The Price We Pay To Survive

One of the more quaint (NOT antiquated) characteristics about me is that I like to write letters. Wordy, sturdy letters, written on nice stationery, sent through snail-mail. I like to light a candle in the evening, turn on my New-Agey music, and scribble away. Fortunately for me, I do have someone to whom I write, that also enjoys writing, and for the past three years, we have been sending letters to each other, back and forth. Not always in a timely manner, but dammit, we write. My penpal's name is Kim; he and I attended college together (I was getting my bachelor's in history, he his master's) and eventually I helped him prep for his comps.
In Kim's most recent letter to me, he told me about moving to Austin, Texas, and the life he is striving to attain for himself and his partner out there. Right now, it's just a dream, but he's working hard to make it a reality. He described this dream to me in detail in his letter--evocative, sensory-rich details, and the descriptions were so vivid, I found it hard to believe that this was not actually already reality.

I envy him that dream. Because, as much as I want to, I can't do it, can't cook up dreams like that. I want to be able to do that, and I used to be able to do that--oh, god, I used to dream of a townhouse in Broad Ripple, with copper pots and pans and a study with walls painted a lovely cornflower blue, and a little back patio where Michael and I grew flowers, and a kitty and maybe a doggy, and a library job appearing miraculously, and quiet years spent in a quiet city, with friends, and a lovely home, and fulfilling jobs, and in the fullness of time, some children.

I used to be able to dream like that, you see. And god, those dreams were lovely. It's been almost a year since my dreams bitch-smacked me back down into reality, and while I have pretty much come to terms with it, one thing hasn't gone back to "normal." I'm no longer able (or maybe only no longer willing) to have dreams like that. It hurts too much when you lose those dreams. And I am afraid to dream, or at least I don't know how to. The only plans I make are short term, like over the next year or two, and all of them are related to things in my immediate sphere--my career and my apartment, for example, or a trip I plan to take in a few months. Nothing, no dreams with Arash. I want to be able to do that--regardless of whether or not he's a willing part of them--but I am too tired still, too scared, too worried that I will look like a fool. And so, I don't dream about our future. I am plain too scared. Or cautious? Or wise, even? I just quietly go through each day, and I'm happy for each day I have with him.

Someday I will learn how to dream again.

2007: The Year Ahead

Yes, yes, I know. We are more than halfway through the month, and I am just now starting to work on the whole 2007 Resolutions/To Do/To Don't List...but hey, I was sick at the beginning of the month, and for the past week I have been juggling various crises.

Maybe "don't procrastinate and make lame excuses" should be at the top of the list.

Finances:

1. Pay off my credit card debt left over from the move (already about halfway there! Wooo!)
2. Pay off one of my private loan from Sallie Mae (assholes)
3. Save receipts, record all purchases

Professional Development:

1. Update my resume every 6 weeks
2. Update my work blog very regularly
3. Attend ALA in Washington this summer
4. Set deadlines, and stick with them
5. Remember this: Every taxpayer is my boss
6. Read all the Caldecott and Newbery Award-winners
7. Do monthly genre studies

Friendships/Relationships/Community:

1. Remember everyone's birthday, and send their cards on time
2. Be prompt in returning emails and letters
3. Become a Big Sister

Physical Care:

1. Drink lots and lots of water
2. Start using gym pass
3. Take vitamins and medications on time
4. Get teeth cleaned
5. Moisturize and use sunblock, copiously
6. Strive to take good care of possessions: hang up clothes, iron items, polish shoes, don't get things so dirty!
7. Learn how to apply eyeshadow with some degree of skill
8. Floss
9. Cut back on junk food. I do pretty well with the no fast food, and have sworn off beef. Now, must do this...

Homemaking:

1. Start cooking, dammit.
2. Learn how to mend
3. Spend 15 minutes each day, cleaning up after myself
4. Get a couple of (non-poisonous) houseplants

Travel:

1. Take a road trip to San Francisco
2. Fly back to Daytona at Thanksgiving
3. Visit Palm Springs
4. Visit San Diego

Creative Ventures/Hobbies:

1. Learn to knit
2. Learn to make jewelry
3. Write more--writing prompts, letters, journal entries, short stories, poetry, haikus, lists, freewrites, research, ideas for novels
4. Try to go on a hike at least once a month
5. Learn Dreamweaver, and how to design my own blog

Spiritual Development:

1. Read Desiderata every day
2. Meditate

Purchases, Little Indulgences:

1. George Foreman Grill, water filter, vegetable steamer, and electric wok
2. Papasan chair
3. End table
4. Bedside table lamp
5. Featherbed mattress
6. "Taste of Home Cookbook"
7. Replace hubcap on car
8. Get car door handles fixed
9. Get car detailed

To Don't

Don't get dumped in a student union! In fact, don't go to any student unions, for any reason!

Don't cry like a bitch with a skinned knee for an entire month if I get dumped. Moping occasionally is okay. Lying on the floor of friends' apartments, sobbing and hyperventilating? Not so much.

Don't sabotage the relationship with the boyfriend. Sure, I've got a lot of issues and hangups left from the last relationship that carries over into this one. Sure, I have my fears. But DON'T SABOTAGE.

Don't spend a lot of time thinking about small-minded Italian women who hate me. If I don't forgive, I am allowing them to live in my head, rent-free. And we all know how expensive rent is here in SoCal.

Don't swear so much.

Don't lost all my nail-files, lip balms, and pens.

Don't procrastinate

Don't think negatively, or anticipate. I don't know what the future holds, so it's unfair to project...

You'd Have to Know Us To Get How Not Serious This Is...

Funniest conversation ever:

M: I think you need to move back to Bloomington and become a librarian at the Kinsey Library.

Me: I think I am underqualified. I think they would want me to get a PhD in sex.

M: Oooh! I'll help you study!

Thoughts Before Sleep

Hot damn, it's cold. Bitterly cold. Colder-than-a-stepmother's-breast cold. And it's windy, too--there's a wind roaring through the palm trees and through the eaves and down the heating vent. I didn't imagine that California would be like this--not that I am complaining. It's hard to be disappointed in a place when it's cold and windy outside but cozy inside, and one is tucked up in bed, with a kitty curled up beside them, and a laptop for company. It's a good life.

Today I had to drive out to Redlands for a couple of errands, and on the way out, I passed by a HUGE tumbleweed by the side of the freeway. Not just any tumbleweed, mind you, but a weird-ass tumbleweed that was all big and poofy like a bad 80s hair-do, and that had all sorts of trash and debris and tire-tread caught up in it. It was a bizarre, yet perfectly fitting, natural collage that represented California quite beautifully.
I didn't expect to like it out here as much as I do. How much of that has to do with my friends and Arash, my super cheap rent and ideal living situation, I don't know--but I do know that I am one lucky girl.

Something to Ponder...

I was going to blog about inane little things, empty vapid commentary that's one step away from insipid Victorian social chatter. But then I got to thinking...

...which is always dangerous.

I will be 27 in less than 6 months. I'm single, in the unmarried sense. I guess I am in a relationship; my twenties seem to be defined by that. I've never been married. Never had a kid. Never been divorced.

One of my friends is separated from her husband. Another friend's divorce was finalized a few months ago. A close family member is coming up on her divorce, I think. I recently got back in touch with a friend who's been divorced for five years. The divorce rate in this country is really high, and I am beginning to believe it, when it's beginning to show in the lives of my people.

It's inevitable to ask this question: what's the point in getting married? It seems like most of us are doomed. Or are we giving in too easily? Or getting married too early? I am willing to bet all of these folks didn't get married thinking, "Hey, we'll have a few good years of it, and then go our separate ways." I'm sure it was something more like "till death do us part" and then...something changed? and they parted. I'm pretty damned sure that most of us go into marriages thinking, "It's not going to happen to us. No divorce here."

So what is it? What changes? What makes us give up?

I'm trying very hard not to be jaded about the marriage thing. Don't get me wrong--I want to get married, preferably in the next five years, give or take a year or two. I believe in marriage, and making things work. I believe in faithfulness and perseverance and compromise and working hard at a lasting relationship.

But I am pretty sure all of those other people did, too.

So, what is it? What changes?

And I don't care that this is all strictly academic, and that I am about as far from the altar as I have ever been in my entire dating life. It's a good question to ask. It's a good thing to ponder.

Not Quite A Valley Girl...But Still...

Back in college, during my neurotic undergraduate years, I majored in History. I loved--still love--history, because I love stories and different places and people. But I would make a BAD historian, because I'm not an analytical, abstract kind of thinker. I'm more of an emotional, sentimental type. I don't romanticize history (mmmm, anyone want some distended ovaries with their whalebone corsets? How 'bout a nice case of the Inquisitions?), but I do tend to look at history with more of an emotional eye.

Another example of this would be my boyfriends. I like to learn about where they grew up, and imagine what they were like, and what their lives were like, when they were there in their hometowns. With the Crap Weasel, who was...well. WAY too old for me, I drove around St. Petersburg and tried to imagine what his life was like, growing up there in the post-WWII, Golden Age of America years. (See! TOLD YOU he was too old for me.) With John the Saint, I tried to imagine what life was like for him, growing up in Daytona Beach before it got really...Daytona-y. With M, I tried to imagine what life was like, growing up in normal, anonymous Middle America, in a place with seasons, and a normal nuclear family. With Arash, I try to contextualize the Valley with him in it. Example: I visited the Valley last week, met up with an old Indiana friend and her family who live there. We went exploring, shopped at Ardvaark's Odd Ark and ate some delicious French pastries, and later, when I told Arash about it, he knew exactly where I was talking about, as I has been in his old stomping grounds.

Boyfriends past and present aside, the trip to the Valley was really, really fun. It was the first time I had been there in the daylight, the first time I got to rove through a Valley mall. And it was wonderful to see Jeana, wonderful, funky, original Jeana again. She always is so driven, put-together, organized, and creative. She makes me want to be better, do more, challenge myself. Even though I don't end up doing these things usually, she lights a fire in me. And her family is wonderful, too, her little sister, Sam, is this sweet-natured girl who agrees enthusiastically "Uh-huh!" with an unspeakably cute inflection, and her parents, whom I have met all of twice in my life, are incredibly warm and hospitable and made a wonderful dinner and basically gave me a standing invitation to their place.

AND I got to go hiking through a canyon!

So, a few pics:

The canyon!

View of the San Fernando Valley

Me. Southern California has been treating me well...

Oh Mr. Sandman...

At almost three in the morning, when you are still awake and sleep does not seem to be anywhere in your vicinity, life takes on a different shape. It morphs into something a little more abstract, something that one can keep, and examine, at a distance, in a detached sort of way. You can contemplate your daylife, your work, your interactions, your plans and hopes and to-do lists and worries, and somehow, the emotions involved seem muted. Almost as if the life you are leading is completely separate from your nightlife, as if they carried on independently of one another, never touching. And, considering the dreams I have, that's not such a stretch.

But here I am, at almost three in the morning, wide awake because I stayed up too late last night and the neighbors below me are assholes that play their television or stereo too loud. I am propped up on a bank of pillows, tapping away at a laptop, swaddled in my down comforter. It's been a long time since I have had insomnia, and I don't know quite what to make of it. Why is it that our heads become so much more jumbled full of mental clutter when we are waiting for sleep to come?