In fairness, none of the life events mentioned have happened this past year, but I write this title in homage to a Facebook post I have had been tempted to create, but sadly not had the gumption to follow up on.
Folks say that the 28th year of one's life is a time when Saturn Returns, which is a alternative way of saying "the shit hits the fan, and despite the mess and smell, you really start to grow into your skin not only as an adult, but as a person with more clarity around what she wants and who she is destined to be."
Before she passed, my grandmother, indomitable spirit and Greek goddess that she was, told me in a secretive tone, "Lindsey, you should open up your heart and put a note in it that says- 'get married when I'm 28.'" She was on a great deal of medication to ease her cancer treatment, and she also said things to my Grandpa and me like, "You're both bums. God Bless America!" The following was also said to my Aunt in response to her joking around Nanny when she wanted to be left alone- "Ellen, if you don't cut it out, I will open you up and SHIT in your ass."
Nanny passed away two years ago this September. She died as she lived- quickly, with fire, good humor, and a heart the size of Texas.
She left me $500 dollars, which I used to buy myself a ticket to Europe. My friends had chipped in for my birthday as well, and Gabi had hidden plastic easter eggs around my house which were full of farm animals, as well as wads of cash from my generous, beautiful friends. In no uncertain terms, it was time for me to leave home and see a bit more of the world.
I write this because a year ago, to the day, I departed on a 3 month soul journey to Eastern Europe and Turkey. In retrospect, it would have been so EASY to keep the status quo- to remain in my safe little haven of Kyle, with our backyard chickens and pizza nights, and my job at The Evergreen School, with the kids I adored, and the job that had become too easy.
A family friend said to me, "once you start to choose what you really want, you get the sensation that all the doors are opening."
Stepping off that plane into Frankfurt sunshine, I was catapulted to places I never could have dreamed of. I traveled to see the circus in Germany. I spent lonely nights drinking wine and reading paperbacks in Berlin. I met Eva and Peter on a farm in the beautiful Visla river valley in Poland. Taught Peter to play "Paradise" by John Prine, a song I had heard growing up, and taught myself to play as 19 year old in Bellingham, Washington. I fed goats and cried over my family ghosts, lay in fields and breathed in cool autumn air. Sat on trains for days as I watched the quiet, haunted countryside roll by. Met young americans whose grandparents had also survived the war. Flew to Istanbul, was kept safe by my old fried Ian, ate delicious food and watched the Bosphorous at night. Met Hope, in her off the grid, magical home in Bodrum. Was nourished by her love, her wisdom and her light. Ate tangerines by the fistful and dreamt of a better life for myself.
I bought a one way ticket to Austin, TX, and arrived in late January with two bags and a guitar. I built a life for myself, adopted a dog, and fell for a sweet man.
I did not marry in my 28th year, but by God I listened to my grandmother and opened up my rusty little heart.
While I was busy living my life instead of planning it out, I started to write. And YOU started to listen.
I thank you for that, for witnessing and supporting me. I hope to do the same for you.
I notice lately how Facebook has become a vehicle for those of us in our 20's to share achievements, both personal and otherwise. I regard this with a certain amount of suspicion, because I sense that many of us operate our lives on the basis of what we feel SHOULD be doing.
The truth is that we are all a little fucked and a little blessed, in the same breath. Jobs run scarce, pressures are many. There are so many "SHOULDS" that nip at our heels, barking at us that by 30 we should be married, secure, in careers, full of babies, etc.
The path is different for us all. Part of me felt like I SHOULD stay in Seattle, keep my secure job, and choose what in fact would have been a road of less challenge. I am thankful that I pushed myself to risk more. For others, the real challenge is return home and face your Elephants, your past, or just reclaim the place that is home.
I am awed by the people in my life who are truly coming into their own in the past few years. There are those of us who are choosing to be healers instead of office workers, those of us who have ventured far into the Alaskan wilderness to seek our path, and those who have decided to stay in a community that needs us.
So, I write on this evening out of respect for the past year- for the equal parts joy and sadness that it brought, for the REALNESS of it. I give a shout out to my grandmothers, my teachers, my comrades in arms who went with me on this soul journey. I give thanks, and recognize that this is not the end, but a continuation of something much mightier within both myself, and the universe at large.
In the words of the wise intergalactic leader:
So Say We All.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Inferno
In the three months since I last wrote, I have survived my first Texas summer. It makes you want to constantly dry heave, and shower in arctic water, and subsist solely on coconut juice and popsicles. This summer was a bear trying to eat us all at the campground. It was a garbage truck that followed you day and night. It was a desert solitude that forced you indoors, reading books and napping through the daylight hours as if you were snuggled up for a winter on a remote island off the coast of Maine. Only when you walked outside, you felt as if you were a muffin in an oven.
It was over 100 degrees for 9 weeks straight. Every day. Relentless. Branches have fallen off trees, brittle and dead. The dirt in my front yard has cracked. Tomatoes refused to fruit due to temperature that would not fall at night. Deer have tried to break into people's garages to find water. (This is true, I heard a woman in the airport talking about it.) Creek beds are barren. I rode my bike to work in 108 degree weather and though I might ralph. But in a weird way, I sort of enjoyed myself. I ate avocados. Swam in pools, floated down rivers. Jumped into Barton Springs once darkness fell. Woke early to walk the dog. Relished my naps, my literary pursuits, my air conditioned work place.
Then, the state caught fire.
In Seattle, an article reported that Western Washington had experienced 80 minutes of weather over 80 degrees THE ENTIRE YEAR, prior to the much prayed-for August heat wave.
Rick Perry says global warming isn't real. My Dad says that God has abandoned Rick Perry. I usually listen to my father. He knows all the correct rules to Bocce Ball, and croquet. He drinks his vodka on the rocks, in small mason jars, and plays guitar with his eyes closed and his heart open.
And I have survived the summer.
In ceasing to write, I attempted to spare you the internal monologue that has marked the past few months. The anxiousness of having a new dog, of imminent change and all too familiar loss. You know the old adage of the elephant in the room? Well, I feel as if all my elephants have converged upon my ranch style rental house, and taken up shop in my bedroom. I come home and they are all eating quesadillas, sitting on my bed. My elephants have been amassing a list of my deepest, most tragically held core beliefs, and turned them into a mountain they insist that I climb before I get older and it becomes too late.
This is all just a fancy, metaphorical way of saying that I got my heart broken. Despite my amateur map making skills, the path to love is unclear, and fraught with sadness. As I was having a good cry on the floor of Target, talking to my sister, I asked her what the point of all this is- why do we even try? And she replied, simply, "because our lives would be boring as shit if we never took any chances." Thank you, Shelley Newman.
In better news, Guthrie the dog is doing splendidly. The puppy who was once 4 months old is now 8 months old, 55 pounds and a big ball of love. I finally stopped calling my mom in a panic over having a large dog, once she exclaimed, "This is really neurotic! somehow you seem to think that the bigger he gets, the more responsibility it is. It doesn't matter if he's big!" As always, she was correct.
When people ask me what I am doing in Austin, sometimes I don't know how to reply.
In a more linear sense, I am working at a charming downtown grocery chain called Royal Blue, where I listen to Pandora radio, wear whatever I want, and sell sandwiches, beer, expensive wine and Kraft macaroni and cheese. I chat it up with waiters and travelers, homeless drunks and lovable co-workers, and try to avoid "the sleeping bag monster." (For real, she can be frightening.)
In the more personal sense, I am spending lots of time trying to scale that mountain in an attempt to make more sense of my past and my inner terrain.
As I deal with the mountains and the elephants, I allow myself to be charmed by Texans and content with my days. I ride my piece of shit bike, and write letters to old friends. As I type this I have a glass of whiskey on my bedside and a hound dog asleep at my feet, so I must be on the right track.
And I remember, despite the heat generated by both the apocalyptic weather and the imminent change within my own small life, the world at large goes on. Kyle proposed on the edge of the Grand Canyon. They called me from Vegas to tell me of the engagement and I ran screaming around the house. A little girl named Calliope was brought into the world by my dear friend and his lovely girlfriend. I sent her a big pink sock monkey and hung her picture on my wall.
It all moves on. I survived the summer, and I know that someday, hopefully soon, there will be rain.
It was over 100 degrees for 9 weeks straight. Every day. Relentless. Branches have fallen off trees, brittle and dead. The dirt in my front yard has cracked. Tomatoes refused to fruit due to temperature that would not fall at night. Deer have tried to break into people's garages to find water. (This is true, I heard a woman in the airport talking about it.) Creek beds are barren. I rode my bike to work in 108 degree weather and though I might ralph. But in a weird way, I sort of enjoyed myself. I ate avocados. Swam in pools, floated down rivers. Jumped into Barton Springs once darkness fell. Woke early to walk the dog. Relished my naps, my literary pursuits, my air conditioned work place.
Then, the state caught fire.
In Seattle, an article reported that Western Washington had experienced 80 minutes of weather over 80 degrees THE ENTIRE YEAR, prior to the much prayed-for August heat wave.
Rick Perry says global warming isn't real. My Dad says that God has abandoned Rick Perry. I usually listen to my father. He knows all the correct rules to Bocce Ball, and croquet. He drinks his vodka on the rocks, in small mason jars, and plays guitar with his eyes closed and his heart open.
And I have survived the summer.
In ceasing to write, I attempted to spare you the internal monologue that has marked the past few months. The anxiousness of having a new dog, of imminent change and all too familiar loss. You know the old adage of the elephant in the room? Well, I feel as if all my elephants have converged upon my ranch style rental house, and taken up shop in my bedroom. I come home and they are all eating quesadillas, sitting on my bed. My elephants have been amassing a list of my deepest, most tragically held core beliefs, and turned them into a mountain they insist that I climb before I get older and it becomes too late.
This is all just a fancy, metaphorical way of saying that I got my heart broken. Despite my amateur map making skills, the path to love is unclear, and fraught with sadness. As I was having a good cry on the floor of Target, talking to my sister, I asked her what the point of all this is- why do we even try? And she replied, simply, "because our lives would be boring as shit if we never took any chances." Thank you, Shelley Newman.
In better news, Guthrie the dog is doing splendidly. The puppy who was once 4 months old is now 8 months old, 55 pounds and a big ball of love. I finally stopped calling my mom in a panic over having a large dog, once she exclaimed, "This is really neurotic! somehow you seem to think that the bigger he gets, the more responsibility it is. It doesn't matter if he's big!" As always, she was correct.
When people ask me what I am doing in Austin, sometimes I don't know how to reply.
In a more linear sense, I am working at a charming downtown grocery chain called Royal Blue, where I listen to Pandora radio, wear whatever I want, and sell sandwiches, beer, expensive wine and Kraft macaroni and cheese. I chat it up with waiters and travelers, homeless drunks and lovable co-workers, and try to avoid "the sleeping bag monster." (For real, she can be frightening.)
In the more personal sense, I am spending lots of time trying to scale that mountain in an attempt to make more sense of my past and my inner terrain.
As I deal with the mountains and the elephants, I allow myself to be charmed by Texans and content with my days. I ride my piece of shit bike, and write letters to old friends. As I type this I have a glass of whiskey on my bedside and a hound dog asleep at my feet, so I must be on the right track.
And I remember, despite the heat generated by both the apocalyptic weather and the imminent change within my own small life, the world at large goes on. Kyle proposed on the edge of the Grand Canyon. They called me from Vegas to tell me of the engagement and I ran screaming around the house. A little girl named Calliope was brought into the world by my dear friend and his lovely girlfriend. I sent her a big pink sock monkey and hung her picture on my wall.
It all moves on. I survived the summer, and I know that someday, hopefully soon, there will be rain.
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