May 29, 2015

And so it begins

Today is Friday night and the end of my first day of staff training. I got in and survived a mess of paperwork and signatures and panicked phone to mom: "When was my last tetanus shot? What's the address for my insurance? Please keep that stray puppy you found." 

I think eventually I'll have my phone taken and will only get to use it during my free time with permission. In the meantime for tonight I can keep up my Friday blog post as I was hoping. 

It was awesome to see old staff members who have known me since I was a baby and are like family now, as well as all of the new staff (which includes a super cute baby wearing a superhero costume. 

The theme for the week is the Ultimate Hero and one of the full time staff made an incredible video I can hopefully get ahold of and share on the blog because it was so epic. Superheroes are the best and I know the best superhero of all. It's going to be an amazing week. This is one of those places you just show up to and feel good. It's a good place to be. So full and peaceful and wonderful. 

I got to see a friend I didn't know would be working at camp. She and I started a bible study for middle school girls a couple years ago and she's amazing. Turns out she'll be working in the store with me and I am so excited to be working with her. She's a lot of fun and so encouraging. 

But also this whole place just feels like renewal. 

It'll be difficult and I know I'll be stretched out of my comfort zone and pulled in directions I could never have imagined. 

I'll admit I'm not thrilled about meeting a bunch of new people and all the hard work but camp makes it easy to make friends and feel comfortable even outside of that comfort zone. It's awesome. I'm so excited and scared and amazed at the fact that I'm here. 

But it's almost lights out and I am more than exhausted so that's enough of a blog post for today. 

May 28, 2015

Year after Year

It's great to have friends. This morning my sister and brother in law drove me down to another Colorado town to visit a friend and then start work at camp. (I am so so glad everything worked out so that they did get to drive me. At one point it looked like they would go camping in the opposite direction and I would be going down on the bus with all my five bags of stuff. Luckily they signed up for pictures at a church directory in this town, and I think maybe just felt kind of bad, so I got a ride after all.)

This friend I'm staying with for a couple days had been my friend for years. In fourth grade we ran around playing fairies at recess and when I left after one semester we stayed friends somehow. I came back in eight grade and we clicked instantly. It was like we'd never been apart- though we abandoned the fairies in middle school...

After a year I left again (it seems like I am always leaving somewhere) but this time we made use of Skype and email and when we rejoined in eleventh grade for a semester we knew everything that had happened in each other's lives over the gap. She knows all my friends from high school in Mexico just because of how much we talk. I know way more of the kids here in Colorado than I would otherwise because of hearing her stories.

Yesterday we were talking and she pointed out some event I'd gone to that I didn't even remember. We know each other so well, and seeing her again feels so great. I haven't laughed this much in a while. I can talk about the hard things that have happened and don't have to explain back story because she already knows it.

It's a fantastic bit of joy before starting camp and I am thankful beyond words. 

May 25, 2015

As the Poems Go- Charles Bukowski

Tonight I stumbled upon the poems of Charles Bukowski. I was looking for a poem to include in this post and found one I really liked. Then I found another which my amazing Writing Professor in college had read at the beginning of a couple of different classes. So I decided that I would use one of his poems for this post and spent way too long reading poetry by Charles Bulowski, and I love him. In a one writer to another sense, of course. I also began a list of poems for my next poetry anthology which I am sure I will have to compose next time I take a class with said writing professor. He always makes his students hand copy fifty poems as a final project for class.

As a result I am writing this post from my phone, which is a lot harder and can't be very good for my thumbs. Not to mention I am so tired- my brain is fuzzy- and my head is spinning with poetry.

Today was a rather emotional day, packing always brings me down for some reason- even if I'm packing my sister's stuff and not even my own. Plus long distance relationships of every kind are hard, and sometimes I feel the distance more than others. Not just my boyfriend, I can feel how far away my family and friends are as well.

Thank goodness for writing friends who will show me ridiculous cat pictures and talk about poetry with me and for sisters who make strawberries and pound cake for dessert and boyfriends who stay up later than planned to make sure I'm smiling. It's hard to stay sad with people like this in my life.

Yesterday I was up at six to volunteer at a bike race, handing out water, energy drinks and snacks to the participants as they biked past. I have no idea why that was so much fun, but I had a blast. Not to mention breathtaking mountains on every side and that sweet Colorado smell of sage and damp dirt. I love this place.

We also tested out my sister and her husband's new car by driving up a mountain pass and getting to go four-wheeling up a mountain. Again with the beauty. Then I got to play with a baby, daughter of a couple my brother in law works with while at a party.

I just completely lost my train of thought and have no idea where this post was going. I think it's bedtime. I'm sto recovering from these stupid allergies that always turn into sickness and asthma for me, so more sleep is always good.

Ah! I almost forgot the Bukowski poem I ranted about in the first paragraph. Here it is:

As The Poems Go

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.

May 22, 2015

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond- e.e.cummings

My life is going to change this summer. I can feel it. I came to Colorado with a plan to get a job, make some money, and spend a quiet summer with my sister and her husband and soon to come husky puppy. Instead I'll be living and working at a camp four hours away from my sister, making less money than I could and working more hours.

I worked at the same camp two summers ago (The camp is an amazing place, full of meaning and memories for me. I imagine at some point there will be a post all about this place.) That was the summer after my tenth grade and my year had been so difficult and I spent the last months of school praying that over the summer God would transform me and speak to me and use me. And He did. He really really did, and it was incredible.

This past semester of college was also hard, but I survived and I think I wanted to just keep surviving, but I know something even better is going to happen. I'm not going to have a quiet, easy summer. I know that already. But it's going to be amazing. It's going to change my life. I don't know how I know this, I just do.

But for now I do get one more week of quiet and rest, and I'm trying to make the best of it without just doing nothing all day, which tends to make me feel slightly depressed instead of rested. My sister and I hiked through Black Canyon the other day and followed along a family of geese. We had to pass them eventually and I was so terrified that I would have to add "attacked by goose" to my list of things I've done, but luckily the angry father goose let us pass without too much trouble.

I also saw a marmot which was so cute and super exciting, and so many chipmunks and I just can't get over how adorable animals are.

Even tonight when I'm fighting for breath and suffering trough itchy eyes and a runny nose because we spent the afternoon eating at someone's house with a couple of dogs. I still love animals, especially the tiny puppy we went to see today that will be my sister's puppy in just over a month. So cute. You have no idea.

Equity Blue has a few more pages of writing as of today and I even wrote a few poems, but then misplaced them and benedril is making me way to tired to go search. So here is a poem by e. e. Cummings, a man who somehow gets away with doing all my biggest writing pet peeves and yet no matter how hard I try to hate him and all his poetry they're just so good that I can't.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if you wish to be close to me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands 

May 21, 2015

The Things We Don't Expect

Last night as I was returning from watching a movie I developed an awful headache just as I was remembering that I needed to write a blog post. I wasn't going to stay awake long enough to find out if I had a migraine.

So here is a few hours late post for Wednesday. After Monday's head to head with failure I called my mom for a wonderful conversation and then wrote back to camp, where I had applied, been accepted, and then I had said no. I wrote back and was given a very enthusiastic: "yes, we have a position. Please come!" So Tuesday I called in for an over the phone interview with a good friend I've known for years.

My parents met at camp and got married there, and worked there before we left the country. Going to camp is like going back. So I said yes. It felt like God has taken me for a loop. Camp was one of the first places I applied to even though I knew I would probably just turn it down in the end. Then I applied to what felt like a thousand more places and nothing worked out. I was so frustrated, and then He brought me back around to look at camp.

I'll make les money than I would at basically any other job I could have taken, though I do have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship. It will take more of my time than the other jobs. It will require more energy. I'll have to live at a camp instead of this lovely room to myself with my own bathroom and everything. At camp there's a good chance I'll have to hike up a hill to teach the bathroom. Camp will limit my access to technology by a lot, and at this point I don't even know if I'll be able to keep up on my blog. I may have to drop down to a weekly post.

But even with the list of negatives there's something about working for camp that just sort of feels right. I'll admit that it was tough to get calls from three of the places I'd applied to the moment I said yes to working at camp either telling me I was hired or asking me to come interview. But I had already said yes to camp, for the second time, and I think it's the right decision. Maybe that's just because in the end I didn't get much of a choice at all.

And here's a poem that really has nothing to do with anything, but at least it's a poem:

They all sing songs of Icarus,
ballads, stories, poems.
Fly too high,
touch the sun,
never fly again.

But who tells of that
other fear,
that pain of flying.
Displacement
as all the world below
starts to fade away, leaving
you
alone,
unforgivably alone,
in the vast expanse of sky.

May 18, 2015

Face off with Failure

Dealing with failure. Sometimes we just fail. Nothing goes the way we hope and expect and we just have to face failure. So what do we do? How do we handle failure?

I've been applying for summer jobs for at least three months now, and nothing at all has come through, except for a job at camp which I turned down because I thought I had so many other options and I didn't want to have to spend a whole summer essentially off the grid. Long distance relationships are hard enough without only being able to talk once a week.

But application after application and interviews and phone calls and yet I'm still sitting here with no job. I'm facing failure right now, and it hurts.

After my interview at the grocery store today I bought myself an iced coffee to celebrate one more interview done and trick myself into thinking how great a chance I had and how everything was going to work out. But then I got home and my sister asked how the interview went and it was like a tidal wave punched me in the stomach.

The required background check can take anywhere from three days to two weeks, and my interviewer said it will take longer if I've ever lived out of state. Great. Not only have I lived in Colorado, Vermont and Indiana in the last seven years, I've also lived in two different states in Mexico and I did a couple months in Europe. Considering what I know about Mexican Bureaucracy, which my English teacher and good friend compared to a tangled ball of Oaxaca Cheese, they'll probably never finish the background check. If they do, it'll for sure take the whole two weeks.

And then there's always that possibility that after those two weeks I'll get a call saying I don't get the job. Or more likely I won't get any calls, since that seems to be the trend with all the thousands of places I've applied to. I mean, as much as the rejection hurts, it's better than the uncertainty and abandonment of not even getting a call. I'm not even worth a phone call to hear that they don't want me.

And now it's too late to apply anywhere. Summer is pretty much already here, and business have already hired the people they want, as was explained to me in a ten minute long voice mail by the only business who did call back. "I'm applying late in the game." I wonder if she would have said that if she knew how many hours I've spent trying to find a job.

So my first reaction to dealing with failure was to mumble something to my sister and run up to my room, close the door, throw myself on the bed and cry into my pillow. Makeup and tears don't mix well. I hope the mascara doesn't stain the sheets...

My second reaction is to write about it, because sometimes when I'm feeling awful writing it all down helps me to see that it really isn't the end of the world and I'm just overreacting.

I don't know what the next step is. My sister said I should call my mom, but I'm not up to talking to anyone except paper (or theoretical paper here on the computer screen). I'll call her later and see if there are any places in this tiny little town I haven't applied to yet. I'll pray my voice out that somehow the background check will only take three days and I'll get a call telling me I got the job. Any job.

I know God has some sort of plan not just for my life but for this summer. It's just really hard to see what that could be when every door I try to walk through seems to just slam back into my face. I don't know what to do anymore except try to use this unwanted free time to work on my novel some more and crank out poems that hopefully aren't awful. Here's to writing- apparently the only thing I can do.

May 15, 2015

Existence Beyond the Canyon

Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck on some twisted roller coaster. Yesterday I spent a vast amount of my day taking personality tests for my characters and doing some research for each type. My main character, Equity Blue, came out as INTJ, which also happens to be my boyfriend's personality type, and I spent forever reading every detail on that page.

It's so crazy to me to read that this personality type "may go so far as to claim they have no emotions at all." Of course the site explains that INTJs aren't just cold-blooded and emotionless, and in fact may have deeper feelings simply because of the fact that they typically don't pay much attention to feelings and therefore aren't used to feelings when they do arise and can't just be pushed down.

My INTJ boyfriend does have a tendency to just kind of push emotion aside. He'll just kind of shut down emotions and have a good day because there's just no rational reason for being sad or angry or any of those negative emotions, so he can just let the rational, logical side take over and act as though he's emotionless. I know he's not, and I probably get to see more glimpses of the deeper emotions than most, but still.

I am an INFP, and kind of the complete opposite. Emotions swoop in and sometimes it feels like there's nothing I can do about it. I'll just feel sad for no reason, even after the best day imaginable, or I'll suddenly get these massive burst of happiness when suddenly I can do anything and be anything. I can't imagine being able to tone down the emotion and choose to feel a certain way. I just don't know how.

I think this is part of why my main character for this next book is an INTJ. It's like my way of imagining what life would be like from that other perspective. I'm building a character who is so different from myself, and right now during this break in life as I wait to hear back from some job (any job {I handed out three more resumes today and got an interview set up Monday for City Market}) I am taking the time off to really explore Equity's brain and find out how she functions and why.

That sounds kind of weird now that it's written down, considering this character exists only in imagination. I'm going to drive myself crazy by talking to these voices in my head.

I want to write more, my fingers are full of energy tonight. But it's getting late and I have to work out and read a couple chapters of my Bible and maybe one or two more from my current read Wizard of Earthsea before I head to sleep. Plus, my computer battery is about to die and I am one of the laziest creatures on earth right now and my plug on the other side of the room is just too far away. See? Emotions. I get sad for no reason and then that turns into laziness. It's a never ending struggle.

Here's a poem I am considering using as a part of Equity Blue. Definitely needs some work, but here is a preliminary draft. It should definitely have some punctuation as well, but as I said, laziness. So here's a first draft, enjoy. Thoughts on improvement always welcome. Or thoughts on whatever, really.

I write the stars into existence
with a flick of my hand
create their blinking eyes
watch them dance against the black paint
of this night sky

I write the sky
because I cannot stand the earth
I sit in a cave made of books
and tread lightly
head down
so they will not even know I breathe

I do not belong
in this earth of deep canyons
tearing through the desert of my heart
and I long to escape the flash floods
and crushing weight of rockslides
pushing me always further down
into the crevices of this dust

The furthest I can see from earth
is that white hole in the black sky
and all the twinkling little stars
who mock my cage
and laugh at gravity

With a flick of my hand 
I write the stars into existence
and dream-
how this ink makes me dream-
that I, too, can one day
fly away.

Reviews: 5



May 13, 2015

My Eyes are Raining

I've decided to challenge myself to write something on this blog on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Three days a week shouldn't be too impossible, right? I'm sure once I get a job (if I get a job. I'm reduced to applying to Wal-Mart, City Market and McDonald's...)  writing might get a little harder, but as long as I remember I think I can do it without a problem.

Today was a lot of board games, a "product party" for a product I can no longer remember the name of, the movie Totoro (in Japanese so I can practice), the beginning of the second book on my reading list: Wizard of Earthsea, a grocery shopping trip, and a phone call with my best friend. Despite still not having a job and not getting the phone call back from the internship position which I was really hoping for, I had a really wonderful day, and it was only partially due to the fact that I bought a new skirt yesterday and I always feel a little better when I look cute. Hm, is that too vain to put up on the internet?

I've also decided that in some ways this blog has turned very much into a poetry blog, so I'll try and include poems in my posts. I have yet to decide if I want to include a poem in every post, though. I'll see. For now, here is another attempt at a Pantoum. This style of poetry is kind of haunting me and I just can't seem to get it right.
Also, disclaimer, aside from just not sounding good, my pantoums also tend to turn out rather needlessly sad. I'm not sure why. I really did have a good day, I promise. I haven't cried at all in the last three days, which is actually really good. I know, I know, I'm kind of a crybaby. I didn't even cry in Totoro, though, and that's a sad movie. So this is one of those cases when the speaker of the poem is not the same one as the writer. The end. I'll stop rambling.

the light touch of rain
draws the drops from my eyes
pulls up old strands of pain
and the echos of cries


drawing drops from my eyes
my tears tempt me
with the echos of cries
to be drowned in my memory

my tears tempt me
to lose sight of the sun
to drown in my memory
and forget what you've done

to lose sight of the sun
means to choke on my grief
and forget what you've done
and forget my belief
 
I mean to choke on my grief
pull up old strands of pain
and forget my belief
in the light touch of rain

May 11, 2015

Dandelion Sunshine

I praise God for a wonderful day today.

I woke up at 7:30 and got to lay in bed and watch the sun filter through my window because as frustrating as not getting a job is, it also means I don't have to do anything for a few more days. Eventually I made it downstairs for breakfast and tea and then read some more Wuthering Heights by a window full of sunshine.

Have I mentioned that I love sunshine?


Then I got to call one of my best friends from high school, talk to my sister for a while, call my wonderful boyfriend, read some more, and eat a picnic lunch outside in the sun. My sister and I laid in the dandelion dotted grass for around an hour soaking up the vitamin D and then went back inside and painted each other's finger nails and watched some old tv show about aliens living on earth...

At three I interviewed for a night audit at one of the hotels in town, and came back nearly panicked because I could get the job and I don't want to settle for a job that puts me, the girl who sleeps nine hours a night behind a desk from 11pm to 7am five days a week.

I then frantically called my mom, who calmed all my fears in a couple seconds of conversation and gave me advice for what to do next. Then we talked about relationships and people and college for about an hour. I didn't say anything yesterday about Mother's Day, but I was reminded again today how lucky I am to have the mom I do. Seriously, my mom is amazing. I miss her so much but I love this technology that lets me hear her voice from across countries.

After a lot more reading in the sun I cooked Enchiladas for my sister and her husband while continuing to be amazed at how this technology can keep me connected to my college roommate still in Vermont, my boyfriend, other college friends, and high school friends and even a friend who's been around (though rarely ever in location) since fourth grade.

But one of my favorite moments was sitting down tonight while my sister and her husband went for a bike ride and pulling up a new Word document. I sat down thinking I would write a letter to those Whisperers from that fantasy novel I've been considering rewriting, but instead I found Equity Blue talking through my fingers pointing out yet another way I could tell the story.

So now I have three more pages of notes and a new idea of how to write down this story I've been dying to tell for more than four years now. I'm so excited to plan out ideas this summer. I'm thinking that I'll do outlining and note taking these next few months, and if my inspiration continues then by the time I go back to college I will have a story at my fingertips ready to be typed up, and maybe my fiction workshop class will be the place where Equity Blue finally finds life.

I'm so excited that I don't even have a poem to put here, and I heard my sister saying something about Full House coming on in a few minutes....

May 10, 2015

Keeping Things Whole- Mark Strand


These last few days have been a whirlwind. Friday morning my sister drove five and a half hours with me to go visit some friends from the college she went to before transferring. One of the girls graduated Saturday, so we went to a diner for dinner and then tried to watch her graduation the next morning. Unfortunately, we didn't get any seats in the graduation building and decided watching speeches on a screen just wasn't the same. That, combined with a Colorado May 9th snowfall, sent us back on the road for the drive back up the mountains. I finally see why I should consider actually learning how to drive and getting my license. My sister would have loved some driving help...

Saturday afternoon we got back to a houseful for another friend's graduation party. We ate massive hamburgers (or at least I tried to finish mine) and drank soda from mustachioed straws and played Apples to Apples. All of this under streamers and balloons hanging from all over the ceiling.

Although by the end of the day my inner introvert was crying for solitude and wishing I had a room to go hide in, talking about hiking and climbing and writing and reading was fantastic. I still laugh at myself for how easily I get carried away talking about books and poetry. 

Still no job update, but I'm hopeful that tomorrow I will get some kind of phone calls either finally finishing the search or letting me know that I need to print out more resumes and hand them out at every store in town. In the meantime, I'm trying to encourage myself to write something. Problem is, I'm not sure what I would rather write- poetry or stories or work on a novel, and Wuthering Heights has captivated me so much that I can't seem to put it down long enough to focus on writing. 

In fact, I'm quite sure the only reason I'm writing this now is because I'm at my brother in law's grandma's house and Wuthering Heights is stuffed in a closet back at my sister's house with all the rest of my stuff. The documentary about Henry the Eighth isn't quite enthralling me, even though I know literature and history are supposed to go together and I should like history. But it's about time for an update anyway. So here it is. Tonight I'll chop off some more chapters of reading and hopefully soon I can find the time and enthusiasm to write my own page turner. 

In the meantime: a poem by someone else.

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

In a field 
I am the absence 
of field. 
This is 
always the case. 
Wherever I am 
I am what is missing. 
When I walk 
I part the air 
and always 
the air moves in   
to fill the spaces 
where my body's been. 
We all have reasons 
for moving. 
I move 
to keep things whole.




May 6, 2015

Jenga Blocks and This Life Thing

The passage of time is an interesting thing. I still don't understand how five days can feel like an innumerable amount of years. I was in Burlington, Vermont less than a week ago dying to get out of college. Now I'm trying to readjust to life in a house where I have to wash dishes and cook meals, but at least I don't have to leave the house to eat.

I still have nothing on jobs, just more applications and interviews and trying to plaster a smile on my face that says "hire me" but when asked why I want the job I freeze because I do not know. I want the job because my mom wants me to have one. I want the job because I can't afford college without one. Or even with one for that matter. I want the job because I would get bored sitting in my sister's house all day, and it would make me fat and lazy with no work ethic. I want the job because it's a job and it will give me life experience I will maybe one day write into a book. I want the job because I'm so sick of wondering what job I'm going to have.

But the last two days were so much more relaxing anyway, and today I even got to walk to the library with my sister in sunshine. I am amazed by my own self's desire for sunshine, and I don't know how I let myself end up living in Vermont. But the walk was nice, with flowers along the way and an almost not cold wind. We got to spend plenty of time in the library finding books for summer reading (I checked out Wizard of Earthsea) and then walk back books in arm while she pointed out this little town's landmarks. (Her husband's office, her church, the new courthouse, Main Street.)

We also spent a large chunk of the day playing Jenga, which I mostly lost. I find it strange how often I wish for things to stay together. Brokenness, destruction and pain, like the news of a good friend laying in the hospital in a coma after he overdosed, terrifies me. And yet here is this game which inevitably ends in destruction and chaos and brokenness. The loud crash of blocks hitting the table and spilling onto the floor makes me jump, but it makes me laugh and want to play again. Maybe it's a reminder that the end of something doesn't have to be a bad thing, or maybe it's the hopefulness of it that I love. No matter how many times the tower falls you can always set it back up and start over.

I'm afraid I've rambled too much. I shouldn't write posts in the middle of the night when I should be asleep. But I'm too full of words tonight and even though I got to talk to my best friend back home and chat with my boyfriend and talk to my sister is n person, I still think better in written words sometimes.

I don't know what my point is. I'm just trying to figure out how this life thing works. How do I fit a thousand years into one day? How do I fit one day into a thousand years? Thank goodness the One I've trusted my life to isn't constrained by this awful time thing. 

May 4, 2015

The Atmosphere

Today I filled out two hotel job applications, one daycare/preschool application, I went to one pizza place interview and called about setting up an interview at a resort. This whole process feels so slow and while it isn't incredibly hard, I feel it wearing on me. Am I applying to the right jobs? Am I saying the right thing? Filling out the correct information? What job should I take? Will any of them even accept me?

It's tough, and I wish I could just enjoy a few days with my sister without this constant pressure to find a job. I hate that money has to be so important right now, and I hate that every second feels like it should be preparing for the next. I just want to relax. I want to take a break from that tornado year of college. I want to get a job so I can stop worrying about getting a job.

Adult life stinks.

But- I am with my sister, and at the very least we got to take a break from chaos to paint each other's nails and go to a beauty salon to be practice models for the hair people practicing for the big wedding season. We got more than we bargained for, sitting in salon chairs for two hours while they tried off a bunch of hair techniques.

Also, I've started reading Wuthering Heigts at the advice of several good friends and it's intriguing. I  so excited to be reading again. Just in two days I've read six chapters and I'm reading on my own for my own pleasure. I hope eventually this enjoyment of reading will pass on to writing and I can get back to writing more than just poetry, though I have enjoyed the poems and definitely don't want to stop writing those either. I just want to write. For now, here's a poem.

The Atmosphere
blankets my worried breaths
as I count the seconds that make up infinity.

Distance feels like a stone
pressing down my chest as I attempt to reach
the other side
wherever that side might be
whatever that side might hold

But the full moon gives me hope
and reminds me how words can carry
across the globe
even when I cannot. 

May 2, 2015

Every Day New

Today I am jet-lagged even though I only traveled through two time zones. I'm not sure whether to think "I woke up at 5am which would equal 3am here in Colorado," or "it's 9:30 which would be 11:30 in Vermont." Either way I'm tired, but I showered in a beautiful non-communal bathroom and am about to sleep on one of the world's most comfortable beds (I think this one is third best. The first is in Mexico City and second is also in Colorado at a different house.)

It's crazy to think that every break in the last two years have put me in a different place. The amount of places I've been blessed to visit are getting close to uncountable. This morning I read a post from my teacher about displacement and I wondered if I even count as displaced. Where was I displaced from? I don't think I really belong anywhere, and I don't think there's anywhere where I don't belong. I find a new place and I love it. I guess this is a part of who I am, who I became through a series of chipping moves that have taken me all over.

Yeah, it's hard and sometimes I complain and wish it was different. But in reality I would not want it any other way. I hope my parents know how grateful I am that they've taught me to belong in every part of this world. This world is not my home, but I think it's sort of a copy, or a shadow, and I love all of it, even if sometimes I forget to love it.

But I will say one thing. While I always find an attachment to the places I visit- there's always something about Colorado. The smell of sage. The lit up cross on the mountain. The blue green pines. The wildlife. The flowers. The red rocks and pink sand. This place fills my lungs with air even if I know in reality the altitude is probably taking my breath away. (I'm making sure to keep my inhaler near. No more asthma attacks this year.)

Colorado, this little mountain town specifically, give "home" another meaning which I am almost afraid to pay attention to. This is the place we always come back to. The place that waits for me with arms open in the form of an unbelievable blue sky. No matter how long I'm away coming to Colorado is always coming back. It's like laying my head down on that old pillow in my room after a long trip. Just in this case the pillow is not mine, nor the room, and the trip lasted for more than a year.

Still, this is my coming back. This is where I'm safe, and the closest I will ever know to coming home.