i realize that i am best at work when alone with myself, my thoughts, music, and space. i think a lot physically (mentally) and in terms of space/movement when on my own and traveling, traveling, traveling forward. momentum propels me. "things that remind me of other things" - the title to a new piece?
movement and relationships. there are so many places where i remember, viscerally and visually, the walks i have taken. walks in philadelphia, trying to find new corners but always ending in familiar places. thinking i've gone somewhere i've never been only to be met with a familiar visage. walks along the river ribble, heavy-hearted and heavy-armed, full of groceries for one. a special trip. walking around peachtree in atlanta, owning your territory. in the cascades, all up & down, literally and figuratively amongst the firs. in new york, alone and lost amongst streets in an unfamiliar neighborhood...here, always: retrace your steps, back to the studio, back to the body. getting lost in the forward momentum, propelled by the beat and one's own headstrong impulses. this doesn't hurt my foot, of course not. only a few blocks more, it costs too much to take public transit. we tell ourselves stories in order to live.
this is where i am at. this is MY life. this is not a charade. i am not treading water until my life comes along. this is it. this is me.
how strange it is to be anything at all. how strange it is to be anywhere at all. how strange it is to be anyone at all.
doorways open open all around and through teeter tottery tipping point and beyond. hold held holding i melt into the wooden floor as i slide, slat after slat slips from under me the floor holds me. i am held
held through the journey making shapes. moving forth, a tinker, a tailor, a traveler. reaching a destination--a destiny? destined, i reach. my head--my hair-- the source of a woman's power-- (that's in the Bible somewhere, isn't it?) my scalp is supple and clean my hair hangs down: tassled curtains framing my worldview cherished-- i find something delicate, a delicacy. no longer do i need to hold on-- letting go, it slips away onto the wooden floor. a bell is rung.
well i don't know if i've got any of the answers yet, but i'm still walking down that distance-less path. to update those of you who do not know (though i suspect most of you have been informed by now), i am back stateside, living in philadelphia. no, it is not always sunny. but, metaphorically speaking, i'd say it's mostly sunny with isolated precipitation. which is to say, things are good.
i moved in with weston, and we picked up our cat, who seems happy albeit attention-hungry. we're in a cozy, cheap apartment on the outskirts of nolib.
i finished my graduate program and have been awarded an MA with distinction, which is the highest degree you can get. so that's good, but i am finding it not particularly helpful in the career search. i may branch out into some freelancing when i'm more familiar with my options in this city, but in the meantime i've been a regular house-girlfriend--somewhere more contented than betty draper and slightly less self-possessed than martha stewart.
so i'm unemployed, but happily looking, and even more happily supported, which is more than i can say for most people in this economy. weston is a smart one, and is being paid to complete his PhD research, and i am lucky that he is as generous as he is intelligent. things between us have been good, and--after a bit of decorating--i'm starting to settle into this new nest. it's hard not having many friends here, and the ones i have found all new and tenuous. things will be better when i have an income and we can afford to go out and meet people, but for now i'm mostly content to be a homebody.
in a while, i'm hoping to get accepted/funding for an MFA here in philly, so my days now are mostly spent studying for the GRE (WHY didn't i take that sooner!?) and getting my butt back into shape with yoga and dance classes. that, and the typical domestic chores--i'm really getting into cooking again, now that i have a clean kitchen and all my tools. (hey y'all! send me your favorite easy and cheap recipies!)
so, (with apologies for the lack of...panache? in this post), that's what's up with me. what's up with you, lj-crowd?
"Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move."
how do we get the courage to follow our dreams? how do we find it in ourselves to swim against the current, to eschew the safe for the fulfilling, to find that edge and take the leap?
these questions keep coming up for so many people around me these days. i wonder where the answers lay, and how we make these paths.
confronted with rejection, as my dreamjob has failed me...in the face of defeat, as devestation eclipses some of the hope, i am trying, as rilke said, to live my questions now. and maybe he was right--maybe some day, without even knowing it, i will live the along some distant day into the answers.
so, i know maybe not all of you believe in manifesting, but we can all agree what a little positive outlook can have and the benefits of positive psychology....so help me feel positively tomorrow.
i've a phone interview tomorrow evening (7pm my time, 2pm EST, 11 am where the interviewers are) for a job i feel in my heart i really needwant. i'm one of ten candidates, this being a sort of preliminary for an in-person interview if they like me the best. so i need to shine.
send them your affirmations and positive support of me and my abilities. send me your lightning bolts.
i was awake, and i found the listening booth at poets.org (among a few other sites). i have stayed up even later, just listening. listening. listening.
here is one of my favorites, by Mary Jo Bang (though the audio won't work for me...). i'm a little bit in love. enjoy!
Catastrophe Theory II
The foot goes forward, yes. Yet there are roots. And a giant orb which focuses its cyclopic eye on a moiré morning. When the microcosm is dry—it's earth; wet—it's water.
Water, reeds, electric eel: one possibility. Sun, reeds, dust mote and mite: another. Whatever the elements (it's urban/it's pastoral, it's empty/it's open), the theory says it could always be worse.
Until it is. Then theory fails, leaving a tracer mark. From blood you come to blood you go. Sudden things happen inside a frame. A flame is lit. Look
at those pathetic wiggly squiggles. Inferno or garden? An immeasurable distance sizzles between them. Watching it all. But taking so little in. Just what will fit on the flat
of a glass lens. The ticker is hopeful. Pathetic fallacy. Look at the numbers move. The mystery of ticks. One per second, sixty per Mickey. Four becomes ten, one in six
bombs falls in a bushel, a basket, a two o'clock casket. Do you wish to stay connected? The seen blurs into the just heard. A bird outside the wide open window. The warm day of March. It changes. It has
all changed. The world as a distracting disaster. MY, what little SENSE you make, said the wolf to Mary Jo. The theory rests on a tipping point. The clock steps in a direction.
having just kissed an old love goodbye, i am readying the room for another visitor. in this room of incense and pillows, it's amazing what mess a mere two bodies could make! (especially considering he took more with him than he brought here!)
slow, relaxing days and long nights of cuddles and comfort, overindulgence and some brief stints of product-/creat-ivity...what joy it is to have old, good, BEST friends about! i miss this. i miss the closeness, the comfort, the physical contact of intimate friendship. now in the quiet lonesomeness of this room, i feel the slight preview of the powerful missing that will take place when these two leave me on this island--an expat alone.
i feel like a siren, calling them to come to me, let us have our time together. it's a good, comfortable feeling, even though i know this place, this city, doesn't always have as much to offer as i'd like.
on that note, i sometimes feel as if being here, living in preston--while it has definitely afforded me a great amount of personal growth--is limiting me and the advancement into many areas of my life i'm perhaps overeager to explore. such a small place has limited opportunities, practically no dance studios or companies, no yoga studios, no yogis, sufis, magis, wizened leaders on the mountaintop. even my own dear course leaders (from whom i am admittedly learning a lot) catch a train to go home every afternoon!
i miss the city. i miss the hustle and bustle and culture and life and all the opportunities afforded by living in such a place. weston and i went to manchester the other day for a concert and explored areas i'd never been to. we dipped into small dirty venues in the university district, drank chili beer and dined in chinatown. while i long for nature, the earth and sky, skin and space...i miss the scene, the freedom that cities bring.
and this i am trying to keep in mind as i continue this arduous process of a global job search. [***aside: if you have any leads for me, please do tell!***] what's next? where to go? what to do? how to be? WHO to be?
i'm trying, as rilke recommends, to live my questions now.
i *love* that i am on a course where i can write things like "the thoracic cage is in a constant dance of expansion and contraction as we breathe oxygenating life-force into the body." and it counts as ACADEMIC writing.
these days, i seem to have once again separated from the muse of my prosetry. and so, instead of words, i find that sounds--noises, chords, riffs and repeats-- are more accurately portraying my feelings. billie sings my blues. dylan fills my jingle-jangle mornings. neko wails the filling confidence before a good night out. in my friendsick-ness, i find such comfort in falling asleep to the microphones. maybe it's because it's what we fell asleep to the first time weston slept in my bed, years ago before anything really happened, and it reminds me of feeling safe, comforted, loved and held. maybe it's because tonight, "i want wind to blow" gives voice to the thunderstorm in my heart.
and dan bejar is a genius i will always love with a passion. he seems to be able to discover the haunting, repeated melodies that play the chords resonating on my heartstrings.
i wish i could verbalize these feelings. right now, of course, it's sort of a sad lonely lost-ness, surrounded by the lack of the truly broad friend-support base that i'm used to having. but it happens, too, in the cheery bright times of singalongs and spontaneous dances. the times that i realize these are the halcyon days, when i know that many years from now, i will look back on my twenties and know that i was happy with and proud of where and who i was.
