I open my email first thing in the morning when I arrive to work. 

Today from my mother I read:

“Hi bebe,” followed by confirmation that yes, I could defer the loan I was supposed to begin paying her back; that her students’ work looks good; that her broken pinky is healing, and that graduation is soon. 
My throat aggressively constricts over the last detail. 

I graduated from the Evergreen State College one year ago. It was like a wedding, everyone joked. We were prom king and queen. Surrounded by those I loved and in love myself, it was the best day of my life.

Now, alone at my white and sticky desk, in my grey and recycled cubicle, I have nothing of that life anymore. 
Not the boyfriend, the adoring professors, or the comfort of living near home. 
Not the notion that I can do anything. 
Not the image of eternal blossoms playing forever in my mind. 

My throat tightens another notch and my eyes well. Briney hot tears leak not as drops but as puddles around my eyes surely dragging my mascara with them.

Loneliness.

I am lonely all the time and in many directions. 
My 12-year-old cousin asked my aunt what kind of machine she would build to save the world, she replied, “one that could cure loneliness.” 
His machine?  A bed that teaches you everything you need to learn in high school, cleverly equipped with the capacity to print your diploma, too. 
My aunt thought her response was inappropriate to tell a 12-year-old, but it had just slipped out.

I loved Tom very much. I loved our story and that time in my life, more. It didn’t stay perfect. Following graduation was a hot, noxious summer where I worked too much and we drank too much, and then a misguided move to Denver, Tom’s hometown. But that day—my college graduation—in a white dress that looked delicate enough to be made of paper, was perfect. And reading about its shadow whilst already reeling from loneliness, anxiety and fear was more than I could take.  

If you want to know if this is a story about how you have to love yourself before you can love anyone or anything else, it is. 
If you want to know that life gets better once that illusive self-love is discovered, it doesn’t. 
At least that’s my suspicion. 
I don’t know because I’m only just beginning. 
I am a vessel with too much chatter in her head and life is demanding that I make peace with myself; 
that I learn to talk myself down from the ledge instead of asking others to do it for me; 
that I fortify myself;
that I withstand the moments, (or hours,) where I think I may die;
that I hoard self efficacy. 
That I do these things and be totally alone.

 Unless it all just does me in. 

After a tumultuous year plus, it's time to revisit the practice of writing. Time and time again, I've tried to start. to break the seal of fear that prevents me from doing precisely what I need.
So now, with no audience, I will revisit the cause of this space and recommit to collecting wisdom.

What is wisdom?

It can't merely be experiential knowledge, right? It must transcend something as ordinary and entitled as age, though I'd rather remain secular with my definition instead of insinuating a spiritual connotation.

I think wisdom is intentional; a prophetic combination of knowledge, inherent qualities and honesty. No two people can offer the same wisdom. It's like a chemical reaction, like fresh sheets that don't fold and wrinkle under your weight during sleepless nights.

Wisdom(s) are acorns of auditory gold, invaluable, sturdy and something you can put in your pocket.

Let's get collecting.

It finally happened.
Walking across 6th Ave after work yesterday to meet my mom who had just arrived to GCS, I saw him.

Bill Cunningham casually rode past me, even more handsome in person, with his electric blue coat.

I peeled my sunglasses off the bridge of my nose, and said instinctively, "hi Bill!"

He turned his head towards me, slowly, inquisitively, and then said, "oh, hello" with a big, toothy grin.

I have hoped for this moment all summer.

I was wearing wedges, Anne Taylor patterned shorts, a brown belt, and a black scoop neck T.

I read letters from Truman Capote.

"i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because i belong to it."

A thick swarm of muggy, hot air made today a New York summer day.
I sit on the windowsill and sing, "At Last". Traffic, dripping air conditioners, and funneled air render my insecurities anonymous. It's a marvelous thing that we can be someone and yet no one in the same stroke.
My best friend is in flight on a brave adventure. Religulous-ly, I pray for her.

I wait for the rain. I wait for tomorrow.



What are you waiting for?



A long drive home from the country last night, from my uncle: in being lost, you find yourself.

Let's write a field guide to getting lost.

House as Home

As I prepare my ego for an unsuspected retreat --moving back home to Olympia with my parents-- I reflect on the concept of "home".

What is home? Is a house a home?

I'm reading a book called Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House, in which the author says, "if there's anything I've learned over the many years and many moves, it's this: a house is not the same as a home. Despite certain Muzak-sounding catchphrases of the real estate world -- "home buyer," "home sales," "home loans" -- the words "house" and "home" are not interchangeable. Your buy a house, but you make a home. You do not shop for a "home" anymore than you'd shop for a life."

I've always quarreled with my house. Like siblings, we irritate each other, a sentiment laced with unconditional love and affection. I used to wish my house were one of those new, pale-colored fixtures with white trim, plush carpets, pergo floors, and a perfectly manicured 4x4 backyard.

Our house is a litany of never-ending DIY projects. It conjures dust faster than the inside of a Dirt Devil, the windows are never clean, strange stale odors linger from pets past, and the furniture is anything but coordinated. To me, our expansive backyard only meant the chore of lawn-mowing, and the likely probability of stepping in sneaky, hidden dog shit.

I suspect that many, like myself, began to appreciate their childhood home as soon as they left it, either willfully or not. Thanksgiving break of my Freshman year, the familiar living room satisfied my pangs of homesickness and lulled my criticisms. For the time being.

My house is home.
One year, Olympia experienced a week-long power outage. Since our house runs primarily on propane, gathered on blankets near the fireplace, my mom gave myself and my two best girlfriends a most memorable and entertaining sex-talk.
Two years ago this fall, my parents were re-married at the head of our dining room table in an intimate ceremony.
That was the second wedding our home has housed. Not to mention the various parties and potlucks and annual dinner parties that I myself began to host for a few close friends.

And I am teeming with memories and smells from houses of friends. Houses are such intimate portals into family culture, the real innards of a family's dynamic. The magnetic decor on a refrigerator alone can give you extensive insight into a family's values. Houses have discernible smells, usually consisting of a combination of laundry detergent mixed with one parent's prevailing hobby, like skiing or painting.
When I was younger, I loved how if I sniffed an item left in my room, I could almost always discern its rightful owner.

Houses are also not homes. We manicure our lawns, obsessively clean, we decorate and re-decorate. We see our house as a reflections of us, and we want our reflection to be spotless. It's like in those episodes of Hoarders, when the house looks perfectly normal from the outside, but upon opening the door, viewers are exposed to a chaotic and often disgusting mess. Houses allow us to live inside a facade that we can prune or manicure or leave well alone.

Exiting my apartment this morning, the door to my left was slightly ajar, and I couldn't resist the temptation to look inside. Every day, I come home to a short hallway of closed, black doors. I suppose I had assumed that nothing existed beyond the doors. To my surprise there was bright green and yellow wall paper, carpet, tile, and a strong foul smell of cigarettes.

Houses are homes, and so much more. We have evolved to live a domesticated life, inside these structures.

I wonder what a homeless person would say about a house.

Ever tried.
Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.
Fail again.

Fail better.


-- Samuel Beckett

Bill Cunningham

I finally saw Bill Cunningham New York with my mother and our good friend Molly.



Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kINiFhplc&feature=grec_index

I have spent many mornings on 5th Ave at 9AM, hoping to catch the man in action.
My face was soggy with tears during the whole film. I really love him.

There is a generation of wonderful people I've come to appreciate and love who are beginning to die, and there are generations already dead who I will never know. Brilliant, eccentric, timeless characters who do not live through myth or text alone. We are so afraid of death that we marginalize the old, but they're the wisest, and the most beautiful.

I'm sad that the generation of holocaust survivors is fleeting, that Bill Cunningham will soon be too old for his bike, that my grandfather can no longer plays tennis, that my father is losing hair. I feel for friends of my grandparents who in their youth were social dynamos and now appear disconnected from the world. Youth is a commodity.Those that age are left behind to fend for themselves in orthopedic shoes, entertaining crazy anecdotal stories from back in the day.

No wonder we're all afraid of getting old. Let's celebrate the wise, the old, the eccentric, dandruff-ed, disconnect and wrinkles. How fortunate we are to live amongst vessels of history.