surprisingly content

The last couple of weeks leading up have been a bit rough, but now that it's actually here I am doing all right. Tomorrow morning will be spent at home, and then I am driving north to spend the rest of the day with P and his family.

I can feel the love already, and I am grateful.

business note

There are still a few baby items left in my etsy shop, if you'd like to check it out... I would love to empty it before Christmas :)

I will also be taking custom orders in the new year for quilts, fleece blankets, and other such things.

Happy Holidays!

lust for life

I want a new tattoo, a big one, and I want to go places and have adventures and live an interesting life. I want to be with someone who will pick up with me on a whim and get on an airplane to anywhere without doing the laundry first or making sure the weather will be fine on the other side or that the hotels aren't all booked up already because of a cycling race. I want someone who wants me around all the time, even if there's nothing much to say, just so they can look at me and know that I'm real and as much theirs as anything is anyone's. I want someone who knows what they want and will make sacrifices and take steps to get it, or at least to try to get it. You must always try. Life does not fall into your lap, all neatly wrapped in ribbon and bows. If I've learned anything, I've learned that you have to work and work and it never really gets any easier and no one can really help you all that much and you have to want it and never stop wanting it and -- often most difficult of all -- keep on wanting it after it's yours. I learned a long time ago, too long ago, that you don't wake up one morning and suddenly enjoy doing all the chores, big and small, that make up the hard work of living, you just get up and you do it anyway and that is what is called being a grown up.

I want to make my own traditions and rules and feel however I feel about them and stop doing what doesn't work. I want to climb things and then jump off of them and I want to live beside the ocean finally and I want to dance and swim and breathe. I want to look into the faces of my babies knowing they are the first thing that has ever truly been mine and that they will never be mine at all and that's okay; that's as it should be. I want to move through my life in this world as a force to be reckoned with, as the star, as the heroine, as the main event.

I don't want to sit in the back. I would like to sit in the front, alongside someone else -- sometimes driving, and other times holding the map.

one of these things just isn't the same

There is nothing like Christmastime to make me feel like I don't belong anywhere, or to anyone.

notable quotables

(a la Nadyne)

bridgeport snapshot

Me + P at Bridgeport. It was shut down for restorations but we stopped for a quick photo anyway. My favorite so far.

hitting the road

On our way north to spend the holiday weekend with P's family... Eep!

this terror and this beauty

The choice to love, to really love, is incredibly, ridiculously brave.

It is not a surrendering of self but rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then you stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I choose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshiped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.


Rachelle Mee-Chapman, Magpie Girl

like you wanna be loved

my best friend's wedding

capture, release

I went over the list, saved it on my computer. Read it again, closed it again. I am an avid photographer, like it or not; I could have completed the project easily enough. But in the end I didn't feel compelled to. It might have helped, early on. But grief is not something I want to capture, anymore. Those particular relics are not what I want to keep.

I am still the face. I have been captured by grief -- and then, without quite knowing the exact moment that it happened -- released. And I find I am able to return that favor, finally. And I am pleased, and pensive, and content.

we learn nothing

We think of color blindness as a defect, but it enables those afflicted with it to see through camouflage.

Tim Kreider

never have I ever

He has said it to my back, in passing, or maybe into my hair. Quietly, experimentally; softly enough as to be easily missed. And I have missed it, intentionally, a few times before. But this morning when he said it, standing there in the bathroom, half shaven, kissing me goodbye, he was so sincere and adorable and I felt so happy my fears weren't big enough to stop me anymore. I grabbed his face with both hands and looked him straight in the eye and I said it too. The first time I've said it to him or to anyone: I love you.

And oh, I do.

st carmel

1. St Carmel monastery 2. P in the olive grove 3. Self portrait
4. Brave rose undimmed by blight 5. Photo of me under the arbor by P

anchor

No, just lay here quietly, and hold me as tight as you can. Hold me like if you weren't holding me I'd float away. Because I feel like I'm retreating, against my own will; and for once I'd rather stay.

soggy quilts and jackals

Jumped ship, escaping. Fuck this shit, I'm out. Swept away in a deep, deceptive current, struck and stuck against sloping rocks. Thick blankets, useless now, soaked and cold and burdensome and onerously heavy, dragged out painstakingly and laid flat to dry. Night falling. Small fire, no food. Unexpected, unwelcome, unhelpful company. Will not be hushed. What will find us in the night if she will not hush? Jackals. Pitch black ones, ears perked. Slow and steady and menacing and coming straight for us through the dusk. There's a shotgun at hand, but it's old and empty, and cocking and firing for show of strength produces only the faintest click, a sound so inconsequential as to be simultaneously insulting and intensely embarrassing. Strike out feebly with the blunt end. Give the alpha a mild headache, at best. Prepare to have your face eaten.

Or maybe just wake up.

Wave of Light

1. "Mom" necklace 2. Jizo + Candle

leaning

Inspired by Angie, and talk of crutches.

You, faceless you, are dependent on others; I see that all too clearly and I shake my head (inside my own head) and feel slightly to highly superior, contingent on your level of dependence and/or co-dependence, because anyone could see that I myself am thoroughly independent, I am as independent as they come. And yet I have realized, suddenly, annoyingly, unwelcomely, that it is only because I am dependent on being independent and I do not know of a way to be any other way.

I need to not need you. I am terrified of needing you. Of needing anyone.

You could try until you drop dead of trying and it is entirely possible that I would still stubbornly, tenaciously, vehemently not-need you but I sure would cry when you were gone. Not-needing is my crutch, my old habit; a mostly invisible one to be sure but still a clear and present sign of brokenness.

As long as I need so desperately not to need you, I am leaning on a temporary solution and I'll never know any other kind of strength unless I learn to lean another way instead.

morning & evening

sandcastles

happy friday

John Lennon

When I'm dreaming it feels like the most real thing. Until I wake up, and awake feels like the most real thing instead. And if there is another state, after or outside of awake, maybe it's the realest thing yet. Like the first time I ever fainted, and I seemed to see events playing out from a long way off, speeding up and speeding up until I rushed into the present again, into my body and what was happening to it, into pain in my arms where my friends were gripping them to keep me from slipping further away, to keep my body from slipping as far as my mind had gone. I laughed, because they were gripping my arms so tight, as if that could keep me here. As if I were tangible.

I'd only gone for a minute. But I'd gone to where no one could reach me, and it was huge and narrow and pitch black and bright and full of colors and unutterably, ineffably real.

It was more real than my fingertips on a clacking keyboard and skinny dark letters appearing on a flat white screen in an attempt to make you see. It was more real than tick tick tick and imaginary measurements of time, more real than faith or science, more real than pain. And it made me laugh, that they wanted me back. I didn't particularly want to come back, although there was something, something important to do, and I was forgetting. I was already forgetting.


Afternoon ramblings sparked by this John Lennon quote.

irony

I way overpaid for this egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free lunch. And now all I can think about is how much I wish I had some cheese and crackers to go with it.

out of sorts

Feeling very emotional the last few days, for no discernible reason.

here we go

Lake Tahoe

1. Zephyr Cove beach at Lake Tahoe 2. Hiking up to the house
3. P and his friends playing volleyball 4. Worn out doggies

Apartment hunting...

is not for the faint of heart.

thankful

I ended up having a really fantastic weekend. I think what made it great, despite my heavy feelings, was how loved and supported I felt by the people around me. My boyfriend, my cousin, my aunt, my sister. My friendly readers. Everyone was extra gentle and kind, and a surprising number of people took the time to actually make sure to tell me that they were thinking of me and Noah and to show me that I was important to them. Thank you.

----------

After the race on Saturday I spent the rest of the long weekend with P, just bumming around and enjoying the time off work. We talked about a lot of important things, which has made us closer, and I also got to meet a couple more of his friends. He has the coolest friends you guys.

I am definitely in the exact right relationship at the exact right time. I love my life right now.

pretty rad

My cousin/roommate Alannah and I did the Color Me Rad 5k in San Jose this morning. We were up kind of late last night for Noah's birthday and only got a few hours of sleep before we had to leave for the race, so we were pretty exhausted but it was still a ton of fun and I'd love to do it again. Especially now that I know what to expect. P decided to run with us at the last minute, and Alannah's boyfriend V was there too, to cheer us on along with our aunt. It was pretty rad.