Monday, May 26, 2008

Guilt and Cat-Naps

I am tired. My head hurts. My mouth is dry because I have just woken up from one of my inevitable cat-naps. I find it interesting that I can be tired on a day when I have done next to nothing: I made a pie (peach! my favorite), I cleaned the litter box, I worked on a friendship bracelet while watching a black and white movie from the 40's, I tried to sort through my clothes and decide what to get rid of, what to put away for the warm weather, what to wash. Alas, however, I lost momentum very early and I fell asleep on my bed listening to This American Life instead.
My exhaustion, I realize, is the after-effect of staying out late perhaps one too many times last week. Isn't this what summer is all about? Staying out late, sleeping in, doing nothing or anything... Yet I can't help feeling guilty over my lack of activity, my lack of productivity. I feel that I should have something to show for what I've done today. Which is funny, because this was never much of an issue for me before. In the past, the only problem with doing nothing was the threat of boredom. Guilt was never an issue. Now, I feel bad that all I wanted to do today was sleep. I think about doing something - editing some of my writing, maybe. Re-learn guitar. Make a mini-comic. Some kind of project. Yet, I lack the drive for any of those things at the moment... Lately I haven't even had the drive to update this old thing, this online repository for my feelings, my observations, and other self-centered things...
Recently I feel that I keep running into my own shortcomings, like walking into a brick wall you forgot was there. But when you're rubbing your swollen nose you notice how familiar the wall is. I keep running into my own selfishness, my pride, my thoughtlessness. And it feels like I can't get away from any of it - it's like when I'm in a really bad mood: I can tell that I am in an irrational, horrible bad mood, and I know I should not take it out on the people around me in the way that I am, and I know that I am being a total pain in the ass! But for some reason, I cannot stop myself from lashing out, from simmering and festering and feeding my discontent... It's like that. Some mornings I wake up and think, "Gosh, I really don't love me. How on earth can anyone else?"
But then, there is a little, rational voice that pipes up and says, "But wait, that isn't really what love is about, is it?" I certainly don't love others because they are perfect (rather, it isn't that I don't love them because they are imperfect). Why is that so hard to apply to myself?
I'm still working on that one. But I think, I really do think, that love must be some kind of answer to this mess, to the sheer blinding imperfection of... everything. Not always perfect answer (because we never seem to get away from that basic fact), but I don't know what else allows us to live with one another except love (or compassion or forgiveness or grace or what-have-you). I feel like a hippie, or maybe someone who works in a shop that sells incense and healing crystals... but there it is.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Interlude

I'm afraid I've hit one of those slightly frightening dry spells with my writing - I am either all apathy or at a total loss for anything to say. My senses have been burned out; I feel incapable of noticing things in the way that being a writer requires you to notice things and I have the lost the energy required to articulate such things anyway... Anything I do write comes out something like a whine... "This is bothering me, I don't like that, I'm so frustrated, I can't stop worrying about getting all that done." Where is all this coming from? It is practically summer. Summer! Summer is what I pined for all those weeks, and now... Some days are joy (thanks to some people), but some days I wake up and wonder what the point of my day is. I wanted to be able to write an ode to summer: hot, dreamy, careless summer... When in fact summer is turning out to be a strange interlude in between the old and the new, and I don't know what to make of it. I am still adjusting to having genuine free time and it is (quite unexpectedly) unnerving me. It seems I have to relearn how to relax. Not only that, but one minute I feel unwilling to let go of the life I have now, and the next minute I am chomping at the bit to move out, so ready to be at my new school, living on my own... It's a strange place to be.

I can say this, though: summer is looking a little shorter than I anticipated. That, however, makes me all the more determined to make it worth every minute if I can. I will work out the kinks as best I can, spend as much time as I can with the people I love, and try as best I can to relax a little and go with the flow.

Easier said than done, but perhaps saying it is the first step.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

...

I am free.
Well, from some things. For a time. Right now all that matters is that finals are over, and everything else can wait a while... today, I spent hours doing almost nothing. It was the most blissful thing I can imagine.

My brain decided to check out for a while. It flew away for some down time after all I've put it through recently. Which means that this post ends here:

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
-Henry David Thoreau

More later.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Body Electric

Oh, I can't focus. I have only a little more to be done, if I could just do it. But my brain rebells, my body won't settle down, my imagination wants to take full reign. I want to dream, and jump, and dance, and sleep, and wish, and laugh, and kiss, and joke, and weep for joy and thankfulness. I would like to take off, let go of the sandbags that keep my feet planted on the ground, the sensible ground. How can my veins hold this electric blood that pumps through me? How can I stay here when I feel like I could float away? Or perhaps go lower, lying on the warm earth, feeling the grass and the sun... My self-discipline holds out only so long. But obligations don't fly away, no they do not. Deadlines do not disappear. It's so hard, though, because they seem so trifling compared to the intoxication of spring. I do believe I am twitterpated, twitterpated with everything. So frustrating, then, to think about grades, and jobs, and money (or lack thereof), and deadlines, and a dozen other responsibilities. I am wondering if I can't jump all the way back to being a kid again, with nothing to to do all summer but swim and read and play. Summers were so long back then, so lazy. Now they fill up with work, and fly by in the wink of an eye... If only, but time only goes one direction, I'm afraid, and I get pulled along, willing or unwilling. I am just looking to try and find a sense of peace in the middle of all this.