are many. but sometimes I write them in friends-only posts and then feel a modicum of relief. so thank goodness for that.
thank you, vox.
yep
saturday afternoon date downtown
today
things I hate:
my end-of-day commute
hunting for parking
so-called friends who are not
squishy, flavorless american “gummy bears”
narcissists, users, and the self-righteously prideful
relentless political campaigning
irregardless unsensible languagistic usage
ugliness
anyone meddling with my teeth
being the only person at work in a halloween costume
teutonic network admins
nostalgic regret
things I love:
haribo gold bears (aka the original gummi baren)
birds, especially ones that talk or cause mischief
clanky radiators
strong coffee
that man who makes me laugh & swoon
tights + boots
vintage raincoats
my art table
happenstance adventuring
kneading bread dough
naps
tinkering & pottering
my niece’s cow saying “mow mow”
the mysticism of friendship
I don’t know how they do it, but they do. I will be scraping along in the sediment of whatever mundane moods seep up of a given day, given week, and a glowing little missive will come fluttering into my inbox to spark alight all the damp and dreary ends back into something warm and pulsing. stillness along the threads that comprise my extended friendship network is completely understandable and natural in the way of ebbing and flowing busy lives, if mournful to the one who’s blue– and I do know that my own fingers should tap out a morse to call forth a reassuring echo when in need– but sometimes these true friends just, somehow, know, and do it, all on their own, just like that– and the whole thing comes awake, alive, and I am nestled, nested, cocooned once more by the knowing of those who value and love me in this world, and all is right again.
october morning
the treetops out the windows are turning from green to golden, the black underlying framework standing out bolder and bolder daily. sunrise shines pink against the window-studded brick wall down the way and must be blushing sleepers in their beds and giving rose-hued dreams.
my dreams have been fantastical and vivid, and I lie in bed after waking, drowsing, to recall them and find myself drifting into new scenarios and cul-de-sacs.
##
I go out for lunch with the work friends to a pastry place we're trying out for some event– and after we've eaten our slices of quiche and crusty brioche, we rise to go– I'm somehow full of bounces and race for the door and have to pull up in a hard stop as a display wall of hundreds of tiny cubbies filled with pastries looms in my path– I reach out a single index finger to help brace me as I halt, and my momentum transfers and the whole thing wobbles gigantically– I try to steady it with the same finger, but a kind of groundswell has taken the thing and rocks it, and it comes crashing down toward me– mortification ensues in the flakey chaos I have wreaked.
we're driving back to work and rounding a bend in a swank and leafy neighborhood when I see a little black dog with its collar caught on a branch of shrubbery and call out to stop– I leap from the car and run and release the little dog and lift it up in my arms so it can't dash off– the black ringlets of its fur are soft against my fingertips and where they brush my arms. we try the houses one by one to locate the creature's home and in the process meet the inhabitants, and it turns into a fantastic adventure involving characters who seem ordinary at first but whose suburban facades cloak astonishing powers and intrigues that now escape me. I know that rescuing and returning the dog to its rightful owner initiates a string of incidents that involve underground cavern hideouts and complicated layers of good versus evil and non-human flying creatures and hiding in escape chutes like breathing vacuum tubes from spies of the enemy and job offers to join the resistance and an old man god of dubious beneficence who can be summoned to walk through solid rock mountains– in the end, sadly, we must return once more to the routine workday– though years seem to have passed, our hair has grown, and we all seem a good deal older and more interesting if not necessarily wiser.
september chicago
(from the notebook, undated but a couple of weeks back)
there are birds of prey out the windows– I hear them, ticking in the night– or maybe that's just a cicada winding down– I've been here just over two years– I don't feel settled, I resist it– will I ever feel settled anywhere? where would I fell settled? I do feel calm and right with my darling, but geographically, socially, professionally, just a little bit I am feeling unsettled, wrought, overcaffeinated, despairing, irritable, late, clumsy, hopeful, slouchy, and deliciously, exhaustedly, heart-recklessly, skitteringly, naughtily, snoringly scattered a good deal of the time.
something other than the sum of my days
time and again I find myself confounded and perplexed by the different places I've lived and people I've known– dreams propel me back into lost contexts and once more I find myself in thisbe's farmhouse kitchen or a cornfield in iowa snapping stagey photographs with people I seem hardly to know but whose faces are fixed forever on film. it isn't so much that I want to recapture these expended bits of lived experience, rather that something in me urges to reconcile them. I know folks who routinely and obsessively renarrate their identities to the most convincing cases possible. sheer happenstance propels me into a few minutes' encounter with a writer I once knew for all of about five minutes, and the gravitational pull of her world throws mine momentarily all off kilter– I'm suddenly wondering why don't I have a big, international writing project that I'm smack in the middle of? and then, after a bit, I'm able to shake myself like a dog shedding wet and remember that hers isn't my story. but every such momentary happenstance does seem to cast me back into questioning just how my own tale coheres. I suspect somewhat that my own struggle, much of the time, is in resisting this very compulsion to fix the story, to form it willfully into this or that shape, but rather repeatedly to draw myself back into the more direct living of it– because, so far, it does keep happening. and too much preoccupation with explaining it to myself can interfere with the immediacy of the experience. but there's a balance. between drifting and driving forward. or between two other things I can't quite name. maybe it's simply that I require the thinking vehicle of writing when I wake up from these dreams, to ease my heart, to reacquaint myself with myself, to reassure myself that I am not as dispersed and diaphanous as it sometimes, terrifyingly, feels. not that I ever forget the real, good things that ground me in the here and now– just that the panoramas that play out can, by their very variety and number, dwarf the humble, uncooked daily context I inhabit, throw it unfairly into cross-examination, onto the witness stand to fabricate some coherent narrative stitching it all, patchwork but seeming seamlessly, together. the truth is, I may never tell this story. or else maybe I already am, only most indirectly and episodically in this medium, as seems to suit my mood and general temperament. to what end I still can't name.
may you live in interesting times
indeed.
went out to my local sandwich joint to sit and read my escapist novel for a little mid-day oasis– but the tv set to CNN chattering away excitedly over my head had other plans.
odd, but the u.s. presidential campaign is beginning to feel like little more than a distraction…
in which I flee
…and then think better of it.
I have this bad habit of just taking off, splitting, vamoosing, hitting the high road– which I’m still learning, ohso slowly and late in life, to get a handle on. it’s like I hit a certain point of sensory overload and just need to get away by myself– it developed early, via tricycle, so it’s not like it’s a little whim I’m trying to shake– but I do believe in gradual progress and the possibility of altering even the oldest, inset patterns.
I have this really amazing boyfriend. he’s just so right for me, tho for a long, long time I despaired of actually finding a fortuitous match– chalk one up for hope and a generous universe. still, it ain’t always easy, even this. because, well, it’s two people negotiating the world side by side, a dance of give and take. and also because, let’s face it, he’s got some crazy exes. yeah, yeah, you say, we all do– but I mean really, cuckoo. and also he’s a sensitive, immensely empathetic person, so it’s not just like he can go, aw, yeah, whatever, to hell with them– there’s some understandable processing that needs to happen– and then last night, while out with my crowd from work, we ran into one of them–
and the thing is, it was totally no big deal. I mean, really. but I had already been kind of, for various reasons, nearing the point of public/people saturation that I tend to hit, and then there’s the cuckoo ex, and then somebody makes an offhand comment about how she looks like me– and it just hits a nerve– and this is where I mess up: I don’t take my darling fella aside and say, honey, I’m ready to go home now. nope. not me. lizard brain sarah kicks into gear, drops some jacksons, delivers some rapidfire air-kisses, and splits.
oh ho ho ho, not such a mature move, you say. and you’d be right. I just left my fella standing there, looking like an idiot, with a crazy ex in the vicinity and a vanishing girlfriend.
bad habit vanishing sarah. it’s not easy, catching that split second you have to consider, to think, before reacting when your old triggers get tripped. more and more I’m finding occasion to do just that, to catch it before it turns into a Thing, to consider and choose before automatically reacting– I’m doing it more and more with my family, practicing doing it in the workplace, did it last week with a landlord issue– I’m doing better all the time with choosing how I want to feel and behave. but last night I slipped. big time. I regressed.
the upside is that my fella is a prince– brave and honest and full-hearted. he came home, and we– did what we do, which is very good. we talk, we listen, we discuss options for the next time; we apologize, we hold one another, and we vow to do better. and, yknow what? we always are.