Belated.

I had a very wonderful birthday. It wasn't my first choice of events. My birthday often gets overlooked because February always ends sooner than people expect and the first week of March comes in seemingly unannounced. Also, I have hitherto spent my life in the rat race that is education with the full knowledge that March is about one thing: surviving until spring break. This year was extra set against birthday festivities in that I couldn't receive calls because my phone was broken and I had an evening class that day. I really didn't have the time to celebrate my birthday.

All the same. I felt loved. It was the little things, the roommate breakfast and egg curry. The boyfriend flowers and necklace. Texts from my family and attempted phone calls from Dallas and other places. A few belated wishes because, hey, we all have days and weeks and, well, years where we forget. It'll be my turn next if I haven't done so already.

Anyway, this post is really about the cake I made and kind of pieced together between classes. Keep in mind that I'm gluten free so if I'm going to go to the trouble of making cake...it's going to be the best damn cake that's ever been made...or close to it. Photographing it was an interesting challenge and lighting sparklers as my candle on my piece turned out to be less tasty than I anticipated (though just as awesome). Unfortunately there are no photos of the sparkler going that I care to put up because it's my birthday and if I don't want to put up pictures of me in my sweats with my hair not brushed staring in excitement and just a little terror at my firework cake, well no one can make me. :) That said, here are my belated photos including a very bad one of my flowers(...but what can I say? I really love flowers. All of them.):

knots tied in between anger, boredom, and anxiety

Task (1): Meet the world each day somewhere between whatever terms it gives me and whatever terms I give it.

Task (2): Remain stress free.

Task (3): Try not to laugh/cry/scream at the combination of 1 and 2.

I have been mulling over how much of stress is a choice and how much of it just is. --As immovable, unalterable fact. It would seem that my body, and human bodies in general, were not made for stressing. They were not made for worry. They were not made for life to be so... hard. We are such fragile creatures for all of our bluffing and hoping and straining.

But how much of life being hard comes from our making it harder than it has to be?

I had a history teacher once who said that the purpose of history was to remind us that just because this is the way things are, does not mean that this is the way things should be or always have been. And ever since those words left his lips, they have followed me. He continued to explain that we need history to tell us that sometimes we need to fight and sometimes fighting is ugly. More than that, sometimes the way things are is, quite simply, wrong; and when it is wrong, we are not powerless. We are not restrained to a passive watching of the world, our world.

Those words have made me bold on more than one account in the years since. Lately, however, I have been really good at refusing to apply this idea. I am not so much the humanist that I can believe that a man's or woman's destiny is in their own hands entirely; but I do believe that the many of us spend too much time reacting to a life that appears to just happen. We are not as powerless as we often feel. We can take responsibility for more than we realize.

Those are dangerous beliefs. They are heavy and ready to add their own layer of chaos to the pile of things worth stressing about. And up until now, I have "turned a blind eye". Yet, I feel it is time to apply the process to the process itself... if that makes sense.

Because apparently, handling stress well is not merely refusing to let things bother you by forcing them into unsee-ably dark corners of yourself. And it is more than cheap denial or delayed reactions. It is not storing it for later to be dealt with when no one else is around. Apparently. Which sucks because...well, I am so good at those. Or I was.

Until my body rebelled. Treason. I had done the hard work of persuasion. Mutiny from the inside.

Now, it turns out, I am not meant to house and store things for later and 'not now'. I am learning to be more intentional about letting things go. Which is strange, because I swear that that is exactly the opposite of taking responsibility and meeting life on its terms and not just being a victim of passive reaction. Yet, it takes so much more effort to say (in a way that my body actually believes), "This is not worth the pain I will feel if I hold onto this one second more."

It is letting go of my right to feel incensed, annoyed, piteous etc. But it is not denying myself emotions, because that also I feel in this seditious wreck. Instead, it is the highest honesty of feeling everything as it comes without letting it rule me. I have never been so aware of my own thoughts or how little true self-control I have. More often than not, it seems an impossible balance to strike; but I guess it is just a more mature version of choosing to feel. To feel without shutting down or being consumed by emotion. To feel emotions in wisdom, if that is possible (and I do not yet know if I believe it to be).

So here I am. Open window blowing peaceful wind across my typing fingers as I try to figure out why I hurt today. All I can figure is that I am pushing myself too hard this week and  my body is too tired to filter out the stressors. I was not always this fragile. But I did love my strength.




Also, art. I have very much enjoyed this photographer over the last few days.

Descent.

Two days into break. Failed waffles stuck to the iron. (Blame the lack of gluten not the maker.) Birds all excited about something... or everything. They seem to understand something more about living than most of us.

No food related pains for almost a week. Stress knots rolling, trying to self-medicate, not quite understanding how life's rhythm has changed. And myself.

I am adjusting quite well to this respite. Except... my mind is turning against me. I think. Maybe. Having enjoyed my health for some consecutive days now, I hear dangerous thoughts circulating round the tables in my mind:

I overreacted.

I was just being dramatic.

I wanted attention.

I did not want to do my work.

It was not as bad as I said it was.

I imagined it.

I am just making life difficult for no reason other than I do not know what to do if it's not.

I can eat what I want.

It is perplexing to me how easy it is to distrust my own experience. The mind and the imagination are endlessly fascinating not to mention bewildering. And the power contained therein is often amazing and frequently frightening. Moreover, this is where I find myself less than a week removed from my last food related pain and about two or three weeks from my last... immobilisation. Each day forward leaves those memories a little more wane, a little more transparent, a little less real.

I should be able to hold onto them. I should know the truth that they contain. And, today, I do.

Today that is enough.

But my grip on reality is not as strong as I would claim. And knowing what is about to happen does not change its likelihood. I will forget. I will convince myself otherwise. Call it curiosity. Dub it denial. Regard it as a lack of responsibility. Whatever sanity I have will slip and I will try again. Why?

Because the answers I have been given are not persuasive. There are still too many uncertainties. So I will keep asking questions. Not exactly the same one and not posed exactly the same way and not to anyone in particular because everyone else knows even less than I do for the most part. It is a long road to discovery, but I have the rest of my life. More than any immediate pain I may have, however acute, I loathe the thought of living with false caution and unnecessary sacrifice.

Either way, it feels like something between falling down Alice's rabbit hole and a slow but steady descent into darkness. I am not quite being hurled into the unknown, I am choosing it; but it lacks all the comforts of control all the same.

collage

This is my favorite place to watch sunsets within easy walking distance of my Portland home. Sunsets here are different then they are in Kalispell...mostly in that they last longer and don't mix and mingle with the mountains. Mostly, I'm sharing this picture because I fell out of the tree on my way down after taking it...and I don't want that to be in vain. It's not a great shot strictly speaking, but I didn't take it because of its visual aesthetics.

Anyway, I am realizing more and more that I cannot remove creativity and art from my habits. With all of my mechanics classes and trying to train my brain to think in new patterns, I have not made the time I promised myself I would for art...consciously at least.

Art is so much a part of my lifeblood that it finds me. It is beginning to feel a bit inevitable--not that I mind. It just fascinates me. Between this inevitability and my celiac disease/gluten allergy adventure, food has taken the brunt of my excess artistic energy. I keep inventing, mixing, marinating, frying, baking, boiling and so on. It starts with a flavor or a texture I want...or a color or a shape. I do not always understand and I do not always succeed, but it keeps me sane. It keeps away the food depression of what I miss eating and it becomes an outlet. And it kind of took over my life, not in a bad way. It is just surprising how quickly and deeply adaptations can be made.

The photo is of my chicken marinade today. It has honey, vanilla, red wine vinegar, olive oil, cumin, paprika, red pepper, chili flakes, white vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, black pepper, and salt. It is special because I think I may have successfully made a meal just for me. I don't really know how to cook for one. Too much cooking for my sisters, for restaurants, for soup kitchen etc. Not that those are really bad...but when you realize that you can just as easily cook for twelve as for one... and then that cooking for 80 really isn't THAT much more difficult than twelve... cooking for one just does not make sense. It is expensive and inefficient. And it is easier to take care of others than just me.

But hey, I am learning discipline and a rearrangement of priorities. I am accepting that not eating gluten makes things more complicated. I am going to be the person who makes people feel uncomfortable and who makes group decisions a bit more cumbersome. It is counter intuitive and not at all what I ever would have chosen, especially for who knows how long. But that does not change anything. I need to take care of myself rather than make things easier or simpler and martyr myself. This is surprisingly difficult to persuade myself of on a daily basis.

so many thoughts and no sifter large enough to fit them into

I want to hide myself in pictures, but only words come.

I want refuge in the expressed yet unexplained.

I want to lose myself to complexities of color and depth.

But everything has been laid bare:

too vulnerable,

too certain,

too easily ascertained;

but not the least bit understood.

So I am left saying what I try to mean

And not meaning very much.

If I could but bite and swallow and win and smile--

all at the same time,

in the space of half a breath.

...If I could just command obedience,

and cooperation from my insides

to my fingers...

then maybe you, they, I would see

what it is that I keep inside of me.

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Your body of suffering now brings pain where once I sought release. It is not supposed to be this way, I think. But here it is in my body condemned to death. And it is fitting, though unexpected. You are the only one I could accept this from. But that does not mean that I want to. Forgive me?

I want to be strong enough to give you my weakness. Perhaps, tomorrow. Or perhaps a miracle instead. If only I could be strong enough, but weakness is my marrow, my blood, my DNA, my name. No, not my name. It is in my weakness that I find those quiet moments.

In these moments I am finding out who I am. And who I am is Pain.

Your body, broken for me, has never meant so much... but it has never felt so far away. Our symbols break down and I feel the weight of the debris. Silly contradicting vanities open wide their questions and load them on my shoulders. Too strong, but not strong enough to be weak. Not weak enough to surrender them to you.

I do not think I am doing this right; but I am not yet ready to stop, only ready to be taught again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I can feel you leaving.

Bit by desperately-needing-to-be-untangled-bit.

I do not have the power to stop you--

Only this bit of broken will.

But you say nothing to draw attention,

(you had that a long time ago.)

You do nothing to be remembered,

(It doesn't matter. I have tallied the smallest details of expressions.)

You try your best to fade out.

(I am disappointed by your lack of originality.)

Friend, stay?

And that is all I have to offer.

But things are changing like a city in its last hour of day light.

Soon nothing will be the way it was.

butter and honey...on rice cakes

For two weeks now I have been gluten free. It's a test run, you see, to find out if I am secretly allergic. Since wandering down this road and finding that there is more truth along it than I would like, I have been told by several people that I am handling this way better than they ever would. Truth is, I am not handing it better because, well, I'm not handling it. I'm terrified. I hate restrictions to my freedom and I can remember specific instances in my life where I thanked God in pride that I had no food allergies and could eat what I want. And now, that is threatened.

See what I did there?

I left that thought at just 'threatened'. It still has not penetrated as actual fact that gluten really is the cause of at least half my head and back pain. I still act as if this is a temporary change. I am fasting, dieting, playing an endurance game. I am not eating wheat because I do not want to. I am so deep in denial, it is all I can see.

Food is a love language. It brings people together and provides commonality and proof of humanity on a basic level. And it is best left uncomplicated. It is a unique meeting place between need and luxury.

I am not ready for it to be complicated. And I am not ready to relinquish that freedom. Truth be told, I never would be given more days or years. But time is not my privilege and I am here. Already. Now. My own body against me in this. I am not fool enough to rage against anyone else. No one and nothing has done this... except I guess God... and I wont turn my anger or my panic or whatever emotional beast this is on Him. He is the only one I could accept this from and I hate that He knows that. But I know that He will be there when I am done and spent.

I am not sure why I am posting this...I like to leave this space for art and adventures and interesting people... I suppose this is the start of some kind of adventure. Here we go.