To be kinder than expected
To eat when hungry
smile when happy
sleep when tired
To feel comfortable as often as possible
and to laugh at silly mistakes
or big mistakes
– eventually they will be funny
so laugh sooner than later
To remember birthdays
and strange holidays
To kiss strangers and lovers on the cheeks
To do push ups
and row at the gym
To enjoy ducks, trees, the sea, the mountains,
the color blue
or lime
Life should probably be done in drafts.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the opportunity to rewrite? Maybe knowing that you can’t is what makes editing so difficult. Editing — we should do it, but can’t when we want to the most.
It’s the opportunity to make everything just so, right? Worth re-reading.
Here I was, thinking that I’d get out for a twenty minute run and all of a sudden a story just started flowing out of my fingers and I had 800 in just about that same twenty minutes. I’m not saying that’s a huge amount, but I think it’s pretty fast and I’m a little shocked by both the rapidity of the muse’s strike and the intensity of it. Usually this sort of thing only happens to me with slam poetry. Although I can remember one other time I wrote a story suddenly and out of utter necessity. It actually came out quite well, although I’ve just returned to it in recent weeks for some serious editing.
In any case, I really need to be writing a travel essay to turn in next Friday, so maybe I should try to focus my resources with more discipline, but it’s so hard to turn away from the muse. In fact, I think it’s terribly stupid to turn away from it. So, let there be much writing in the days and hours and minutes to come (after I run).
I need a philosophical running buddy, I think. Dear friends of mine with a desire to talk crazy while running, if you are nearby and would/could do 8-minute miles for about six or eight miles, I’m your gal.
Oh gosh, I just used the word ‘gal.’ I absolutely must go.
Sometimes it's just blurry up close.
But don’t worry! I didn’t.
I was in the middle of realizing that during this day of rather rippling emotions, I had eaten only a plum, a slice of gingerbread loaf with a small latte, two bites of a banana, and around five or six bites of yogurt. (Until dinner, that is).
Let me explain. This was not intentional, but I’ve been feeling fairly stressed out about the fact that I think it’s important to be fair and balanced (seriously, not like Fox) in talking about controversial issues. And I keep engaging with critical arguments about things that I feel really strongly about (one example: abortion and choice), and every time I feel shaken — not necessarily in my perspective, but definitely in some weird essence of me that I might call a soul.
Engaging is important, I think, but I am finding that sometimes engagement takes a serious emotional toll. A few of my friends have pointed out that I throw myself into ideas with a lot of force — to the point that people don’t always want to hang out with me for the free and easy stuff.
I have been asked, on more than one occasion, if I exercise, because people seem to think that exercise is a good release for both high levels of intensity and anxiety. They’re right, and sometimes I’m running along and something fantastic occurs to me, or I write a haiku in my head, but exercising doesn’t always provide answers to deep philosophical questions. And unfortunately, although I really want to believe otherwise, it seems as if the really big questions don’t always have answers.
Still, I’m really glad I didn’t drop my computer. And that I ate dinner. There are good things in my life, even when I’m shaking.
Maybe this is me.
On the first day of my social and political philosophy class, I walked into the scattered circle of desks and felt immediately exposed. This guy watched me walk in, sit down, and pull out my binder. His eyes ran over my body and then fixed on me while I tried to chat casually with someone else.
Now I should point out that I was not entirely uncomfortable. Maybe I was indignant—it was crass. But there were other girls in the room, and he was looking at me.
That is, he was looking at me until there was a better option, which is inevitable; there is always a better option.
She was tall, thin, and white with a tight, short hair cut. Normal brown hair, but with a build like Seven of Nine from Star Trek, only she had smaller breasts. She was wearing three-inch, chunky heels, a collared black button-up, black slacks and vivid raspberry-bright lipstick.
Lipstick has always been hard for me.
He practically jumped as she passed through his field of vision. Eyes scanned down, up, locked-in, mouth open like a paralyzed fish. I smiled, leaned over to the girl I’d been talking to, “At least we’re not getting ogled…” She looked up, hesitant, and said, “Huh, yeah.”
I don’t think she had any idea what I was talking about.
This other woman was brilliantly cool looking. Her eyes were so blue that I imagined her blonde when she wasn’t right there for me to see in brunette reality.
And she was the T.A. She led a class discussion a few weeks later. Mostly she was silent in class, gazing over us, smiling serenely at particularly pertinent comments, or smiling serenely because the comment was inane and, yes, she recognized inane. She always seemed cool, detached, and maybe a little like she was over-compensating—she did look like a student. When the professor was gone, she sat in front of us, spine vertical, bottom on the edge of her seat and our questions, written on note cards, clasped firmly.
Even though she did speak on occasion and it really shouldn’t have come as a shock, her voice always surprised me. At first I thought it reminded me of a line from the Cake song, Short Skirt, Long Jacket. It goes; “With fingernails that shine like justice and a voice that is dark like tinted glass.” Except that her voice wasn’t dark. It was reflective and shiny, more like broken glass. It ricocheted out, too loud, maybe insecure?
In the same song, the singer wishes for a girl with “shoes that cut and eyes that burn cigarettes.” I felt like I had met the real version of the girl who Cake wanted—the one who is not perfect, but looks like she might be.
I thought she was stunning, even as the disparity between her voice and appearance was unsettling. It was the way you might feel when you meet someone and have an uncanny sense of what her name should be, only to discover it’s something entirely different, something essentially grating to her character or presence. In this case, she was the kind of woman who defines fly for white people, but then she sounded like an over-achieving high school student; “Well, actually, I think…”
Maybe it was a little disappointing?
The boy from the first day dropped the class. He stayed after to talk to the professor, though, and managed to ask me where my shawl was from. I acted bitchier than I am, and smiled really coolly. Then I said it was from Chile. He liked it; I said, “Oh, thanks.”
