Rant and Ramble

it's the same feeling, the same edgy distance from myself. i drive these streets, fill coffeeshop seats, sleep in my big striped bed and watch the horizon curdle with the next storm, but i know, i know - i don't belong here anymore. i have found no peace here, save that which i always have in the presence of friends.

perhaps it is only myself with which i am not at home.

i ripped a crab in half with my bare hands last night.
rinsed out its mealy yellow guts, pulled off the lunglike filter sacs, broke the cartiladge encasing soft pink flesh.

i feel i am a better vegetarian for having done so.
no, really.

i think many of the problems facing mankind today stem from our disconnection to the basic essentials of our lives. we delegate the responsibility of our daily needs - food, shelter, clothing - to people we don't know and will never meet. most people have no concept of what process brings strawberries to their table in december - or crabs to their table in iowa.

no, i didn't catch them myself, but our neighbors bought them off a local boat at the harbor. my father cooked them, two big boilingover pots, and he prepared them for everyone else, cracking the legs and making the body ready for easy consumption.
i wanted to do it myself, break open the hard shell and deal with the messy crustacean ick inside. i figured, if i couldn't handle the process of preparing it, i didn't deserve to be eating it. if i couldn't deal with the whole reality of consuming another being; muscles, guts, ick and all; i shouldn't do so.

i stood at the sink, yelping every few seconds as i discovered another squishy piece of innards to be removed. my mother laughed and asked what, exactly, was i doing.

in tones of squeamish indignation, i replied,
"i'm experiencing my food, mom."

jesus, sure. santa, fine. time with friends and family, alright. but i know what christmas is really about.

food.

last night we had our big dinner - french onion soup, scalloped potatos, green beans, crescent rolls, salad, lovely puffpastry veggie things for me and steak of some sort for everyone else, followed by pumpkin pie and cookies. this morning started with our traditional blueberry muffins - three boxes worth. then, when all the presents had been opened, we had breakfast - eggs, toast, oranges hashbrowns and sausage. we began watching a movie, with christmas cookies and chocolate to snack on. i went from there to silke's house for a superrich southern meal, and now i'm about to head back to the kitchen for our christmas dinner - crabs, fresh off the boat.

if i can move tomorrow, i will be a happy girl.

happy anniversary, love.

a little holiday cheer... for those of us with open minds (and birthdates before 1984) only.

the light now is thick and golden, honeycombing through the oak leaves to glint off my windows. the sea has settled some, finally, though the waves still reach too high on the rocks and have swallowed some of the beaches whole. i'd like to paint this world, but i wouldn't know where to begin. with the pines trailing their bony fingers through the fog? the silhouette of a craggy cypress? the long curl of the sea itself, perhaps, its rugged insistence on soft beauty, or the gilded opalescence of a sunset? how could i capture any of it?

my mother has been full of distraction lately, bursting with it. she can hardly finish a sentence or purchase a christmas present before she leaps to the next. we spent the day in carmel, collecting hysterically expensive gifts nestled in chic paper bags. we stopped at a chilly french cafe with a nervous waiter for lunch; she asked me about my life, my love. i didn't know where to begin, not in time, not under so weak a sun and with the wind so cold.

four days left, and i spent all my shopping time today talking to old teachers.

worthwhile, though.

waves crashing over the streets.
trees through cars.
no power in some places for days now.
no power at all, really.
nature always wins, in the end.

because my insurance agent sent me a christmas card with a picture of his family and a summary-of-the-year letter.

i will take the consumption of five dill pickles and the dog shit on the bottom of my left shoe as sufficient proof that i am, in fact, home.

so.
i did no laundry, took no shower, and had no ramen.

instead, i realized that my flight had been leaving, ironically enough, exactly when i wrote the previous entry. there ensued then a manic rush of packing and airline calling and cab hailing. i arrived at precicely midnight last night, fell asleep around two, and woke at seven with a kiss from my little brother. we landed and deplaned amidst pounding rain, but the sky outside my window shines brilliant blue, with a flock of flashing doves circling like strange blessings around a stormbattered pine.

my plane leaves in twentyfive hours, and i will be home after the following eight. assuming no delays, of course - which, given the current state of california weather, becomes rather a large assumption.

i ought to be doing laundry, and packing, and finishing the weatherstripping on my cracked and drafty windows. but instead, i will first take a shower and imbibe a large bowl of ramen-with-lime, and check again for my visual comminications grade, and wish i could be home already. wish that i felt "home" here, more than i do.

we went on a long bike ride, during which my strange low bloodpressure acted up and left me panting against a streetlight pole, bike overturned in the gutter, face feeling buzzy and vision staticblur.

sometimes i wonder how my body can betray me so. it collapses upon itself on occasion, bursts into tears without my permission, falls down stairs, pulls ridiculous tricks - gets itself sick when i'm upset, or stressed, or hiding something. sometimes i feel that i don't really live here, in this skin. just visiting for a while, maybe, or just testing it at the request of some god which i don't particularly believe in. quality control.

don't worry, i assured him, i only fall over after i stop. it never happens while i'm pedaling, only when i pause to take off the sweater that changed, somewhere, from comforting to stifling. as long as i keep going i'm fine.

it rained overnight and we woke to tiny icicles hanging from all the tree branches. the wind picked up around noon as i walked home and tried not to slip on the ice. thin grey light in my room, a twiny mesh bag of clementines and cold toes.
winter.

hey, you, well i'm tired
but that's okay,
full of grace, you know,
saving face, you know
how i am when the sun
sets sometimes,
when the wind picks up
behind my teeth tearing,
wearing me down but that's okay,
wearing me out but anyway,
don't you like this crooked smile,
this pulling mile, this quick denial
of the soaring sky,
i'm not afraid of rain, baby,
but i just can't stand
the way your puddles dry.

yeah, i have no idea where that came from or what it means.
but i think it's rather neat.

"An audience with a literary preoccupation could find some food for sexual fantasy in pictures of bathers, barmaids, ballet girls and tarts scrubbing their backs."

art history rocks because i know every single painting that donald holden refers to in that line.

the irony, of course, is that i'm doing brilliantly in all my classes.
at crit today, my professor explained to me how much she enjoyed my presence in her class, that she felt i had "vision" and "style." the courses have involved effort, yes, but never more skill than i possess. i even enjoyed the final project, to a degree, and i know i've been producing work at least on par with most of my peers.

but it doesn't interest me, not really, not anymore. my nineteen credits next term will include not a single class related in any way to visual art. i don't mean to say that i plan to remove art from my life - rather, i plan to remove design from my career path, and i find that to be a beautiful prospect. all of my favorite classes from my college career thus far have been those unrelated to my major. i most enjoyed over the summer the time i spent at the SPCA, not that which i spent at the design firm. i refuse to devote any more of my life to dissatisfaction.

amy suggested that i become an english major, and i think i might. seems as good a background as any for a career in used books.

oops.

hello, winter break.

why yes, it is a beautiful day.

snow.

months ago my mother mailed me several pounds of sand in double ziplock baggies, for an ocean altar that i only today got around to creating.

two bags. one of fine, white asilomar sand, dotted with little bits of charcoal; one of the coarser sand that knows it came from granite, maybe from the beach where we spread a blanket and all stared up as the sky misted down on us and we shivered in the cold. i kneeled on my freshcleaned floor, shoved my hands in up to my wrists, scooped out handfuls and let them sift through my fingers. sand has a smell, you know. cold, almost wet, and a particular way that the larger bits get under your fingernails and how the powdersoft kind sticks to the creases of your palms.

the way you sink into it after stepping off the boardwalk, just past the carefully partitioned dune restoration area, with the dog who will get tiny white flecks into every crevice of your car. the way it slips into your shoes and through your socks, or how it sucks out from under your feet when the tide pulls away. the brief startlement with every digging when you find the packedcold wet sand under the fluffy top. the tiny holes that crabs breathe through, even though you can never find the crabs beneath. how sharp the pieces can be when you try to brush them off later, and how you find little bits in your ears the next day. the way it feels against scalp and skin, inside the bathing suit and between your fingers. the joy of an abalone shell and the thick slurp of a kelp pod. the heat of a bonfire against wet shivering, the warmth of a towel in the occasional sun. the alwaysthrill of seals on the rocks. the fog.

for all i try, nothing in the colored trees or windswept sky can compare.

i feel terribly fractured, hairline cracks above deep faultlines, emotions flying up like startled birds. they circle and scream, angry at an intrusion i can't even see.

i keep finding tears nestled in the most unlikely places, in between footfalls and under newly clean sheets, full of the realization that if i died tomorrow, i wouldn't be happy with this life i've led. full of poetry and slow, sad songs, the sound of passing trains and the icy breath of wind.

i'm cold all through.