entirely to pieces. it’s a little sloppy, but the only thing that works.
the problem with facebook
Sarah Townsend
… is feeling bittersweet, conflicting emotions as she views one niece’s posted photos of the eldest niece’s wedding this past weekend, which sarah herself was unable to attend.
… experiences a moment while brushing teeth in which the mirror face comments, sotto voce but unmistakeable, so-called bloom of youth vanished.
… ‘s boyfriend tickled her out of bed rather than allow her to wallow indefinitely in a weepy slump.
… often feels overwhelmed by the myriad glimpses of other people’s lives and psyches crushed together in the virtual realm.
… isn’t entirely certain to what extent she continues to “know” people she was once friends with in a different time and place.
… doesn’t altogether recognize, in a real, concrete sense, family members and other loved ones, when seeing them or reading them in decontextualized slivers.
… has an unsettling array of uncertainties and questions.
… is hyper-aware that depressives are a serious drag.
… settles too often for the too-familiar, too-human unspiffy personal truth.
… is mushing forward, struggling to feel okay.
quotidian thrash
another fine book with “dog” in the title (no mystery why these jump off the shelf at me): a three dog life by abigail thomas– memoir most gracefully arranged.
my head is full of shards that poke me awake at three and four a.m.– at which point I’ll get out of bed, fed up with it, meander aimlessly from bathroom to kitchen, alight on the couch and sit staring, full of unreconcilable noise, simply fraught in the dark, until eventually exhaustion wins out and back to bed.
saturday we spent entirely out, unusual for habitual homebodies– downtown among the shamrock throng– we pursued our own parallel and unrelated course from cell phone store to lunch to art museum to secondhand shops to bar and so on, weaving through and among all those drunken costumed babies– girls crying into cell phones, boys hollering, singing, peeing in doorways– loud and incidental to our own daylong adventure.
we’ve decided to stay put for now, though spring is tweaking me– it’s the good choice, pull ourselves together in all the right ways for planned rather than haphazard forward momentum. practicing patience is uncomfortable. my mind hounds itself with buts and ifs, and it’s difficult to keep still and steady. my heart craves large, marked and decisive gestures, but is unable or unwilling to settle on a single direction for momentum and so thrashes against itself, pushing this way and that until it’s simply worn out.
the time has changed, so days are brighter and seem longer, which lifts my mood across the board– regardless the prospect of another year confounds.
vertigo
I’ll be lying in bed, deep in the middle of the night, and will shift, turn my head on the pillow or roll my body to a new position, and the whole world suddenly tilts on its axis and wobbles there, uncertain of north. Heat washes over me, followed by nausea, and then I’m wide awake, trying to hold my head in a neutral position to make the tilting stop. The feeling is unbearable, so for two nights now I’ve ended up getting out of bed and sitting up on the couch, holding my head so carefully upright, tentatively on solid ground. Tomorrow I’m calling the doctor to get my ears looked at.
I have a fear of heights. I don’t recall any sensation of the world spinning as I looked down from a height, only sweating palms, racing heart, tunnel vision. When I was a child, I visited some family who lived near Niagra Falls in upstate New York, and we went to witness that great spectacle one unlikely icy day. All I can recall of the place is the elevator bank on the blustery observation platform, which I could not bear to step away from, and the high surrounding fence laughing back at me.
We used to go repelling off rock faces up in the wilds of northern Michigan. We’d scramble up the less vertical parts off ’round the side, and I vividly recall that feeling of freezing to the face, incapable of motion either forward or back, up or down, just hanging suspended there in the most hated position, my fingernails dug into some wet clump of moss, patches of lichen shearing away under my Keds.
Well into adulthood to this day I dislike malls with tall escalators stretching into wide open space, follies of some interior designer. I’ll locate an elevator, if I can, despite the swoop that lodges in my stomach—but if compelled to, I will ride those infernal ascents, heart pumping at the yawn of gravity at my back, fingers gripping the rail too hard, eyes fixed on the steps or someone’s back, anything solid, before me.