Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
what a long strange night it turned out to be
What I have recently learned about myself along with commentary
1) I can convince myself of anything. I think this is mostly a good thing but it could also be dangerous. It allows me to be open and receptive to unique experiences, spiritual practices, and exploring different philospohies of thinking and perceiving. However it can be dangerous because just as I was lying in bed indulging in my thoughts I almost convinced myself that I should be back with my ex boyfriend because I allowed myself to reflect on our past from a different point of view.
2) I need a comfort spot. Too often I suffer from anxious thoughts when I am overwhelmed with obligations, chores, and responsibilities. Too often about money, the future, finding a companion, media, and feeling alone. Without realizing it I was using unhealthy scapegoats to avoid panic attacks. Now I have finally found a comfort spot that doesn't involve another person which is dependable and safe. It is the bookstore/library. I can spend hours reading in that place and it is therapeutic for me, it soothes me.
3) I don't want anything to do with Catholicism and I do not believe in Heaven. I have never been able to connect to this religion and I have a hard time believing I ever will. My dad insists that later in life I will want to go to church and subscribe to the catholic thought. I seek peace and happiness in spirituality and Catholicism only offers morality teachings and is founded on a promise that as long as we endure the present world's hardships and avoid sin that we will be granted a paradise in heaven when we die. How can such a place exist? Because happiness doesn't exist without sadness, and pleasure isn't felt until junxtaposed with pain so heaven sounds pretty dull to me. I would rather create my paradise right here right now on earth, and I think that may have been what Jesus really meant anyhow.
4) Addicted behaviors fascinate me and terrify me. I have had to consciously avoid addictions in my life and it's all because of a friend named Elena I had when I was younger who was wise beyond her years that I have always been so self aware. She told me when I was 8 that I had to be careful of addictions because I was likely to adopt one or several in my lifetime because of my mother.
5) Television depresses me. Watching it, listening to it, watching other people watch it, thinking about it, and realizing how much richer many lives would be without it. It all makes me incredibly sad and I don't want to even say anything more about it.
1) I can convince myself of anything. I think this is mostly a good thing but it could also be dangerous. It allows me to be open and receptive to unique experiences, spiritual practices, and exploring different philospohies of thinking and perceiving. However it can be dangerous because just as I was lying in bed indulging in my thoughts I almost convinced myself that I should be back with my ex boyfriend because I allowed myself to reflect on our past from a different point of view.
2) I need a comfort spot. Too often I suffer from anxious thoughts when I am overwhelmed with obligations, chores, and responsibilities. Too often about money, the future, finding a companion, media, and feeling alone. Without realizing it I was using unhealthy scapegoats to avoid panic attacks. Now I have finally found a comfort spot that doesn't involve another person which is dependable and safe. It is the bookstore/library. I can spend hours reading in that place and it is therapeutic for me, it soothes me.
3) I don't want anything to do with Catholicism and I do not believe in Heaven. I have never been able to connect to this religion and I have a hard time believing I ever will. My dad insists that later in life I will want to go to church and subscribe to the catholic thought. I seek peace and happiness in spirituality and Catholicism only offers morality teachings and is founded on a promise that as long as we endure the present world's hardships and avoid sin that we will be granted a paradise in heaven when we die. How can such a place exist? Because happiness doesn't exist without sadness, and pleasure isn't felt until junxtaposed with pain so heaven sounds pretty dull to me. I would rather create my paradise right here right now on earth, and I think that may have been what Jesus really meant anyhow.
4) Addicted behaviors fascinate me and terrify me. I have had to consciously avoid addictions in my life and it's all because of a friend named Elena I had when I was younger who was wise beyond her years that I have always been so self aware. She told me when I was 8 that I had to be careful of addictions because I was likely to adopt one or several in my lifetime because of my mother.
5) Television depresses me. Watching it, listening to it, watching other people watch it, thinking about it, and realizing how much richer many lives would be without it. It all makes me incredibly sad and I don't want to even say anything more about it.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
"Break these Arms Around the One I Love"
"And you don’t judge me
That’s not your style
But I won’t see you for a little while
And there’s no worries
Whose got time
All these changes are going to fill your mind"
And this is how we have carried on all these years, letting our lives take us away from one another. I don't think we ever sacrificed any experience, opportunity, or part of ourselves for the other, no we have always conveniently retreated into self fulfilled prophecies (apart). "I'll never hold you back." On the contrary all sorts of wonderful and not so wonderful unplanned events, experiences, and opportunities have brought us together. Good timing, friend's birthdays, coincidences, a best friend's trauma, another best friend's departure, and even a holiday.
Refreshed with intellectual conversation, loaded with new found optimism about the world, validated in our wits and thoughts, and awakened with the passion of our love. If it weren't for clocks some of those nights and mornings would have stretched on forever.
So grand experiences are on the horizon and once again they take place in physical distances far away from one another. We have already exchanged farewells, already broken the love spell. We ask ourselves lover after lover, countries and states apart: Will I always love you, will anything ever compare?
We are getting older now, loosing faith and maybe loosing our childlike belief in the meta-narrative of love conquering all. It's pretty silly when you think about it. Of course you should walk the Earth, come into your own, breathe life through your hands for a year and find your home in the mountains. Of course I should follow my adventure spirit and nurture my need to get out of the U.S. and use my health, youth, and energy to help, create, farm, or educate in a less industrialized civilization. Why should either of us give our dreams up for love? We wont, we never will.
And how happy I am that my looking glass self, my muse, my inspiration for so many parts of who I am today, my self reflective lover can go out in this world and carve out happiness and meaning, can live fully! I will live fully too and what can we feel towards one another other than fondness and admiration for the other even if it means we never cross paths again. And this is why we have never resented, scolded, begged, or held eachother back.
And just as before, soon enough you will become to me as I will become to you just a passing question, a momentary thought, during a lifetime apart.
That’s not your style
But I won’t see you for a little while
And there’s no worries
Whose got time
All these changes are going to fill your mind"
And this is how we have carried on all these years, letting our lives take us away from one another. I don't think we ever sacrificed any experience, opportunity, or part of ourselves for the other, no we have always conveniently retreated into self fulfilled prophecies (apart). "I'll never hold you back." On the contrary all sorts of wonderful and not so wonderful unplanned events, experiences, and opportunities have brought us together. Good timing, friend's birthdays, coincidences, a best friend's trauma, another best friend's departure, and even a holiday.
Refreshed with intellectual conversation, loaded with new found optimism about the world, validated in our wits and thoughts, and awakened with the passion of our love. If it weren't for clocks some of those nights and mornings would have stretched on forever.
So grand experiences are on the horizon and once again they take place in physical distances far away from one another. We have already exchanged farewells, already broken the love spell. We ask ourselves lover after lover, countries and states apart: Will I always love you, will anything ever compare?
We are getting older now, loosing faith and maybe loosing our childlike belief in the meta-narrative of love conquering all. It's pretty silly when you think about it. Of course you should walk the Earth, come into your own, breathe life through your hands for a year and find your home in the mountains. Of course I should follow my adventure spirit and nurture my need to get out of the U.S. and use my health, youth, and energy to help, create, farm, or educate in a less industrialized civilization. Why should either of us give our dreams up for love? We wont, we never will.
And how happy I am that my looking glass self, my muse, my inspiration for so many parts of who I am today, my self reflective lover can go out in this world and carve out happiness and meaning, can live fully! I will live fully too and what can we feel towards one another other than fondness and admiration for the other even if it means we never cross paths again. And this is why we have never resented, scolded, begged, or held eachother back.
And just as before, soon enough you will become to me as I will become to you just a passing question, a momentary thought, during a lifetime apart.
Monday, March 16, 2009
And I just found this really happy spot in my mind and I cannot, I can not stop smiling. How could I not when I am reminded of the playfully devious and romantic life I led as a teenager. I was reading a book preview online of The Perks of Being a Wallflower which is astonishing by the way that I have never read this text. The most infuenctial peers of my life have listed it as one of their favorites and somehow I missed that memo, I am reading it now. But how thankful I am for reading it now because I cannot go a few lines without pausing and smiling. Pleasent memories of my past are flooding my thoughts even the unpleasent ones are still welcomed because I lived so passionately when I was a teenager. I felt everything so deeply, and I dedicated myself to everything that was mysterious, magical, or whimsical, to any experience that was harmlessly rebelious, to anyone who endulged me and my thinking and talking too much self, my silly off beat behavior, oh and my sleepless energy. I feel those good parts of me returning laitly, I feel reconnected with my youth in a healthy progressive and optomistic way not a regressing, fear of becoming a responsible adult way (because I am totally kewl with that!)
Their are a few reasons I believe I have come to this point, it is the time I've spent recently in my home town with my good friends and companions from the past. The story telling has definetley gotten the ball rolling. It is also the concluding chapter of my undergrad career, the kind of thing that would make anyone gleefully nostolgic. I think however, it is mostly the newfound accepting of my past (those painful dark moments in my childhood) that has allowed me to release the happy memories and recognize the so very intensely good moments I whitnessed in my life thus far. I have been reliving happy moments I had completely forgotten about, moments I never want to loose again.
It was this epic moment I had where I was sitting at my mother's kitchen table familiarly disattatched to her words and keeping the tempo of my shaking foot to the second hand on the clock. I was waiting to leave.... in her company, I have always been waiting for one of us to leave. Suddenly something she says catches my attention, she has confessed to taking a book of mine to work. It's Omnivore's Dilemma and she tells me she really enjoyed it but was a little unsure about some of the concepts. Suddenly I am listening, suddenly I am aware of her. She begins asking me questions and we get into a lengthy discussion about America's food culture. After food culture we move to the topic of consumerism and I begin to tell her about a material cleansing I am going to begin soon and we begin to plan a day together rummaging through all of my stuff (their is so much!) and she gets excited thinking about sorting the goodwill from the goodkeeps (for her). Immediately following this nice chat she tells me in an anxiety ridden tone that by the way she also needs me out as soon as possible when I graduate because she needs more space. (for more stuff). Okay, so where is this epic moment? Well for the first time I stopped ignoring her as my mother and talked to her as a person. It was as simple as that. We don't get each other, we never will, if she were someone in one of my classes I would interact with her but I'd let bygones be bygones I wouldn't push it. I wouldn't beg her to come sleepover or bake cookies with me. The therapy, years of dating a dude just because he had a wonderful mother, drunken tears, hardly escaped addictions, and bam! I am having these waking life and sleeping dreams now that are nothing but pleasant reminders of my silly adolescent years and suddenly I feel incredibly blessed for my childhood, for my past.
So here is one of the oh so many good ones:
Before we had cell phones we had to synchronize our bedroom alarm clocks so that we could leave our houses at exactly the right time and not leave one another standing alone under the midnight moon, even as safe as our suburban neighborhoods were (this was pre inner-city assimilation time). Now there were many nights I snuck out my window and many late night strolls through those streets but this particular walk strums a cord in my memory because it happened to be a night where a particular feline companion joined me. I spotted her waiting for me at the end of my street and cooed to her softly “aw miss kitty just on time shall we meet Doak (Stephanie’s nickname)?” We walked like sisters side by side talking with our eyes. As I approached the intersection marked in my mind as a halfway mark I noticed two felines walking towards us. I looked down at miss kitty and she peered back up at me “so you told your friends to meet you here while I have to walk the rest of the way to meet mine alone?” We stopped for a moment when we met with the other cats. I told them to be safe and thanked miss kitty for her company and went on my way. I kept my eyes in back of me until I saw them turn away and escape into the night together, just as they left my eye sight I saw Doak in front of me. “Perfect timing she said!” and we both giggled nervously. Just as we met our friend Eric pulled up in his rusting Easter egg blue Oldsmobile. “Whatuuupp ladies!” We quickly jumped in and I turned to Doak and said “So most of the walk I was accompanied by a kitty, she followed me almost the entire way” They both paused and exchanged skeptical looks "and then we were greeted by two other cats at the intersection and it was like they were meeting up for midnight mischeif just like us!" I continued. Doak rolled her eyes and Eric said “is she rambling about cats again?” and we all erupted with laughter. We...(to be continued)
~KAT
Their are a few reasons I believe I have come to this point, it is the time I've spent recently in my home town with my good friends and companions from the past. The story telling has definetley gotten the ball rolling. It is also the concluding chapter of my undergrad career, the kind of thing that would make anyone gleefully nostolgic. I think however, it is mostly the newfound accepting of my past (those painful dark moments in my childhood) that has allowed me to release the happy memories and recognize the so very intensely good moments I whitnessed in my life thus far. I have been reliving happy moments I had completely forgotten about, moments I never want to loose again.
It was this epic moment I had where I was sitting at my mother's kitchen table familiarly disattatched to her words and keeping the tempo of my shaking foot to the second hand on the clock. I was waiting to leave.... in her company, I have always been waiting for one of us to leave. Suddenly something she says catches my attention, she has confessed to taking a book of mine to work. It's Omnivore's Dilemma and she tells me she really enjoyed it but was a little unsure about some of the concepts. Suddenly I am listening, suddenly I am aware of her. She begins asking me questions and we get into a lengthy discussion about America's food culture. After food culture we move to the topic of consumerism and I begin to tell her about a material cleansing I am going to begin soon and we begin to plan a day together rummaging through all of my stuff (their is so much!) and she gets excited thinking about sorting the goodwill from the goodkeeps (for her). Immediately following this nice chat she tells me in an anxiety ridden tone that by the way she also needs me out as soon as possible when I graduate because she needs more space. (for more stuff). Okay, so where is this epic moment? Well for the first time I stopped ignoring her as my mother and talked to her as a person. It was as simple as that. We don't get each other, we never will, if she were someone in one of my classes I would interact with her but I'd let bygones be bygones I wouldn't push it. I wouldn't beg her to come sleepover or bake cookies with me. The therapy, years of dating a dude just because he had a wonderful mother, drunken tears, hardly escaped addictions, and bam! I am having these waking life and sleeping dreams now that are nothing but pleasant reminders of my silly adolescent years and suddenly I feel incredibly blessed for my childhood, for my past.
So here is one of the oh so many good ones:
Before we had cell phones we had to synchronize our bedroom alarm clocks so that we could leave our houses at exactly the right time and not leave one another standing alone under the midnight moon, even as safe as our suburban neighborhoods were (this was pre inner-city assimilation time). Now there were many nights I snuck out my window and many late night strolls through those streets but this particular walk strums a cord in my memory because it happened to be a night where a particular feline companion joined me. I spotted her waiting for me at the end of my street and cooed to her softly “aw miss kitty just on time shall we meet Doak (Stephanie’s nickname)?” We walked like sisters side by side talking with our eyes. As I approached the intersection marked in my mind as a halfway mark I noticed two felines walking towards us. I looked down at miss kitty and she peered back up at me “so you told your friends to meet you here while I have to walk the rest of the way to meet mine alone?” We stopped for a moment when we met with the other cats. I told them to be safe and thanked miss kitty for her company and went on my way. I kept my eyes in back of me until I saw them turn away and escape into the night together, just as they left my eye sight I saw Doak in front of me. “Perfect timing she said!” and we both giggled nervously. Just as we met our friend Eric pulled up in his rusting Easter egg blue Oldsmobile. “Whatuuupp ladies!” We quickly jumped in and I turned to Doak and said “So most of the walk I was accompanied by a kitty, she followed me almost the entire way” They both paused and exchanged skeptical looks "and then we were greeted by two other cats at the intersection and it was like they were meeting up for midnight mischeif just like us!" I continued. Doak rolled her eyes and Eric said “is she rambling about cats again?” and we all erupted with laughter. We...(to be continued)
~KAT
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