on belief: we're all as lonely as we wanted to be

i will follow in a long line of bloggers, reporters, and friends to (belatedly) relay the sense of hope i felt listening to barack obama's victory speech. i felt myself compelled, of course, by the election of our first black or mixed-race president, by the symbolic potential of such an event, and by the seeming empowerment of the disenfranchised in his election. but i also felt overwhelmed by an absolute belief. watching obama speak - seeing people reverant, overjoyed, crying - i was reminded of important visionaries like mlk jr or malcolm x or yuri kochiyama. and while i recognize the differences (and the potential violences of such a comparison) i think what ultimately stirred in me was the ability to believe in someone, to be inspired by a leader to believe in our collective potential to effect social change.

of course, thinking before and after the election, i inevitably return to a critical examination of the (race-related) implications of obama's presidency and the reality of what obama may or may not stand for.

but for that moment i felt...inspired.

and in that inspiration, i suddenly understood through a different perspective one reality of our generation: a tendancy towards cynicism, a cynicism that may or may not suggest knowledge but certainly (i've discovered) suggests a painful lack. this, i know, has a historical explanation awaiting exploration but for this moment, this once, i want to dwell on its loneliness.

belief is needed. important. and perhaps the silver lining of cynicism is a refusal to believe just anything --- at some point, though, i hope we each find something to believe in.

renaissances of wonder

i find myself, always, drawn back to lawrence ferlinghetti (ironic, i know). to this wrinkled man, with his white beard, with his 'radical' ideas wrapped in an old body.
"i am waiting," he writes, "for my case to come up. and i am waiting for a rebirth of wonder. and i am waiting for someone to really discover america. and wail."
* * *
since embarking on this "new chapter" of my life (you know that one you start after college? the growing up one?) i've felt torn between practicality and idealism. between a job, a move towards a lucrative career versus pursing a highly impractical (lets soften that by saying idealistic) ph.d...it feels too often like a choice between a vague educational pursuit or a "life" with a house and a husband and the guarantee of maintaining or exceeding whatever privilege i was born into.

and it occurs to me that i, like ferlinghetti, have been waiting. this is why his poem runs occasionally and unexpectedly through my head. i, too, am waiting for a rebirth of wonder. i am waiting, like ferlinghetti, for my case to come up. i am waiting for a moment when we value, really value, education. and nothing more. i am waiting for my idealism to renew itself.
* * *
and this is the key really. these years of getting my ph.d. cannot be for me about anything more then my own education. this is not a journey with a career necessarily at its end. it's just a journey. one that i am lucky enough to allow myself.

so i will wait. and experience, and observe, and allow...

awaiting, perpetually and forever, a renaissance of wonder.

i've finally discovered the emocon that summarizes my experience of life.

o_O

i can't remember all the times i tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass

~ you. me. the golden gate bridge. we pull off the road, walk down darkened trails, perch on the edge of a westward cliff to watch stars move over the pacific.

~ near the bishop hot springs we lay side by side on the hood of your jeep. in the shadow of the eastern sierras, the car metal warms my skin.

~ a late ride back from union square, lost on the muni. we wander through tendrils of fog in silent victorian neighborhoods.

~ the sidewalks are empty and glowing hazy yellow street light in japantown. you put an arm around my shoulders, glance sideways. i know what you want to say.

~ocean beach: after my first run. the waves, blending gray with the low clouds of a november morning, break at my feet. there are kite flyers and dogwalkers and september sunners: all i hear is my breath.

there was no simple cure

on the bridge, the wind blows and the cables hum steadily. like a harp, he says cynically, the wind running its hands across the nylon strings of its instrument.
walking around the towers of the bridge, i am almost blown over. he waits on the other side as i lean into the gusts, skidding against the rails. face windburnt, reddened, he reaches a hand to help me.

to be lonely is a habit
like smoking or taking drugs
and I've quit them both
but man, was it rough

now I am tired
it just made me tired
let's build ourselves a fire
let's build ourselves a fire

* * *

if we made a pact to meet halfway on this bridge, then i would come meet you.
if we promised to move only south across its span, then i would walk with you.
but i don't know that i would never look back at the northern shore of my memories growing small and blurred in the distance.

all i want is a room somewhere

work today: caught between just-graduated high school kids (self-involved, cynical, innocent...how we all used to be/still are?) and mid-thirties lexus house-moms (self-involved, privileged, fake, demanding) ---
it occurs to me that you can be unhappy or happy anywhere, because of circumstances. the trick is to find a way to be happy in unhappy circumstances; that, i think, lies in being happy and satisfied with yourself.

i am...

ready to be amazed.

question of the day: why do people who go to grad school suck?

because they're not the people you went to undergrad with.

oh yeah, and they're CRAZY!

good workout music!!

1) hip-hop is dead, nas
2) chicago is so two years ago, fall out boy
3) monkey wrench, foo fighters
4) monster hospital remix, mstrkrft
5) god only knows, beach boys
6) see you, saves the day

i'm just coming here to come down

five things happy people do, according to msn.com:

1) directing their thoughts towards meaningful goals
2) designing their lives to bring joy - making deliberate choices to do things that make them happy
3) avoiding if-only fantasies - and filling life with novelty instead of wishing it full
4) putting their best friends first - plenty of time to "just hangout"
5) allowing themselves to be happy

* * *

there's a time, i suppose, to admit that we are more in control then we ever want to believe. and in honor of the end of summer, and the end of my first month here...

1) training for a 10k, maybe a half-marathon; developing my intellectual goals and interests; taking accountability for my academic insecurities
2) exercising; talking on the phone everyday to at least one of the many people that i love and care about; turning off the tv
3) starting yoga; going to cafes; taking walks
4) make an effort to see people that are far away
5) counting my blessings --- every morning

* * *
i'm just coming here to come down
i could be here
i could move town...

forced to live like there's curfew;
translation: means i love you.

nobody said it was easy

"The recognition that one cannot know the other or the self, but must ask in respect for all of time who and what are emerging in relationship, is the key...Because who/what is is infinite, a finite being, without idolatry, can only specify what is not...Another name for that kind of 'negative' knowing is love."

- Donna Haraway

so many stories of where i've been

a forgotten struggle, to demand greatness.
and when i have forgotten to demand it of myself, i wish you would demand it of me.

to write this down as means to reconcile

dear jane: i'm sorry.

we lie in beds made of words.
and when you wake there's i love you on your cheek -
another promise
but when i felt it most i let go.

i let go.

with every mistake we must surely be learning

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye."

-Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

And yet we clamor for it, this love.
And perhaps all we ask is to be loved, wholly, by an imperfect being.

* * *

on another note, this quote, this return to the bluest eye reminds me of something that once made me feel complete --- more complete then i feel now no matter how great, real, imperfectly perfect my relationships may be. without finding completion on my own, they alone cannot, will not, make me happy...

open up your plans and damn you're free

i'm enjoying that lazy yet slightly desperate kind of free-time.
that free-fall, planning period you come upon every once in a while, the kind where you sit in coffee shops for hours sipping tea and reading novels or travel books.

i am about to move into a new apartment, well, house actually, and with a bunch of med students.
i am about to spend the weekend in new york.
i am about to get a part-time job somewhere.
i am about to begin my second-year of graduate school.
i am about to write abstracts for conferences.

all those delicious abouts, each with so much potential...

she's already out the door

my room echoes now. just the skeleton of a bed, now, an emptied chest of drawers - and downstairs boxes of clothes, food, the accumulation of these eleven months.

santa cruz remains a space i left untouched (afraid, i suppose, of letting it touch me): a few memories here and there of a bike ride, a hike near the ocean, studying by candlelight that week of winter storms. a few people left behind, more markers of what could have been then what ever was; a few dreams left behind and a few nightmares, residue swept into the corners of the apartment, settling on the windowsills of windows shut tightly against summer fog.

when i left san francisco, i left a home. a home defined as much by the people, experiences, and memories as by the place, a home i was sad, reluctant, terrified to leave. and yet now leaving santa cruz, i am only relieved to be gone. there's no use, i suppose, in what-ifs. if you choose only to pass through a place, it will in turn only pass through you.

and now onto another future.

one for sorrow, two for joy

in remembrance.
---
i walk along these hillsides in the summer 'neath the sunshine.
i am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me:
change, change, change.

give us faith.

prayer of st. francis

lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

o divine master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
and it is in dying that we are born into eternal life

time won't let me go

i have this impression that i should have my life figured out at this point.

that i was always one of those people that did have it figured out. and yet now i'm suddenly finding myself behind where i was once ahead.

more training to get my career? possibly another bachelor's?

sigh.

you are what you love: and not what loves you back

i'm back, at last, in san francisco - and it's absolutely beautiful today! warm, bright, clear, but with that familiar cold in the air as you breathe it in.

i stopped in at cafe gratitude for lunch (where, because of the prices, one can't help but think that, despite good intentions, they serve seriously yuppified vegan food) and one of their trademarks is to ask you a question of the day when you pay your bill. and the question today: what do you excel at?

the thing is, i feel like i'm still figuring that out. there are things that i excelled at in childhood, highschool, college --- but what now? and then i thought it would be interesting to hear what other people excel at (if anybody reads this? hehe.)

lions and tigers and...banana slugs?

we have a pet banana slug.
i mean, not really. he lives in our first-floor bathroom.
he only comes out at night and last night when i saw him i didn't want to move him or kill him because he was so harmless and cute sitting there in the corner.

but now i'm wondering where he lives in the daytime...

but she didn't realize: now that's a lot of love

i meant, today, to go on an adventure.

instead i listened to old playlists. it's funny how songs have a way of conjuring up emotions - not necessarily specific memories (although sometimes those too) but an overall feeling characterizing a certain time or event.

like this song, "not for all the love in the world". listening to it i feel that exact hopeful longing i felt all those summer nights in a san francisco dorm, window open to the sounds of the street. i remember the way it smelled (treated pine, laundry detergent, and crisp sf air); i remember the comfort of knowing your friends were a floor below or a block away or coming back in a month. and the feeling that each of us, in our own way, had something great to do with our futures.

post-college life is lonely.

but i suppose all of us find things to fill that lonely. come to terms with our mortality. eventually pick ourselves up and put ourselves back together in different ways.

i did go on an adventure of sorts right before sunset: i walked to the end of alta vista dr and looked out over the bay. it was so clear i could see across to monterey. and for a moment i wondered if i would miss this, too, when i finally could leave it.