January progress

I'm not doing so well with my list. New Year's Eve turned into a quiet night at home, since Erik worked til 10pm. I did not go snowboarding the next day because of the forecasted wind and rain.

I made these convertible mitten/fingerless gloves years ago as a gift for Julie, and I think I'm going to make them again to complete #2 on my list. I remember the pattern being surprisingly easy to follow, no mean feat for someone as hopeless with directions as myself.

In the new year, and number 30

Having a list of 31 things to do in the next 11 months, I realized that I'd better get started. After all, I have to cross off almost three items a month in order to make it!

Tomorrow should take care of #5-- I bought the lift tickets today and Erik has agreed to hang out on the beginner slopes with me.

Another one I thought would be easy(ish) to get started on is number 30. Really, it has me the most worried. Sure, it's easy to start, but it's something I've attempted before and never achieved. It's a very long term goal, too, with a tiny bit of work every day. I'm in great shape right now: running, lifting weights, practicing yoga regularly (although only once a week), so this particular feat of agility should be within my grasp. And it does take more than flexibility. Your arms have to be strong enough to hold your body in an uncomfortable position without letting the leg muscles tense up, and you have to be able to breeeeathe through the pain (always good practice).

I've also been doing particularly well with daily goals. This week, since I've been working from home, I've been able to read (and recycle) one magazine a day (I have a huge backlog since we get so many as gifts and for free) and get rid of one item a day. The latter was proposed to me by a friend who pared down his belongings to an extent that worried his family. Being a pack rat, I'm sure I won't go that far, but I really admire his spartan aesthetic and the ability to be able to travel lightly. The discarded item can be big or small-- it's just the idea of slowly and steadily working on large projects and big issues that really appeals to me.

That said, I've had a lot of success with my before-bed ritual. I know this is boring, but since I've had to wear a night guard to minimize grinding damage to my teeth, I've stuck with flossing, brushing, taking an iron supplement, washing my face and putting moisturizer on (eyes, face, lips and hands!) every single night. All of those things we're supposed to do that are so annoying and are quickly derailed by just skipping it "this one time." Things that really make a difference over time and will allow me to enjoy better health, longer. I am now officially no longer a spring chicken.

So I guess that's my mantra for the new year: slow and steady, every day. Hopefully I will find ways to apply that to my newly manifested dream of becoming a travel writer and photographer.

Wanderlust

I am sick of seeing beauty, of being inspired by shapes in a way I can't verbalize, of catching my breath in the birth of an idea, and not doing anything. I feel impotent. I am fascinated by everything. I want to do everything. But I never get anything done in the hot mess of my mind because I cannot gain purchase to push off from.

I finally know what I want. I want to be a travel writer and photographer. My god, I'm 31: how did it take me this long to realize what I want to do with my life? I've just spent the last 10 years as a web developer, working mostly on internal projects. Always behind the scenes, working on the projects that aren't big, shiny or impactful, never getting credit. I'm earning the same salary as when I started, and I still get treated as a junior.

Well why wouldn't I? I have no passion for any of this-- nothing pushing me to excel, try new things, or learn when it's not expressly convenient. I am not a web developer at heart.

I'm a traveler, a wanderer, someone with acute observation skills and adequate writing abilities and decent photography knowledge. The way I've always lived my life (by necessity) has become more popular in recent years, so my niche has come to me. The seed has been planted, roots dug in, and now I just have to figure out how the hell to start.

To list, perchance to learn

I had no idea that making a list of 31 things to do over the next... now 11 months... would be so difficult. It almost reads as a craft to-do list, although that was far from my original intention.

The thing is, I'm good at seeking out new experiences. I am not good at finishing. Finishing anything. Following instructions, recipes, steps. That's something I want to work on, to learn. Maybe that's really what my 31st year will be about.

But there are so many things I want to do, to make. For starters: everything. I have a vast fabric collection, dreaming in my sewing-room closet of what each yard showed me it wanted to be. I have a collection of links to coveted jewelry that I'd like to try my hand at recreating or at least taking the inspiration and seeing where it leads. Visiting a new country each year. Running a marathon once a year. Trails, coastline, mushrooms, trees, birds. The road untraveled: I want to travel it.

List for 31

I love lists. I love Hula Seventy's lists of "x Things To Do Before I turn x+1." So here's my version:

1. finish a sewing project
2. knit a pair of gloves
3. complete a photo project
4. make donuts July 25
5. go snowboarding January 31
6. run a half marathon in under 2 hours
7. make a painting
8. create a signature granola recipe
9. learn the trail names of Tualatin Hills Nature Park
10. run all of Wildwood Trail
11. build a patio in the backyard
12. create art for my garden
13. run a marathon May 2
14. repaint my sewing room
15. write a work (novel? graphic novel? short story?) based on a music album
16. enter a photo contest June 7
17. try playing the cello
18. learn how to apply eyeshadow
19. try new hairstyles
20. make (& wear) spats
21. hike in the desert January 16
22. go out dancing June 11
23. watch FLCL
24. clean out my car
25. sew with LEDs (wearable circuit)
26. keep up with my book blog
27. write more often (frequency)
28. take a photography class July 25
29. improve my reading speed
30. do the splits
31. complete an olympic distance triathlon August 22

The persons of people

I've never been good with people. One-on-one, I can get along with just about anyone, make them laugh, pull a good story out of them, even enjoy myself. But add another person, and my balance shakes. The more bodies, the worse I am able to divide my attention. I try to avoid large group situations, I hide, or I stick with one person in the crowd.

At work, though, almost everyone is smart, interesting, and genuinely friendly. It's fantastic, but most of them are also very social and interested in networking, so I often avoid the myriad impromptu and plannef gatherings, which means that my introversion is exposed and I don't spend much time even the people I really like. I care. I would get to know them better. I just can't focus when so many others dilute my small slice of charm.

Now it's too late in so many cases. I just want to send out the sentiment, the knowledge that I care.

The air is thinner at the coast, as I imagine it to be at the top of Mt Everest. Perhaps it's not the altitude but proximity to heaven or the alternate. Earthly vales are stretched. Perhaps it's the beauty, casting fiction over the rest of the senses with its staggering bulk.

I watched the moon rise quickly over the coast range, full and miraculous. A sunrise I can appreciate.

Lately I overhear whispers from the other side, snippets of the goings-on. The streets are wet with rain there, as here. People rush by. Here I sit at my desk for hours, bruised by fluorescent light. There, giant lanterns beckon ponderously in the wind, and I know I will stop for a minute at the temple, searching for a cat to cajole. Red glow from vertical signs and grill smoke from tented alleys along the train station, two ghosts haunt the city together. I know where I am, here. But I want to be there, lost.

I am no transformative flow of river

"Its language is inadequate for the rapid complex syntheses achieved by the minor hemisphere." -- Jerre Levy and R. W. Sperry, 1968

"Our brains are double, each half with its own way of knowing, its own way of perceiving external reality. In a manner of speaking, each of us has two minds..." Betty Edwards, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 1999

I am still, an underground lake, but the experience flows through me. Ripples charge the surface til the water absorbs the movement without a trace.

Reading this chapter of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain explains why I've observed the most beautiful autumn I can remember, but I can't translate any of it into creativity.

For all the hours here that move too slow

A song I love, whose lyrics I would hope to never be true, now rings clearly and insistent as a clock in the market square chiming twelve noon. I'm not sure that I can ever listen to it again.

Moments of Heaven

This has been the most beautiful season I can remember; no other autumn comes close. We had more sun than we've any right to in the month of October, and November is always the month in which to pay. The beauty has rendered me speechless. My brain is too busy trying to fit all that my eyes funnel in, and the visual never even gets translated into words.

Lately I've been mindful of my daily moments of heaven. Usually once a day (more often on weekends) a few things come together and result in a delicious, fleeting bliss. Today's moment of heaven happened as I drove home from work. It was warm out, so I had the car windows down, and as I waited for the highway meter a New Order song began, and as I accelerated with one arm out the window, singing, the rushing air traveled all the way up the sleeve of my trenchcoat. At the first breezy tickle, I knew: windows down, the full fall air, the song, the singing. The elements come together, and recognizing the confluence is the cherry on top.

Inevitably, the parts that make the whole begin to peel away, and the sublime is lost. But having that moment, appreciating it in its presence, and diligently awaiting the next one-- the present is suddenly more in the present, a sensation entirely new to me.

The weight of time

This morning was so many days ago that I can't keep count. I'm aging in syncopated rhythm, the heartbeat of an insomniac racehorse five years past its prime.

Control top

I don't like the attention. I think I know why. I am guarded-- cautious-- and I like to maintain control. That's why I can never let loose at parties, why I'm often the stick-in-the-mud. I'm cautious. I like to be reasonably certain how things will turn out.

Sometimes I hate this about myself, and I rebel. I think that I will let go and have fun. It's not enjoyable though. It never is. It's not me.

I think of it as a familial saddle, with each generation leap-frogging. We look after those before us, we challenge those ahead of us. I will keep my head down and do my job.

The sighs of miles

I thought I had the words. I thought I had them because this morning while riding my bike from the train station to work, I found myself enjoying the very act of breathing. The air felt late and thoroughly warmed through, a twang of diesel and cut grass wafting through like hot sauce that purifies and elevates the flavors of the entire meal.

The rest of the world moved mechanically by like a well-tuned, slow-turned music box. I could even hear the tinkling notes through the cotton air. As timeless as it felt, it ended abruptly when I went inside the office building.

Maybe I've accepted autumn.

I'm going to go hit "Publish" on some old draft entries that only contain a sentence or two. There's some fiction mixed up in here, words written just for their joy at being seated next to one another. This entry isn't one of them, but they're in here. In case you wondered.

Autumnal panic

I used to think that I could pick out my favorite lyrics from songs and rearrange them and come up with the most beautiful poem imaginable.

alonetime

Alone in the kitchen. Erik just left for PAX in Seattle, and my dad will leave Port Angeles any time now to drive the five hour journey to my house. The radio is set to the jazz station and Kenard is snuggled up to the laptop, obscuring the left side of the screen.

There are so many versions of heaven on this earth. This is one. Last night at the Doug Fir, watching the lead singer of !!! move in a shameless heartfelt body-jerking dance while performing All My Heroes Are Weirdos. Finding a dead snake floating in the lake at work, with Hanna. At least, that was heavenly until she touched it and we found another dead snake in the water. Then I worried about Hanna getting sick and snakes being targeted by poison. Back down to earth.

But here I am, listening to jazz, stringing rocks on wire for my latest modular jewelry idea. The only thing missing is coffee, and I'm about to head to the farmers' market to sniff fruit and caress plants-- that favorite beverage of yours and mine can't be far behind.

I still find pieces of you in places I thought I'd locked you out of long ago, even while we were still together. How did you wend your way in? It must've been one of those times, your hurricane winds blew right through me. I could never stand your gale force, and being knocked over, chipped, you were right there.

Night in the garden

This dark heart of mine, crouching in wait, overflows in the rain with its scent of the earth. Waiting for answers before questions can be given over-- the lock to make the key turn in writhing anticipation.

I used to fear reaching my hands into the unknown black spaces beneath rocks, leaves, and wood. Naked fingers are drawn to the tangled puff of spiderweb and sudden cold slime of snails. Time spent closer, face pressed to the ground, has cured my hands of their exploratory apprehension. Every rock is turned and all secrets are baked away in the white smoke of the sun. I know all corners of the garden and each leaf-leaned nook.

Now though, these night visitors-- the raccoons-- fill me with dread each morning I wake to find undersides turned under again.

these thoughts I must not think of

I am wound up. Not wounded-- wound. Why are those heteronyms?

At any rate, I usually think of myself as invisible. Certainly in public I try to not speak out or stand out, to blend into the background and observe the surroundings. I've been told conflicting opinions as to my effectiveness on this front, but the point is that I keep to myself and I'm rather shy.

Tonight while I was out for a run in the conditions I most dislike-- hot, dry, sunny, windy. I was thinking about people I used to know. When I saw one running towards me (although his hair was the wrong color). I shouted at him, stopping, perhaps jumping to give impact to the name. I shouted til he had to forcefully respond that he wasn't who I thought he was. Oh. I moved on, embarrassed. And my mind locked onto the interaction, repeating every detail.

Why did I think that was my friend? It's like I expected that my brain could conjure him up. Normally when I see someone I might now, I remain quiet out of fear of intrusion. What pushed me to act, when it was more than likely I'd be wrong?

Welcome to the real world

I still can't believe what she said to me. I know why... but, really, why?

She's mad that I've been absent for weeks.

It's like she hardly knows me after all of these years, although she is now one of my oldest friends. She doesn't understand that I can't contact her every single day, and I don't understand how she could need so much contact. It's the kind of cycle that breaks down before it can rebuild; an eclipse marring the otherwise perfect 365 day calendar. All of the other years— most of them— are fine.

She thinks that I am punishing her by not calling, and when she tries to punish me by also not calling, I don't notice. I am the insensitive one, and she is doubly punished. So she lashed out to let me know.

Even with this logicked map, it still hurts. Her words echo in the corners. It feels like a shared sentiment. Everyone waits, watches, assumes that this is not it— the end, result, reason. Call it what you will, the end does not justify the means: the means is all.

Where we are, where we stand, we chose. Persevere.