Category: Random Musings

Random Musings

Turbulence.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Turbulence.

I wish I was sleeping, or working, or doing something productive, but that’s impossible with the rough knocking of the window against my head in this nonstop turbulence. Since we took off, it has gotten really bad in its relentlessness, and it hasn’t let up now an hour or so into this flight.

Meanwhile, something smells funny in here as well. It always smells funny in economy… I can’t quite put my nose on what the smell is but at least I don’t want to. I bury my nose into my scratchy airline pillow and wish I brought perfume or some other such pleasantries to sniff.

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Random Musings

Stop.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Stop.

She ran anxiously through a forest of overgrown trees that hadn’t been touched by another human in years. Thick foliage ripped her feet raw as they bled and painted lush verdant carpeting a morbid maroon. In the thick of thicket, surrounded by oak and pine, a lone stop sign stood, screaming its one purpose, “STOP!”

But she just kept running. She wasn’t sure where. The trees blocked the view of anything beyond and her feet were scraped to the bone, but she ran anyway in circles and squares and circles again.

There was, she later observed, a clear, paved path out of the forest, down the road, to town, where people laughed and played and drank and took comfortable shelter at night and in the storms. But, for whatever reason, she couldn’t see it. She refused to see it. Plenty watched this woman running in circles, her feet tattered, her clothes torn, her body aching, and questioned why she didn’t just step on to the path and head back into town.

She didn’t see it. The more she ran, the further blind she became to anything but trees and that stop sign, coming into view time and again, cutting through leaves, pinecones, and bits of broken and unbroken branches sprawling to the sky. She just kept running because that is all she knew how to do. And she hoped, without hope, that someday deep in that forest, there, in the prickled green, would be another pair of feet, freshly wounded, another set of eyes, seeking an exit but incapable of finding the obvious path out, and another pair of fingertips, reaching recklessly towards the branch-cut sky.

Instead she remained there, alone, revisiting the stop sign every few days and pondering its significance. “Why stop if there is no one else here,” she thought. “Why stop if I don’t even know the first thing about how to start.” She looked down at her battered feet, layered with old and fresh dirt and dried blood, and continued on, in circles, through the forest, running for the sake of staying in constant motion, hearing the laughter erupt from those in town, somewhere, nearby, and suffering from self-sourced infliction.

The forest isn’t real, the villagers knew. It was just a stop sign and a crazy woman circling it. She hadn’t any wounds on her feet, only deep in her heart, long ago pierced by something far more sinister than fabricated forest; her throbbing vessel, beating alive at her core, punctured prematurely, left open and raw, with a wanting wound, festering from infinite intervals of intellectual isolation.

…

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Random Musings

Cracking Chrysalis.

by Life With Interest1 Comment on Cracking Chrysalis.

We come into this world alone and we leave it alone. In between there is insatiable loneliness and the thought that perhaps if we surround ourselves with people, if we socialize and find love and family and friends we aren’t meant to be lonely. 

But loneliness is not solved by surrounding yourself with people. I’m not sure how it’s solved, or if it’s meant to be. I binge on anything unhealthy to make myself feel whole. To forget the emptiness, momentarily. I long for connection but fail to find it meaningfully. Or I share too much and push others away.

I find the grittiness of humanity — interesting. Intriguing. Inspiring.

I don’t want to discuss what, I want to understand why.

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Random Musings

Baseball.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Baseball.

My father would have been pleased if I shared his passion–his family’s passion–for baseball, but I never could get into it. I’ve always understood the value of playing sports–the exercise and learning how to succeed as part of a team (and how to lose gracefully) but for the life of me I couldn’t grasp why intelligent people spend time watching sports.

When my father was on his death bed and couldn’t so much as remember my name, he could remember that the game was supposed to be on. “What’s the score,” he demanded with crystal clarity. In his life, I imagine, only baseball gave him a sense of true happiness. But why?

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Random Musings

Circulation

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Circulation

I like the light here. Perfect-looking people look all the more perfect in this light, and everyone else still is painted with the polish of perfection. There is a cool breeze circulating around my lips, entering from the open door where light pours in. It also pours in through the large glass doors and the loft ceilings with more tall windows. This place is far too fancy for someone like me, with every element designed to meet the highest of standards, and every guest seemingly architected to fit in their respective space, much like the ceramic mugs with half-heart-shaped handles.

It is a “gallery cafe” and its aesthetic is apropos. I’m far too desheviled for this space, but perhaps I’m performance art disrupting perfection. Women with crisp white button downs and bright blue jumpsuits and soft cotton flowing skirts are on display. Men who look like professors and rock stars and startup CEOs also design themselves into the scene. The “rock star” has tattoos and long hair and wears a muscle shirt that says “risk it for the biscuit.” I wonder if he really would.

Today, I’m ok with being alone. I’m enjoying the cool air pressing against my nose and tracing its invisible path and sources. I’m enjoying the parade of pants perfectly creased, too-perfectly creased for Sunday. And the tall trees outside, piercing up fiercly, far beyond my view. And those smaller, whisper trees that feature leaves in the season’s transition, a base of green yellows up into red orange, as if someone took a culinary torch and burnt just their tippy tops into rust.

I’m tired. Not tired as in I didn’t sleep last night, but tired as in a visceral exhaustion that aches through my bones. The exhaustion that comes with fighting getting one year older, one year further from my father’s death, one year away from my childhood home likely being sold, and forever away from identifying some greater purpose–or maybe moments away from that.

I can barely keep my eyes open. But with them closed, as they are now, I do not fall asleep. I feel more awake than ever. I feel the breeze up against me, holding me, keeping me safe in my solitude. I have to go back to the real world shortly–this is just a brief post appointment hiatus to caffeinate and rejuvenate before the week ahead. The weeks ahead. The last month of 35.

Turning 36 is something. Not that it’s old, but it’s certainly way closer to 40 than I ever thought I’d ever be. And its gone so fast it’s clear that I’m also close to 50 and 60 and the rest of it. I want to do something in this vast pool of time I have left in good health before it’s gone. I’ve always felt death’s hold against me–as a child I’d close my eyes tight at night and wonder what it would be like to just be gone–but now it’s there, ahead of me, approaching. If the next 20 years of my life are dedicated to earning income and motherhood, that means I’ll be 56 before I have time to create. Not that I know what to create or have any talent, but I still want to find the time to try before I’m 56.

I just write these silly blog posts because they’re the only thing I have time for these days, and writing consistently, even pointlessly, helps me in my day job. But what else is there? There must be something more. It feels like a cruel trick that through childhood we’re given ample time to create and then, just when we have enough knowledge and maturity to say something meaningful via these creations, we have no time.

But I do have this time, sitting here, eyes closed, typing hopefully the right letters, circulating a thousand possibilities in my mind, breathing that fresh, pollinated fall air deep into my burning lungs.

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Random Musings

Cappuccino.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Cappuccino.

Alabaster froth with a light dusting of sienna cinnamon sways and bubbles in my cup to the beat of every keystroke. I’ve added enough time to my parking meter to keep me here until forever (or at least morning), which is what I’d like to do–forget about all of my responsibilities and wander city streets as a nobody, buzzing from all of the caffeine I’ve ingested to secure seats at a series of coffee shops with soft jazz music playing and people doing all the things they might do at a cafe — working, connecting, philosophizing, thinking.

A succint sip scalds my tongue and warms my lungs. Bitter. I accidentally make eye contact with someone telling a dramatic story about a police chase. I quickly look down. Back into my own world. Where I belong. Watching. Waiting. What have you.

I wonder what it’s like to be connected. Not that most people here are. I lock eye contact with another woman, who is sitting at one of those awkward large tables designed for strangers to silently sit at and do work. We both look down and never look at each other again.

I’m a double espresso topped with foam and hot milk. Or maybe I’m just the foam. Just the froth.

Frothy.

I need more substance. Sadness has a stronghold on me this week. But it’s tinged with secret hope. With flickers of the past jolting my mind like the lightning bugs rhythmically electrifying the heavy late July night air. In the desolate darkness, there is still latent light. I taste it on my tongue. I swallow it in my shadow as my body pulses with the need to believe there must be something greater than redundant redundancy.

Motherhood. There’s that. That’s new. I enjoy it. I love my son. He’s becoming a person. I teach him things. He teaches me how to be more than myself.

Another sip. I’m a horrible coffee drinker. It’s usually way too hot when I take my first sip and cold by the second. I should be banned from ordering hot beverages.

I should drive home. I should do more work. I should drink this cappuccino.

Instead, I hone my ears into individual conversations. I try to know people I won’t know before I never know them again.

I’m just sitting here seeking scalding stimulation.

I’m just sitting here sipping life lukewarm.

Random Musings

Over and Under It.

by Life With Interest1 Comment on Over and Under It.

Turning 36 in a month, I’m over it and under it. Exhausted. I’m ready for change. I’m more than ready to cease self destructive behavior for good. I’m ready to give myself permission to love myself unconditionally. I’m so tired of this recurring drive to self destruct.

I’m no special case. Abusive childhoods, even mildly abusive, cause trauma, and trauma more often than not causes lifelong mental illness. But I’m old and overwhelmed. I know this story. I know every plot point. There’s no more excitement in turning the page. I’m just done. Spent.

I don’t need my worth to be determined by anyone else finding me worthy. I can, somehow, find my own worth. My worth is in being a contributing member of society, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, and hopefully a good friend. It’s not in the negative G-forces spiraling through a clothoid loop on a coaster of my own self infliction. It’s not the highs and the lows. It’s the middles. It’s sustaining one note and reveling in its lifelong consistency.

The world around can spin on. I’m on an urgent quest to find peace. It starts with accepting that being broken is not a chronic illness. It starts with healing myself–enacting the advice of a thousand self help books—more sleep, more nutrients, more exercise, more quiet, more music, more doing, less seeking, less wanting, less thinking, less boozing, less obsessing, less escaping, more accepting, more loving and nurturing.

I wish I knew what it was like to not be the product of childhood trauma. What is it like to be a mentally healthy person? To believe that I deserve all of the goodness in the world, as long as I give that goodness back? Everyone has their issues. But some people weren’t taught that they’re always wrong, that they’re not not trying hard enough, that they’re ugly and broken—what would life be like if I was taught to love myself from day one?

Unfortunately, I’ll never know. I owe it to myself to try to understand how to have healthy thoughts and make it a priority to think that way. I can’t spend the next however many years of life being this way. It’s suffocating and debilitating. I can’t do this much longer. I’m shifting my focus. I’m reincarnating my ego. I’m cracking myself open and hoping that after all of my yoke has run out there’s still some sustenance of value left. 

I’d like to believe there’s something there, someone there, who can exist without want, without need, without all these unhealthy tendencies. It’s time to shut this book once and for all and tear out all of its pages, shredding them into a million pieces, and levitating in the lucid lightness of being scraped down to the bone and rebuilt anew.

Random Musings

Fall.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Fall.

I always want to be one of the type of people who loves fall. It’s the perfect time to put on cozy boots and cozier sweater, cuddle up with someone else or a good book (or kindle), lounge under the sharp sun rebelliously fighting the cooling air, and enjoy pumpkin-spiced everything.

But as the lush, verdant leaves shrivel into dry, dead rust, as the thin fall air suffocates my lungs with its invisible ice, as the darkness of night swallows the day earlier and earlier, I am left aching and spent. Spring brought hope and summer belief but autumn is a reminder that all life rots like those damn rusty leaves.

In the melancholy of October, minutes stretch on, elastic and taut, snapping to the next after being pulled paper thin. You are sluggish with the sensation of coming down with something, body tingles and sore lungs. Your “The Lows” Spotify mood list, with its 223 songs, is the only orchestration that seems appropriate, despite it being filled with too much Coldplay. 

You listen to “Swallowed by the Sea,” 
and it’s everything you feel right now. 

In the death of everything, hopelessness turns to apathy. Your ravenous hunger has faded and you’ve lost your appetite for anything. You just want to pour yourself a hot bath and melt into it, listening to the water rushing into water, burning your skin until you dissolve entirely and no one remembers you ever were flesh, bone, and thought.

More Coldplay. “Trouble” plays. “Oh no I see — a spider web it’s tangled up with me. And I lost my head, and thought of all the stupid things I said…”

I’m in the autumn of life now. The rotting leaves are beautiful in their reds and oranges and yellows, I ought to appreciate them. Every step is on leaves crunching under my feet, no longer piles to jump in with, but instead to clean up, launder, fold, hang up, do the dishes, change the diaper, buy the paper towels, make the dinner, make the bed, pay the bills, crunch the leaves, crunch the numbers.

I should enjoy the tea and the boots and the sweaters,
not lust for the sweetness of spring or long for the seduction of summer. 

Next song. Radiohead. “No Surprises.” This.

“A heart that’s full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won’t heal
You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don’t, they don’t speak for us
I’ll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide”

Random Musings

Aging.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Aging.

The past year of watching my son grow from a born-blue, tiny little wrinkled creature, to an off-the-charts tall toddler with a full head of hair and a personality aligned with that wild mane, I’ve witnessed the miracle of human growth with a front row seat, albeit in a haze of stage mist.

As my son approaches 14 months, I too am aging. The once pluckable silver strands on top of my head are appearing in droves, streaming down my once solid brunette locks. The corner of my eyes, an area I frequently examine up close in the mirror for those lovely crows nest lines that will eventually come, seem to be starting to etch themselves into my face. I’m aging, maybe not as dramatically as my son, but a year is a year is a year, and in each year we do grow that much older.

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Random Musings

14 Years in the Bay Area – is it Home?

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on 14 Years in the Bay Area – is it Home?

It was August 2005. Apparently Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” was playing nonstop on the radio, but I wouldn’t have noticed. I had picked up a giant, sleepover-camp-sized duffel-bag worth of my belongings and headed west.

I had not thought out my plans clearly — in my mad dash to have some sort of clear next step after college, and to maintain my relationship with my then-boyfriend, I accepted a year-long marketing internship at a theatre company in Berkeley. It paid very little, but provided housing and enough to survive. That was all I needed.

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