This chapter is closing,
another one is opening,
it's all happening,
it's all right Now.
It's alright, Now.
I won't likely be blogging here any more.
Tumblr is has fun blue backgrounds--hurray!
I'll be sharing words and what not at weneverwait.tumblr.com

thanks for playing, kids!

2013 edit: try tinyhomemaker.tumblr.com instead.

Think of me, think of me fondly when we've said goooooooodbye

I leave in the morning.
I leave. In the morning.

...

Nope, doesn't seem any more real by saying it differently. I almost backspaced back towards the top of the page because I couldn't figure out what to say after that. I'm exhausted. Naturally, I procrastinated till tonight to pack. And weed out junk I don't need. And re-pack. Seriously, how can a few skirts, shirts and necessities take up so much room?

I bought at top-loading hiking backpack from our local surplus store, and it's loaded to the brim with goodies to see me through various climates till summer.

I'm heading to San Diego first, then joining my mom in Puerto Rico for a few weeks, then hopefully on to Virginia till May or June. I've acquired a traveling companion who will adventure with me on the first bit of the trip. I wish my fingers could type the story of this acquisition as my body slept. I've decided to leave my computer at my parents' house, which means I won't likely get to tell the story any time soon. But I'm okay with that. Originally (and by that, I mean up until a few hours ago while I was packing), I was planning to go bloggo crazy on my adventures. I even made a new blog that I was all excited about (http://weneverwait.tumblr.com/). But space constraints of my bag made me stop and question how necessary it was to tell people what I was doing while I was doing it. Everyone knows I can't multitask--and I'd much rather be fully engaged in every experience than hole up somewhere with a glowing screen.

That's right glowing screen, I'm dumping you. When I come back from working on organic farms, maybe we can reevaluate our relationship. I'm hoping in the end, we'll stop goin so steady (I know, I haven't blogged in forever. But facebook and hulu have still been sucking my soul a little bit too much lately).

I doplan on staying in touch with people. Maybe I'll even learn to start answering my phone! Besides, hand-written letters are so much more exciting to get than an electronic comment on an electronic wall. Or maybe they're just more exciting for me. Meh.

Okay, I'm going to sleep now. And I'm darned excited.

P.S. my new favorite jam:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (Albert Einstein)

Just found this and don't feel like pulling out my commonbook to write it down. Tomorrow, tomorrow--and possibly an update on things somewhat new.

I appreciate home and train

Life is a whirlwind that incessantly howls, oh so lowly, in my ear. I exist during the quiet hours, sprawled in my bed (yes, I'm sleeping on a bed again). I trace the rolling quiet during cigarette breaks--now coloring breaks complete with crayons and underwater critters. But it's much too cold in Wisconsin to slip outside for a concentration on color. My bed is five hundred miles away, and no bed--or space reserved for sleeping--gives me peace like the one I am accustomed to. I get claustrophobic with too many people (or even just one) focused on me, and I need that rescue of clarity and solitude.

It's been a long time--well, since spring--since I've really blogged, and naturally a lot has happened since then. I wouldn't know where to start, and frankly don't have a mind to.  I've been so homesick since early summer. I fell in love with Leise--we were going to have babies together one day, we said--and the homesickness was dulled. But it did not fully disappear, and, when things ended between us, it snuck back around to nudge me at the most unexpected moments. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and, though nothing about its foundation makes me thankful, and so thankful to be sitting where I am.

A fire softly flickers to my left. My parents expanded their (new) house with a dining room made of cedar walls and ceiling, skylights bringing in the outdoors during sun-filled hours. The pool room has been finished, with a cement floor that heats the pool. My favorite part is the hot tub, looking out the many windows into the (near)neighborless expanse. That room has cedar walls and ceiling too. It looks like something out of a dream or magazine. And the kitchen with fridge full of food makes me itching to play.

It's not just the place though. The safety of the country--and with parents sleeping nearby--is folded over me like the warmest, lightest blanket. When I go to sleep, I don't worry if someone will try to break in. Not that those worries normally take up all my time, but when Terra isn't home when I climb in to bed--well, I pay attention to the noises outside our door till I remember how to fall asleep. Sometimes, I forget.

It's 11:11. Did you make a wish? I'm making wishes. Home is lovely, but I can't come live in this tiny town. Work beckons me back, and so do my last semseter of classes (for now. more about that later). It's tempting though, to shake it all and stay where the fridge is always bursting with organic fruit and vegetables. Where I am sought out. Where I have a history. A family. Close connections.

I have many random friends--lovely friends with lovely dreams--in Lincoln, but not many core connections. No real best friends. And I thrive with best friends. Or at least I feel like I'll thrive with the ability to meet new ones--new faces, stories, and ways of interacting. Lincoln feels more tiny and hollow as I get to know it, but I don't know understand how that can happen simultaneously. What I'm looking for--the community of people I'm looking for--I think will be found in other places. Or I need to go to other places to find more pieces of myself, really. Then maybe I'll discover those people have been, and always will be, all around me--in the every day life.

 I'm thinking of Madison after my lease ends in October. Or maybe finding a farm over the winter that I can wwoof on that provides a stipend (pesky student loans), then Madison in the spring when more places will be hiring and apartments opening up. I'd certainly like to live with roommates, but don't really know anyone in Madison anymore. Plus, we've all changed so much that even if they still lived there we'd be play the part of strangers. I actually love strangers--like the boy on the bus who studies art in Chicago and is leaving for Indonesia soon to help with a friend’s art school--but right now I'm yearning for the kind of strangers that see the world similarly to how I do. Or at least hold similar desires in how to interact with it. Symphony of Science's We Are All Connected and Matisayhu's One Day pretty much sums it up. And many Rebelution songs.

You know, all the corny "all you need is love" crap. Except it's not crap. It's legit, and seriously missing from society today. What ever happened to community? It's pretty much my new quest--to find, to build, understand, to reclaim.

So I'm starting with stolen moments to get my thoughts in order. It's only in the quiet that I can think, that I fully exist. And I want to learn to make my everyday filled with the peace and clarity of these moments. I want to be Present in my life, and not just get swept in the whirlwind (oh society, and all the evils that we have made you). I want to Live. And really, deep down, who isn't earning for the same?

rocky mountain dreams

You will NEVER be merely pretty.

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother
“What will I be? Will I be pretty? ”
Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?
What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich
which is almost pretty depending on where you shop.

And the pretty question infects from conception passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?"
But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad:
teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose,
face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones
went finger-painting my poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”

Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say,
grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage
she might buy.
But, this is not about her.
Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset
she could bestow upon her awkward little girl
was a marketable appearance.
By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides.
Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed.
Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia,
and every convulsive twist,
like my body screaming at me from the inside out
“What did you let them do to you? ”
All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on
like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.
“Will I be pretty?”

Will I be pretty like my mother,
unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal
the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her?
Pretty? Pretty.

And now I have not seen my own face in ten years.
I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me!
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in.
About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls
to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue
where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy,
wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, b
eneath those two pretty syllables.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter.
When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity,
begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?,”
I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.

The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be,
and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
You will be pretty intelligent,
pretty creative,
pretty amazing,
but you will never be merely “pretty.”