I Took A Mental Picture

On Saturday, after power H&M accessory shopping with my mom (we sent dad off to comparison price digital cameras so that one day my blog might be pretty), the parents dropped me off at GYM's place in downtown Seattle.

Usually on the weekends, I'm about the doing, the going, the creating of food or shopping for food or at the very least planning what foods I must shop for in order to create something tasty. But this weekend, I just didn't have it in me. So I went in his room, flopped on the bed and pulled my book out of my purse. And started laughing.

Laughing because of what a ridiculously old couple we already resemble. Here I was, wearing my Sounders FC sweatshirt and reading Don't Know Much About History. Him wearing his Chelsea FC jersey and reading a book about Arabian history. Every once in a while, we would move to check an FB message or scroll through LL. After about an hour, we split a Carnevale Ale while watching the Sounders game with our computers on our laps, turning the Mariners game on the radio about an hour later.

I had no camera. But Saturday afternoon is captured perfectly in my memory. We fit together. We rest well together.

Love in the Time Of Anberlin

Some things in life are unforgettable

I haven't been keeping up with this blog recently. The busy-ness of having an office job combined with tutoring, editing, and baseball has taken a bit of a toll. But here I am, sitting in front of a chapter on the IPE of food, and I can't concentrate. My mind keeps drifting, and it keeps returning to a heavy subject: the nature of love.

If this isn't love, this is the closest I've ever been

I've always felt that love is love, and when you love one person you should have no feelings for someone else. But is that really possible? If someone breaks into our heart, breaks it apart and wedges their way inside, does it always get stitched back together again?

I don't care now where we live; it's not where, or what, or who we were with

As I get older, I find it harder to keep naive illusions of love. When I first fell in love four years ago, I thought it had the power to conquer anything. Distance. Culture. Beliefs. The past. You fall in love, you stay in love, and you get through everything.

Give me time to prove
Prove I want the rest of yours
Call this a prelude to a lifetime of you

Falling in love now, I realize that's really what it is--a process. You fall and you keep falling, learning about the other person, figuring out their flaws and faults and marveling over the connectedness. Love isn't about drama and roller coasters. It is intense and building and strong. That's what I know right now.

And my world still turns when you're not around

It's the in-between, the second love, that's where I get stuck. It's a love that defies logic, that shouldn't exist, that hovers unrequited. I can't see its beginning and it had no heart-felt reason to end. This is the love that forced me to face up to my romantic notions, to acknowledge that my life is not a song lyric and I won't be rescued by a dashing man on a white horse. Sometimes love has to end before it really gets its chance to begin.

Steal a kiss yet and call us friends
Distance is the thief in which you conspire

But the problem is that I haven't been able to completely close that tear in my heart. There's still a weak spot. I'm still vulnerable. And I have this fear that I can't be good enough, can't be giving a good enough love, if I didn't give him my entire heart.

Could've been more but at least you're still my day late friend

You're the Only Thing That I Love, Scares Me More Each Day

Sitting on my porch with my cup of coffee this morning, I watched a hummingbird hovering over a cone-shaped, magenta flower. And I sat and I thought about something that I've discussed with a few people over the past couple months.

I sat and I thought about love. I thought about how, when it all comes down to it, it's much harder to be in love with a city than it is with an individual. Our nation is one of transience. It is a place where people move for jobs, or for family, or simply for a change of place. And so to fall in love with a city, to have a desire to put down roots, that's intensely scary.

Especially in this city. This is a place that often focuses more on its past than its future. It is not a place that is thriving, where people go to make a name for themselves. It is not at the forefront of agricultural development or community food planning.

There is also the issue of falling in love with a place before falling in love with a person. For awhile, I thought B got it--but he didn't, doesn't, get this place in the way that I do. He didn't want to know everything he could about its streets, its history, its lore. He didn't read Gambit--not even the food issues. There's such a distinction between not caring about the place, not understanding the place, tolerating the place, and diving in and letting this place swarm all over your skin.

I wonder if I could even fall in love anymore with someone that doesn't understand what it means to drown in this city. I do know that I fear falling for someone and that person not wanting to be here, here in New Orleans where nearly every inch feels like home. It was a decision that was staring me in the face for awhile...and one that actually caused tension in my old relationship. I didn't want to leave. So it's a genuine concern.

And that's what I mean when I say it's harder to love a city than a person. She's captured me, and I'm afraid that she won't let me go.

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Now playing: Mae - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Like Love Loss Lies and Us

Like lipstick traces on pillowcases
Some things in life are unforgettable
Like love, loss, lies and us
Some things in life are undeniable
...Adelaide, Anberlin

So I've been avoiding the blog a bit. I haven't had the words, and I'm not sure I have them yet, but they are part of a story that has been told so many times already...

Once again, B and I seem to be on the out-side of our romantic relationship. Every other time that this has happened, we have not been strong enough to see through a break. We are each other's best friend, and we have grown together and want many of the same things for our future. But at this point, it feels that we are more often hurting each other than uplifting each other. We have yet to decide what our relationship might look like. We know that we don't want to slam the door on the possibility of ever trying romance again, but we also know that we want to place our friendship and our individual needs first.

For the first time in the history of these breaks, I don't feel upset, or scared, or nervous about the future. For once I'm able to let it go and know that the future is not in my hands. I know that we will both be healthier if we just step back and not work so damn hard on this.

Speaking of healthy, Mom arrives tomorrow night! She's going to be here for four days to help make sure we get my health back on track. I'm so tired of being tired, of worrying about what is off in my body. Tomorrow morning is yet another doctor's appointment and at this point I just want to know something.

I do have to say this, for those of you who read my blog from far away: while I may not have my genetic family here, in the past year I've come to find a family, a community, a group that makes me grin and brings tears to my eyes with how wonderful they are. They've given me ears, brought me meds, are accompanying me to the doctor, let me sleep on their couches, make me breakfast while I study, and given me reason to leave the house when I just want to stay inside with the covers wrapped around me. Although tonight, after a biostats exam given by Satan's messenger, a night tucked in bed sounds quite alright by me.

Now I know it was only you I've been searching for

PostSecret. I check it each week, usually on Monday mornings. Sometimes the secrets are so heartbreaking they bring tears to my eyes. Sometimes I see myself in them. And sometimes they bring a smile to my face.

This video has a few of the heartbreaking secrets. I can relate to the one in which the girl gives her heart and the boy says, "No thanks." But what I know most is the one at the end..."Good love is on the way." Good love isn't something that just randomly shows up in our lives. Sometimes we don't recognize it. Often we want it to be perfect. Every once in awhile, we do everything in our power to screw it up, because we don't believe that it's enough, that the love we have is good enough.

And then, every once in a great great great while, we are lucky enough to have our eyes opened in time to avoid throwing away the good love. Love isn't always exciting. It doesn't always make us want to send secrets in to Frank Warren or doodle hearts on our notepads or give the sensation of a roller-coaster ride. Sometimes we're not sure that the good love is good enough. But then we realize...well, we realize that for all of someone's flaws and imperfections, that that person is the one that we see in the future, for all of the future, the one that we need when life crashes down and the one that we celebrate with when life gets good.

It's been a tough six months. It's probably still going to be a bit of a rough road. But to know again that I have a partner, someone to plan the future with, someone that is my first in the morning and last at night, well...well, it's making all my cheesy love songs make sense again.


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Now playing: Anberlin - Godspeed
via FoxyTunes

La flor mas linda de mi querer

At home, an abundance of books and papers overlays the heavy furniture I inherited from my grandparents. A perfectly simple room, with one perfect object to meditate on, remains a dream until I step outside, onto the Plains. A tree. A butte. The sunrise. It always makes me wonder: What is enough? Are there enough trees here? As always, it seems that the more I can distinguish my true needs and my wants, the more I am shocked to realize how little is enough.

- Kathleen Norris
Dakota

Every day.
Every day--that's how often I think about leaving. About finally doing it, running away, going to the place that has my heart.
And every day I find a new excuse. Quite a bit of the time, it has to do with the "stuff" I am so used to. I like to pretend I'm not, but hey, this life is easy, right? I have two iPods. High speed internet. Fully stocked kitchen. Not enough room on the bookshelves for all my books. Unlimited access to Guitar Hero.
Can I really live without this? Do I really want to go somewhere where I wouldn't have all these freedoms, all this luxury, all the comforts of my life?

It seems it would be so difficult, so very very difficult, to surrender them--not temporarily but long-term.

But yet there's still this:
I can feel Nicaragua clawing at my brain

I don't remember where I read that quote. I don't remember who said it or in what context. All I know is that it applies. Every day, every day, every day Nicaragua is there, a presence, telling me that love is sometimes more than a person, that love is sometimes a place, and that even for all its flaws, failures and difficulties, I am not willing to give up on love.

And so maybe this quote that I began with is something to repeat.
The more I can distinguish
My true needs
and wants
The more I am shocked
To realize
How little is
Enough

Makes the City Seem Like Home

Hello all.
I am sorry it's taken so long to post again...I think I'm done with Nicaragua by now and want to give you an update on my life, if that's alright by you, my slightly loyal readers.

First of all, I am in love again.
This time it is with a city, as many of you may have suspected.
I've been to New Orleans three times in the past month and a half, and each time I leave it it is more difficult.
There is something inexplicable about the city, and if you don't feel it I can't convince you that it exists. It gets under your skin and lives within you...
Of course, at this point I am at the twitterpation stage, yet to embark on a new relationship. The good is apparent, the bad not so much. I am sure that once I live there the sheen will diminish as I see the crime, the corruption, the dirt. But I've never felt this way about any city other than London, so I think it's worth the chase.

Here's what I've been doing:
**Celebrating, obviously, at Mardi Gras, but I did not get to stick around for the end, unfortunately. Next year. B's house is only 4 blocks from the parade route and it was so convienent.
**Meeting with the development research department at Tulane University. Unfortunately, they have yet to post the two open research positions that they have. I don't know why...seems to me that it would help them manage the workload, but...Anyway, I loved the people and the location, but not sure I have the patience to hold out for it.
**Interviewing at the Office of Research Administration. This interview was Monday and I should hear next week, but I'm still active on the job search. This job would be close to where I would take classes and sounds like it would keep me busy, which is a definite positive!
**Applying to be a paralegal. Apparently my mother never told me that I'd be good at it (although she insists that she did). I always thought paralegals were ditzy people who earned their degrees in two weeks from an ad on television, but apparently they do a lot of research. I'm playing phone tag about an interview for that.
**Earning an interview with TeachNola. Still not sure I could ever be a teacher...I think I could. I know that I'm a nerd and I know I like to teach people things, but how much of it would be teaching and how much would be struggling to make kids pay attention? But I'd get my teaching certification paid for and that would sure be something helpful to have in the future.

Cross your fingers that I leave this lonely town soon...I've made a good friend and learned that research is a suitable position for me, but it's time to move on.