So Sayeth the Stars!

After funerals and finals and a week's worth of manual labor, I finally hit the day on which I'm supposed to drive back down to Portland and start my actual vacation... and this is the horoscope I get in my inbox:

Relax; the tough part is over now. It will be a boring afternoon, but it is better to just kick up your feet and let the last few weeks of work get resolved automatically.

...Thank God.

Upon Meeting a Dear Old Stranger:

I started with a cadenza.

Slow at first, complicated, filling
up space and rolling through my chest
and over the tips of your fingers, green,
blanketing us with familiarity of "we"
and the strangeness of "new."

And then there were notes that slunk
through tunnels in the brain,
melodies that slipped and twisted and wriggled
and wouldn't let up their nipping; electrical
synapses lined up in a squad with you
in their sights.

I got in my car and drove away from you
and the crippling knowledge
that my poker face was a mess of tells,
that each and every well-formulated equation
was suddenly filled with errors,
and I would never understand the pump and flow
of my own red heart
despite its monotonous rhythm.

There's a Comfort:

Always keep in mind, Sarah, that no matter what has happened, you did the very best you could.

And so did those who may have let you down.

Love,
The Universe

However...

...the sun is shining, I've put in my two weeks notice at the awful job, started training for the fantastic one, and generally am feelin' purdy-fine.

I guess that fairy godmother showed up after all.

Another Death, Another Little Drain.

It has occurred to me as of late that if I want things to happen in my life, I'm the one that will make them happen. Nobody is going to take care of me but me. It's a scary thought, really. Perhaps I should marry rich?

I need to surround myself with ambitious people. I need to learn that it's okay for me to make mistakes, and conversely I need to learn to not always be so accepting of everyone else's mistakes.

But I'm tired, and lonely, and sometimes it just sounds so much easier to give up. Lay down, close my eyes. Let it all rain down.

Where is a fairy godmother when you need one?

Almost no one ever says it will be easy.

Actually, most say it will be hard. Really, really hard.

What do you tell yourself, day after day, Sarah?

Hubba, hubba -
The Universe

The Concept of June-uary and Some Thoughts on Recall

It is blustery today, and cold, and somehow muggy. One of those days where you long to be outside (because inside makes you crazy) but you're uncomfortable in your own skin either way. I've been zipping and unzipping my sweater and zipping it again, caught in that not-so-pleasant realm between sweaty and chilled.

This afternoon I suddenly stopped in the middle of my walk home and thought of an old friend-- someone I haven't been in contact with for almost a decade. I stood for a moment next to a neighbor's blown-over rose bush and smiled at the memory of his face and his voice. Then, out of pure curiosity, I went and looked him up online. And, an hour later, we were talking. He looks and sounds exactly as I remember him. He writes the way I remember. He laughs just the same.

It's amazing how memory can be stored away silently for so long and then have no other trigger than a line from a song, or a certain smell, or a stranger's grin. But if you actually sit down and TRY to pull up particular memories or feelings, they melt. They shift around in your brain and take on new characteristics, and you question the validity of them. For instance, my oldest memory is of the sails of the old windmill on Cape Cod... and last time I was there, it was exactly as I'd always pictured it, only the setting was completely wrong. My mind had somehow picked up this entire windmill, perfect down to the last detail, and stuck it somewhere entirely different from where it belongs.

Take this man, for instance. Hearing the timbre of his voice on the phone brought back a flood of memory; I found myself closing my eyes at moments and just listening to the musical rise and fall of each sentence. I am suddenly filled to overflowing with nostalgia, even if our friendship only lasted a short time to begin with. Really, in the grand scheme of things, I barely knew him. But we shared a small piece of our young adulthood, and therefore he represents a connection for me... to me. The same me, a different me. By rekindling this originally short-lived amity I am able to resurface and preserve, for a time, a particular series of moments of my adolescence.

I can look at them from afar, from the now, and think, "Wow. I existed back then. That was me."

What a gift, memory: the talent of framing thoughts. Of adding and subtracting, like paintings that are never quite finished-- they can be erased, or embellished, or covered up, or stripped naked. They can burn you down or make you whole. They don't stay in one spot.

They change you, and you change them, and it never stops. And it is glorious.

On Writing

"A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets make a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
-Oscar Wilde

Respiration is a 50-50 Thing

Today I feel as though my thoughts regarding my life have started to fall into a series of equations, all of which are following the same formula: "Yes, ______ sucks, but ______ is really great."

It's a relaxing way to look at the world. Instead of letting myself focus on all the minor negative things, or trying to force myself to ONLY look at the positive, I simply acknowledge a single bad issue and follow it up with a higher-in-value (but related) good issue. Some examples:

Yes, it's stressful moving my parents out of the house I grew up in. BUT they're moving to a really awesome house fifteen blocks away from me, so I'll get to see them more often. Yes, I'm working a dead-end job that pays dirt. BUT I potentially have a career-building position elsewhere in the field I'm studying. Yes, I'm having problems with a friend. BUT I've reconnected with a lot of other friends I thought I'd lost, and those friendships feel better than ever.

When applied like this to every upsetting thing that pops into my head, the formula works beautifully to make me breathe normally again, and smile, and brush it off my shoulders. Today I feel as though everything will work itself eventually, as long as I don't panic about it.

If I flail, I'll drown. If I relax, I'll float. Inhale, exhale.