The problem with art is that it is a tentacly thing with so many arms. You think you grab one, and you may very well do that while you are creating. Somewhere, though, in the midst of your creating, 6 more tentacled arms have attached themselves to you each with a string of inspiration and direction, demanding you. Not your minutes or your hours, but you. All of you. Perhaps you will be allowed to eat. And they are not terribly polite and will not let you go on quietly with your life with a simple "Goodbye I hope we meet again, but I am quite busy today." Nope. A muse petitioned and provoked is rarely content to just go back to bed.

I should be ecstatic. But the fact is, I have 2 days, then the grind for 4 months and so many tentacles wrapped around me.

Word for today, tenebrous. I like that my browser thinks its not a word. I like having a larger vocabulary than my browser.

I wish I had a physical form for my syllabuses/syllabi to take this term... like the avalanche I feel like they represent. Then people would know where to find me. There would be rescue teams and medi-vac all poised  for the moment that I go under.
Real life, I suppose, is not really like that.
You have to ask for help. Again and again and again. Each time you need it. I am not yet good at that. I suppose I will get better or get buried alive. I'm one of the lucky ones though. I still have people to ask for help from. I forget that sometimes as people leave and fade out. But I have been blessed with new ones and just a few old ones.

Here's to having started something without really knowing if I'm the kind of person who can finish it. Here's to apologizing for the past lack of art and the continuance of this in the next 4 or 5 months. And here's for promising myself that I will learn how to make furniture or a long quality story or something when this is all over.

For now, it's time for some stew.

The Cosmological Principle official: 
"Viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the properties of the Universe are the same for all observers." 

The Cosmological Principle paraphrased by my Astronomy professor: 
"There is nothing special or unique about our corner of the universe." 

My addendum: 
"...except that it is home." 

That is all I got for today. 

Well, Christmas break is almost over, for me anyway. I always end early. I kind of like it that way. At least, I like it as much as I am frustrated by it so I break even.

Hmmm. Breaking even. That has been the feeling for awhile now. New faces come. Old faces fade out. Challenges advance. Sometimes I lose and sometimes I win, er survive... but mostly I am where I was before. And I never seem to do much more than break even. It still is a break of a sort with all the feeling of separation and loss of something inexplicable and therefore unmournable.

There have been days here in Montana where I have felt very much like this is the only home I will ever truly have, like I belong here and here alone. Yet there have been days which chase that feeling away and the mountains surrounding this little valley look as much like a choke hold as they ever did an embrace.

Have you ever tried to maintain a relationship based on who you used to be? You can do it for awhile because you have loads of experience with all of those things that used to interest you and you are very good at those old activities. But for you, they are fond memories and you enjoy them as much for that as you do for doing them in the present. It is not, however, the nature of people to stay static. Leave a friend alone for a  year and see what you still have in common, see if they have not grown. If you do not see it, perhaps one or both of you is only keeping up because of fond memories of what used to be.

Montana is like that for me. It changes when I am away and I change too. Then I come back and our reunion is messy. I can tell you with certainty that when I go for a walk after dark and pass frozen pastures with horses eating sweet hay before they sleep, I know I am home. There is room for me here. More than that, I can almost believe there is room for all of my changes. But during the day, the busy walking about day, I constantly run headlong into confines that used to fit quite comfortably. I was younger and smaller then. I hadn't explored all of who I could be yet. But I'm also not done growing up. I don't think I will be done until I die.

I suspect Montana and I (and a good many people) will have a complicated relationship for a good while. Perhaps it's just the new normal.

This has been the most difficult finals week of my academic career. Regarding next term: Goal #1 Don't get sick. Goal #2 If goal 1 is not achieved, do not get very sick. Here's to hoping my next one will be better than this one!

I have one more final left...
But I am much more interested in my winter break reading.

So far I will be choosing between:
Aviation from the Ground Up
The Shack (a highly controversial book I've wanted to read but not wanted to start for lack of ambition to read it while everyone was 'up in arms' about this and that point.)
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Leadership and Self-deception recommended to me by my boyfriend
Tuesdays with Morrie (a classic that was given to me off hand by a friend of a friend)
as well as picking away at these long time companions that I simply cannot chew up all at once:
The Letters of  Vincent Van Gogh
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

So many choices! And I haven't even gotten to books I requested for Christmas! Oh, and given the absurd class load I will have next term, I suppose I should get on that reading...but not for the first half of break.

I will never be a mermaid.

I am learning the full circle of stress--
learning it with all of its particles.
This is much more than a "beginning, middle, and end."
We are not talking about literary rising action
or falling action.
Though it has all of that.
I mean the living
--and the breathing--
bits of stress and anxiety.
It is like looking at yourself
in a mirror
underwater.
You are not allowed up until
you learn something,
but you never wanted to look
in the first place.

And so I learn the full circle of stress--
emotional CPR
and eye drops for chlorinated vision.
I learn the headaches
I receive just after the dreams start.
I learn not to ignore the dreams
if I expect to greet my life the next day.
I learn that the dreams aren't reality,
but they are a sort of mirror
for those who can bear to look.

But I have yet to learn
how to breathe underwater
and I am afraid
by how slowly I learn.

poetry like a game of scrabble.

I want to drink words that have aged like a fine wine.
     It has been awhile and I do not quite feel myself.
     But...how could I be anyone but me?
     Maybe if I could hear the world in another's words,
     I would find myself.

I want to slow down time and to stop wishing for the rewind.
     I keep missing things and I know it but I am helpless.
     Why is that the important things travel fastest?
     How is it that they feel heavier?
     Perhaps, to force us to drop what does not matter.

I want to hold the seconds tighter as if they could be mine.
     My arrogance tells me I would be a better clock keeper.
     ...As if that will fix my problems.
     Changing time will not teach me to use it well.
     Wisdom comes, it seems, from failing.