The Resilience of the Human Spirit

I called it his most redeeming moment, I later realized he needed no redeeming. It was late last summer and my friends and I had decided to do something fun to bring us closer. After a few minutes of telephoning back and forth and awkward ideas being thrown around we settled on white water rafting. I did the research and we settled upon a trip into Buena Vista, $80 for the full day, $50 for the half, lunch on top of a mountain - corn on the cob and steak, salad tossed from a trash bag - and we thought we would have a great time, all of us together. We would be like the babysitters club, or the sister hood of the traveling pants or some other such group of friends realigned for the summer soon to be seperated for the school year. We invited our siblings, me my brother, and they their friends and my excitement slowly began to mount and my friends slowly began to find reasons not to go. Price was to high, family in town, summer was almost over and tension was high, boyfriends were leaving, one day seemed like too much to give and yet not enough. My brother too found no one to accompany us and on the day before what I imagined to be the "WHITEWATER EXTRAVAGANZA" my brother and I sat face to face on the couch with no one but each other.

Dejected and feeling somewhat alone I kind of asked, "We aren't going to go, are we?" He didn't fully answer but I realized he was looking up hotels in Buena Vista to avoid the early morning drive, I knew that anything on the am side of noon was not something that was appealing to my brother on a non workday and I thought maybe I don't even want to go anymore. All the hotels were booked up and in my dramatically tragic manner, I took it as a sign. At 5am the next morning, the alarm blared and I don't know if I woke him up or he woke me up but we went, and we drove - fast to boot - and we had fun together.

I sometimes feel like I shouldn't be invited or included in what goes on, like I should sit on the outside and look in. I feel sorry for myself, down on my luck and at those times I have a tendency to look for people to blame when there is no fault. I realize very quickly though, when the hearts of those around me raise me up that when there is love and dedication and family, no matter in what form, there needs no invitation and with that thought my spirit bounces back. I thought mostly that because my brother took me and only me and was so truly dedicated to me that that was his most redeeming moment. As I have grown into myself in the last year, however, I have come to realize that his dedication was and is always ever present and that was just one of my favorite memories. He never needed redeeming, at least not in my eyes. My brother has always been a bad ass and the one that lifts my spirit.

Maybe not much of a story right now.

I'm housesitting. I sit here in relative boredom and as I write this sentence I think to myself who would want to read this crap. Come to think of it, who would want to read any of the crap you write because you don't do anything and in order for you to have a story you have to do something, right? I'm housesitting. Literally speaking, I am sitting in a house, watching it. I am watching more specifically three men I don't know redo the hardwood,but technically I am housesitting. I listen to them. I listen to them talk, I hear them pee, I listen to them drill, hammer, sand. I hear the house sounds, the neighbors doors slam and the water run through the pipes, the relatively low buzz of the refrigerator or the elecrtronics in every room. I listen and I sit and I think to myself, who would want to read this crap. Who would want to read this crap? I'm asking, really, I am.

Then I think a story doesn't always have to be thrilling to make it relatable, millions of people just sit in their houses. Just because I sit in what I now hasten to admit is more than relative boredom and in someone elses house doesn't make my words completely obselete. What does, in fact make this crap readable is that people can identify on some level with my restlessness, my joblessness for some, my stagnation, my frustration, not just today here, sitting, listening, hearing others accomplish a task beginning to end as I might have in a different situation in a different place at a diffent time, but they can identify with my position as a post grad here stagnant in my place in life, unsure and unavailable. Many are in this same place, people in transtition, because life is full of change and it rocks your worlds and you cope as you can and we cope in funny ways. There are entire films about these stages of life The Graduate, Wall Street even, Breakfast at Tiffany's, American Beauty, all films about people changing their places in life, but all people in different places at life...

Our stories though, no matter how inconsequential, are ours and should been be shared, even if they are just the stories of the days that we sat, and we did nothing but cope with the fact that we were relatively bored, and we listened to the others moving forward and heard them pee, and heard them drill and heard the low buzz of the refriegerator humming.

What do I do? no suggestions, please.

In a time of relative loss and no redemtion I look to the things I love. Things have been fairly difficult on a personal level in that I am trying to cope with a cleanse of sorts, become someone more in tune with who I say I am. I am in essence the person that takes no shit from anybody, strong in my womanhood but when push comes to shove do I define myself in truth? As I have heard often in the past few days about influences in my life, do actions speak louder than words? So in an attempt to make my future strong and my self stronger I have decided to keep only those influences that are positive and be true to my inner beliefs but it is that journey that is truly difficult.

What I love is to stand on the grass without my shoes on when it's just sunny enough and the grass is just green enough. What I love is to wear my high heels and dress up and maybe not have anywhere to go or anyone to impress and just see a movie that is not any good. I love to sit in the driveway that my Daddy built where our handprints were set before the cement dried and let the bugs crawl by and let the shade guard me and the trees blow in the breeze. I've taken to the outdoors to calm me down and I love the pond or the trees or the flag in the wind. I love a lot of things that contradict and many people will tell me that love must be defined but as I have said in my speeches, in my life and in my lectures love is all around and unconditional and so as I need it for me love is all around so I will love the little things.

He didn't look like Santa

I used to have this recurring dream when I was a little kid. Someone was pushing my mom off a balcony, an indoor theatre balcony and it was a very vivid dream. He was a bearded gentleman, not bearded in a pleasant way like Santa Claus, rather bearded in a frightening way like someone that did it to make them look older or more threatening. He was never unkempt or dirty as one might imagine the unabomber to be, he was someone you might have seen in the grocery store and discussed the ripeness of your melons with, and he was throwing my mom over the front of a balcony.

My mom, even in her fear and agony, was looking radiant, always wearing a silk blouse and being on the cusp of a generation that found feathered hair "the thing" she wore her short dark hair in a fluffly toussle around her hair and I could see it wisping backwards and forwards around her as he threw her. In my sheer terror I would always wake up before the man suceeded in throwing my mom over the edge, in some respects saving her from my own worst fears.

Although I would save her from my imagined fears, I never did find out the outcome to that dream, but when I would scurry my pint sized body as fast as I could to my unharmed mothers side in the middle of each night I would see that the man had not won this time. Now, over 10 years later, as real life drama escalates that dream comes back to me in sleep and in waking and I wonder will simply waking up be enough to save the day?

There's no crying in Crazyville

I've recently taken to feeling very sorry for myself. It's a feeling similar to that felt by the Beat Generation or Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie the graduate. I finished college and am anxiously or hesitantly in many cases awaiting my next step. I can't really fathom the point to all this "relaxation" I am doing and as I see my friends take off around me I've had a mini bout of depression.

The television and news media recently has gone crazy with the subject of depression amongst celebrities as one beloved one tries to kill himself, the rest come forward to reveal there secret lives of sadness and Larry King and Greta Van Susteren host panels of experts on the subject. If I was a celebrity, it would be okay to be down. But, it would only be okay to come forward in the wake of someone else's tragedy, in their fall from grace.

My friend Joe has taken to calling my house in Denver Samiraville, maybe because of what it is - a beautiful kingdom or village over which I have absolute rule...I don't think so. More likely it is because I masterfully manipulate the comings and goings of my own life from under the table because that is the only way I know how. Given the environment I am in and the life I lead, I must live under the rules that I have been given, to a degree of course, but you understand. Of course Joe wasn't thinking all this when he said, "Are you in Boulder or Samiraville today?"

A more accurate name for where I live, all the time is Crazyville, because we're all a bit mental. The problem is you can't even cry here. So, you sneak in your moments. Where you didn't used to like to waste time in the bathroom, now you take a minute and collect yourself and you emerge a new woman, ready to greet the world. Maybe it's not that profound, but it's that kind of thing, the little things, the tiny sobs in the bathroom, the stolen kisses on the train, the last day out with our friends moving to Tanzania that keep us sane and keep me the Queen of Crazyvi...I mean Samiraville.

;)

"Is it too much to ask of you, to stay inside with me?"

It is odd for me to be here right now. HERE, in this current predicament. Everyone's going it seems and I'm staying still. I was the first of my friends to graduate and I'm staying still. Not moving, somewhat stagnant. Many of course are just returning to school but some are going to the places of their dreams and I, I can't even remember what my dreams look like. Regardless of where they are all going there is a semblance of permanence in their departures this time.



There is a suitcase sitting by my door, I brought it home with me. Usually a suitcase sitting by the door signifies some sort of impermanence, a journey yet to be begun, but for me it was the end of my journey and my coming home. The suitcase was full of my shoes and they just needed to get back where they started.

Burn Baby, Burn

When bad things happen there are several ways that people can react. Some react with anger, some with spite, some calmly and cooly display their emotions on their sleeve and some don't even react at all, not even at all. In many instances we are compelled to look for someone to blame. To find a scapegoat, when the universe seems to have collided unfairly just in our directions and sometimes we act compassionately displaying the true grandeur of our hearts, saying things like, "At least we have each other," or "Thank God no one was hurt."

In situations like those, when we hold our emotions in and in chillingly kind voices take care of eachother, we wonder if we are condemnable if we are really pissed that we crashed our new "used" VW Passat into our best friends van or that our brand new million dollar investment burned into the Florida ocean or even that we dropped our new bracelet cavalierly from our wrist on the walk to McDonald's on a Mediterannean Vacation. It's just stuff so truly it doesn't matter. We do have eachother, we didn't really need all of that, and really, thank God we are alive, so then why do we secretly mourn their losses when everyone stops looking at us to be brave and the sad eyes stop telling us how much it sucks to lose your stuff?

It's a funny world we live in, the goals we work for and the way we look at stuff, and when it all comes down in ashes what do we have, if not eachother?