Rant and Ramble

in my new room, my desk faces the window. in my new room, the window faces the street. instead of a dim alley with a giant tree and the neighbor's shuttered windows, i have the edges of branches and the flat faces of the rowhomes across the street. one of the houses has a flag strung between two windows, curled on itself from the wind.

i feel as though i could balance on the windowsill, the cracked soles of my feet rocking on the old, old, wood, hands braced on either side. i could bend my knees, reach down like my window was a starting block and the wide air a pool, and launch myself across the street - porch, sidewalk, coming, going, sidewalk, porch - over the phone lines but under the birds. could catch on the flag without hitting the brick, hang for a moment, and let myself fall to concrete without a scratch. not fly; just reach. the world feels that close.

my new room is bigger, with better light during the day. movement is good, i think, change necessary. and despite a crippling rage the other morning, i think i'm getting better. i need to believe i'm getting better, that this thick miasma will pass; otherwise i suffocate under the fear that i may never be happy. (what if it isn't philadelphia i hate? what if i leave drexel but never love school again? what if i will always be afraid of strangers? what if i will always have days when i wake up paralyzed with the need to destroy something? what if i will always weep, suddenly, without knowing why? what if one day, the sunlight streaks across an iris in may and it doesn't make me smile? what then? what then?) the melodrama aches, but i can't put it away.

ani has some line about dreaming every time you blink, and that's about where i am right now. i've fallen in and out of sleep so many times today, and had so many half-dreams and semi-somnolent moments that i can't be sure just what actually happened, and what only in my mind. these days, i understand the buddhists more. if i can't tell the dream from the reality, how can i be sure the reality isn't really just a dream?

look. you have two weeks of school left, and then a whole year off. just get it over with.

thick mist obscures the twilight and the tops of trees, and the wet grass mats down beneath our feet. the sharp chunking of the shears echoes, and our voices echo, though we speak mostly in reverent tones. we pull bamboo against the picnic table to remove it of its shoots and leaves; later in the season, the long, slim stalks will be readorned with tomatoes and peas. jason pulls a shoot from the patch that is slowly devouring the yard. the leaves lie against each other like folded hands, a strange and perfect spear.

we break it open, tear of the end, peel back the thin green wrapping leaves. they're like artichokes we whisper, thrilled. it smells so green kristin sighs, holding a pulpy fragment close to her face. one piece splits evenly down the center, revealing little segmented cubbyholes, just right for a pair of diamond earrings or a game of mancala. the light fades, the mist deepens, our clothes and shoes grow a damp sticky and soon we wander inside for zucchini lasagne and a salad full of green.

a defacto choice of macro / or microcosmic melancholy / but, baby, any way you slice it / i'm thinkin i could just as soon use / the time alone ani

i didn't get in.

the first wave of disappointment is predictable and brief. almost before my housemates finish hugging condolences, i'm planning my next year. i've been wanting this time off so badly, but hesitated to make plans because if if if i got in i'd be afraid to pass it up. so now, aside from a momentary grief, i'm filled with the exhilaration of opportunity, the quaking hiss of shifting destinies.
do you remember when i wanted it all, everything, this whole world? i'd forgotton that. forgotton that there could be a reaching need inside me that demanded growth and change and revolution. there's a stagnancy in this city and i've fallen prey to it, locked into the routine of class and homework and a deep internal atrophy despite intellectual challenge.

we argued about this a little last year, when i felt him pulling away from me and didn't understand why. he needed to know himself, he said, needed to understand how he acted as an autonomous person before he established a routine with me. i felt, then, that i'd done all my proving in the single act of coming here, threethousand miles away, alone. i think now i understand him more.
we are happy together, recently more than ever. tonight we celebrate a year and four months, and i am thankful every day that he is in my life. but at the same time, i'm looking forward to a year away. a year alone. a time to take inventory of myself, to write, to explore this person i somehow seem to be becoming. i look forward to defining myself, to myself, and then coming back and redefining us. and i do plan to come back.

i'm a little bit afraid that i'll go away and do something amazing, and won't want to come back to school. i've had to force myself into enjoying my classes for the past year, and while i think that's a lot to do with drexel, it's also my state of mind. i'm hoping that my year off will allow me to regroup, realign my values, and come back able to devote myself, fully, to learning. i want to be learning, and i want to continue my education at least through its "final" two years. but i know the knowledge i'll gain in the next year might seem more authentic than the study even of toni morrison and buddhism and the putting of words onto a page.

so, then. a year off; a year away. where shall i go, and why?

i have an altar on my south wall, but it really gets no more than a cursory nod every so long, a bending of the knees and trailing of fingers through sand and smoke. more often, i bend my eyes towards my informal shrine: the corner of my desk, where sit a spindly, reaching plant, a piece of quartz, a wolf fetish from my mother, and a beautiful fairy sculpture made by one of my dear friends. just these, and somehow a glance to the left while typing can be almost as reenergizing as a twenty-minute ablution in the shower. my spirituality has become a reflexive chant when i'm afraid, a deep breath when overworked. a coping mechanism, not a source of joy.

my writing has become a minor chore, a postponed dream.
these two are, i think, the same. and i'm trying to reclaim them both; trying to reclaim myself.

i'll keep y'all posted.

a long, cold day. a flannel day. i spent it, all day, trying not to curl into a corner with a mug of tea, a good book, and the woolen socks nika brought me back from poland. every time i look at the sky, i just want to crawl under the covers with some popcorn and never come out, get warm all through, even down to my evercold toes. ah, well. at least i can bring my tea to class with me.

like i said, my body betrays me sometimes.
and sometimes, it just lets me know.

this time it's cankersores, three, just where they get jabbed by my teeth every time i eat, or talk, or try to smile. it turns out that a deficiency of B-complex vitamins is one of the most common causes of canker sores - and, incidentally, of depression, apathy, and lethargy. i've been taking my vitamin religiously for the past three days, and while it still hurts to smile, that's no longer a metaphor.

also:
my best friend is engaged! yip, yikes, huzzah!

i cried later, of course, because i always cry this time of the month, and because he was right and i was wrong for being mean. but before that, before, we were on the bed and smiling, and there was a descent of contentment, a wave of it settling over me, over the both of us. we wrapped our arms each around the other and i hadn't felt so peaceful in longer than i can remember. and later, when i was crying and thought he was asleep, he put a strong hand against my skin and all the peace came flooding back into me.

it's okay, you know.
all of it.
it is.

these days, there's so much what and where and when that i sometimes forget all my whys.

the night is cold and full, a wet breeze sweeping past me, against my bare legs and through my hair. i close my eyes and can almost taste the ocean. it's the same wind, the very same, and my very blood aches for its sweetness, for its missing salt.

well. there's not much better than getting back a midterm with a perfect score and the comment "superlatives fail me!"

especially when you adore the class but thought maybe you hadn't done that well.

actually, here's what's better:
when all your classes seem tied to each other in some inexplicably complicated way, full of strange resonances and stunning interconnections. the place of women in hinduism and the cultural ban on intercaste marriage means that highcaste hindus are genetically related to europeans more than the lower castes, and the language of the brahmins is derived from greek; pythagoras believed in vegetarianism and rebirth. my literature professor gave a guest lecture in my science and religion class, which discussed today the lecture i went to about babylonian creation stories and genesis. we compare buddhism with nihilism; i explain the premise of my research paper, and jason quotes durkheim in support. my synapses have been getting an unaccustomed workout, and it is this, these sudden realizations that give a glimpse of the greater fabric, the brilliant moment of revelation and connection, this is what convinces me that school is worthwhile, that, really, life is worthwhile.

acing a midterm is ancillary at best.

i wish i could listen to the rain, without having also to listen to the neighbor's air conditioner.

alright, i'm not a teenager anymore. no more whiny melodramatic moodswings, no more languishing self-loathing, no more aimless depression.
you hear me, all you hormones and neurons and brain chemicals? you'd better shape up. i'm not kidding. no more moping, no more getting irritated at nothing, and absolutely no more chocolate binges. you're a grownup now. grow up already.

and happy birthday

the night is too hot. the single cotton sheet is too much, bunching up around me, his skin like a furnace at my back, the occasional stale breeze only a mockery of relief. agitation builds in me, makes my legs itch, my eyes roll, the sweat creeping in the creases behind my knees, under my breasts, the back of my neck. he is snoring, faintly, the neighbor's air conditioner growling, the room in its perpetual orange twilight because nothing is ever dark here, not in this city, not really. i want to scream, i want to shove him onto the floor, i want to take a little codine or a long swim or a high dive onto cold pavement. the heat is scratching into my bones, getting under my scalp, drying my throat and my blood. his heartbeat thumps against me, terrible, i move away, kick off even the sheet, try not to lash out.

the breeze changes.
a moment after the rain begins throwing itself against my open window, he nestles his forehead between my shoulderblades in the way i love best, and the rain is loud, so loud on the windowscreen and his breath is soft, and suddenly, easily, i sleep.