a cadence of dancing bubbles that slide against my skin, the cool touch of the water, my shadow sweeping along the bottom, heedless of the gritty surface which must tear it to bits.
within the first four laps i can feel the fatigue building in my shoulders and triceps, and the sense that i am being held up by some gentle entity fades. now, my movement is my own.
another ten or twenty laps, and i find the rhythm of the water. from here, i can swim forever. the aching in my muscles stabilizes and won't increase, the gulp of air between strokes is the perfect amount to bridge the time before i take another. never, once i find this place, have i had to stop for any reason other than because i chose to.
i watch the clock, and i don't count the laps. at eleven forty-five, i surprise the wall by extending my hand rather than swirling away with a flex of calves and thighs against breifly anchored feet. hauling myself out of the water, gravity gleefully restakes its claim. my grace slips down my arms to drip off pruney fingers and puddle around my feet. later, the crimsondyed towel will brusquely disenchant the rest, and as i dry i am returned to the gawky, landbound creature that accidentally stepped on her design project an hour before it was due. :: 19:16
(speak)
...
:: april 24, 2002 ::
the sky is warm today, and i wish the sunlight could reach around our strangelyplaced dorm furniture to replace the flourescent buzzlight that makes my hands look pale.
dinner last night at the thai restaraunt had us commenting again on the fact that americans never would have thought to put those flavors together. ginger and chili and lime swirling with bits of peanut over cabbage and carrots on one plate, and something with subtle bits of coconut and onion to go with a honey and peanut sauce on another... both entirely delicious, and somehow seeming to reveal so much about culture and humanity. the rice was blazing white in a little bowl, curry and tofu and vegetables mingling and exchanging ideas. a tiny votive cast its tiny flickershadows against the dark coral walls, while towering fushia flowers surveyed the meal out of elegant vases.
his head bent over the menu, little concentration expression, and i wonder to myself how a mere three months can possibly hold so much. :: 19:44
(speak)
...
:: april 23, 2002 ::
"well, you know what they say about stars with high luminosity..." (wink wink, nudge nudge) :: 14:01
(speak)
...
:: april 22, 2002 ::
it's not that i felt out of control of my life, so much as i just didn't feel like an active participant.
talking to a friend yesterday, i jokingly told her that my life consisted of my design homework and my boyfriend. after the conversation, i realized that it was, essentially, true.
the design homework isn't without it's own sense of satisfaction, and certainly my relationship is as fulfilling as i think it can be - in fact, if it weren't for that, i might well be miserable. i think only my soaring happiness and utter contentment has kept me from despair.
i realized that i don't do anything. yes, i run from class to class and occasionally to paint call, but i'm not truly giving anything of myself. i don't commit myself to my design projects, and i don't paint on my own anymore. my writing has consisted of only this page and a few scattered email poems to counterbalance papers on thermonuclear destruction and 19th century astrologists. i don't read if it isn't required for class; or at least, not like i used to. it's been a while since i devoured a book for the sheer pleasure of it, the absolute inability to put it down.
there are four newly filled pages in my journal that brought me to this realization, and then a short, neat list of what i plan to do about it.
i choose to take my life back before i lose it.
i choose to write more.
i choose to find something something to do here that uses my time and talents well.
i choose to swim at least twice a week.
i choose to begin an earnest search for a summer job.
the cold front broke over us with a series of thunderstorms, great pounding reverberations that echoed between trademark blue skyscrapers and made the windows rattle like my soul. today the sky is brooding and a crisp breeze belies the aching heat of last week. i flipflop in my birkenstocks to seven-eleven to buy indulgent dill pickles and coffee, reluctant to go to the cafeteria by myself. realize that i prefer not to be alone, that despite the times when i retreat into my own little darknesses of pen and paper and silence and loud music, i generally enjoy just the presence of someone else. i think i am a bit afraid of being alone, lurking fear from those nights i laid awake wondering if he'd come crashing through my window to show me his scars.
i'm not working on my project today; instead, devoting the grey sky and counting crows again to reading everything i should have read already, surprisingly good books most of them for being schoolassigned. little yellow humanities which echoes my thoughts and depressing as usual apocalypse novel but quite well written, and the chaucer and to catch up on astronomy a few chapters.
enough with the rambling? but it feels so good. :: 12:50
(speak)
