Dizzying

I just got struck with this wave of unhappiness.
The kind where you don't want to do anything because you're depressed and you don't want to move.
But at the same time you know that it would make you feel better to get up and go out.
But you can't bring yourself to do it.
The kind where you need someone to talk to, but you don't know what you need to talk about because you don't even understand why you're so unhappy in the first place, or who you would ever want to bother.
And then your body feels numb.
And you want to eat your emotions, but you're too unhappy to eat and your stomach protests the thought.
And you can't even bring yourself to use "I" so you talk as if it is someone else, saying "you".
And I'm not sure how to make it go away, because I don't want to go to sleep like this.

Life is Good

Thanks, PostSecret

Home is where the heart is

Just before the start of fall quarter, at the end of the summer, I went on a weekender on Odyssey. It was one of the most beautiful weekends I can remember.  I felt happier in those few days than I had in the last few months, and I felt as if I wasn't chained to all the things that felt like they swirled into a fog that dampened my old feelings of bubbling, un-containable happiness. I felt muffled, like there was still happiness, but it was padded down like listening to the world through earmuffs. Out on the water though, I sat in one of the lifeboats on deck in the sunshine, and wrote about the overflowing happiness I felt:

"I'm completely surrounded by the sea.

It sparkles and glistens in the light of the sun, both calming to the soul and deadly at the same times, rolling and calling- a deep, dark, impenetrable force- it's own world beneath our ship.

The ship moves in an effortless glide through the water, sometimes filled with music and laughter  and other times, like now, wearied, teenaged sailors heading for home after three days that flew by all too quickly.

But "home" is a relative term.  Though the world would recognize my street address as my place of residence-my "home"- the coined phrase "Home is where the heart is" would lead me to believe otherwise as my heart yearns for nothing more than this boat- than the ocean, the salt, the sun to surround me and consume me in the gentle rocking of the waves and the foam of the water that so distract me into peaceful bliss as I write.

Yes, I will return "home" tonight, but my turkshead bracelet will remind me of then I belonged to the sea in case my time on land ever leads me to forget.  If it is possible to forget the feeling of falling asleep under the stars to the swaying and the creaking of the boat with the bustle of hectic cities and people and stresses so far away on land where they can't reach you.  It is a pure and unparalleled  joy, a feeling beyond my comprehension to be this free. If I could do this forever, just sail away and never be bound to return-not owned by text books and work hours and the sense of duty and responsibility to have a respectable college education that leads to a respectable career to fit into a modern society of waste and prejudice and twisted methods of belonging.. if I could leave it all behind and belong to the ship and the nature and the sea (as I know it does not belong to me but to itself) then I would be happier than at any office job or anywhere bound by land."

Ramblings from the summer

9-10-08

The following is an excerpt of my ramblings from one of the notebooks I wrote in over the summer:

"I was thinking today about how much more connected each person is another than they realize.  How many times I must have crossed paths with someone before formal introductions are made. How many times I might have driven past them on the way to school or been in the same restaurant or bank.  Think about how many times you might have encountered the person you married before you even knew of their existence concretely.  And you may never know know of all those times, may never recall buying a taco from the love of your life at Taco Bell three years before you met formally and started dating.  You'll likely never remember the person in the car next to you at the stoplight who turned the opposite direction, but even this is an interaction as driving was described to me as a social activity in my driver's ed class and I have pondered this statement ever since.  

It seems to me almost like a ballet. or an equestrian drill team.  Lines of cars taking courses in synchronization out of a stoplight, veering out into clover shapes and meeting with a line of cars going to other direction who may also turn, or split from that group and go straight, all forming beautiful patterns like a dance or a drill and also in a perfect imitation of a silent social scene.  Like people who meet and stay together for a while but leave down different paths, all ending at separate locations and destinations, or ending up at the same ones by different paths.  Sometimes these thoughts distract me as I'm driving.  There's just so much beauty to see in everything.  So many different ways to see."

Did you ever notice that wondering and wandering are only a letter apart?

I write in silence, lest the words of others cloud my own.

I write when inspired, and I will try not to let myself cloud my creativity with thoughts of doubt or distraction.

I write by pen, so I am not confined by a desk and office. So I may look outside, beyond the old fashioned white windows that in my childhood would have inspired hours of imaginings of fairy tales and lack luster stories reminiscent of "A little princess" locked up in her isolated room.

Beyond the window there is moss on the shed roof, and bare trees that on this gray day, don't stretch upwards to reach for the sun, but rather look as if they are tired. Though these thoughts are contradicted by the small green buds sprouting from the limbs, quieting whispering that the life cycle cycles on, and these weary trees will spring up and blossum and throw themselves into another year's new season of spring and awakening with all the same ferver as before.

And from here I can see the houses and I wonder about the families inside them, and I wonder if they wonder about me. And of all the wonderings in this world, how many people sit within the confines of the same city, same building, same room, and never know that they crave the same answers or just to continue to ponder the same ideas, for sometimes it is the wondering itself that is most fulfilling, rather than the answers to the ideas you wonder about.

If only a person had it in them to ask. It is the habit of humanity to choose to believe they are all alone in the world with no other being who feels or things or wonders the same things or craves in the same ways or ponders the same concept.
It is our habit to set outselves apart from one another; set ourselves upon a pedestal high above the reach of others and pity ourselves the solitude as isolation.

Did you ever wonder what everyone else is wondering?

Two roads

I have decided, that my block is a result of a period of attempted growth.
When I was younger, I wrote about what I saw and what I knew. I was descriptive. Nature, people, events; abstract but concrete at the same time. I can write about nature easily. I can describe what I see and make it sound pretty- invoke images and memories, but that's not what I've been attempting to write. Somewhere along the line, I began to crave to write about ideas. Ideas that I haven't fully explored and that's where I found my block. It's not blocking an entire path, just one branch of that path, my road less traveled by, if you will. And now that I've realized this, it's not so much a battle as it is an obstacle I need to find my way around in order to grow into the writer I want to be.

Does it seem mind boggling to think of how writing about writing helps me sort out my problems related to that very thing?
And through it all, it feels like I'm coming home.

Hm,

I just did it again.
I wrote up an entire post, and deleted it because I decided it wasn't good enough.
And with that defeat, I think I'm done writing for the day.

Writer's Block

How is it that I have become so caught up in the words that other people have written, the lyrics in songs that I feel say what I was trying to say, that I have lost my ability to write my own? I read or hear something beautiful, and instead of inspiring me, I let it intimidate me. Someone else has already said something so beautiful, it gives me writer's block to think of how my words will never measure up, and writing has always been at my core. If I can't write, I don't know what else to do. But I don't know how to write my words, not a sad imitation of something I heard once and fancied, when I'm too scared that my own won't be good enough.
So for now, I just write; stumble through words and hope that one key word will open up that block and I'll be able to write freely again.