in fours: rants and raves
BEWARE!: Long brain-dump ahead

Nostalgia, Deja Vu, Rememberies- Whatever you want to call it...
I got it. Muchos grande. Is there something wrong with me where I when I look back at the parts of my life that have slowly detached from me I feel great sentiment and longing? I always worry that this means I'm obsessed or that I haven't moved on. I always worry that other people think that I'm not functional when I haven't seen then in YEARS and I tell them I miss them, because I do... or that they think I wish things ARE the way they've BEEN just because I love/loved the way they WERE. Does that make sense?

The truth is, I place a great deal of value on the past. I believe that you are where you've been. I believe more strongly in nurture than nature (but yes, as stated in last night's debate with a very vehement and crotchety Dave, I believe in nature too). I believe in honoring past ties, even though I have problems holding present ties sacred. I value that I can see the lines and nodes of the past infinitely more clearly than those of the present.

I love life. I love living with all its joys and sorrow and karmic spasticity. I love twists of fate and irony. I love peace and seeking, questions and answers. So maketh it sense that I love everything I have yet experienced as much or more as that which I have yet to experience? I think so. Still, it makes me feel awkward to express my undying affection for figures from my past. During the last week, I've been talking to a lot of people that I haven't spoken with for about a year and haven't seen for over three years. To really share with someone that you KNEW makes you realized that in some way, you still KNOW each other. I don't think we really ever let go. For me, talking to someone is the difference between seeing a memory in black and white and in living color. To hear the voice of an old friend, even through an email, is like unbottling the past. I can smell it. It's like picking off a scab or poking an old bruise. All those wonderful, icky, unconfortable but somehow satisfying reminders that you're still alive and you kick harder than anyone you know. It's like I'm shedding old skin to get back to the memories and in the process becoming both someone newer and older than I ever was.

When I got an email this morning from Emilio, a friend of mine from high school, another layer of old skin came off. It always surprises me when I reconnect with someone, just how MUCH and how fiercely I miss them. There's a certain affinity for a friend or a lover, a certain fingerprint feeling that belongs just to them that you can never forget nor lose. It might change, but it will always be there. It's like a scent, like instinct. Certain people feel certain ways. They fit like old clothes. They bring you right back to the last time you felt them, and every time before. This is the beauty of lines and nodes. They recongnize each other.

I had a dream the other night that I was building chi (ki) balls with my hands. But they weren't raw light, they were orbs with spinning orbitals, globes like the world full of connections. When I think about flying home to be with people I knew so well, friendships so close I'm only beginning to build new ones as strong, the same energy fills me. Working out today I had a moment of euphoria, pure bliss and clarity in which I saw myself standing both above the world on it, gathering all of the lines to which I am connected. I reeled them in toward me, like a great fisherman, and saw the web that my existence has woven upon the world. There are parts of me everywhere now, dispersed over the globe like glowing fireflies. As I pulled the lines tight, my life came into focus. In these instances I am accomplished, I am successful. I AM everywhere. And I'm proud to be a part of other people. In these instances, it is impossible to see how one person cannot make a difference.

So I've been talking to old friends. Specifically, Lesley, Sian, and Emilio. Lesley's in Venice right now, Emilio in China (for a year, no less, then on to London!) and Sian is soon to leave for Japan. I always thought I was the one among them with the most wanderlust. Maybe I am, but here I am, stuck in podunk Oregon because of my own uncertainty and fear of screwing up by breaking loose of the system. I always seem so ungrateful. Really, I'm not. I just wonder if I'm doing the right thing for me. I know my life sounds impresive, especially for someone who hasn't travelled a lot. But I do travel. I've moved across the country and survived. I lived a year in Germany when I was younger. I went to Florida for Spring break, Belize this Christmas. I've been skiing in montana the last few years. I hike Glacier National Park in the Summer. Oh, and don't forget Colorado last summer and all the ren faires this one. I have to keep reminding myself that I am, by no means, boring. I am strong and I am independent. I kick ass and it thrills me to know this. Yes I have an ego. Lick my boots!

I read a great quote today while fixing some theatre GTF's windows 95 machine. He had it posted above his desk. It reads:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,
"Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of god.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
-Marianne Williamson

Sometimes I wonder when I'll get up the courage to leave the sandbox and actually comb the beach. This is why I'm going "home," because I want to force myself to look back and to look forward, to reevaluate life in retrospect and in foresight. To open up memories and remind myself that life is not all about the past.

So, to all my old friends, I love you and I miss you so much! I wish you were here with me but I couldn't trade the way things have gone down for anything in the world. Life is to precious to do over. Any rewind is wasted time. So I look back with an eye toward the future. I love you, I love who you were, who we were together, who we have become apart from each other. This goes for you if I have known you, for you if I know you now, and for you if I do not know you and we have yet to meet. The lines all connect back to each other in the end. In the end we all come from the same great light, the same cosmic breath. I know you even if we have not met. I will meet you someday even if we never speak.

And still, I find it somehow true when Tyler Durden says: "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. We all come from the same dung heap." I don't know how it can both be true that we are amazing, shaped individuals an nothing more than lawn fertilizer at the same time, but it is.

Everything we do is art...
I've been thinking a lot about where I am lately and what I'm doing with myself. I've been thinking that I might like to go to graduate school for a masters in Asian or Japanese studies. That I might like to travel to some obscure location and not even write, just live. That I might have had more fun had I decided to be an art or a theatre major, a sociology major, a criminal psychologist. There are so many things that I like and so much that I could be good at that the world just seems to FULL sometimes. It's both a blessing and a curse. There are so many possibilities, so many openings that I am both invited and oppressed by them. Free and stifled. Where do I go? What door do I choose? I look at my friends, new and old, and I see music, art, language, politics, science, religion, every niche in every corner of the world... I look at myself and I want to be ALL that, but I'm only a small bit. There'd better be reincarnation, else I'll be pissed off at what I'm missing. I have a good feeling about where I am. It's similar to that "WHEE!" that Katie was writing about the other day. I know I'll go good places, I just want to do it all NOW! But I am in a good place. I'm envious of my friends and happy for them. I know they think the same of me. I envy their adventures and independence, they envy my success, stability, and innovation. We all complement and inspire each other.

Really, I think what matters is that what you are doing is, in some way, art to you. How is making not art? Tara wrote this the other day. The truth is, making is art unless you can't feel passionate about it. Then it becomes nothing. I could have been an actor, an artist, a model, a singer, a writer, a poet, a teacher, a psychologist or anthroplogist because these things feel like art to me. But that doesn't make them any less legitimate than chemistry, physics, computer science, neurobiologist or doctor. To some people, these are art. This struck me as somewhat of a revlelation this morning. There is a passion in everything. Like Dave's passion for lasers. Obviously, I don't feel it... but that doesn't mean it isn't magic somehow. The only sad thing is that when there is so much out there, so much art and passion, that so many people have stuck themselves doing things that are not art. Business can be art, marketing can be art, you can enjoy being a lawyer as much as you enjoy poker. But there are thousands of people working lifeless jobs because they don't remember what art feels like, or never found their own.

Just do what feels good...
Last night, Justin and I drove over to Katie and Luke's place (well, technically Murray's too but he's in Walla Walla right now). I had to take the hem out of my garb skirt and put a new, shorter hem in. An interesting experience considering I've sewed all of one other time in my life. The house was a bustle of people, mostly Scaddians (SCA members) building masts and making garb for the event this weekend. When we came over around 10, Katie and Dave were just getting around to dinner. It took me a while to get my hem started and then everything kept screwing up until midnight. Katie was in the kitchen making a pie with cherries she had to use before the weekend and I was sewing. The guys all sat at the kitchen table, drank beer, and talked about the SCA and lasers. Then they went into the backyard and pounded and hacked at masts. It was classic. Unfortunately, it started feeling late very fast and several of us got cranky trying to get done what we meant to accomplish. Every time I see Katie I like her more, so I felt horribly guilty for contributing to the stressfulness of the already busy house. But somehow we got things done and on top of that got a pie made. So at one thirty we ate hot cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and all was mended. Life is good.

Tonight I go to get my first credit card, since I've felt more presed to build credit recently and tomorrow we're off to St. Helens Renaissance Faire until sunday evening. I feel relaxed and relieved. There has been a sense of balance restored to my life with the advent of this trip home. I envy the independence of some of my single friends but I also appreciate their envy of my comfort, stability, and sense of perspective.

This is the Problem with relationships:
It's all about perspective. I don't want to BE my relationship, but it's so hard to be just ME anymore. Sometimes I miss that. I miss loneliness. I miss desire. I don't really seek it in other places but, like I've said, I've been known to flirt. Yesterday Kasey finally figured out that I wasn't single. It took him that long to find a good way to ask. I'm sure he was flustered but he was polite and didn't let it show, at least until today when another of the SRC employees was obviously rubbing it in. I know he was quite smitten with me but I really haven't figured out a way to get around this PROBLEM I seem to have talking to men. It really pisses me off and it's a COMPLETE catch-22. I don't like to define myself by my relationship. I hardly ever say "my boyfriend this, my boyfriend that.." even when I'm talking to girls. Often it's 'Justin and I,' etc... which is as much as I said to him. More often than not, guys seem to assume I'm single. I don't know why. I don't fawn over them, I'm just capable of holding a normal conversation. More often than not, I'm talking to guys because I like talking to them, I'm more of male affinity than female. So there's no reason for me to say outright, "oh, I'm seeing someone!" If I'M not interested. And if they're interested, shouldn't THEY ask? It seems ludicrious that I should have to assume that every man I hold a casual conversation with and who would like to have one again wants to sleep with me. I'd like to think I'm more than a sex object! Are men really so stupid that they can't ask or need it spelled out when a woman isn't interested in them? Why should I have to advertise my relationship status in the reference of a normal conversation? It doesn't make sense! And if I do, they act all offended like 'no, no, I wasn't thinking like that!' The FUCK you weren't... every time I DON'T mention I'm seeing someone, I'm 'leading you on.' So why can't we just talk? If it comes up, it comes up. If you want to know, ASK, for fuck's sake! I'm a person first, a potential mate second. Aren't I? Man, the world has some communication problems. Ugh. That just really riled me to see his friend cracking up today. I didn't lead him on because there was no reason to pretend that we weren't doing anything other than talking whenever I saw him. Not to mention he was playing the role of stalker... I just came to the gym to work out, he's the one who acted like I came to see him. Grow up!

I don't really want to end on such a trite and angry note, but it really does bother me. At least he can't avoid me now and at least he seems to be acting normally. But really, why should he assume I'm single? Like he has some claim to me or something... Am I supposed to act or do something in some other way? I'd like to think I won't change myself for the world.

Well, onward and upward!