writing your own story

I have been following Stephanie's blog for a couple of months now. She is an excellent photographer and an incredibly impressive baker/chef. She has a gift with food. She makes it art. However, the post I am sharing today is not one of her recipes but one of her musings on purpose in life, choices, and building the life you want. It is excellent. She has words that so many need to hear. Even though many people make up that "many who needs this", everyone thinks they are totally alone.

wandering

I am taking a Spanish class.
I am finishing a Spanish class. On Wednesday.

Much better.

However, the final for this class requires me to tell about my life up until now. I have to fit my life into 8 photos and 10-12 minutes.  Admittedly, I only have to make sense of 21 years and yet... I am proud and ashamed to say they have not been an empty 21 years. It takes a good deal more time than 12 minutes to make sense of them. I am struggling because, the point is not to make sense but to use the past tense of Spanish. And because I have only just finished remembering that the way I remember things is gone. Where I come from exists in fragments and it would not matter how many times I rewrote my past and what adjustments I made. The past is always just fragments. This crisis is not unique to me.

But I want so badly for it to make sense to these near strangers. I like my life, all of it. It is the tangled knot of yarn and time and memories and people and other broken bits that may not look like much one apart from the other, but that maybe, just maybe, might add up to something all together.

All of this would not matter so much except that it feels like the most disrespectful thing I could do, this condensing of life and accepting that I will misrepresent a good amount of it. Not disrespectful to me, though I guess that is likely to be true as well, but to life itself. I think there is a certain amount of respect due to things just because they are alive and even more so a certain amount of respect due to life.

Living is tough sometimes and it takes a lot to hold on. But life, life is a tenacious thing with strong hands and maybe even claws that dig in deep into living, whatever living is made of, and do not let go until it is time.

I do not understand whatever pact Life and Time have made, but it is not one to take lightly. I see them, in my mind, shaking hands. And if I had the time and the ability, I would draw for you what that looks like to me. It is terrifying and beautiful and just about comforting but not quite there. I promise. You will have to take my word for it because words are all I have today.

I am constricted to 26 characters and a handful of punctuation. Twenty-six characters to explain to you that I am homesick and day dreaming and not altogether here because everything that I want to touch is not in the least bit real. Some of it was. Some of it may be... and a lot of it never has been and may just stay that way. And that may even be ok.

26 characters to communicate the sort of pictures that my mind sees which is tricky because my mind knows no language only picture after picture after picture. Today, my translator is broken, both of them. And so I say too much and draw and paint too little and never get the right thing out, never say what I meant, always wish I could take back what I said even when no one is hurt. It's still a waste of words to say anything other than what you mean. Anyway, I am lost and currently untranslatable. Don't expect me to make sense; and please, send my apologies to my Spanish class after I try to explain myself for 10 minutes and leave them to wade through my verbal debris.

A picture and a poem. 

Tea with Mr. Wilde and God

I like my life.

It is small and quiet and often times difficult. I can't really afford much, but there is always enough, every time. I have a handful of close friends here and the circle gets smaller every time life changes. There are healthy good byes and less healthy good byes and there are a lot of far away people that I love very much. But my handful of people that I hold here know me and I like to believe that the depth of love and the miles of life we have covered together is more than a fair trade for the small number. I am ever so slowly learning how to be a healthy human being before God and learning enough about myself to figure out where I want to go. The questions are not all answered, but I am sure that I will have them when I need them. I really do like my life, the people in it, and where I am going.

I need to remember that sometimes. It is so easy to forget in the natural process of moving forward and changing and growing and striving. It can be so easy to lose sight of such a quiet feeling while I am reacting to deadlines and people I like and people I don't especially when those two people are actually the same person. But right now, in the Sunday quiet of my house with too many too busy people, before all of the trying to be who I am becoming starts, and before I begin to take on all of the descriptors for the roles I will play today, I want to remember that I really do like where I am at.

I think life would be a lot less stressful if I could hold onto that while I race through my days. I think I would be better at remembering that if I gave myself the time in the mornings that I promised God I would. It's like he knows what I need, like he's on my side trying to help me first, be healthy and second, stay healthy. Weird.

But I am fighting so hard to be so good that I forget that I do not have to fight him. In fact, most of the fighting I do is fighting that he would gladly do for me if I would just stand on the promises he has made and let him fight for me. As long as I am fighting, however, he stands aside so he doesn't hurt me... so that I know he is there after I beat myself up. I do a fine job of that even during this part of my life that I like so well.

Today, I woke up two hours before I needed to be awake after a whole night of dreaming that everything that I need to do in the next three weeks needed to happen and be finished tomorrow. I was so frustrated and anxious that I could not sleep and then I realized that I was probably going about life wrong again. I was probably fighting too hard when there wasn't really a fight to be had. So today here is what I need to remember (and what I will likely need to know again and again for the rest of my life):

I am loved and I am learning how to love. I am loved by God and by the people he places around me and most days, I don't get to know why. But I do get to know that that is enough. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

One final thought for the rest of today, "Who being loved, could be poor?" [Oscar Wilde]

[Re-fried]

It takes me about a week to do anything of any real importance that does not fall under the category of damage control. With that said, it's Saturday. I am getting lots of things done. Letters. Phone calls. Baking banana bread. You know. The parts of life that somehow get shoved to the wayside even though they really are the marrow of living.

Today, I miss my sister. And, even though I have previously posted it, this poem is particularly fitting. Can I do that? Repost something...? I don't think there is an authority to appeal to on this one. After all, I did write it for her and all the times I tell her I am making something tasty and she should join me for dinner/dessert/whatever and move in with me...drop out of high school, move 600 miles, and what not. It's selfish. I am getting better, I think. Ok, so I just sent her a letter and told her to come to me. Someday. Someday I will grow up and into who I know I should be.

Unrelated: I think I need a whole cork board wall to pin prayers on. People and things to pray for keep coming to me in flocks or herds or torrents depending or your metaphor; but yeah, you get it. And I, I have lost all discipline for praying regularly especially on the intercessory level... for myself and for others. Maybe this is a good enough reason to buy a new journal ...since that's a bit more private than a wall. Maybe I will even buy a journal with lines in it. I haven't had one of those since I stopped writing my prayers in high school.

life and living

My thoughts are sticky mess. I keep trying to take one out to examine it, but it will not leave its kin. A lot of life has happened in the last few days. And yet, it is just life. Nothing I am not used to. I have been practicing living for awhile now. Somehow, however, I round a corner and everything feels foreign again. Like the laws of physics have changed and gravity has a different tug and the science of living is not what it once was. None of my equipment and formulas and expectations are relevant anymore. Or maybe the laws of metaphysics.

But there's hope. I do not know what I am hoping for, but I think that it is enough to know that hope is alive. It is not certain or else it would be fact and well past hope. I am through the meat of my mechanic's certification, which is a milestone I have long been looking at with uncertainty. I know I am ready for something new. I do not do well with the formulaic life anyhow. A life I could transcribe from a textbook would never be big enough, rich enough, or otherwise worthwhile. So here we go. Onward.

9 of 10

I learned how to build home on the topography of my father’s emotions between wandering the woods and chocolate chip cookie making. He was a man still working through the rubble of his own upbringing and so he brought me up in the crowded space between his own tears. I learned to read him the way sailor’s read the stars, the clouds, and the sea. I learned to sail him like he was the only ocean I could ever love. I tried to learn the words that could bring us both home.

He taught me everything I know about emotions and feeling. “Don’t bottle them up and stuff them in.” he’d say, “They’ll always find you because they are not the sort of things that fade unless you face them.” So while he told me not to keep them in, I resolved to be better than that. I chose, instead, to keep them always out.

It took years for me to figure out  that short cuts are just longer ways to the same place for those who want to put off confrontation until it hits you from behind, knocks the wind out of you, and demands your silent attention. It may be the shortest distance between two places; but there are no places or paths for lessons like love, forgiveness, and getting over yourself. Those are long roads you have to walk yourself. Do not skip a step or you may miss it altogether.

It took me even longer to realize that sometimes the act of sorrow is all you have to give. There are no wrong ways to feel, just wrong ways to cope with the feeling. Still I forget and so I say again, there are no wrong ways to feel.

I have now been brought up as far as anyone else can bring me. I do not always feel the things I know. And I do not always understand the things I feel. And yet, the longer I spend trying to feel truth and questioning the why’s and the how’s of feeling, the more I stand by that statement. There are no wrong ways to feel... but my emotions are often malnourished, ignorant, and a little disconnected.

The struggle is to bring all of me into agreement. The struggle is to learn my own coastlines, correct my compass, and learn to sail a new sea. The struggle is to connect and educate all of my emotions in the hope that the daughter I do not yet know if I will have will never have to try so hard to ride my waves, weather my storms, and bring me home.

8 of 10 "Rooms"

The kitchen and the bathroom are my two favorite rooms. 

If I could only have a house of two rooms, 

those would be them. 

The kitchen for loving. 

And the shower for forgiving. 

The kitchen to remember, 

the bathroom to forget. 

Bedrooms are dangerous if you leave your dreaming 

always and only for night. 

They just might swallow your ambition.

Hallways are passages just long enough to get lost in. 

Stairs are easy enough 

to push or be pushed down 

in the rush for fulfillment, success, 

and getting what’s yours to be had. 

But kitchens, 

they are for giving, for sharing. 

And the shower is that requisite don’t-forget-to-breathe 

and permission to be. 

Kitchens are for the mess of life 

with all of the wonder which that should bring. 

Showers are for getting clean, 

for letting go, and for moving on; 

because, when you are done, all you have left is you.

So take a bottle of soap.

Cry as mush as you like while you scrub.

No one else will be bothering you for awhile.

It is the bathroom after all.

Send all of the bad days down the drain

into that mysterious plumbing.

Living rooms are deceitful.

They would have you think that life

is only what you have when you are not working.

But living does not happen only in those particular four walls,

I would hope.

Dining rooms are liars as well.

They make you think family

is who sits around your table

and hospitality is what happens

at a quarter to 7:00.

Keep the sharp things in your kitchen,

knives, scissors, cheese graters and other divisive objects

which require discretion.

And keep the soft things always nearby:

towels, tissues, and a clean set of clothes.

If I could have a house of only two rooms,

these would be them.

A kitchen for loving,

a bathroom for forgiving.

Not just for loving and forgiving others,

but also to forgive and love yourself.

I do not have to grow up
And I know it.
But I cannot keep the world young.

That, I realize, is what I really want.
It is a tragic case of miscommunication
Between cause and effect.

Digging in my heels will only make me
Terribly alone
--and covered in dirt.

Life is not ever one single thing,
That's just how our memory records it,
Editted and glamorized.

Instead, it is the quiet pounding
Of a thousand hearts
Headed hopefully home.

And every one of those hearts
Spins ever onward
At full tilt with our globe

As we race ever and always
Around the only star
That gets to rule and reign time itself.

We can stop all of the clocks
And break all of the alarms
But the world will never stay young.

Brilliant Archimedes wrote,
"Give me a place to stand,
And I will move the Earth."

But that is not the problem, is it?
Try to hold this Earth
Stationary.

Try to keep her still.
Yes, unwind all of the watches
And let us together lose track of time.

But neither you nor I can stop it.
And we will never be free
So long as we spin.

So shake the Earth from orbit,
If you can find a place
To stand so far away from home.

Or better yet,
Let us sail
Straight into the sun.

Let us make it explode
With all of the star light and wonder
Held in our own aging eyes.

There, in the dark of newly emptied space,
We will finally be free of time and change;
But we will also be left with no where to go.

control and oblivion

As of November 1st, I started keeping a journal of pain. I do not know what else to call it. The journal is not for emotional pain or psychological pain. Just physical pain (unless I have reason to believe that they are tied together). It has started to worry me how many of my hours and even days I give away to pain but I hardly keep track.

I am so busy running to the next day hoping to feel ok then, to feel like a functioning individual, to feel human and then trying my hardest to dwell there for as long as possible and forget the grinding of gears, the shorting of circuitry, and the complaining of parts desperately in need of maintenance that I do not know how to give...that I am quite certain that I am missing something.

This is my attempt to take a step back. To live less in survival. To stop swinging from 'things will never get better' to 'I hope this never leaves'. Because things will get better and then the better will leave and life will keep on living.

I need to be careful, though, not to fixate on my pain as I write it down. I need to not make any goals as I study myself. Because I cannot tap into another source of stress. This is more about honesty and remembering things which I have hitherto tried my best to forget because I do not want to have the answers available for myself much less for the people around me. I do not want to feel broken and I do not want anyone else to know that I am. But I do. And I am sure that they do.

And I guess in some way this is my attempt at reclaiming my life. Maybe a journal is progress... and maybe it is just there to make me feel like things are moving forwardly... like I am allowed to move forward... like I am not choosing blindness as I move on. I cannot be bound much longer to the constant stopping and starting of life; and I cannot keep making my life about how well my body is cooperating with my intentions. At some point, I have to stop caring about all of that and get to living.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." ~Oscar Wilde

So I will let the paper do the caring, let my ink pay attention; but as for my life... it will not be found mapped out on paper and it will not be confined to the days when I feel like it. I have already allowed too much of pain to dictate who I will be on a given day. It is so easy to do.

My pain journal, in a way, is a confession and hopefully my repentance. If I am honest enough about the pain, if I let it in, if I stop ignoring it... I think it will not fight so hard to be heard. In a way, by giving it a voice, I hope to free up more life for actually living. And that really is all I can ask for at the end of the day: I want to be allowed to live. Everything else after that is peripheral. Descriptors and clauses. Commentary and opinion.

in an effort to distract myself, i bring you: the past.

She stands there like sad poetry gracing pastel pages,
ill-fitted but never wrong.

If you look at her side-ways,
her smile could be a frown.

Doorway open.
Sun streaking perfect, amber light.
Imperfect flies buzz at screened-in windows
as if to make you aware,
there are still worlds out there;
and they know nothing of her sad laughing eyes
and her big, sarcastic lips.

She is less sure than you
that there are differences
between your world and hers.

Some would say
to let the poetry be.
What is ethereal cannot
be understood.

Some would say.

Some always
always
have to say

something.

But as the sun wraps layers of warmth
around your shoulders,
as that perfect amber light
contrasts those imperfect flies,
as you contemplate the poetic differences
of tragedies and comedies
etched across skin,
there is prose that beckons understanding.

There is poetry in human living.

She has it all in her own subtle way.
Those who would say to let her be
have never met her, right?

When you begin to hope to understand,
her world comes crashing in.
Violent, living poetry
without a shade of gray,
her polarized planet stopped spinning
a long time ago.

She stands there
and when you are done reading her,
you smile.

There is poetry in human living.
And it is best when you understand
but understand without division.

There is nothing beautiful about
dismembered worlds yanked from orbit,
dissected lives taken out of context.

And those who always have to say
are only half right.
They read only their own poetry.

 08.03.09 3:24pm

One of my favorite places to just be at: Avalanche Gorge.

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.

Respite. (I apologize for the ironic haste of this post)

A little rest. A few dreams. A little art.

It is funny what creeps into my mind's eye and gets lodged there when I am not looking.

I have finally had the space and freedom enough to unclench and remember a little more of art. You know. The art that I loved and breathed and was before mechanic's classes and Bible College and Portland. It's been two years and only this week have I come to terms with how much I need to budget art supplies in because it is a matter of sanity and life and living...not a question of "

responsible stewardship" or whatever else I use to justify these last two years.

And so now that I have reclaimed my imagination. Or at least come to terms with it. Ya. I begin my summer term in...8 hours. Sweet. This is going to be interesting. Also, these are the saddest photos I have taken in awhile, but I start my summer term in 8 hours and have every intention of going to sleep...twenty minutes ago.

Home.

I keep coming back to this idea and now is a fitting point in my life for yet another return trip. I am moving, have been moving, will be moving...am feeling quite certainly homeless. I am living between my old apartment and my new room in the new house of my future occupancy...and not quite belonging to either.

They are only 1.8 miles apart driving. It really should be the easiest thing in the world...which it is. No hang ups, blow outs, let downs to speak of. I even have two more weeks befo

re my old lease ends. It really does not get easier. Except for the silence. There is a certain ineffable vacuousness. It is not a normal silence.

But I do not think it is dangerous either. I have never been afraid of silence and I have never yet been able to find boredom for much time at all. This next while will not change that.

Even now, I am discovering things. Turning ideas round in my hands. Getting a better look at where I stand and what surrounds me.

I have said so many goodbyes in the last few days; and they have been good, healthy goodbyes. Yet, they were not without my requisite not-saying-what-I'm-thinking because when I say it, I feel it and the depth of feeling I find often frightens me. Anyway, to the point and away from bad diary-ism...

In a lot of ways, home has left. I am finding that I have given up attaching home strictly to places. And I think a good many more of us on this planet do this than I previously thought. Any place that was a home can have all of that fondness and safety revoked in a moment. And while the sights and sounds and textures may well remind us of home, it does not take very much for them to betray us and feel empty.

I see and feel and hear now that I have built my 'home' into the people around me; and that is a very hard thing for me to accept. It feels so fragile, ephemeral, and so very likely elusive.

Most of all, it means I have no control once again where the pieces of my heart land or if they are taken care of much less if I shall ever recover them again. I believe I should be used to that by now. This is the feeling of loving and being loved. And that is the lifeblood of living itself. Or at least, I would contend so. It is beautiful in its own dangerous way.

I think life is supposed like that and I am sure I will regret this belief in the future; but I do, believe it that is. I think it should be dangerous in more ways than one. It should be

bigger than one person can handle. You do not need to be the world's most extroverted individual, but it may be easier then. And, contrary to a lot of opinions that I have received lately, it's not the point of marriage. It should come before that, after that, during it, and in spite of it. I do not like that some days. I do not like complicated things, messy things, high maintenance things. But I have to admit, a life that I can handle alone...is altogether too shallow. (And I will not here admit to the hypocrisy involved in such a standard).

This is why I think the feeling of falling never really goes away. I am not the five year old who believes the adults have the world under control anymore. They do not. They never really will. The only thing holding us together and making us safe in anyway is that very love that is so dangerous. And we live in a world under a curse. Love can be falsified, forgotten, and one sided. Despite that, it endures and it is still out there. That is altogether amazing and terrifying.

"I love all these fragile things." ~ Ladonna Witmer

If we believe these stories...

I was sitting in church the first time I followed that thought: "If we believe these stories..." And my black pen met my black book because I liked the sound of those words and I wanted to inspect their truth later. It has been a month or two or three since (not more than three though) and I still like them.

The sermon was on Psalm 105 and it asked us "why do we focus on the one thing that God has not done and ignore all that he has done?" Verse 14 talks about how God has moved kings for his small group of sojourners. It was good to be sure, but I think the most I got out of it was this phrase that would follow me..."if we believe these stories..."

I look at my Bible and I tell the world that I believe the words written in it. I promise to live by them and, perhaps, to die by them. But I forget.

Tonight is heavy. It doesn't have to be, but there are forces and people beyond my control making decisions, and they do not care that I am wrapped up in their story. They do not grasp the depth of their own significance, especially when one names them family...and that is ok. It is not good; but, quite simply, it is not the point. It is a symptom, not the problem itself. And so, tonight is heavy because I am waiting and hurting and trying to guess at the end. And because I am human. A woman living on a planet under a curse.

And I want to know what to do. I want to know how long this will last. I want to catalog all of my complaints and deliver them to heaven with a final request of answers in the same orderly fashion. Most of all, I want a promise that life wont always be this way, because, quite honestly, it has been just this for such a long time.

So I am sitting again, this time, weeks later, in my room. And just like that, I am holding that black book and looking at my Bible and hearing those words, "if we believe these stories..." Then what? At the time, the first time, I wrote: "If believe these stories...we should realize that we do not stand upon the shoulders of giants only, as the saying goes. But we stand and fall by the breath of God. A God of ancient goodness. We should have fallen a long time ago; but we forget our frailness and think ourselves invincible."

I wont get all of my answers delivered to me in bullet point form--that's hardly a way to live. But I get what I most want. It's truth. And it's a promise that life wont always be this. I forget what has been done and I get so afraid of something I know is not true. "There is a time for everything, for every activity under the sun." "Hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?"

If I believe these stories, it changes everything. There are hundreds of people in that book who have fought their way through living. It is not a plan in black and white with diagrams, but it takes care of the bigger issues. It makes itself useful to all people in all places at all times...and it answers my fear and my humanity. It gives me just enough.

swimming pool blue

I have a paper due for a class and an apartment to clean, but I do not feel tonight what I think I should. So I am trying to work myself into a pensive mood that might produce something, that might let me know that I am still alive the way a human should be. Or at least what I imagine a healthy human being to be.

I wrote some very profound things the other day on a piece of paper that I cannot seem to find. I do not suspect that I will. All my art seems to fall into a void these days. I think my muse is starving because I broke the cycle. One must create in order to be inspired, or did you not know? I did not. If I had, maybe I would not be here filling this virtual space with more letters, as if we needed more words and more messages.

Truth is out there, but it is buried with each breath and word and picture forward. It is overwhelming. I think that is where I dwell now, overwhelmed. It is an accomplishment if I can shake off most of the lies and overtly propagandized messages that adhere themselves to me by the end of the day. I think this is why depression and cynicism and skepticism have such deep roots in our society. We do not know what to believe.

But maybe we don't have to have all of our beliefs lined up. Maybe we wouldn't give up if we didn't feel that pressure. Maybe life would be worth living if we weren't striving so hard after a goal we will never touch. I keep hoping life is about more than the striving. I think that it is, but I am afraid to call it knowledge. Cheese-filled as it is, life is about the love we pour into this cracked and wavering planet. And you cannot love with a goal or it becomes a very selfish kind of love. We do not need any more of that.

Human

I am discovering something, or rather a lack of something: I do not actually know what it means to be human...and for myself, what it means to be a woman. What is more unsettling to me is that I do not think that this is just the age I am at or where I live or even just who I am right now. I do not think there is any rule that says, "You will eventually figure this out." As best as I can tell, we are too often a species content with not knowing. I really hate it when it is not comforting to not be alone.

I want to know. I do believe that I need to know if I am to build the sort of life that I want. I have a lot of cheap answers and maybe even some good ones but nothing has been sorted. This is not the kind of thing that will resolve itself without at least the small effort of seeking. And I am excited, at least, in part. It is my project for the summer. It may last longer, I can hardly hope to know that this will all be wrapped up beautifully at the end of the about 70 or so days I have left of summer before I am back into classes and routine and schedules.

People do not usually make sense, but I have long justified this by saying that I do not know enough about them...that I am merely reading them out of context. But now, I want to know what it is that we are...and what we should be...and if there is any hope of bridging whatever gap there may be.

I believe that people have the right to be themselves. As a whole, we are not honest enough or secure enough most days. Too many of us are who we think we should be without a clear idea of where these standards came from or why. But I think it is important to be different...not for different's sake, but for honesty and beauty and all the makings of art that somehow pour out of the souls and minds of men and women. There is a way to see our similarities without laying aside what makes us different and unique.

Doubtlessly, I am a product of Western society; but I hope that I am not so entrenched in culture so as to never meet with Truth. I am what I am, and I cannot pretend to be anything else. We will see what this search brings. As I said, I am excited. I am also a little be wary of finding what I do not want to know--but more than anything I am curious. There is a life that I am looking for, and I will give up so many things to have it; but how will I know it if I do not even know who it is I should be?