on learning the fine art of keeping my mouth shut

This evening, after a very busy, very good day, I was relaxing and (as is my ritual) slowly drinking a glass of water. I was browsing the internet, and at first, my tranquility was a little irritated. There were a lot of things that I wanted to say, arguments I wanted to get involved in, smartasses who were just begging to be put in their place.

But then I noticed all the lovely posts, little comments, kindnesses shared by other friends, and something happened- for once, I kept my mouth shut, and just enjoyed knowing there are some reasonable people out there. It was tempting to whip out one of the approximate eighteen million Responses to Idiots I keep in my head at any given moment, but I resisted.

I've made a lot of goals this year. There are a lot of things I'm working on and a lot of things I feel like I should be better at. But tonight I just thought back on the things I have grown better at. And one of those is "keeping my mouth shut."

I know a lot of people would probably laugh at this, since "outspoken" is one of the kinder terms I hear used to describe me on a regular basis. But in the past few months especially, I have made an effort to be realistic. More and more I believe that people are rarely convinced by arguments. I, for one, really love a passionate debate, but not everyone is so inclined. Maybe even I'm not as easily swayed by a convincing argument as I like to think. If I consider some of my firmest beliefs right now, none of them were really sudden revelations. They were ideas I slowly came around to myself, prompted or encouraged by other people, maybe, but ultimately I only had a change of heart when I looked at my life and what I saw around me and gradually adapted my original theories about the world to match.

I used to make myself actually sick, I'd get so invested in an argument. That's still something I have a problem with. I feel like people are WRONG, that they're doing themselves and the entire planet a disservice by being so ridiculously screwed up, that if I stay quiet I should be ashamed of myself for not trying to "fix" them, that if I DO speak up and fail to convince them, then I am a failure and probably don't even have a strong enough faith in the values I pretend to believe in anyway and maybe I'm a poser and-

(At the risk of upsetting some people, I honestly feel like many of these feelings are due to the kind of Christianity I have frequently found myself surrounded by, a very guilt-driven religion I struggled with a lot and ultimately can't say I believe in. I've always been deeply bothered by evangelism taken to a level that can only be described as vicious.)

The thing that helps me the most is to remember- I believe that certain values, certain ideas, certain courses of action, are good and true and right. There aren't many things I absolutely believe in, but there are some things that I truly think are good and commonsense, and that while it may take time, in the end if they are right people will come around to them. People have pretty impressive brains and they do tend to accidentally use them from time to time. The truth will be revealed, the universe enjoys its elegance being observed and rewards intelligence, blah blah blah. You know. There are lots of times that I do think it's good to say the things that need to be said, but mostly I guess you have to live the life that needs to be lived and call it good and hope for the best.

And I do, ultimately. I may be a short term pessimist, but in the long run, I really do hope for the best.


(Now watch me go get sucked into a stupid pointless argument within the next week.)

on my mind this night

Suppose we came back as ghosts asking the unasked questions.

 (What were you there for? Why did you walk out? What
 would have made you stay? Why wouldn't you listen?)

-Couldn't you show us what you meant, can't we get it right
this time? Can't you put it another way?-

(You were looking for openings where they'd been walled up-)

-But you were supposed to be our teacher-

(One-armed, I was trying to get you, one by one, out of that
cellar.   It wasn't enough)

~ from Telephone Ringing In The Labyrinth, by Adrienne Rich

I can't get enough of this rain. If it were up to me, there would be grey sky and thunder and the song of pouring rain against my window every single day. Instead of 120 degree scorching heat, it's wet and in the mid 80s and the first true monsoon season I've seen in several years. If Arizona were like this all the time, I'd consider staying.

I wonder sometimes if there is a god, and if god happens to know how I'm feeling- because if there is, he/she just sent me the exact weather I needed to help me cope this past week.

Tonight it's stopped raining, and a lot has happened, so I'm simply reading and going to sleep.

I taught a piano lesson today, babysat three sisters (ages three, eight, and twelve) until around midnight. It made me a little frustrated and tired, because if there are easygoing children in the world, I've never met them, but it also made me think of how much I want to be a mother someday. There was yet another huge thunder and lightning storm tonight, and Kailea (the youngest) came snuggling against me and looked up at me and laughed, and told me I was "funny and pretty." She's beautiful, one of my very favorite people. I don't think I would be an exceptionally good mother, but I would probably be an interesting one, at least. I used to swear up and down I'd never have a child because I didn't trust myself to raise up another human being, but.... they're just so wonderful and every line of work I've ever wanted to go into involves children. Lately it's the mothers I'm more interested in, though. I watch them with their babies, their teenagers, their grandchildren, and I look at myself, and I wonder how do they DO it?


As tired as I am lately, I have difficulty sleeping at night. Lights are off, my body's comfortable and warm in bed... there's nothing to distract my brain. It just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and

There have been a lot of little losses today. Things too small to mention to anyone, but they hurt. After a major loss I always feel like the small things shouldn't matter at all in comparison, but it tends to have just the opposite effect for me. It makes them matter more. Lately I am losing a lot of things that have mattered to me. I know that that's normal, especially at this stage in most people's life where you're becoming A Grownup and having to make decisions and choices that inevitably change a lot of things... I alternate between wanting to charge forward and seize the world (about, say, 18% of the time) and feeling overwhelmed and alone and sad and missing. And there are other times where I feel so disconnected from both the immediate past and the impending future that I just float. I suppose there are worse things than drifting. I just need to train myself to stop staring at old pictures and trying to memorize every conversation out of fear that it will be the last one.

 I'm supposed to be learning to let go gracefully, but I never realized how much of my life that would require changing. For now, I'm learning to fail gracefully instead.

dragonfly eyes watch me
in my bed, a constellation quilt
spread over my lap.
the warm ripples of thunder
bring to my mind a memory of
arms around me, the
vibrations of a low, soft clearing
of the throat against my cheek.
I listen to the steady strokes of
raindrops against my window,
and I think of the one who has stayed
to listen to the storm near the place that I am.
my closed eyes see such love,
electric nameless colors deepening
and taking root behind my eyelid doors.
I have chosen not to break
and instead found a lover written
across the pages of my notebook.
on my lips, caramel and vanilla and salt and rain,
under my fingers, soft desert dust,
in my ears, a little-boy smile.
I fall, but not asleep.

a thunderclap applauded me tonight

Today I went to orientation at the college, which I'll admit I hadn't looked forward to. It was approximately twice as terrible as I expected it to be, but oh well. I'm really going because I couldn't come up with a convincing enough argument not to, but I do at least think the classes I'm taking (Women in World Religions, Creative Writing, Introduction to Alternative Medicine) look interesting.

On a whim, I added in a twice a week yoga class. People think I kid when I say walking up the stairs is as much exercise as I get in a day, and I'm not. I want to kick this habit of not wanting to do anything, not wanting to get out of bed. I need to be healthier. This will probably involve not eating waffles with whipped cream for dinner twice a week, but I try not to think about that.

Tonight I feel oddly strong, a feeling I haven't had in... I don't know. A long time. This morning was sad, and I am still sad, but I also feel a little hopeful, and for the first time I feel bigger than this stupid fucked up hazy cloud of depression I'm sick of sitting around in. I'm going to go make myself a cup of sleepytime tea and read a little poetry, and then go to sleep early.

Today I accomplished none of my goals. But I made Mexican hot chocolate from scratch, and I helped someone else stop crying, and I walked to the mailbox barefoot in the warm, grey evening, so maybe that's enough?

1 am, because 2 am is a cliche

It's raining more today. I only napped long enough to actually recharge, without making myself feel fuzzy. I went to my grandmother's house, which for a long time was my favorite place in the world. Now it's my little sister's place, and she hugged me hard for no apparent reason, and it turned out to be exactly what I needed.

Mercy and I taunted our cats together, and laughed when one got so confused he fell off the bed. We ate Belgian waffles for dinner and I realized that as much as she makes me angry, she really is my friend. I wonder when exactly that happened.

I think more and more that people force themselves to be sad. Sadder than is necessary. Sometimes I feel like I deserve to be unhappy, like it would be wrong of me to not feel the weight of the entire world on me at least a little bit every day. I know that I'm a privileged person and maybe that bothers me, like I believe I owe the rest of the world a certain amount of pain on its behalf. I understand empathy is important, but now I wonder if maybe there are better ways for me to live... responsibly, I guess. Tonight (this morning?) at least, I want to focus on sharing my joy instead. And there was a lot more of it today than I thought was possible.

This week's only goals: Eat better, breathe better.

Maybe I'm writing too much, but after such a long time starving myself of words, it feels good.

day one

This morning I woke up and went into the bathroom, and felt like lying down on the tile floor and sleeping straight through today. I want to skip past this first day.

Instead I took a long, cold shower, brushed my teeth slowly, sat down and practiced breathing exercises while my hair dried. it's okay to be sad, you know, he told me, and I cried while I put lotion on. My skin dries out with sadness, for some reason.

Normally this is where I'd go back to bed and stay there for hours or maybe a couple days. A couple months. Instead I drank a glass of water.

the last song that I write/ while still in love with you

Today I listened to the song "Blue Skies" by Noah & the Whale and I decided to be happy.

It's the first real monsoon of the summer tonight. I can hear the wind singing along my window. Tomorrow I am going to write a letter, and finish "The Miracle of Mindfulness," and make waffles, and probably cry some more, and I'm going to be alright.