hauntings

I sit in my parents' living room, not the one I was very young in, or even the one that I was mostly young in, but the one of those lovely pre-teen and teenage years. There's a Christmas tree, with all the decorations I remember, the stockings my grandmother knit, the creche I played with each December for years. (It was always a reenactment of the escape into Egypt, Roman soldiers in pursuit killing all male children 2 and under. Sometimes the shepherd boy went with the family, because he was my favorite figure in the set, after the donkey.)

And even though the youngest and even the young years were in different houses, being here, surrounded by the tradition of holidays, paging through old family albums, I find that I'm haunted by my younger self. I turn a corner, catch an image out of the corner of my eye, and there I am: a quiet, happy, obedient child on the outside, maybe a little impish, trying to hide the hard earned dirt packed under finger nails and coating bare feet.

On the inside? Rebellious, drawn to the morbid and dangerous, refusing to believe that one day I would be a woman. It was the Roman soldiers, outlaws, pickpockets, warriors, traitors, assassins, spies. Those were my playmates in my mind. That was me in my mind.

I was always a boy (when I wasn't an animal). Peter Pevensie, Robin Hood's younger brother, Sir Lancelot's squire, a lost boy, Almanzo'a friend, a pirate, an unnamed pickpocket in Victorian/Medieval/Ancient Britain...Those were who I really was. Sometimes maybe, playing with friends, I wore the dresses in our dress up clothing collection. I don't really remember any of those games. I think was always an orphan, or ran away from home, or half way through my character suddenly needed to disguise herself as a boy.

Those are the things I remember, here at my parents'. The double life of my childhood.

home?

Home /hōm/ (noun): The place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household.

Home is where the heart is...

Home is wherever I'm with you...

going home...coming home...leaving home...running away from home...making a home...finding a home...

Basically, home doesn't have a set, agreed upon definition. (Let's be honest, how many words do? We'd probably have a lot less arguments and hurt if we all meant the same thing when we said the same words.)

I don't really like the word 'home' very much. It's almost as bad as being asked where I'm from. Do you want to know my current address? Where my parents reside? The place I am most comfortable with me? Then ask that, because the answers to those three questions are all very different: 30th St, Lake Stevens, WA, 3rd RV in the row, Lewisberry Pennsylvania, on a ridge above treeline.

Maybe I dislike the word because it implies permanence. And while my life is many things, permanent is not one of them. Maybe I dislike it because saying somewhere is home implies commitment to that somewhere (and I'm not good at committing).

life is not a board game

You know how in board games you roll a dice and it tells you how many little squares to move, and then the little square itself, or a card, or something, tells you what - exactly - you need to do next? Go back two spaces, loose a turn, collect $200. And even if you're playing a more advanced board game, Parcheesi, say, you roll a die or two and then you have some choice you can make, like which piece to move and if you are going to be kind to the other players or not.

Well, sometimes I wish life was like that.

But then I think about it a little more, and I remember how boring those board games can be - if the mood and the other players and the atmosphere and the snacks and the astrological signs aren't all aligned correctly. Sometimes, even playing Candy Land with adorable children feels overwhelmingly insipid.

So here I am, no cosmic die to roll, no cheery path of primary colors at my feet (nor am I one cheerful color with a tiny head and an abnormally large bottom). The other players have also misplaced the instructions, or when we discuss them we interpret the rules differently. Sometimes, the strife and stress is even greater than that of a two year being told to move back two places, or my terror as a three year old of getting stuck in the licorice forest.

Directionless, no instructions (and disagreeing with the mainstream interpretation of the rules), and uncertain what the final goal of the game even is, anyway - that's me. The future is blank and full of possibilities for wild happiness and dreadful terror and heartbreaking wretchedness. It is exhilarating, exhausting, terrifying, and overwhelming and sometimes I long just for stability. For a job that lasts and a home that lasts and a community of friends that is face to face, there, right there when we need each other.

But I remember how stability can feel claustrophobic and cloying - trap-like (and with live traps, you drown the rat). I create my own semblance of stability, with music and morning coffee and favorite sweaters and Little Ugly and letters winging back and forth between the web of friends scattered across the globe.

Sometimes, I move back two spaces. Sometimes, I worry that I've lost a turn. And sometimes? Sometimes I even collect $200.

sun, sun, mister golden sun...

I don't think that I am sun starved, I don't feel an active desire for sunny weather (I do feel like I will never be warm again, and that my clothing and everything will maybe always forever be a bit dank, but that is another story for another day). Guess I'm missing it without missing it, though, because a few nights ago I had a dream.

I was at the dairy (but it was also not the dairy) and all the interns (but also not the interns...you know how dreams are) were getting ready for some big dinner picnic thing. A bunch of people were coming over for some reason, maybe new interns - I don't remember. Someone came up to me, upset, saying that I needed to come look at the picnic tables, we had to move them.

I looked at the picnic tables. All the dairy was in it's normal gray western Washington autumnal drabness. Except the picnic tables. Direct sunlight. Beautiful sunlight. You know those old religious paintings with the saints in a ray of divine glory reaching down from heaven? That's the kind of sunlight we're talking about...but more earthy.

"Why would we move them?" I asked, genuinely confused. I wanted so badly to go sit at those tables, soak up the sun before it slipped away.

"They're right in the sun!" Dream person said, "it will be too sunny, we'll get too hot."

I think they had gone insane. I still didn't understand - why, why would we move them? There would be sun! We would be warm!

I'm not sure what happened with those dream picnic tables. I'm not sure what's happening to me...

i do not cease to exist

So many things change. So many things stay the same.

I drove across the entire breadth of this continent with three of my favorite Farm kids. We called it The Journey. It was one long grand adventure full of laughter, talk, silence and yes, tears. And the end of the adventure was a beginning of another adventure for each of us, but no longer together (other than that connection always between friends).

I no longer live in the North East. Forget that, I no longer live on the East Coast. I live in a different time zone, surrounded by different people, by a different job. But I still struggle with balance, with knowing myself and meeting others. I still write, if not always here.

All of my hair is in dreads now and I love each and every lock and I love the journey, and the meanings they have for me, and how I think of the friend that bruised her fingers and crafted them all for me every time I see them.

I am no longer at The Farm. Leaving, starting over, has been one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. I didn't expect this struggle. I didn't realize the beauty of the times. The Farm is the first place I've left in a long, long time that I haven't been somehow running away from. My heart still aches.

One day, I'll write more about where I am now. But it's sometimes hard to see the beauty under the grime and it's hard to see friends in strangers.

So for now, a piece of common beauty in a place of strangeness.

a love letter

Sometimes, there are words that wash over me and under me and through me, saturate my brain and my eyes and my skin and I can't dig them out from under my fingernails. An ocean of words, swells over and under of infinite depth, lapping at my brain and whispering thoughts I don't grasp but feelings I know too well.

Only in the ocean of words, I can float and I am not afraid of sharks.

Words reach me through the window, words from The Farm, from people working. They are not scintillating because they are so mundane and their cadence is not thought out and glorious. But they are scintillating because they are so mundane, so full of the cadence of the moment.

There are words in the music that I listen to, words that sometimes make no sense but somehow I understand them. Paired with music and each other they say much more than the meaning they are assigned.

There are words on the pages and screens in front of me, words of people more bold than myself saying the things I only whisper in my mind.

And there are words that are not words, the words that flood my mind when I look at the green of grass in morning sunlight or smell fresh cut hay and I want to describe these things and I can't, not even to myself.

And sometimes I love words and sound and image and light so much that I wonder why I am leaving one farm for another and why I am not giving more time to words. And sometimes I want to be surrounded by other people who love words and light in the same way, and acknowledge this, and talk about this and spend time trying to explain those words that don't exist. And sometimes I know that I won't give up life for words because one isn't without the other and too much time with words leave them lifeless.

Words are tricky. I have written so many, and said so little to anyone but myself.

a meeting of an old antagonist

Oh hey there Sunday morning at 1:30. It hasn't been nearly long enough since we've seen each other. In fact, I would have been totally cool if we could have kept our distance. It's not you, really. I just still need some space. It hurts me to be with you more than you maybe realize. I'm not going to recover from seeing you for days.

Today - yesterday, I guess, huh, Sunday? - was a great one. I did a lot of writing, had a lot of fun, but it was enough work that it felt really accomplished. I figured that I'd sleep well tonight. Maybe should have closed the computer before 10, but I wasn't right at a stopping point. 10:30 isn't so late for bed.

And then you showed up, along with our old pal insomnia. Maybe I should take the hint and hit the keyboard again, but my eyes are burning. I have all the symptoms of tiredness but cannot sleep. I am half asleep all day. My communication skills are spiraling downward. You wear out my patience. We can't go on like this. Something has to change, or one of us is going to give.

And I have a sinking feeling that it will be me.