mine

my mind is havoc, teasing this scapegoat body that most label as mine

Repeat.

March 12th, 2007

I couldn’t sleep last night. That’s the worst, isn’t it? Lying there, wide awake, with nothing to do except think about how you REALLY should be sleeping right now and how tired you’re going to be in the morning. I know it happens to everyone.
I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about Adam; missing him and the idea of him. Missing having someone to care about like that, to wonder about his days and to leave little insignificant surprises on his desk. I was thinking about how absolutely pathetically desperate I am for that connection. However awful it seems, it almost doesn’t matter who the boy is. That’s terrible, but true. Recently I’ve been falling fast and hard for just about anyone who will reciprocate it, no matter how serious they are about starting something.
Anyways, I wrote three little poems/scribbles/whatevers. Scribbled them in my food journal, which has been woefully neglected recently save for lovesick poems and bold “fuck you”s.

I
I came to you for your long hugs and willingness,
Your twisted sheets and floppy Hair.
I came to you, let you so far in.
We saw what’s real, together.
But now I’ve forgotten
What is real?
This ripping, aching sob?
This jealousy, regret, sadness?
Nothing is real anymore,
not even the floppy hair.

II
We shared.
We shared our favorites, our dreams, our hopes.
We whispered randoms until we fell asleep,
Lips still forming.
We were real, silly and quite weird.

We stopped all that;
It meant nothing to one.
We stopped all that.

III
The cold walk, the sweatpants the anticipation.
The warm room, always music.
The warm boy, the warm voice, the warm guitar.
Touchy soft floppy swishy tangled legs and muffled.
Accepted.
“What do you need?”
ridiculous line drawings, funny only to two.
Two on the inside, two on the inside
Come back! I think we have the same mind…
Calling each other by our first names, our line drawings.
By whispers and gasps
And letting go, sinking into each other, falling,
calm loose soft sleep.
Morning glasses, music, smiles, classes, you made me so late again.
Repeat.

Lucky.

I've started to question- not just raise my hand in class when I don't understand what the professor is lecturing at me, but to really question who I am, what I am a part of, what I know, and how I want to live my life.  I've started to gain a bit more awareness of how my decisions weave into a complicated network of actions and choices and people and lives and futures and truths.  I've begun to see many things differently.  My values, words, activities, and thoughts are very different from what they have been in the past, and will probably continue to shift as I learn and question more in my life.

I'm learning what the phrase ESSE QUAM VIDERI really means (the Latin phrase I first encountered as a member of the Archons at Kenyon College).  It's become very different for me to just wear the phrase on an American Apparel shirt as opposed to actually living it.

I've started to really think about what I value and why I value it and how I incorporate (or fail to incorporate) my values into my day-to-day life.  Maybe I'm up in my head too much, or developing a debilitating guilt complex, or isolating myself, or acting like a crazy liberal college kid out of touch with the “real world,” or beginning to live in a way that doesn't mesh well with other lifestyles and choices.  Maybe I'm doing all of those things, but additionally taking steps to figure out who I am.

I made a list yesterday in the back of my Spanish class notebook titled “Things I Can Do.”  I wrote it mostly to identify things I can do that I am proud of as opposed to things I can do that I either don’t care about or am not proud of.  I made it very quickly.

Things I Can Do

-          boil an egg

-          identify sassafras

-          smile

-          use a spade

-          calm a crying baby

-          do laundry using washing and drying machines

-          sing all the words to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”

-          question

-          manipulate SPSS

-          fix a small issue with a toilet

-          buy a Mountain Dew from a vending machine

-          clean a bathroom

-          navigate the internet

-          break a sweat while sweeping

-          use a Phillips screwdriver

-          read newspapers, street signs, academic journal articles, books…

-          write papers for classes

-          recognize that I am very, very lucky

delighting.

A much more interesting, kind, adven-

turous, and joyful approach to life is to

begin to develop our curiosity, not caring

whether the object of our inquisitiveness is

bitter or sweet.  To lead a life that goes be-

yond pettiness and prejudice and always

wanting to make sure that everything turns

out on our terms, to lead a more pas-

sionate, full, and delightful life than that,

we must realize that we can endure a lot

of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding

out who we are and what this world is,

how we tick and how our world ticks, how

the whole thing just is.  If we're committed 

to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come

up against the least edge of pain, we're

going to run; we'll never know what's be-

yond that particular barrier or wall or fear-

ful thing.

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

                          Our wisdom is all mixed

up with what we call our neurosis.  Our

brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is

all mixed up with our craziness and our

confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any

good to try to get rid of our so-called neg-

ative aspects, because in that process we

also get rid of our basic wonderfulness.  We 

can lead our life so as to become more

awake to who we are and what we're doing.

The key is to wake up, to become more

alert, more inquisitive and curious about

ourselves.

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

      The point is that our true nature is not

some ideal that we have to live up to.  It's

who we are right now, and that's what we

can make friends with and celebrate.

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

In the same way, if we see our sp-called

limitations with clarity, precision, gentle-

ness, goodheartedness, and kindness and,

having seen them fully, then let go, open 

further, we begin to find that our world is

more vast and more refreshing and fasci-

nating than we had realized before.  In

other words, the key to feeling more whole

and less shut off and shut down is to be

able to see clearly who we are and what

we're doing.

           The innocent mistake that keeps us

caught in our own particular style of igno-

rance, unkindness, and shut-downness is

that we are never encouraged to see clearly

what is, with gentleness.  Instead, there's

a kind of basic misunderstanding that we

should try to be better than we already are,

that we should try to improve ourselves,

that we should try to get away from painful

things, and that if we could just learn how

to get away from the painful things, then

we would be happy.  That is the innocent,

naive misunderstanding that we all share, 

which keeps us unhappy.

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

Joy has to do with seeing how big, how

completely unobstructed, and how pre-

cious things are.  Resenting what happens

to you and complaining about your life are

like refusing to smell the wild roses when

you go for a morning walk, or like being

so blind that you don't see a huge black

raven when it lands in the tree that you're 

sitting under.  We can get so caught up in

our own personal pain or worries that we

don't notice that the wind has come up

or that somebody has put flowers on the

diningroom table or that when we walked

out in the morning, the flags weren't up,

and that when we came back, they were

flying.  Resentment, bitterness, and holding

a grudge prevents us from seeing and hear-

ing and tasting and delighting.

(Pema Chodron)