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arguchiklife keeps feeding me change, and i keep wondering where it's going to take me next.
this weekend i went to a birthday party and to a going away party. i had fun at both, but the weekend as a whole left me feeling melancholy too. taken as a whole, i mean. a completed work.
birthday parties always make me think about the passage of time--nothing new there, i know. because my own birthday was not that long ago...but long enough for me to think, "wow, i've been 39 for a month already??"...i felt a little bit emptied out. i also missed another birthday party to attend the one i *did* go to, so i was worried about hurting the other friend's feelings (or pissing her off). thus, the feeling of being stretched too thin added itself onto to the feeling of being emptied out. it just seems impossible, sometimes, to maintain all of the connections to all of the people i want to stay connected to. it seems like other people manage it much better than i do--but that's probably a misperception on my part. which doesn't make me feel any better, in case you were wondering. if anything, that thought makes me feel even more urgently that we have to find new ways of connecting with ourselves and each other, ways to buffer ourselves and our relationships against the....whatever it is that disconnects us. and what is that, exactly? it's hard to say because there are so many answers.
with the going away party it's more clear.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crash66 is moving to OZ! i felt really happy to be there, saw a bunch of people i haven't seen for awhile, and just generally enjoyed myself. as the party dissipated, the reality of the situation sank in a little bit. then it was time to say good-bye, and i didn't know how to express everything i was feeling and thinking. how do you ever? you put it into a hug, into all the stock phrases people say...stuff you mean, but that doesn’t quite get to the heart of what you mean, either: "i'll miss you," "take care of yourself," "enjoy yourself," "this is so exciting," "you're going to do great things," “stay in touch,” and "i love you." and then you go, you leave the time and the place where you knew each other and were close and meant something to each other, something you want to put into words but can't. and they stay or go. and maybe you never see each other again. c'est la vie. so ist das lebens. that's life. (there must be a reason that so many languages have a phrase to convey this meaning, this feeling...)
and i remember the last time i saw my ex-husband in the flesh. i think we had just met at muddy waters (my favorite coffee shop at the time, on main street in burlington, vt). we probably needed to sign some piece of paper or tie up some other loose end before he moved to germany. he walked me home and then he hugged me good-bye at the front door to the dump of an apartment building where i lived on college st., right next to the nickelodeon theater and across the street from the fletcher free library. i can still see myself unlocking the front door...hear my dog's tail whacking against the wall of the too-small entryway of my apartment as he heard me come into the building and start leafing through my keys for the one that would unlock my apartment door and bring us face to face again. before i did that, i turned and watched rex as he looked both ways and ran diagonally across the street--i think it was raining--to the white rental car he was driving because he had finally sold our jeep. no more ties. he didn't know i was watching, didn't look back, but i waved anyway, and then i started to cry as i watched him drive away. that was 6 years ago.
yesterday morning (sunday) i got up fairly early and ran the henry weinhard's st. patrick's day 5k with my friend K from school. it was fun...and somehow symbolic, as the course took us east from seattle center, onto the viaduct that may or may not exist soon (it felt so solid...not quite eternal, but lasting, anyway...but things often do, before history gets a hold of them--an earthquake and some city planners...), through downtown, and ultimately to safeco field. it was a gorgeous day, and we ran under a blue sky with sweeping views of the sound and the olympic mountains, and i couldn't help thinking about how much more i want to do here before i move away. but of course that made me think about moving away...the likelihood that i will have to, if i get a job when i finish my degree. even if i don't, i think it will be time to pick up stakes and move elsewhere.
i'm going to get a nice, big taste of that, really soon. i'm going to be working out of state for a couple of months--from the end of april through the end of june. before i leave, i'm either going to move my stuff into a storage area, or into a new place that i'll be sharing with friends. i'm also going to fill out "on leave" paperwork for my department, and while i'm going to keep working on my dissertation (have talked to my two main advisors, and both are happy to keep working with me even though i'll be on leave), it just feels precarious and weird to be changing my relationship to the university so drastically. and to not know when i'll ever get to teach again, or if i'll ever get to teach *here* again. and my class this quarter was less than stellar…it’s just anti-climactic. It also got me thinking back to the last class i taught at UVM—as an adjunct, after finishing my master’s there, i taught 2 sections of american lit. and the weird thing is that i have to really work, to remember what it was like teaching the class. it feels like a lifetime ago. i guess it was—5 years ago. but 5 years doesn’t seem like much, anymore. i don’t want it to be that way, but it is, and i wonder where i'll be 5 years from now, who i'll be friends with, whether or not i'll have a romantic partner, and if so whether that’ll be someone i know now, or someone i haven’t met yet.
is it possible, or even desirable, to know or to exert some agency over the changes life brings? even when i think i'm making conscious choices, i know the outcome is likely to be really different from what i expect or what i want. still, i walk myself through the reasons why i'm doing what i'm doing, how it's going to work, what the pitfalls might be. i walk myself through the gains and losses life has brought me before, big transitions and small. small transitions i thought would be big; big transitions i thought would be small. and i know that, no matter what, things aren’t going to go the way i think they will, or the way i want them to. but they will go. that much is certain… i tell myself that as long as i live each moment and make each choice as consciously as possible, always choosing the path that really seems best to me, i'll be able to live with whatever consequences come along, no regrets. it sounds really good…almost zen, right? it’s never quite like that, though. yet i continue repeating it to myself, like a mantra; and i continue to long for something more….something more something…something more true, maybe. no, that’s inaccurate. what i really long for, deep in the heart of my heart, in my brainstem, is something more lasting. a self, an other, many others, a network of love.
if you could see, right now, what an effort of my will it is taking, to leave that last line there, to not press and hold the backspace key……………
the vulnerability of not back spacing...of leaving the admission there, where anyone can read it, is scary. but why? i feel weird saying something like that, probably because it seems like an admission of traditionalism, like people will read it and think, "oh, she wants to get married and have babies." no. definitely not either of those things. i'm not longing for *any* particular formation of life or of relationships. i certainly don't want to "go back" to something that supposedly "worked" for generations of people before me. does that lie ever actually work for anyone, anymore? i'm just longing for something that works better than what i've been doing, is all. the trick will be figuring out what i mean by "works" and "better." because right now it's very hazy. there are elements that i want: easiness, emotional and physical intimacy (sex and way more than sex, also not just sex), play, adventure.
ok, i give up. this is sounding like a really bad personal ad. lol. don't even get me started on that...
this weekend i went to a birthday party and to a going away party. i had fun at both, but the weekend as a whole left me feeling melancholy too. taken as a whole, i mean. a completed work.
birthday parties always make me think about the passage of time--nothing new there, i know. because my own birthday was not that long ago...but long enough for me to think, "wow, i've been 39 for a month already??"...i felt a little bit emptied out. i also missed another birthday party to attend the one i *did* go to, so i was worried about hurting the other friend's feelings (or pissing her off). thus, the feeling of being stretched too thin added itself onto to the feeling of being emptied out. it just seems impossible, sometimes, to maintain all of the connections to all of the people i want to stay connected to. it seems like other people manage it much better than i do--but that's probably a misperception on my part. which doesn't make me feel any better, in case you were wondering. if anything, that thought makes me feel even more urgently that we have to find new ways of connecting with ourselves and each other, ways to buffer ourselves and our relationships against the....whatever it is that disconnects us. and what is that, exactly? it's hard to say because there are so many answers.
with the going away party it's more clear.
crash66 is moving to OZ! i felt really happy to be there, saw a bunch of people i haven't seen for awhile, and just generally enjoyed myself. as the party dissipated, the reality of the situation sank in a little bit. then it was time to say good-bye, and i didn't know how to express everything i was feeling and thinking. how do you ever? you put it into a hug, into all the stock phrases people say...stuff you mean, but that doesn’t quite get to the heart of what you mean, either: "i'll miss you," "take care of yourself," "enjoy yourself," "this is so exciting," "you're going to do great things," “stay in touch,” and "i love you." and then you go, you leave the time and the place where you knew each other and were close and meant something to each other, something you want to put into words but can't. and they stay or go. and maybe you never see each other again. c'est la vie. so ist das lebens. that's life. (there must be a reason that so many languages have a phrase to convey this meaning, this feeling...)and i remember the last time i saw my ex-husband in the flesh. i think we had just met at muddy waters (my favorite coffee shop at the time, on main street in burlington, vt). we probably needed to sign some piece of paper or tie up some other loose end before he moved to germany. he walked me home and then he hugged me good-bye at the front door to the dump of an apartment building where i lived on college st., right next to the nickelodeon theater and across the street from the fletcher free library. i can still see myself unlocking the front door...hear my dog's tail whacking against the wall of the too-small entryway of my apartment as he heard me come into the building and start leafing through my keys for the one that would unlock my apartment door and bring us face to face again. before i did that, i turned and watched rex as he looked both ways and ran diagonally across the street--i think it was raining--to the white rental car he was driving because he had finally sold our jeep. no more ties. he didn't know i was watching, didn't look back, but i waved anyway, and then i started to cry as i watched him drive away. that was 6 years ago.
yesterday morning (sunday) i got up fairly early and ran the henry weinhard's st. patrick's day 5k with my friend K from school. it was fun...and somehow symbolic, as the course took us east from seattle center, onto the viaduct that may or may not exist soon (it felt so solid...not quite eternal, but lasting, anyway...but things often do, before history gets a hold of them--an earthquake and some city planners...), through downtown, and ultimately to safeco field. it was a gorgeous day, and we ran under a blue sky with sweeping views of the sound and the olympic mountains, and i couldn't help thinking about how much more i want to do here before i move away. but of course that made me think about moving away...the likelihood that i will have to, if i get a job when i finish my degree. even if i don't, i think it will be time to pick up stakes and move elsewhere.
i'm going to get a nice, big taste of that, really soon. i'm going to be working out of state for a couple of months--from the end of april through the end of june. before i leave, i'm either going to move my stuff into a storage area, or into a new place that i'll be sharing with friends. i'm also going to fill out "on leave" paperwork for my department, and while i'm going to keep working on my dissertation (have talked to my two main advisors, and both are happy to keep working with me even though i'll be on leave), it just feels precarious and weird to be changing my relationship to the university so drastically. and to not know when i'll ever get to teach again, or if i'll ever get to teach *here* again. and my class this quarter was less than stellar…it’s just anti-climactic. It also got me thinking back to the last class i taught at UVM—as an adjunct, after finishing my master’s there, i taught 2 sections of american lit. and the weird thing is that i have to really work, to remember what it was like teaching the class. it feels like a lifetime ago. i guess it was—5 years ago. but 5 years doesn’t seem like much, anymore. i don’t want it to be that way, but it is, and i wonder where i'll be 5 years from now, who i'll be friends with, whether or not i'll have a romantic partner, and if so whether that’ll be someone i know now, or someone i haven’t met yet.
is it possible, or even desirable, to know or to exert some agency over the changes life brings? even when i think i'm making conscious choices, i know the outcome is likely to be really different from what i expect or what i want. still, i walk myself through the reasons why i'm doing what i'm doing, how it's going to work, what the pitfalls might be. i walk myself through the gains and losses life has brought me before, big transitions and small. small transitions i thought would be big; big transitions i thought would be small. and i know that, no matter what, things aren’t going to go the way i think they will, or the way i want them to. but they will go. that much is certain… i tell myself that as long as i live each moment and make each choice as consciously as possible, always choosing the path that really seems best to me, i'll be able to live with whatever consequences come along, no regrets. it sounds really good…almost zen, right? it’s never quite like that, though. yet i continue repeating it to myself, like a mantra; and i continue to long for something more….something more something…something more true, maybe. no, that’s inaccurate. what i really long for, deep in the heart of my heart, in my brainstem, is something more lasting. a self, an other, many others, a network of love.
if you could see, right now, what an effort of my will it is taking, to leave that last line there, to not press and hold the backspace key……………
the vulnerability of not back spacing...of leaving the admission there, where anyone can read it, is scary. but why? i feel weird saying something like that, probably because it seems like an admission of traditionalism, like people will read it and think, "oh, she wants to get married and have babies." no. definitely not either of those things. i'm not longing for *any* particular formation of life or of relationships. i certainly don't want to "go back" to something that supposedly "worked" for generations of people before me. does that lie ever actually work for anyone, anymore? i'm just longing for something that works better than what i've been doing, is all. the trick will be figuring out what i mean by "works" and "better." because right now it's very hazy. there are elements that i want: easiness, emotional and physical intimacy (sex and way more than sex, also not just sex), play, adventure.
ok, i give up. this is sounding like a really bad personal ad. lol. don't even get me started on that...
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 12:17 pm (UTC)hugs and farewells. i'll miss you; many others will miss you; seattle itself will miss you.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 08:37 pm (UTC)so, if you're ever walking around sydney and you see a group of people juggling, go up and ask if one of them is a crazy american by the name of crash.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 08:38 pm (UTC)