How to be.

Here is me being useless and surrendering to the futility of my ant-hill life. I guess we’re all going nowhere, busy in carpeted rooms that smell like popcorn, that sit against our souls in greenish despair — we’re all going nowhere, going to the copy room and running our fingers over hot pages of meaningless text that we’ll press into some other hands and later, come home to our lovers, and have nothing to show. Working up to, working on, and never leaving, spinning in the endless spiral of our old stories, and getting lost in the familiar grooves of our once-upon-a-times, and here we are, clacking away and muttering with sore throats, stapling and shaking hands and trading facts. The fact is that we are sitting very still in all this claustrophobic motion, hoping for a way out. Fuck.

There’s a chance of showers, dust storms, and a welling up in my chest that will make me cry small tears and open and close my hands, wordless with desire and nowhere to put it. I am not enough people, I am only me, bruised shins and freckles, and no idea how the fuck to be. I remember sitting in the temple and wondering if I was comfortable, even in my own head, reverberating with the music of gongs and the sigh and murmur of all the sad fucking people, so sad, so heavy, with the burden of our limited years, all the dying, every day, all the living, all the choosing. And it feels so hard, but it’s the only thing we’ve ever done.

Outside the parking lot is bright, and there’s my car, cracked windshield and cluttered seats, rattling speakers and streaked windows, and a few things that I carry around from here to there, and back, spending long hours sitting and letting the Californian landscape rush past on either side. What the fuck am I even waiting for? More time to elapse behind a window, with all my fears bunching up around my bones until they grow solid and unmovable, imaginary zeros to march away from my bank account, despite my lack of motivation? I am not supposed to be this petrified person with a life behind walls, with boxes and stale letters, am I?

Yesterday.

Good morning, my name is Tressa. This is the first day of the rest of my fucking life. Outside, there are loud chickens, screaming from behind the fence. Mishka is pawing at her bone, trying to pull an elusive treat out of its hollow center, where Casey shoved it before he left to skateboard. There is a wax stain on the tablecloth I sewed. There is a passing ambulance. There are two cinnamon buns growing cold on a baking dish next to the stove. There is warm coffee in the pot, and cold coffee in my mug, the green mug, which I do not like.

Today I am thinking of taking Mishka for a walk. I am thinking about going to the bookstore, or the library, but the thought is also exhausting. I am thinking of going to the art store, or walking, or staying.

I wonder what other people do all day. I wonder if I should cut my fingernails.

Other things I’m considering are: turning the tablecloth to hide the stain, making small books with scrap paper, going back to sleep. I don’t think that’s an option because I’ve had too much coffee, and besides, if I sleep in the middle of the day, I’ll wake up with a headache.

Everyday adventures.

It's funny how when it comes down to it, I know what's important. What's important is love. I know that time is limited and life is unpredictable and ultimately all I can do is make sure to squeeze everything out of every little moment I'm given, yet in any given moment I am worried about thousands of things that don't matter. But every so often I have a moment of clarity and I just want to hug the earth and myself and every person I've ever met because the sun is out, and there is kale growing in garden, and I can play loud music and dance around the house, and my dog is ridiculous and my family loves me. 

The duality of my brain is amazing and terrifying to me sometimes. I have so much love for humans, but half the time I'm terrified of them. I spend so much time burrowing into my own brain and getting lost in my own flaws that I forget how wonderful is can be to experience other people. There's no way of putting it that isn't silly. I think I often come across as an extrovert, and in the right circumstances I definitely am, but there's a huge part of me that is totally petrified by my own fabricated fears. What am I always so afraid of?

So much of the time, within the confines of everyday life, I find it so hard to reach out to people and to connect and make friends and relax and be myself, but when I get outside of that routine and enter into the realm of inhibition and wildness, into travel mode or festival mode, and I feel all my knots come undone and I'm able interact with people in a way that is totally different, that is totally genuine and uninhibited. I don't know why I can't do that every day.

It's nice to be aware of some of the differences within myself. This summer I'm going to have so much time on my hands, I'm really hoping I can use it to find fulfilling things to do and find people to be around that will pull me out of myself a little. In Spain, I was so aware of the necessity of taking advantage of every opportunity that presented itself, and I think because of that, I was able to give myself up to the universe and to the possibilities of life in a way that was really freeing and exciting. I want to start looking at every day as an adventure again.

Word Cloud

I've been pretty absent from this blog lately, focusing on finishing up my final year at UCSC and working, but I recently came across a word cloud generator and plugged in the blog URL to see what came up. I kind of like it, it seems pretty reflective of my time abroad:

Continuously coping with return.

I think I have finally identified that gnawing anxiety between my ribs, the intermittent weight hanging over me as an existential dread resulting from the mismatches in my experiences, in the realities that I feel attached to or embedded in; an expanding sorrow as the past and my connections to it drift away, the sense of relationships dissolving into their geographic impossibilities.

Stop the squirming.

 

Stop that squirming,

with your blackhole anxiety,

transition dreams and pockmarked skin,

there are certain people and then

there are others.

Displacement is not replacement,

personality is a fluctuating element, susceptible

to time and rejection.

Don’t forget to dig up love,

don’t forget that you can’t dance but you do,

don’t forget,

bald bird,

that you are just another indoor cat

before the open door.

Your secret hands are no secret,

self pity is no hot commodity and hot days

make you like this:

sticky, stuck, irritable.

And your lungs, too, may be cloudy

and thick,

but breathe through the gunk.

And your eyes may be cloudy

with distance,

but don’t blink the time away.

And your skin may be cloudy

and lonesome,

but it’s still translucent;

so the only choice is to be the muscles and the blood

the only choice is to be the bones and the sinew

the substance and the soul.