i dream in...

i spent the morning commute dreaming.

last night was not good for me.

or it was very good for me--i haven't decided.

last night several dear friends implored me to enjoy life, not to wait to pursue my dreams, to take that leap into the unknown and be okay with both failure and hardship as long as i'm in pursuit of that for which my heart burns with passion.

listening to them made me shiver with fear, anxiety and excitement. i couldnt help but hold before my eyes painful scenes of letting go, of leaving, of saying goodbye and moving on. i couldnt help but feel fear twisting in my gut.

when i dream, i dont dream in office supplies and long doubled white boards newly cleaned. i dont dream in text books and literary terms and tests warm from the printer. i dont dream in colorful vis-a-vis on overheads, a podium white and firm at the front of the room, a solitary stool behind it, in button-down shirts and sweater vests, in red pens making red markings across black ink and A's, B's and "see you tomorrow, Mrs. Fissel's."

i dream in browns--creamy ones and bold ones, dark roasts with fresh cream. i dream in cozy spaces with markers and post-its and lit tea lights with flickering, circular glow. i dream in pastels and paints in poetry with metaphors and push pins on maps at 3am. i dream the smell of fresh cinnamon buns and a bell tinkling above the front door and ceramic mugs, cool to the touch. i dream in clicking keys and letters forming and reforming, in punctuation and sentence structure. i dream from the tiny firmness of laptop keys to soft yarn with wayward fly-aways, taming them with each stitch, and magazine cut-outs arranged to form a new thing and cards heralding the ordinary with color and image and words, always words.

i'm not in despair--not yet. i'm not a wilting flower, each day more dry and liable to crumble at a touch--not yet. but one day, i would like to dream awake. to feel alive with my eyes wide open. and i can't decide if i have to jump out of the boat to feel that way, or just try another deck.

memories from a song #1

not talking about a year,
no not three or four
i dont want that kind of forever in my life anymore
forever always seems to be around when things begin, but forever never seems to be around
when things end
so give me your forever.
please? your forever
not a day less will do
from you

people spend so much time
every single day
runnin around all over town givin
their forever away
but no, not me, i wont
let my forever go
and now i hope that i can find my forever a home

like a hand-less clock with numbers on an infinite of time
no not the forever found only in the mind
forever always seems to be around when things begin
but forever never seems to be around when things end

so give me your forever...please? your forever
not a day less will do
from you

these words take me to that four-way traffic light, or through the K-mart parking lot (coming in by the dumpsters and driving at break-neck speed out the front to try to catch the light by Denny's onto campus). i am sitting low in the passenger's side, staring out the window, lulled to a comatose state by the blur of trees and buildings in the muted blue of morning. i am thinking about class and the soft scratch of no. 2 pencils (the mechanical kind now that we're in community college--although i do miss the feel of slender polished wood between my index and middle fingers) on notebook paper. i am thinking about the weather and how it will affect my lunch location, and about thick, hot fries right out of the basket with plenty of ketchup and salt and--if i'm very lucky--a chicken finger shared by some generous soul (probably a sister or a friend as close as a sister). i am thinking about the echo of our voices on the walls of building 10 and if the seats will be free in front of the new television and how long we can throw quarters against the wall (as if we were still in high school) before someone comes out to say "stop!" as if we were still in high school. i am thinking about how that first kiss felt, shared through the open window of an old mini van. that is what i am thinking of. i am young and when i hear those words forever, i catch them in my hands, shaped them into a heart and give them freely to the one who stirs the butterflies to dancing.

(song lyrics "Forever" by Ben Harper)

diatribe on holy matrimony

it's amazing to me how naturally evil comes to us...how quickly we can devise the most perfectly cynical and hurtful things to say or do that are crafted uniquely to our chosen target and will slay them at a breath. this is why it matters so much when someone is able to change the tide of their thoughts and choose to act in opposition to these inclinations.

today, as i was walking around my neighborhood...enjoying the pleasantly cool weather, it was very difficult not to think about all the things i could say or do that would destroy mikey. i thought about how sweet revenge would taste on my lips as i made him hurt for ways he hurt me. i got a tiny glimpse, though, of my own destruction in the process.

i don't think i listened very closely to my marriage vows. today, when walking around my neighborhood..."cooling off" from a marital argument, i was thinking to myself that there should be more specific promises (or warnings) in marriage vows. truth be told, i was only really remembering back to the "rich, poor, sick, healthy" part and i had to google marriage vows before i remembered all that stuff about honor, respect, love, comfort, in good times and bad etc. i also ran across that line that always makes me tear up a bit: "this is my solemn vow."

so i started thinking about vows (and wishing i'd worn a bra so i could take off my coat, as walking was making me sweat) and covenants and promises and how they're in a league of their own. they're like ancient sages looking down at "feelings" splashing around mindlessly in a kiddie pool.

i often feel like an adolescent playing at marriage. at the end of our fights, i feel so stupid...like i just can't get it right, like i'm still letting mindless things throw me into despair. and when mikey looks at me and listens to me stumble through my expression of hurt or anger or frustration, i feel at war between the side of me that identifies with the bruised emotion and the side of me that realizes it's a tiny pothole in our journey together.

anyway, the conclusion i reached by the time i turned onto braceyridge is that i'm going to have this fight again. probably tomorrow. definitely next saturday (mikey said he'd put a reoccurring event in our outlook calendar in case we forget). but marriage is a promise. i made a promise, a promise, a $*%&!@* promise.

marriage is a covenant, a commitment, a vow, a promise. a promise, a promise. i made a promise.

"yes, i meant 'ybame' instead of 'maybe.' you're a genius."

i'm the kind of texter that goes the extra mile with punctuation. capitalization not so much, but commas and periods (and even the occasional parenthesis) are important to me because they affect TONE. how will someone know when I mean something as an after-thought and not a primary idea without the DASH??? they could mistake my equal importance on the entire thought without such essential additions. caps I care about mostly when I want to express a frustration or emphasis that the feeble exclamation mark cannot contain.

most of the time, I appreciate and utilize text messages as a valid form of communication but sometimes it causes me to mourn the not-so-long-ago time of real letters with paper and ink. i am brought to such remembrances in moments of using auto-complete when it finds every other possible combination of letters but the word that i want, and i think to myself: if i had a pen in my hand, i would be in control of this.

meat and meetings

meatloaf was a disaster, by the way. well, i heard it tasted good but i didn't eat any of it because i was afraid of it. it WOULDN'T COOK. every time i took it out and dug it up and peered into the folds of meat and bread crumbs, i saw pink and PINK scares me (sometimes not only in meaty situations). so i went out and got us fast food after cooking for a few hours; some friends who like rare meat devoured it later and as of today (four days later), they are still alive. so maybe not a total disaster, but disappointing nonetheless.

i thought of all these great things to write about this weekend, but i didn't get a chance to sit down and now they've all left my head. i've often thought about buying a little tape recorder to talk into when my hands are indisposed. ESPECIALLY for in the car. my best thoughts, best metaphors, best imagery seems to wiggle into my brain in the early hours of the morning commute. on the way home i am grumpy and distracting myself with NPR, but the morning is somehow peaceful and still and i find myself quite enjoying putting on cruise control and sipping my coffee all the way to winston. i hope in my life-time they invent the automatic car. i mean, the kind of car that automatically drives itself somewhere, or at least has the option. i like being in control sometimes, but other times id like to be free to watch the scenery go by or read a book or write or knit. i thought of how they could do it, too...sensors on the side of the road. tracks would be too primitive (that is SO Jurassic Park). i havent though through all the scenarios but maybe this will make me famous once all the trouble-shooting is done (shhhh, i know they had cars like that in Minority Report, but thankfully, no one watched that movie).

for some reason, since Christmas, my creativity has truly bloomed. i have a new-found love called card making (first sparked by Emily Garrett's mad skills), and i think i might be finally ready to knit again. i'm even entertaining the idea of an account on etsy, but i'll have to stock up on completed projects before i'm ready to take that dive. im also tired of not writing anymore. i used to be proud of my writing, but i practiced a lot in college with my e-journal. i still go back and read those entries and laugh at my own cleverness. these days when i write, i feel like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz when he first meets Dorothy. at least he knew what would get his limbs moving again; i'm not so sure about my muse yet. speaking of Dorothy, i just recently read Wicked and am trying to work up a review of it when I figure out why exactly I liked it so much.

as i drove home last night through my neighborhood, i passed a teenage girl hugging herself close against the cold walking down the side of the road. her carefully applied make-up suggested to me that she was not on her daily work out. on the contrary, as i turned right off of carolwood, i soon passed a teenage boy in the process of zipping up his hoodie and sauntering in the direction of, i can only assume, his romantic dusk rendezvous with said girl. it reminded me of secretive meetings in mikey's old crown vic (that were more often than not interrupted by cautious policemen) and the warm, tingly feeling of being near the one i loved--i'd like to say a more appropriate scenario than the hormonal fling formerly mentioned, seeing as how we're married and all, but i'd have to say "not really" if i were being honest with myself.

but oh how irresistible the draw of love!
(ie: the raging of hormones)