13th of august, break

Gross.

12th of august, break

Yoga in the mornings is, quite possibly, absolute magic.

beginning, slowly

My blog needs a break. Or rather, I need a break from it.

I've contemplated methods of accomplishing this: looking for guest bloggers, an extended silent absence, dropping the whole thing altogether. But I don't want to abandon this space, as difficult as I'm finding it to keep up. I began this blog when I feel that I began, when I started to awake to this new level of consciousness that I'm unfolding every day, now. This has become more than just a blog--it's become a facet of myself, an extension.

When I became too involved with what I should be writing about or who would be reading its words or whether or not I should share certain information, it became less of myself and more of a concern. And my life didn't, couldn't, wouldn't allow for any more concerns.

So I considered ditching it. And immediately I took it back and snatched it up and embraced it, guilty for abandoning it, if only in my thoughts. Since then, I've tried hard to make it for myself, a self-serving space I could use however I liked.

It's a weird thing, this blogging, no?


Nevertheless, I've still felt like I need a break from it. My energies are just in so many other places right now that my heart just hasn't been in my posts as much as I feel it should be.

As you might know, at the end of July I finished my service term with AmeriCorps. Not only was I facing looming unemployment, but I realized I was left with the extremely trying, difficult, intense task of processing this year on my own, at home. The after-school program and family resource center I had worked with had lost funding and was shut down after ten-plus years in service to the community, leaving my small team with the task of disengaging from the kids and families we had grown to love, not to mention layoffs of the only coworkers I had come to know. So, the last month and a half of my term I spent sitting at a desk in the nonprofit organization's corporate office, faking smiles for the CEO and trying to pretend like I enjoyed working in a cushy downtown office where everyone acted as if the less glamorous neighborhood I had relocated from didn't exist anymore (where I'd much rather have been). It was a difficult year.

Add to that my (slow) acclimation back to the real world after college and my recent major decision to turn down two amazing offers at UVM and UW, and I was in rough shape. And not many people around me understood this predicament I found myself in.

But you know what? Hmmm, how do I put this.........I'm better for it. In fact, I began to see that these were fantastic, good things for me.

You see, the past few months of my life have taken an entirely new direction, a 360 degree spin. I was sick and tired of surviving. My whole life I had been just surviving. I was mad. I was furious. I was sad that I had to be mad at all. I had had enough. Somewhere in there, I found enough courage and love for myself to reach a breaking point, and I let myself break. (Breaking is scary stuff.)

I decided that at some point, the cycle of abuse turns to yourself, and you can either choose to abuse yourself as well, or try practicing some self-care and step away. I tried just that. I left home and awoke to this whole new world that had existed the whole time, just under the surface, that I just hadn't been aware of through all the muck.

I don't care for abuse. I don't care for negative, draining, exhaustive energy. I don't care for lack of support. I don't care for direct crushing of morale. I don't care for any of it. At some point, I realized that my disdain for such things had reached a whole new level. I was waaay up here, and they were waaaay down there, and removing myself from these abusive situations has been my saving grace.

I'm still up here, and growing farther and farther higher to an entirely new level of consciousness, but they're still down there. In fact, that's been the hardest part about all this growing--realizing that you're growing away from so much that you've known.

Now, I'm still living at home. I've found ways to deal with that for now, though. I've been reading Rumi and Julia Child autobiographies and Sark and travel guides to Paris (you know, for dreaming up my someday-getaway). I've been writing in journals and recording every single truth I come to realize about my life. I've been listening to myself--really listening, and trying to be true to that voice. I'm forming new bonds and shying away gracefully from the old ones.

I'm unemployed, for now. To some unsupportive souls who know me, this is a horrible, terrible thing. But luckily for me, I can still afford to pay my student loan bills and I live with my parents and have no rent and I can embrace it. This might be my only chance to embrace it. In two weeks I'll be starting back up again with the old daycare I worked at in college (I know--I was ecstatic when I thought I was done there, but it really won't be so bad, I know it won't be, it's simply a step for now), and until then I'm practicing self-care and discovering new outlets and creating new truths. I'm trying to remind myself to have some compassion for me, and go with the flow. (In fact, just the other night this notion of self-love was solidified for me: I dreamt that I came face-to-face with a seven-year-old version of myself, and we hugged and cried and it was the weirdest, but most satisfying dream-experience.) I want to go to the movies by myself and sit in libraries and read my camera's user manual and eat good cheese and practice yoga and revel in alarm clocks set early.

I don't know where I want to live. I don't know what kind of job I want to look for, or where to look for it. I don't know what I want to go back to school for. I don't know when I'll want to go back to school. But I'm not jumping to a place of "OhmygodIdon'tknowwhattodo" anymore, I'm simply living. I'm learning that this isn't a terrible thing, living. In fact, I'm rather enjoying it. Slowly.

Perhaps it would have been easier to write about all these things as they happened and prevented myself from getting too overwhelmed, ending in this huge voluminous post (kudos to you if you're still reading), but hey, I did try.

Therefore, back to my main point (can I remember what it was when I started writing this?), I'll be taking an August break. Susannah's great idea, that I found through Alfie, spoke to me--I'll be trying to post every day with just a photo or two, maybe some words, maybe no words, maybe a lot of words. Maybe this will make me want to post more often and get back into the swing of things, but until September, this will be put on hold. I need time. Hopefully you can relate and will still check back in for daily tidbits.

Until then, I wish you the happiest of Augusts and send you peaceful thoughts of summery relaxation! Thanks for listening, truly. My readers mean just as much to me as my writing here.

xoxo

in the garden

There's something magically satisfying about eating food straight out of your own bit of earth. Even if I didn't do any of the growing and sustaining.




And then making pizza out of it, too!

the piercing gun

When I was eight years old, my mother took me to the mall to get my ears pierced. I remember wanting nothing more than dangling earrings that I could swish and swirl with each turn of my head and that could catch the florescent lights of my third grade classroom, all shimmery and glinty.

When I got it done, I sat on a high stool at Claire's and don't remember much except lots of people watching me and thanking the good Lord in heaven when it was over and done with.

Of course, I was eight, so my ears got infected when I neglected to clean them and I can remember many nights spent crying as I tried to force the studs back in and hide the terrible redness from my mother (who, lovingly, decided to believe me when I told her that of course I'd clean them twice a day and not let them get infected or close up like Rachel's did--which I thank her for. I had good intentions).

But I feel as though getting my ears pierced was some sort of rite of passage into biggirldom and I wouldn't take it back.

So, when Mary decided last week that she was finally good and ready to get hers pierced (at the age of ten), I was probably more excited than she was. I even brought my camera in to embarrass her a little more.

Before, she was excited and giddy and just a teensy bit nervous:


Then, the girl started marking her ears and her smile started fading:


Right before she counted to three, the nervousness factor skyrocketed:


And then, she lost it, and almost came out with one pierced ear instead of two:



But hey, I'd still call it a worthy experience she can tuck under her ten-year-old belt. Plus, I had a blast.


Note: I'm not making fun of Mary for having such a low pain tolerance, or for being such a baby. In fact, she laughs about it now and I'm sure she'll get a kick out of seeing these photos up here.
I hope.

how to be alone

I've been mesmerized by this for the past half hour. I've fallen in love.

The past year for me has been a self-serving practice of being alone, and I'm getting there. This speaks to me. You must watch it, in its entirety.

(Found via Coffee and Stilettos--love her!)


HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cause if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting life's magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that community's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

a dapple of my weekend

Another weekend come and gone. Can you believe it's August already? I feel like just a blink ago it was June. I can't make it any more cliche--time is flying by. It's sad, in a way, but it also feels right. It feels right that it's the 8th of August. Although maybe that's because I'm rather looking forward to the fall--I feel like without school looming ahead, the fall months seem to hold happy prospects for me. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been trying to savor every tiny second of summer.

This weekend I went camping with friends in a state park filled with mountains and streams and hiking trails. It was splendid.

As a kid, my family used to go camping at least once every single summer, driving all over New England. From the White Mountains in New Hampshire to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, we would set up the tent, start a fire, and get out the games, sometimes even braving terrible thunderstorms.

This weekend I traveled to a part of the state I had never seen and submerged myself in all things camping--hiking, roasting marshmallows over the fire, surviving with only an outhouse, playing games by lantern-light, listening to bugs and birds outside the tent (and once even a coyote!), smelling like bug spray perpetually, and cozying up in a sleeping bag.

It was a perfect August weekend.

eating with intent

I just sat down with my toast and cheese and tomato, and as I munched I checked emails and read blogs and perused Google maps.

Before I knew it, I looked down and my toast was gone. Both pieces.

Perhaps I should be paying more attention to what I consume and put into my body. I hardly even remember what that toast tasted like.

I want to really savor my foods, to breathe in their aromas and chew them slowly and feel them in my stomach. You know, instead of inhaling them while I do five other things.


Or, I could just take a nap.

at the lake

A Monday spent at the lake, overcast sky or not, is usually a good Monday.

We spent ours swimming in the cold water anyways and taking jumping-in-the-lake photos in rapid succession, slideshow-style. A rather large fish perpetually followed us at our ankles, which we affectionately called "the love fish." We ate cold sandwiches on the big rock and took photos of our feet as they dangled over the edge.

Now that I'm done with my AmeriCorps service term and virtually unemployed, I'm realizing that "playing hooky" feeling I'd feel as a child when I came home from school early, stopping at the pharmacy with my mom for cough syrup or Tylenol and feeling naughty for not being in school. Not being at work on a Monday morning, completely legitimately, evokes this same feeling.

a dapple of my weekend

I just realized I haven't posted since last Wednesday. As hard as I try to keep up with this blog, sometimes I just can't post daily (who are we kidding here--I can't even post more often than three times a week lately). Especially in these last few weeks, I've hardly had a spare minute to remember to brush my teeth or make my bed or do laundry. And sometimes, the words just aren't there.

But thankfully, this last weekend slowed down just enough for me to stop and look around before it all slips away again.

It began with my very last day of work, followed by an immediate retreat to Vermont for a girls' weekend with sisters and moms and aunts and cousins.

There was lots of playing Five Crowns, waking up early and reading outside with coffee, eating English muffins and Spanish tortilla, swimming in the river under the green metal bridge, roasting s'mores, playing with sparklers, and perusing old library art shows.

After Vermont, Rachel and I drove down through New England to the Lilith Fair, where we met up with Steph and had a ball.

Not only did we see Missy Higgins and Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Barielles and Cat Power, but we tailgated behind our cars in lawn chairs and dust, drinking beers and eating watermelon, making new friends and connections, too (which may be featured here soon!).

All in all, it was a pretty quintessential summer weekend.

Now, moving on with August.....