Anxiety and the Giant Dipper

I recently spoke to someone who pointed out something very interesting about anxiety and excitement. She had me conjure up each sensation, and compare the visceral, physical feelings that they created. Interestingly enough, they were nearly identical. Each subtly sped up my heartbeat and my breath; each created a tightening in my belly.

As someone somewhat prone to anxiety and stress, noting these similarities has been useful in that it allows me to perform a transference of stress and worry into excitement. As my trip approaches, my mind is intermittently flooded with all the looming unknowns I’m scheduled to face, but with some conscious effort, I’ve been able to turn these fears into anticipation. The unknown is what keeps life interesting; leaving for Spain is a choice based on my desire to experience the unknown, to challenge myself and embrace upheaval, unpredictability and change.

As the days pass and my departure approaches, I’m reminded of a rollercoaster. (Specifically, the Giant Dipper at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, which I’ve been riding a lot lately.) 

The most terrifying part of a rollercoaster is the slow, painstaking ascent. The ride creaks up, foot by foot, and as you approach the top, and look out at all the people milling about with both feet safely planted on the ground, you begin to wonder if you’re insane, why you’d ever boarded the ride in the first place, and, of course, if you’re going to die. But once you take the plunge, the adrenaline rushes through your veins, and you’re swept along in a whirlwind of exhilaration that leaves you wind-tousled and energized. (And, if you remembered that the camera is on the second drop to the left, you’ll have posed for a ridiculous photograph.) 

Goofy and cliché as this metaphor is, it’s been useful. Every now and then, I wonder if I’m insane, why on Earth I’ve signed up to fly away from everything and everyone I know, and why I think I’m capable of taking classes in Spanish when school is challenging enough in English, but ultimately, I know this is just that nerve-racking ascent and eventually I’ll be plunging headlong into an amazing adventure that will make it worth my while.

Visa Victory!

It's official! Yesterday I drove to San Francisco, waited around in the frighteningly quiet Spanish Consulate for far too long, and finally picked up my student Visa!

And then, of course, I had to celebrate, by stuffing my face with Todd at a Burmese restaurant in the City. Delicious, but deadly.

 My potato curry.

Todd's chicken and noodle creation, which provoked the comment, "Tressa, I feel sorry for you, because there's no way yours could be as good as mine."

Digging

My dreams keep coming, cloudy and verbose; they bite at me, spiders and ants, little legs scurrying beneath my eyelids, clothing, in my skin. I am becoming a self-conscious sleeper, navigating through the rubble with my eyes closed, constructing big labyrinth nations where my tongue is broken in half. There are so many trials to face.

4am—I sit up, squinting into the darkness for a creature with six legs I suspect is crawling across my pillow, but it is black, so I fall back heavily, into a field where you’re tugging off your shorts.

I am churning excitement from anxiety, and then laying in it, the mornings long and hot and grassy. I want to dissolve in summer heat, then maybe, I can become pliable and spread out, among the selves I’ve been, want to be, am destined for or expected of—then, maybe, I can settle into the cracks of yellowed paper, black ink. How contrived, the divides in land, and why can we not drift between them, wide-eyed nomads, why must we be bureaucratic, paper-bound, sludge through the fine print for month-long headaches.

Sometimes waking up is exactly like a sigh, like giving up, losing hold of some mystery place, losing grasp of the most important secrets. I wish I could write in my sleep, wake up and find the words in neat rows. When I wake up, I feel soggy around the edges, like my subconscious has been sweating from hard manual labor—digging. Digging for old clues, linguistic tricks; I’ve got to have something worthwhile buried down there, some faded map that will remind me how to find that self-certain part of my self, some calm self that’s ready for anything at all. 

Transnational Heart

[A preemptive poem for Casey and California.]

 

I give you my transnational heart

and all its miles of ocean salt;

I give you my transnational heart

and all its miles of mud and grass,

rocky hills and sweet-smelling mountains,

twisty redwood roads.

I give you the rusty trailer post office,

the corroded rural park,

the late night tea and bullshit family time,

the meditative drive from home to home,

the open-close-open refrigerators,

the dog-hair carpet, empty bedroom,

stained glass studio days.

I give you the chlorine and barbecue summers,

the happy birthday crackers and cake,

the mauve ringing phone family jokes and drama office,

the noon arrival lunch runs

the highway one ocean cliffs,

sporadic rain and damp heat.

I give you my transnational heart

and Santa Cruz sun-soaked meadows,

stretches of barely urban street,

ice cream shops and favorite taquerías,

lecture hall naps, in-class poems,

the on-campus deer sightings and

cell phone camera animal portraits,

the body-smell bus rides and all the conversations

I listen in on.

I give you my transnational heart

and its jet lag birds eye dreams,

the patchwork quilt of human homes down low

the crowded highways and train stations,

the narrow cobble stone streets and vendors,

the plazas and thieves; the heat.

I give you my transnational heart

and the free-dinner lines

the legal liquor stores,

don’t-sit-down clubs

and the 4am beer vendors.

I give you the monuments and the people

sleeping around them,

the tourist shops and ugly t-shirts,

the serious archways, the churches,

the mind-mushing infinity of art.

I give you my transnational heart

and the salty pizza dinners, red wine,

the exhausted footbone walking,

heat relief gelato, the coffee shops and

subways, accordion players with jaunty mustaches,

the money-in-tin rattle, the maps.

I give you my transnational heart

with its overpriced crème Brule,

the endless tower climbing, and the views,

the famous merry-go-round and

the shuffle-foot scam-avoidance dance,

the strips of sand along the river,

the craggy warm rock beaches,

twelve kinds of cereal, the bunk beds,

top heavy night trains, potato chips and

foot-jiggling Laundromats.

I give you the heaving stubborn suitcase bulge;

I give you my transnational heart

and all the dreamlike maybes,

the there and back again aspirations,

the ticket stubs and virgin journals,

the palpitations, twisting sleep-tongue,

and hope and hope and hope.

I give you my transnational heart,

I’ll come back for it in a year.