bye bye....

No more Blogger for me. I'm consolidating, kids. I'm not sure who the heck looks at this, but whoever you are, if you wish to keep following me, please do so here.

I like it cause it has nifty filters that allow me to write personal posts and keep certain people from seeing them ;)

And, Will hasn't written on his blog in months. I can't figure out why that makes it reasonable for me to leave Blogger...but it does. So there.

post #100

Otis (cat) came up and sat behind me on her chair, and until she hopped down a minute ago her fur was warming up my lower back. She seems to have decided that she'd rather curl up on my bed and lick my comforter.


Today has gone from excellent to shitty and finally levelled out at OK. I'm delighted to have found Otis in my room when I got back from classes this afternoon, and that the yellow lily on my windowsill is slowly, shyly opening a little more every time I look at it.


My cousin's 10 month old son, Val, is wonderful and I wish I could see him and his parents every weekend.

Tonight would be a good night to fall asleep in someone's arms.

(more)

not sure why I post constantly now. I'll find an explanation some other time.


~Dumpster-diving: fruitful, ethical (in my opinion), sustainable, and FREE.
In the last month, Tenney has dumpstered:

*about 8 big heads of broccoli, barely beginning to get rubbery, slightly frozen from being in the dumpster but otherwise perfect
*a bunch of collard greens
*4 bunches of beautiful pink and red tulips, which lasted at least a week
*an unopened, unspoiled package of pepperjack cheese
*more loaves of bread than you can shake a stick at...at least 30, if not more



~ I find Chad Kroeger's singing voice incredibly sexy. Don't judge me - I still think Nickelback sucks. But I can't resist that voice...


~ As I was cleaning up in the Emerson dining room the other day, I overheard a conversation in which one girl was telling the other girl about a conversation with her mother. The girl would be speaking in English, but whenever she quoted something her mother had said she'd slip seamlessly into Spanish. It went something like this,
Girl: "and, you know, she's really strict, so she was like, "Tu no debes vestirti en los (spanishspanishspanishetc)" and I was like, "Mom, I can wear what I want, it's OK, what are you worrying about," but then she was like, "(spanishspanishspanish)!""

(I'm now wishing I was still taking Spanish so I could do a less lame job of making up quotes for the mom...right now all that comes to mind is Italian)


~ "Suppose I kept on singing love songs, just to break my own fall?" Regina Spektor - "Fidelity" - Begin to Hope
sometimes these lyrics resonate so strongly in the moment and then, when I show them to someone, they lose all their power. Oh well - there it is anyway, you'd probably have to be me for it to make sense.

~ another one: "My greatest fear will be that you will crash and burn, and I won't feel your fire." Nickel Creek - "When You Come Back Down" - Nickel Creek
(more significant; that particular song is corny from any other perspective, but someone told me months ago, when it came on the tape player of his Toyota pickup somewhere between Washington and Illinois, that this song made him think of me. Henceforth it has gained anthem status.)


~ the other day, in a fit of self-reflection that definitely had nothing to do with the linguistics textbook I was supposed to be reading, I wrote this on my notepad:
"I know what I want.
I know what I need.
I know what I'm doing.
I know these things conflict and overlap, and I'm making the choice to manage and balance them *my* way."

That was true then - I've veered back away from that moment of clarity and back into confusion since then, which is to be expected but still a drag. The good news is, I know how to get clear again. The bad news is, that involves some form of emotional digging/upheaval/vulnerability...and the temptation is always to take the "easy" route.

vignettes

-every Sunday when I work during brunch, I invariably get waffle batter on my shoes and on my pants. Always a single drop on each surface, always looking like bird shit and reminding me that one pair of too-loose jeans is probably not enough.

-today the light outside is clear and warm and the snow blows down in quick tornadoes and stops again.

-I got a letter from Oma and a package from Dawn in the mail today - a note, a bar of chocolate and a mix CD. Filled with smiles and memories of the only other person whose packages to me contained such things.

-the bruises on my shoulders are the marks of a ghost struggling to escape into the past. There's still a lot there, but piece by piece it's starting to get free.

-room's a mess. house is a mess. just drink tea and translate and transcribe and don't care. keep writing, keep working, keep talking, choose the battles.

-what's going to change on Friday afternoon? How about on Thursday March 15th, or during Spring break? I've lost the audacity to believe that I can predict.

update

I thought it was about time for an update, and my linguistics textbook is boring (sorry Amy), so I'm upstairs listening to Ben Harper, watching the snow swirl around in the sunset and writing to you guys instead.

Flannery (housemate/chore partner/friend) and I just finished making sushi for dinner (vegan of course) and it's sitting in little rolls on the table downstairs, waiting for 6pm when the other housemates will come and pounce on it. I failed 2 quizzes this week; Linguistics and Italian. Testament to how distracted I've been.

I'm trying to stay afloat in school, making some choices that I've never made before, becoming strangely close to Mike's parents, and thinking ahead to this summer and to the next school year (which I'm going to spend in Florence). It's going to feel good to get out of Northampton, as much good stuff as there is here...it's going to be good to get out of the US, too. I need a new world for a little while.

If there's anything I'm learning from this it's that morality is all opinion, black and white and right and wrong only exist in your head, and that I'm at a crucial point right now where I know that if I continue trying to live life without hurting people or making enemies, I WILL lose myself in the process. before now I feel like it's always been a risk and a possibility and I've been able to compromise myself without losing the ability to get Alex back. Now, my wellbeing rests on hurting someone else - and someone I care deeply about.

*

*I'm thinking that last summer is encapsulated in my memory by sunlight streaming through various windows, warm skin on chilly mornings, tension, and a CD of traditional music from the Yunnan province of China


*I have no reason to be cryptic except to protect the privacy of people I love. My own privacy no longer seems important - in fact I feel like I need too-close contact right now, no privacy at all.

*I'm going to buy some sleeping pills so that I don't make myself sick again by not sleeping

*my mom's coming to visit this weekend. I'm really glad she's coming but I also know she's going to make me own up to my shit and hurt and I don't want to.

*In the last 2 weeks I've had phone calls with at least 5 people I never would have imagined myself talking to as openly as I did.

*I admire the people right now who can handle silence and be with me in it, or who can handle letting me carry the conversation in the weird, digressive way that I want to. I admire the people who don't ask me to explain or cheer up.

changing

(new room, new semester, new attitude...my family is suddenly so much more important, the thing in my life that I know will remain constant regardless of their ups and downs)

I can't sleep...when I do, I do it from exhaustion and when I wake up reality slaps me in the face and keeps me from going back to sleep. I think I had dreams last night, but the nights before were deep and black, a weird kind of sleep only comparable to being put under for surgery.

Right now I feel like I'm alone in this house. There are 3 others here, but they keep to their rooms and they're so quiet it feels like it's just me, in this 14-person house, in the room I moved into in what felt like minutes even though part of me knows I spent about 6 hours doing it.

It's good to know that I'll be on a plane tomorrow, flying back to Seattle to spend another week with my family.