…In which I ramble about life in my twenties. April 1, 2011

I find that words fail me a lot.  We as human beings need to invent a better method of communication.

I feel… frenzied tonight.  Like I have more energy than I know what to do with.

I would like to be a connoisseur of beauty.  That sounds nice.  Let’s do that.

It’s strange how the same things inspire me now as when I was fifteen.  It’s funny how much changes in nine years, but it’s even funnier how much doesn’t change at all.

I hate cold calling* people I don’t call on a regular basis.  In fact, I have a minor panic attack before I have to do it…  The best way to get it done is to just dial without thinking about it, but it’s impossibly difficult to try NOT to think about something.  I like to think that courage is rewarded.  I’ve found that to be the case before in my life, but I suppose it can’t always work that way.

I went to a dinner party/wedding reception last night with some people that I work with, and I ended up having more interesting conversations with my coworkers than I ever have at work.  One coworker in particular gave me a smattering of random details about her life that I found fascinating, and I would love to get to know her better.  At one point we were talking about the idea of age and retaining a youthful spirit, and I asked her what advice she would give to someone who’s twenty-four.  (She’s in her mid-forties.)  She said that she wished she hadn’t worried as much and had experienced more.  That sounds right on, as far as my life goes.  I spend my time worrying about all sorts of things—the past, the future, what career I’ll have, whether I’ll ever get married/have kids/buy a house, whether I’m wasting my twenties, whether my health will fail me, whether I’ll die in a car accident, whether I’ll ever become a rock star, whether I’m stuck with this acne for the rest of my adult life, whether I’m a bad person when I shop at chain stores, whether I’m making the right choices, whether I have enough friends, and what people think of me… for example.  (I worry a lot.)  I also wish I were doing other things, like traveling more and seeing more plays and going to more concerts and open mic nights and taking more pictures and trying to see every park in Buffalo and learning the guitar and starting a commune and opening a tea shop.  Those are all plausible things, so really I just need to stop being lazy and do them.

The problem for me is that I have no desire to be tied down, but it’s so hard not to be.   I need a job to have money to pay rent to have somewhere to live and to buy food so that I don’t starve, and jobs generally keep me in one place.  If I keep job-hopping that will look bad on my résumé and make it harder for me to find a job at all.  For some reason, it’s hard for me to accept that all one can really expect from a life is a steady job, a home, a family, grocery shopping, going to the gym or the bar, taxes, car insurance, etc.  I’ve always expected more from life than that, but I’ve never really been able to articulate what exactly that is.  Maybe I’m just being greedy.

I think there has to be a balance between accepting things the way they are and trying to be happy, and retaining enough dissatisfaction to motivate you to improve things any way you can.

But I still don’t know what I want.  Buddhism says not to want anything, but I’m not sure I buy that either.  I’ll give it some more thought.

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*I’m pretty sure I’m using this phrase wrong because a quick Google search suggested it only applies to call centers.  I guess those four months rubbed off on me…

Kicking through the autumn leaves October 26, 2009

We’re finally starting to hit the peak of fall. This weekend was astonishingly beautiful—in the sixties and sunny—and I tried to spend as much of it as I could outside in spite of grad school (which I’m sure I’ll pay for later this week), just basking in the glow of the colors. On Sunday we drove to Glen Park, playing the old cassette tape of Hootie & the Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View that I found at Goodwill last week, to walk through woods and take pictures and soak up the glorious, perfect fall day. This is what I was missing all of last year in California, one of the things I’ve been looking forward to the most about being back in New York… When the leaves first started to turn I walked around my neighborhood, grabbed as many as my hands could hold, and taped them around my room, trying to pull as much fall into my life as possible. They’ve curled and browned now but I left them there because I’m not ready for this to be over, as the early-darkening sky portends. Why can’t this part of fall just last longer? What other season is this great?

There’s so much I want to do—roll in the leaves, drive out to the country, have endless bonfires, watch the sunset and the stars, find a corn maze, carve pumpkins, eat fried cakes and drink cider… I want to relive the best parts of all my falls past. It’s actually kind of stressing me out because I know I won’t be able to do everything I want to because I have grad school to deal with too, and I’ve been sick for the past week, which ate up valuable fall-enjoyment time. I feel like this happens with most of my favorite things in life. I look forward to them intensely forever, and when they’re finally here I can barely enjoy them because I’m so focused on trying to live out all my daydreams. Then they’re over before I know what hit me.

I think I just need to scrap my expectations, sometimes. My ideas are usually good but I just end up putting too much pressure on things so that I don’t enjoy them as much as I would if they were spontaneous. So I think I need to let some of it go and just try to be where I want to be in each moment as it comes—and if I can’t control where I am, I can try to make the most of being there.

Babylon June 18, 2009

The past few days, I’ve actually been getting into the swing of this whole “enjoying life” thing.  I still have plenty of moments of frustration and stress, but in between I’ve been able to sink into a pleasant sort of calm—a “drinking tea and watching a candle flame” sort of calm,  I would say.  I’ve just been relishing simple things… existence itself, the people around me, the space I occupy and the air I breathe, sunshine and wind and music.  On Saturday, Damon borrowed a huge pickup truck from his agency, and four of us drove down to Big Basin Redwoods State Park to see the redwood trees.  You know those pictures of people standing in the hollowed-out bottoms of giant trees?  That was us.  We got slightly lost on the way back and Damon ended up steering said massive pickup truck down a one-lane, two-way road that twisted around and around the mountains for miles.  While trying my best to fend off the motion sickness, I trailed my hand out the window and looked out over valleys overflowing with treetops and beautiful remote boarded-up houses, and this song by David Gray came on the radio.  I’d heard it on Pandora before, but I’d never paid that much attention.

“And if you want it,
come and get it,
for cryin’ out loud
The love that I was
giving you was
never in doubt
Let go your heart,
let go your head,
and feel it now
Let go your heart,
let go your head,
and feel it now—
Babylon.”

I’ve had it running through my head ever since.  Something about the chorus just feels so full of hope.  Like—hey, things are pretty simple when you get down to it.  There’s beauty all around you.  All you have to do is open your eyes.  I start to think about how lucky I am, to be myself and to be alive in this moment on earth.  I’m the only person who ever gets to be me, in all of history.  How fucking awesome is that?  This is my one chance to live my own story.  It’s exhilarating and terrifying, all at once.  And none of it will last.  It never does.  You just have to take the fleeting moments of beauty life brings you as they come.  Life ends, and you never know when—that’s the nature of it all.  What can you do but love the hell out of whatever’s here in front of you?

Cliché?  Probably.  For me, at least, that doesn’t make it any less difficult to live up to.

Real Stories Don’t Have A Point May 20, 2009

80-degree weekend:
spent most of Saturday
convincing myself to do laundry,
finally got it done around 4 p.m.
and decided
the beach was where I needed to be.
Walked to 16th and Mission
and noticed that at some point
over the past week, the bus shelter
had disappeared.
Homeless guy walked over,
asked how long I’d been standing there,
told me tomorrow
he was going to see the Mayor
about the budget cuts
and he might be on national TV
so he hoped he wouldn’t have a booger in his nose
in front of the whole country
and you could tell a true friend
because a true friend would tell you
if you had a booger in your nose
on national TV
and he wanted to start doing
“Bus Stop Stand-Up”
because people could use entertainment
and he liked talking to pretty girls
at bus stops.

My phone rang.

Took the 22 to the 5,
which took me all the way
to the ocean.
I stepped into the sand,
kicked off my shoes,
saw a skinny guy
in a green t-shirt
walking toward me
arms spread open
a beer can in one hand
and gave him a hug.
I stood in the surf
til my feet went numb,
then chased seagulls.

Saturday, May 3, 2008, 3:25 p.m. March 9, 2009

I’m sharing an old journal entry that I liked, because I don’t feel like writing something new. I wrote this in Village A1, in my pajamas in the scoopy chair. Keep in mind that it wasn’t written to be read.

“The world is so goddamn beautiful.

It’s so fleeting, this kind of feeling, and I just want to hold it here in my hands for a while and try to let it soak into me, permeate me, change me. I want to be made of light. The world is made of light, and I am made of the same substance as the world—I am a part of all of this beauty and it is a part of me. It’s always here, all around me, in secret pockets and hidden corners and right in front of my face, and it’s within me as well, even when I forget how to find it. There will always be a way back there. It’s a cycle, and the cycle itself is full of beauty.

I want to write it here, to hold onto a piece of it even once the moment is gone. I don’t know if I can capture it, though, in describing concrete events. I want a record of the fact that even fairly crappy semesters can have happy endings. And I don’t want to move on yet, because when I feel like this, I feel like nothing can top it, like no matter what I do now there’s no way to go but down. It’s an exhilarating and terrifying feeling. Because it’s only for the moment. Everything we do and feel and experience is only for the moment, and what is life if not a collection of moments? If I’m happy I won’t stay that way, and if I’m sad I won’t stay that way either. The impermanence is frightening and comforting at the same time. There’s nothing to do but live the moments as they come—savor them as much as we can, and relinquish them once they’re over. We can keep the memory but we can never return to the moment itself: we must go off in search of new ones. …That’s life.”

Getting Re-Oriented February 4, 2009

I complained about having to go on our “Re-Orientation” retreat for the whole week leading up to it, and as soon as we got there I was glad to be there. This one was at Camp St. Francis again, which was where we had the original Orientation in August. It was good to be back. I appreciated it a lot more this time after having lived in the treeless Mission for so long—plus, the fog was gone. I basically spent two days kicking around the beach and hanging out with other JVs. We had presentations and discussions too, but I’ve noticed that I’m not very good at focusing/reflecting on what I’m asked to think about. I just kind of work through things on my own timeline and I can’t do much to change that.

My main realization from retreat was that I’ve changed a decent amount since high school, and not all of that has been positive. I’m a lot more knowledgeable and capable in general than I used to be, which is good, but I’m also a lot more cynical, which is not so much. So my realization was that there is value in some of the things I’ve found myself moving away from. I’ve learned to recoil from any sort of sentimentality and to see value primarily in the academic, the ironic, the esoteric, and the analytical… But I’ve decided that while cynicism has its place, on the whole it closes its eyes to some of the best parts of life.

“Fifteen, there’s still time for you
time to buy and time to lose yourself
within a morning star.”
                                   (Five for Fighting)

I woke up to this song playing in our orphanage-cabin on the second day of retreat—I think it must have been the alarm on somebody’s phone because the song played halfway through and then started over again. It’s one of those songs that are overplayed and kind of cheesy but I find I relate to them anyway… It brings me back to senior year of high school, and the bittersweet taste of transitions. I appreciated the little things in life so much more when I was younger. I think that’s something that I should be trying to hold onto. I decided I’m going to try to start collecting moments of beauty every day, or at least every week, because they’re always there if I remember to look for them. I found quite a few this weekend, just in the utter and absolute majesty of the star-filled sky and the moon reflected in the Pacific Ocean, the sound of the surf and the scent of eucalyptus in the breeze and the total immensity of time and existence, wrapped up in the richness of a single moment.

Creeps, Ruins, and Marin January 12, 2009

My first genuinely creepy encounter in the Mission: It was little before 12:30 on Friday night, and Julie, Courtney and I were walking back from BART. As we turned onto our street this guy approached us and started saying things like, “Hey, baby. Where you going? What’s your name? Come on baby, why won’t you tell me your name? ¿Hablas ingles?” I just kept walking, and Courtney said, “Could you leave us alone please?” —”No, now why would I do that? Why don’t you just tell me your name? …Leave you alone…” We only had a block to walk, and we got to the gate. Julie got it unlocked while he continued. “Are you disrespectin’ me? I can’t believe you’re disrespecting me.” We filed through the door. “I’m not trying to disrespect you,” Julie said, “we’re just tired. I’m sorry.” —”Sorry? What is that, sorry? I can’t believe you’re disrespecting me like this. I’m a gangster! I’m Norteño!” While he was saying this he stuck his arms inside the gate and tried to pull it back open as we were pulling it closed. We got it shut and he started kicking it; we closed the wooden door behind it and went up the stairs, and he walked away. Once upstairs, we talked it over and decided that he was clearly strung out on something, so hopefully he wouldn’t remember anything that happened, and therefore our odds of being attacked by a gang were slim. Julie and Courtney had been afraid he’d had a gun, but I hadn’t even thought of that. My mind was strangely blank throughout the whole experience, and after we were back in the apartment, I was just pissed off. None of us thought to call the police. It was definitely a reality check, though, and it made me wonder whether my general sense of safety in the city is a result of it actually being safe, or rather a result of my own obliviousness.

On Saturday, because it was in the sixties and I wanted to get out of the Mission, I decided to Indiana Jones it and go explore some ruins. Sutro baths, an “extravagant public bathhouse,”¹ opened in 1896. Once “the world’s largest indoor swimming pool establishment,”² the operation was closed for good due to financial difficulties in 1966, and it burned down soon after in a “suspicious fire.”³ The Golden Gate National Recreation Area bought the land in 1980, so now the ruins of the foundations are open to the public. It’s rare to find something abandoned that you’re actually encouraged to explore, without placards or tour guides or caution tape. I took the 22 to the 38, which took an hour that I spent listening to Coldplay. The 38 brought me to the north end of Ocean Beach, and when I got off the bus I had a conversation with a random old man who told me about rent issues in San Francisco and the trouble with consumer debt, with which I was of course very familiar. It was a very friendly random encounter, in contrast to that of the day before. After we parted ways I walked along the path up the hill to the Cliff House and then down a dirt path to the ruins by the beach. There were a lot of people there taking pictures, surfing, or wading in the surf. I walked along the edges of the foundation, took off my shoes and meandered down the beach a ways, ventured through an old tunnel in the rock, and then sat down on one of the crumbling walls to watch the sun sink beneath the horizon. The people gradually thinned out as it grew darker, and soon it was just me and a few couples smoking weed, watching the stars begin to appear in that huge dome of apricot-to-indigo- faded sky with the moon rising behind us.

“And I could write it down
or spread it all around,
Get lost and then get found
Or swallowed in the sea…

…Oh what good is it to live
With nothing left to give,
Forget but not forgive
Not loving all you see?

Are the streets you’re walking on
A thousand houses long?
Well that’s where I belong,
And you belong with me—
Not swallowed in the sea…

You belong with me,
Not swallowed in the sea.”

Saturday night we went to a party in Berkeley, and on Sunday Teresa, Courtney, Kareen, and I went with Rod to Sausalito and played around with some beautiful $200 handmade stained-glass kaleidoscopes in a craft shop before driving to the Marin headlands and taking pictures of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. It was beautiful but it also reaffirmed the fact that I cannot live in a mountainous area long-term because I would never leave my house thanks to motion sickness.

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¹ http://www.sutrobaths.com/
² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutro_Baths
³ http://www.outsidelands.org/sutro_baths.php

Turkeyday Weekend November 30, 2008

Happy end of Thanksgiving! I spent it in Phoenix, AZ, with a whole bunch of JVs. Chris, Lorraine, Julie, and I left around noon on Wednesday in a rented minivan along with Aimee, Lee, and Matt from San Jose, and we got to Phoenix around 4:30 a.m. Thursday. We spent Thursday and Friday hanging around the city with the other JVs. The weather was beautiful, and there were cacti (did you know you’re not supposed to pronounce the “g” in “saguaro”?), but other than that I was largely unimpressed with the part of the city that I saw—it felt like suburban wasteland to me. We left early on Saturday and drove to the Grand Canyon, got out and walked/climbed around for a while. It was beautiful, of course. You don’t realize just how big it is until you’re actually standing at the edge. I’m not going to waste your time describing it, though—just go see it for yourself.

That was a short post, so I will leave you with something to watch. To me, this video is pure beauty. See if you agree.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbtH6dWR1xU

(That link doesn’t work anymore.  New link: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=15819613)