Not in Kansas anymore…

I have left South Florida.  Friends, I broke free from the heat and am in Washington D.C. for the week.  This feels beautiful, and cold…

I came to visit friends and family.  I arrived yesterday afternoon, and as I watched my plane amidst the beautiful monuments, structures, and symbols of our nation’s capital I reminded myself of the notion of home…how strange it was, how unfamiliar the feeling.  It was almost overwhelming.  Then I reminded myself to breathe.

As we drove through the city, I could not believe how this beloved city has changed since I was last here.  The buildings seem almost larger, even more monumental than they were when I lived here.  They still resonated that voice of freedom as they always had, but this time, they were almost calling me to come home.

I suppose as I struggle to find out what is really home, I should not rule out any option.  I have made home a strange series of events and it has almost become an overpowering word in my ever growing dictionary of life.  This solitude, as I have become so accustomed to, has now opened up a plethora of doors and windows to remind me that yes, wherever I go, I may very well be alone, but there will be an air of happiness and contentment in this solitude.  Someone please remind me of this moment when I make my next move…wherever it will be.

It is in this moment when I am forced to ask myself to identify the voice that is pulling me home to Oregon; the feeling in my stomach that almost resembles butterflies when I hear her name.  Is it because that was home for so long?  It is a person, a group, my friends?  Is it the prospect of not such a lonely future?  I can’t put my finger on it.  Maybe it is the distraction of this beyond words, incredible city I am presently residing in.  Maybe I needed to put myself in a city to remind me of who I am and where I belong.  Maybe I haven’t been selfish enough and thoroughly thought of what I really want and where I really belong.  Maybe it really doesn’t matter at all where I am as long as I can find happiness amidst the solitude.  My friends, I may be walking on a strange version of the yellow brick road, but I will find my Kansas for Skordo and me.  Maybe I should start clicking my heels more..

A healthy understanding…

Yesterday the unthinkable (almost) happened.  My computer crashed.  The good computer.  The one with my book.  The hard drive that has lugged around my vibrancy, my soul, my ever being for the past two years.  Friends, a friendly word of reminder so those do not end up in a frenzied, panic mode such as I did yesterday:  back up.  Daily.  For the record, the book is backed up, but I was sitting in fear for hours that maybe I did not back up properly and as I have no printed copies of the book such far (correction:  I do now…), I was crying (yes, crying) in fear that she was gone forever.  How do you even begin to start over?

While scans and such were running yesterday to salvage the computer in question, I began to read.  For the first part of said reading, I was unable to focus, but after a while, I realized that if the book was gone, I was going to have to start over and like much of my reading, it is all research.  I then came to the conclusion that if I had to re-write, I would.  And I would make it better.

My mother and I often shop the Costco book section.  I generally grab ‘airplane’ books from their book department and I was true to form last week.  I grabbed a book that was a quintessential love story/murder mystery.  This time, I was pleasantly surprised.  This book hit me.  I got it.  The characters felt as though they were mine, my friends, myself, and I knew exactly where I was.  Does this happen to you?  All murders aside, I felt I was reading a little piece of myself.  I stayed up until 1Am finishing the book.  I can’t remember the last time I did that…

After the unthinkable happened and the book, my book, was salvaged, I set the book down and returned to my pages (yes, it was a late night…).  I wrote with such force that slightly escaped me over the past month or so.  I felt inspired (less the murder part), I felt alive again.  It is such sweet irony when someone else can force the feeling of love out of you, but I found it leaving my mind, my fingers furiously typing, and suddenly there they were -  the words I had missed for so long, appearing on the screen.  Love:  I may not know you in my bones, but I felt we had a healthy understanding yesterday.

As I sat alone in my dark room, the once so suffocating voice of solitude did not feel quite so stifling.  It was the most fulfilling moment I have come across in weeks and I found myself smiling amidst the clock bearing 4AM and sleeping dog at my feet.  I wrote the end of the book last night.  I gave words of closure – a plea if you will – but finally, there is a semblance of completion.  It’s not done yet, as I still have a bulk of the ‘middle’ to finish, but my final thoughts, the last words I so struggled with, are there.  They are finally out.  It’s as though this solitude that I spent months in Oregon begging for has at last paid off.  I complained, I bitched like a teenager when I first arrived in Florida about being alone.  Not today though.  This was why I needed to distance myself from my great state, the irrevocable heartbreak, and any other means to distract the words.  And in that bittersweet moment, I felt at home.

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

E.E. Cummings

No alligators today…

I woke up this morning smelling like dog.  Really.  Thankfully, there is a reason for this.  For those that have noticed on the weather forecasts, Florida is in the midst of some strange arctic weather.  It has been in the 30s in much of South Florida.  Yes, we are cold.  Very cold.  The average temperature for this time of year is in the 70s…where did the heat go?

Before Christmas, Skordo’s crate was moved from the den into the garage as to allow more room for company.  This worked out just fine when the weather was ‘normal’ but once it hit the 40s at night, I knew Skordo was going to have a few choice words for me.  Needless to say, yesterday morning I woke the boy up and he was shivering.  Last night, I let him sleep in my bed with me.  The things we do for dogs…

About two weeks ago, I proved to my mother just what extent I would go to in order to take care of an animal.  Thankfully, this animal was not my own as Skordo has been trained not to do this.  Also, he is afraid of water…best dog fear ever I have come to understand.  What did you do, Mary?  We’ll get there.

My mother loves Amazing Race. Yes, the reality show.  I really do not enjoy reality shows in the least bit and my mother (love you, A, I really do) thinks this is an excellent show.  She wants to fill out an application for us and believes that we would be absolute characters on this show.  I am inclined to agree that characters we certainly would be.  Picture this:  my mother standing at the bottom of some Vegas casino watching her daughter – her only child, the light in her life, her will to live – scale a building.  I am attached to harnesses and ropes cursing ever being born, my mother for making me do this, and reality television for ever existing in my mother’s nightly channel line up.  Any running expedition, I would be doing.  Any heights and/or rollercoaster activity, I would be attempting.  Anything involving the consumption of strange food or frog testicles, I too would have to do.  Yes, this is a great idea, A.  Get right on it.

Getting back to the story at hand though.  About two weeks ago, my mother and I were on the sofa watching TV one evening and we noticed that our neighbor’s Golden Retriever was swimming in the lake again (side-note: we live on a lake, and not the kind of lake you swim in as there could be alligators anywhere in Florida).  We go outside and sure enough, about 12 of our neighbors are making attempts at coaxing this dear dog out of the lake.  We join the parade and bring Skordo out.  Nothing is working.  My mother (being the talker that she is) has had a long conversation with what turns out to be our neighbor’s dog-sitter and sure enough, this dog-sitter (first day on the job) did not attach the choke chain properly, it slipped off, and off the retriever went, swimming with all her might, into the middle of the damn lake.

After 20 minutes of shaking dog treats, throwing bones, letting Skordo bark around the edge of the water (smart dog, he wants nothing to do with water), it is beginning to get dark, the dog is getting tired but is still swimming circles in the middle of the lake.  I look around the lake and realize not one person is making any active effort to get the dog out.  Shit.  “A, get me a towel.”

I ask the uneducated dog-sitter for the leash and jump in the water.  To be honest, it wasn’t very cold and I purged all thoughts of alligators, duck feces, and whatever other marine wildlife or bacterial infections could be lurking in our lake.  I swim out to the middle, grab the dog by the harness, and make a speedy return for land.  If there are alligators in the lake, they kept away from my toes that night.  The dog was returned to its dog-sitter and I proceeded inside for the longest, hottest shower of my life.  I scrubbed so hard I looked like a tomato by the time I got out.

After finding my place on the sofa again, my mother looked at me and said she was proud of me for taking action while everyone else was sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.  I looked at her and said “Well thank you, A.  And this is why we would win Amazing Race.”

The beauty of moments…

It is nearing that time of year when my mother and I look at each other on certain dates with great avoidance.  It is the time that I feel often closest to her, and the most distant.  It is when we try to address our loss with the best powers we possess, only to know it will never feel right again.  This year though, I want to find progress in it – progress from him.  Not the bittersweet devastation that we have grown so accustomed to.

I wish I could say that with great loss, a life comes out of it.  As we are nearing the 19 anniversary of my father’s passing, I wonder if we have done this right.  Would he be laughing with us at moments?  Would he be proud that his girls are together again, living in a strange place with two cats and a Doberman?  Would this be what he would have wanted for us?  Of course, we hold on dearly in the blind hope that maybe we have been right in some of this, that we have made this great man proud in some way.  I cannot change what I have done, what I didn’t do, but know that this past year has finally been an act forward in progress and know that some part, maybe only small, he would be proud.

There was a day not too long ago when I almost had it figured out.  I thought if I bottled it all away and never thought of it, him, or what happened again that it would stand for a brighter hope for tomorrow.  But that was just one day, and I know that it was a knee jerk reaction to sadness and simply put, it cannot be done.  Try as I might, I cannot hide from him, nor will I.  I have strange means attached to his identity and I will never shy away from them.

As I continue to press on into this vast unknown, life is spinning in a new direction, one that I am making great efforts to do with some semblance of right.  The strange twists that occur – death, love, moving, heartbreak, even the simplicity of an argument over the cat with my mother – don’t rattle me as much as they used to.  Maybe this is just age and maturity beginning to take over.  Maybe it is learning to address life with a clearer, sober mind.  Maybe I am beginning to just take inspiration from these moments and quite frankly, roll with them.  Maybe these moments are now as humbling and endearing as a morning cup of coffee on the water.  Whatever they are, they are no longer arduous moments of thought.  They are beauty in the life I am slowly creating for myself, and I am gathering progress in them.

You don’t survive in me
Because of memories
Nor are you mine because of a
Lonely longing’s strength
What does make you present
Is the ardent detour
That a slow tenderness
Traces in my blood
I do not need to see you appear
Being born sufficed for me
To lose you a little less

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Onward march…

As I sit here consuming what is my third cup of coffee for the day (really), I wonder a bit what would happen to me if my coffee was switched to decaf without my knowledge.  Would it be a placebo effect?  Would I flat-out taste a difference?  Would I quit coffee?  The answer to all of these:  probably not.  Onward march…

Today is a most relished day away from the bar.  I have not accomplished much yet other than go to the dreaded bank, walk Skordo (14 months and still growing…), and call school to register for classes.  What joy (<- insert sarcasm).  I did do something today that I have not done in a while.  Though the last thing my car needs is for me to add extra, unnecessary mileage to it, I did it anyway.  Aimless driving – entirely necessary in my life.

Amidst my driving and listening to the same song on repeat (Sherwood – For The Longest Time), I reflected over the past three weeks and decided it was necessary to share a few words explaining my absence.  As I previously mentioned, yes, it was needed.  I did need a break from the words.  To be entirely honest though, I didn’t quite have enough words to give you.

Two weeks after Thanksgiving, my mother was putting together a bookshelf and to make a long story short, she herniated a disc in her back.  For those that have experienced this or have cared for someone with this ailment, it is not a pleasant experience.  Needless to say, it took this injury to flood my brain and hit the off button where once the on button for words had been.

While caring for her and watching what had once been such a vibrant, active woman lay on the couch, we found ourselves in conversations that maybe we had avoided.  Maybe it took this, this forced time with each other, to finally muster up the courage to say these words.  Maybe it was a cue from my friend that told me to stop whining, but in the end it was this:  Mary, get your shit together.  Thanks, A.  This was needed too.

I know I have spent much of my time waiting for something great to happen.  Whether it is with employment, education, money, or love, I have been biding my time waiting for some level of life to begin.  The light finally turned on and I realized that in the midst of this waiting, I have taken not as much of an active approach in progression.  Pressing forward, my friends.  It’s time to get all of this done.

Waiting around for that dare to be great moment isn’t going to change anything.  I will still be here, in South Florida, bartending on the beach, wondering if I made a grave error in judgment by ever moving here.  Did I need to run all the way across the country to find myself?  Did I need to allow what had once been such an irrevocably broken heart rattle everything that I had once know?  Did I need to allow a man who wasn’t ever worthy stir up the fragments of solidity that I had seemingly known?  No.  I allowed it though.  And I was a passerby to my own life for way too long.

So where do we go from here, you ask?  It’s time for progress.  It’s finally time to pick up the phone and make the phone calls I have so avoided for the past six months.  It’s time to save money in a manner at which I have never done before in order to move back to my beloved Oregon.  It’s time to learn to be an adult, alone, and not wait for something or someone else to awaken this life.  I have spent six months learning to be alone, and now I need to learn to be happy with this solitude.  If I spend the next five years walking my dog everyday with just myself and the words bouncing through my head, then I will do it, and I will find great joy in it.  If I find myself with a beautiful MFA in Creative Writing, then I know I will finally have accomplished something.  None of this will happen though if I don’t follow through.  Maybe I have spent too much time sitting around wondering about ‘me and my big dreams’.  Why not actually do something about it?  I suppose it’s about time to carry on and make it happen.

Some form of resolve…

I don’t believe in resolutions.  At one point in my life, the beginning of a new year carried a bit more significance than it does now.  Alas, I no longer resolve to much as January approaches.  I just continue on…maybe everyday is just a slight effort to do something a little bit better than the day before.  Maybe not.  Oh maybe, how I have missed you so.

I am just as indecisive in 2010 as I was in 2009.  So far, I have not worn color (largely in part due to my indecisive nature – I cannot decide on a color so I don’t wear anything other than black, white, and whatever those two can create).  I have consumed more coffee in three days than most people do in a week.  I (for a brief moment) considered retiring from bartending to pursue a say, cleaner job after coming home from work wearing Bloody Mary mix.  I had a moment where I wondered if staying in Florida wasn’t such a bad idea…then today happened and I was reminded that much of what occurs here does not occur in Oregon.  OK, maybe it does, but I haven’t run into such bizarre behaviors out of grown men in Oregon as I do here.  Words of wisdom (for those that need a refresher course in how to not be a jerk), please do not tell your bartender (or server or any female in which you do not know her last name) that she looks four months pregnant.  This will not end well.  And it’s rude.  My breakfast was delicious, thanks for asking.

Back to the task at hand though after that tangent of a rant.  I feel much better having that off my chest.  I used to make resolutions.  I remember in high school, I resolved to not salt my food.  Yes, I know it sounds silly but allow me to make this blissfully clear:  I love salt.  I put salt on just about everything.  Needless to say, salt and I were separated for about six months until the shaker found its happy way back into my right hand.  We have been attached ever since.  Failed resolution #1.  There were a couple scattered January 1 that I threw away packs of cigarettes, swearing that I would never buy another.  I would make it until January 2 at 6pm.  Terrible.  This list could keep going, but I will avoid the gory details of my indecisive nature and not continue to bore you all with my inability to make commitments (or break-up with my favorite food adornment).  It’s understood:  my level of follow-through has never been on the impressive side.

This is a far stretch from a resolution.  I just want to try to be better, in whatever capacity that is.  As my friend told me:  Mary, stop whining.  I want to stop.  I get it, far more than I should.  Now I just need to apply it and actually follow through.  I am not getting any younger, I need to do something productive (other than my book which is going quite well…yay) and not continue to waste time.  I don’t feel like I am in a race against this clock of sorts, I just don’t really want to miss anything either.  I needed my ocean today…

And you wait, await the one thing
that will infinitely increase your life;
the gigantic, the stupendous,
the awakening of stories,
depths turned rounded toward you.

The volumes in brown and gold
flicker dimly on the bookshelves;
and you think of lands travel through,
of paintings, of the garments
of women found and lost.

And then all at once you know: that was it.
You rise, and there stands before you
the fear and prayer and shape
of a vanished year.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Bring on 2010…

This break was necessary.  I could apologize for this absence, but I believe it would not be entirely critical to use the word sorry.  I’m not.  I needed this.  I flat out needed a break.

I have tried to gather my thoughts over the past few weeks.  In between family members gathering at my mother’s house, work, caring for the menagerie, and gorging myself with holiday food (I have successfully gained five pounds…and every ounce of chocolate has been so worth it), I have not been able to find the words.  They somehow managed to escape me amidst the chaos.  So here we go, the last words for the year…

I could spend this time reflecting over the last year in some sort of format, but I believe we have covered enough.  You have all spent quite a year with me and to create a recapitulation of sorts seems slightly unnecessary and redundant.  Instead, I am going to take a different route.  Off we go into 2010 my friends.  I am going to embrace this.

I guess you could say I am ready for this year to be over.  Even more so, I am ready for the next to begin.  I have much to look forward to: the upcoming birthday (the big 25…let the anxiety begin), the soon to be loss of the holiday weight, embarking on a new journey back to Oregon (this Oregon girl needs to move home), the next six months with my mother, school (I have no great words surrounding this topic as I am not that motivated…if anything, my description is simply this: meh), enjoying the last months of palm trees, sun, and heat, and last but not least, the first year where I live a life that finally begins to feel that of an adult.

I no longer am feeling quite like Wendy (Peter Pan reference, folks).  Florida has been a humbling experience of Neverland.  I say humbling as I took much of life prior to The Great Move for granted.  I have this conversation often as I did – I took Oregon and everything encompassed by her for granted.  Never again though.  And hopefully I will be able to find my way back home and if Oregon ends up as my Neverland again, at least I am home…

Let the adventure begin, again.  I hope the new year finds you all with great joy and happiness.  I will embrace the passing year knowing that much was gained from my crazy year.  This new year is the end of a bizarre roller coaster in my life…yes, this is now the downhill slope.  Call me superstitious, but I think I prefer even numbered years.  Happy New Years, my friends!

Two necessary words…

After publishing my last post, I received a comment from a patron at my bar.  This comment was warranted.  I was in dire need of hearing this.  My mother (I love you, I really do) was quick to verbally state that she had made the same claim.  I just needed to hear it from someone else; someone less involved, if you will.

“Stop whining.”  Got it.

I sat on this comment overnight as I needed to absorb it and process exactly how I wanted to handle it.  Not in written word, here, or any other format for that matter, but how I really wanted (and presently need) to apply it to my life.  I have come to this conclusion:  I need to live.  That seems like a rather open-ended statement but it can be summed up into a pretty simple response:  I have spent the past few years, and more so months just being.  I need not simply be any more.  I need to live.  Monstrous difference, my friends.

A friend of mine said something that struck a chord.  She said that she felt as though she was sitting on the sidelines of her own life and was doing nothing to really progress it.  If anything, she was just watching as others moved her along and was just following where she thought she needed to be; not going anywhere on her own or because she flat-out wanted to.  While I don’t necessarily believe that I have taken the sideline approach to life, I found strange solace in my solitude and got a bit too comfortable in this odd depression that began once I moved here.  And even faster can I say that none of this am I doing for anyone else, as we all know I am a bit too selfish for that.  I am settling right now and am not living.  Living starts now.  I am jumping on whatever bandwagon I need to be on and am pulling out of life in the bike lane.  I think this will be a much healthier and happier approach.  Don’t get too excited A,  I am not going to start wearing color just yet…

I must thank my patron that left me this comment.  At one point in our conversation, he told me that I gave hope.  My friend, you have given me hope.  I cannot thank you enough.  I’ll do my best to stop whining now.

So off I go into yet another great unknown.  Though still here in my pavement covered and strategically placed palm tree land that once could have been called paradise, I am going to take a different thoroughfare to this strange place called Florida.  No matter what sinks in and creeps under my skin and into my head, I am going to live.  And if most or all of this occurs in the solitary of my own being, I am content with that.  I am most importantly going to learn to find happiness in that.  It’s time now.  If anything, it is long overdue.

i closed my eyes
although i never knew
the difference
i stood before
a brighter light
at lesser distance

and then, a feeling. almost as if nothing were ever bound to repeat itself again. as if history had been masterfully created as the great pyramids and any attempt to reconstruct or relive any given moment would have to stem from an understanding of how pyramids were built from the TOP DOWN.

Saul Williams – , Said the Shotgun to the Head

Up from down…

Often, I find this all to be a bit overwhelming.  What is this? you ask.  I am learning to live.  As an adult.  This is a battle unknown to me and I am entering a great fight, a strange chapter, and a circumspect mind.  Great changes are one their way and I haven’t the slightest clue as where to even begin.

I am bracing for the six month day to arrive.  Yes, it is almost six months of life in Florida.  Better yet, six months since life in Oregon.  For some reason, numbers have always been a daunting figure in my days.  Whether it be time in minutes or time in years, I have never received them with the joy at which many of my co-patriots in life have taken such.  I have found myself saying recently, almost in wishing or hopeful manner, that if I could start over and do this – all of this – over again, I would.  I am exhausted.  I have been thinking too much, reading too much, learning too much.  There are pieces of me that have never felt better or more stimulated, and then there are the eyes that want to close, only to reopen when all of this is said and done and I have found that semblance of peace I have so been longing for.

It is odd to look over the past six months in whatever strange documentation I have gathered of it, and relive it.  As I am now knee deep in cataloging my book, I am bracing to dive into the words and give the final prose of what I have spent the better parts of myself working on.  When I finally hand her off, I don’t know if I will find that to be a moment of joy or of sorrow.  I’m sure it will be somewhere in between such, but alas, my mind will be vacant of her.

With the exception of that book, it is hard to say what I have really accomplished in six months.  I came here – correction:  I ran here – a woman in love, a woman broken-hearted, only to slowly remove myself of the coma my vulnerable heart had fallen asleep in.  I broke hearts in this process.  I drained my bank account.  I added miles to my car, probably a few lines on my face.  I grew out my hair.  I cut off my hair.  I ran from what I once thought to be a lonesome existence only to discover what the definition of solitude truly is, and better yet, to live it on a daily basis.  Friends, I could tell you I made a mistake, but I would be lying.  This was the best decision I ever made.

The next six months will not parallel these previous six by any stretch.  It would be difficult to describe this year as a hill in the up and down sense.  I don’t know which direction I have necessarily taken, only that I have accomplished at least parts of which I had intended to conquer.  What was once so irrevocably broken: gone.  Book: progress.  Learning to be alone: success.  Realizing that running is not the way to battle your dæmons: an expensive, emotionally and physically exhausting process, but a necessary one.  I will not do this again, I won’t run again.  I will however learn to live and love without any fear.  Maybe I am a bit on the uphill climb for that part but no matter how overwhelming it feels, when this is all said and done, I will have known a better side of me for it.

Yes I long for you, I glide,
losing myself, out of my own hand,
without hope of conquering
what comes to me, as if out of your side,
grave and stark and undeterred.

…back then: O how complete I was,
nothing calling, nothing that divulged me;
my stillness was like a stone’s
over which the brook makes its murmuring…

But now in these spring weeks
something has slowly broken me off
from the dark unconscious year.
Something has given my poor warm life
into the hand of someone random
who doesn’t even know what even yesterday I was.

Rainer Maria Rilke – Woman in Love

A racing mind…

I am doing something I never do.  I am sitting in a bar.  OK, I retract the first statement.  I am often in a bar…just working.  Tonight, I am a patron enjoying the ambiance of an establishment that so reminds me of home.  This bar even serves Rogue…how fitting.  I assure you, this evening is spent sober and coherent.  I needed to get out, so out I went.  Here I am, sitting alone at a bar.  I have not been this bizarrely happy in a long time.  Oregon, I miss you and this is the best I can do until I am home to you again.

Life has taken a strange turn lately.  I think I am in the midst of a slight identity crisis.  As I re-read what I have posted recently, I believe this to be ever so apparent, it just didn’t dawn on me until now.  Be warned – this could be strange tonight.  Even more so that this is not my standard writing element.  I have grown accustomed to writing hidden between the silenced, four walls of my bedroom, not a dark hookah bar, curled up on the corner of a maroon velvet sofa, with Pearl Jam’s first album sounding through the speakers.  For the record, I’m wearing flannel.  This feels oh so politically correct.

I mentioned not too long ago what a divine feeling it was to be surrounded by friends again, and no longer feeling as though I am a prisoner inside of my own head.  Introducing the first part of the identity crisis: since moving here, I didn’t quite realize just the extent at which I can feel alone.  This is still strange.  Though friends are present now (and ever so thankful for them I am), I still feel as though I am lost in my own thoughts a bit.  The ever wandering words, stories, the book, poems, it is all compounding into noise and I am struggling right now.  I am fighting to turn this all off and the only solace I have had from being too emo (yes, emo) has been the comfort of others.  Where once alcohol had been salvation, it is now the company of a good friend to quiet my sensitivity to life.  There, I finally said it.

A few years ago, I was working for a website.  The building our office was in also was the home of an art gallery and local artist.  The artist and I became close friends and she even displayed some of my photography in the gallery.  One day we were chatting about love, what it meant to us, and if we could really define it.  She asked me if I would describe myself as sensitive and my knee-jerk reaction was a quick no.  If anything, a vehement no.  She then gave me this all-knowing look of understanding and handed me a book.  It was a self-help book for the overly sensitive.  For years, I have carried that book around, almost in denial of admitting that I am sensitive.  I have put on a tough face and created my version of Berlin.  Wall down:  I am sensitive.  I still haven’t read the book.  It is in a box, burning a slight hole in it I fear, but I fear more that I would read it and only find myself tucked away between sentences and words of the sensitive person, that same person in love, carrying a heart that almost feels as though it is going to explode, and replacing tears with words.  Here she is, sensitive and afraid that this is the beginning of a quarter-life crisis.

I’m sure tomorrow I will have pulled myself out of this funk a bit.  I am thankful for much right now.  If anything, I am thankful for my anonymity the most at this moment in my life, as I can hide on the corner of a sofa, in this strange, beautiful bar that reminds me so much of the organic beauty that is home, and write the words that I have kept so hidden from myself even.  I am still not the girl to cry, I just feel a bit too much.

I certainly haven’t been shopping for any new shoes
And I certainly haven’t been spreading myself around
I still only travel by foot and by foot it’s a slow climb
But I’m good at being uncomfortable so I can’t stop changing all the time

I noticed that my opponent is always on the go
And won’t go slow so as not to focus and I notice
He’ll hitch a ride with any guide as long as they go fast from whence he came
But he’s no good at being uncomfortable so he can’t stop staying exactly the
same

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me or treat me mean
I’ll make the most of it I’m an extraordinary machine

I seem to you to seek a new disaster every day
You deem me due to clean my view and be at peace and lay
I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way
And say I’ve been getting along for long before you came into the play

I am the baby of the family
It happens so everybody cares
And wears the sheeps clothes while they chaperone
Curious you’re looking down your nose at me while you appease
Courteous to try and help but let me set your mind at ease

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me or treat me mean
I’ll make the most of it I’m an extraordinary machine

Do I so worry you
You need to hurry to my side, it’s very kind
But it’s to no avail
I don’t want the veil or flowers
I promise you everything will be just fine

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me or treat me mean
I’ll make the most of it I’m an extraordinary machine

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me or treat me mean

Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine