Denoument

Rest by Koda12

I'm not sure when it started building, but it all culminated these last two months in a roiling boil, that high note climax that sends you soaring at the apogee. Move apartments. Find submitters. Find new job. The interview clothes. 11th hour packing. Unloading the moving van after dark. Tanuki's squint eye needs looking at. Start new job. Apply to school. Apply to school. Apply to school hard.

I put the last of my application in the mail this afternoon. Registered mail means it's carried in a locked bag. I imagine by a man dressed in a suit, with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. That's how my application will arrive. I told the woman at the post office how reassured I felt with all the stamps going onto my package. She told me that's what I was paying for.

Then I went for my first visit to my new doctor, paid for by the insurance offered at the hospital I work at. Her waiting room contained one of her own paintings, and I knew I was in good hands.

Then I stopped on the way home to look for winter gloves for Dave, something fair trade, or environmentally or socially responsibly made, because I have some money to afford that now with our extra cheap rent. There was nothing I could find that wasn't either made only of knit (not good for 'driving or making snowballs'), or made in china. So I came home.

We had a roasted sweet potato and green bean casserole, and I laid down for a quick nap before going to our friends' apartment for art night. Quick nap became three hours. But there'll be art night next week. There will be more days and weeks to come, and more fights to be fought, challenges to be met. But for now there's peace. Now I can rest, and glow in the warmth of all the goodness I've found during these latest blessed struggles.

Damning evidence.

I haven't been here since college. Sitting at a computer, finding a variety of creative escapes from doing what needs to be done. My Essay. I've done all the little houseworks I can think of tonight for my grad application. Shot off some base-touching emails to my remaining references, nudge them back to the paperwork they need to do. Switched my Facebook and long forgotten Myspace accounts to private. God forbid the admissions committee comes across a photo of me dressed as a pizza slice, in the hungry embrace of a suited grizzly bear.
In any case, I believe in my heart that I am capable of this program. The tricky part is convincing the admissions people of this. Which is why I'm so cautious about my essay. My transcripts and recommendation letters will speak for themselves, this is the one time I speak for myself. I don't want to wharblegarble all over the place.

It is possible that whatever godly force is out there has let me feel their guiding hand, and restirred my faith now for some kind of Jobian test. I mull on this likelihood everyday. But what do I know about the whims of gods. All I can do now is pull every trick I know, and though I may be facing a crushing defeat, hold the faith, like water in cupped hands.

Returning to the path.

I discovered the root of my general malaise as of late. As of the last year.

In a piece of synchronicity I discovered the word for it during my GRE studies: Anomie. Instability caused by lack of purpose. And it's not the first time. Anomie motivated me to leave art school, and drifted with me through my first year of Johnson. It abated, quite suddenly, when I discovered the Alternative Medicine program, which I promptly jumped on. The relief, the rush, of following this path was visceral.

Somewhere along the line I took this all for granted. The program seemed like the yellow brick road, and I never considered what would happen when I finished college.

...

A swirling anomie. Like a storm that slowly but stolidly settles in, occasionally lighting me up and leaving me tearful, wondering what I'm doing. It's been a year and a half.

At some point I discovered UVM's Masters Entry Program in Nursing. I could enter with my non-nursing degree, and finish with a Nurse Practitioner degree. It would be a year until I could apply, and that year is coming to a close. I've just taken my GRE's, I'm working up the nerve to ask people to speak for me, and formulating a new essay every day to speak on my desire to return to this path. Every other day I squelch the fear that I'll be left in a coffee kiosk, pining and aching a moment longer than necessary--because I feel that a nurse practitioner should be made of tougher stuff than that.

Bridgid of Kildare

A wordy album.

Some snapshots from my last week.

The furrows in my mother's brow in the rearview mirror, after we passed a fallen deer. It remained furrowed for 6 miles.

My hulking brother, who punched numerous holes in the walls of our old house, tenderly attending to his girlfriend at the dinner table.

My sister, 8 months pregnant, her house filled with chattering women and a baby shower, as cool and collected and unfathomable as I've ever seen her.

My Dad, lying dripping marinated steaks onto the grill, asking me if I'm becoming a vegetarian.
He grilled veggie burgers for Dave.

Driving home to hang out with Dave on my lunch break, finding myself running to the house unable to not grin.

Afraid of the stilted phone conversations after someone moves away, yet prattling on with Emily when she calls one afternoon.

Emily Margaret.

I once heard that faith is just the knowledge that all things change. Like it's a comfort, as I grew up thinking faith to be, that bad times will end, just hold on a little longer, etc. But if we take that to be true, than we're accepting that all things change. Not only the bad.

Good things can change too. And isn't that what makes life so bittersweet?

I think it takes a kind of courage to face loss smiling, happy that you have something to miss.


This is my best friend Emily Hamlin. She's going to Syracuse University next week, for their nationally renowned Public Administration Masters program. That they're throwing money at her for her to come learn from them is only a suggestion of what an epic person she really is. I'm lucky and proud to know her. That I'm going to miss her is an understatement.

Turning the tides

I'm coming to the realization that I may be a pessimist. I almost remember being an optimist, before some grand teenage disillusionment. Now I can't see a rose but for it's thorns. Maybe this is some long standing defense mechanism, expecting the worst. I rather hate it. Ironically enough, I don't think it will end well.

Now watch, wait and see, as I turn the tides.

I'm grateful for chocolate milk. That shit is delicious.
I'm grateful for aloe plants, that are healing my lobster skin so well.
I'm grateful for the people at the state department, for giving me a job. And for Karen, Darlene, Lillian, Cyndy, Lori, Marcella, Steve, Mrs. Goldwin, Razelle and Stella- for everything they've done for me.
For 'Chuck' at the bike shop for selling me an awesome bike, and giving me a discount on my helmet for working for 'the man'.
For that girl I waited at the street crossing with, chatting about biking.
For Mom, raising three kids and still retaining her sense of self.
For Dad, holding a steady job for 40 odd years, and still encouraging us kids to be adventurous.
For Gavin, threatening to beat up, I believe, every boyfriend I have ever had.
For Jody, my amazing sister, who, on occasion, makes me feel deeply human.
For Brent and Ryan, for loving my sister so well.
For Keefe, who was at times a doggy glue that held our family together.
For Cat, Lobsty, Norm, Figgy, and the whole slew of animals I brought home to foist onto my mother. You were all somehow special to me.
For Emily, for coming out of no where, and being amazing. I never expected to have a best friend again.
For Laura, inspiring my love of science and reason.
For my Wise, Beautiful, and Fun aunts.
My adventursome uncles and cousins.
My old friends, and everything they taught me and let me teach them.
For Dinosaurs, and their mighty talons.
For Cynthia, who sublet us her sweet apartment, when we were so quietly desperate for a place to live.
For Tanuki, an honest, hardworking, heartwrenchingly adorable cat- who could have spawned a legion of kittens, ruling by fluff and mewls alone. Instead she sleeps on our laundry and cries outside the bathroom door when Dave tries to poop.
For the maple tree, for growing new leaves this spring.
For Dave. His good heart and patience. The intent look in his eyes when he puts aloe on my back.

To my chagrin, I think that some of my pessimism comes from statistics. That no one can be so thoroughly blessed with such good people. That loss must wait somewhere. And that it's immature of me to find them irreplaceable. But these are the jewels of my life. And like the maple tree, I want them to come back every spring, and grow big and healthy.

Being Human.

Recently Dave posted a blog about being a dwarf. More specifically, the experience of being drunk and functional. Unfortunately Dave is not as impervious to liquor as the stout dwarf, and the ensuing post was a source of amusement for all.

I think Dave was only half-serious in his research study about dwarvishness, and I am only half-serious when I say I'm still figuring out how to be human. It seems like other people 'get' this, or at least don't wonder about how to have the most fulfilling human experience. I think I forgot to pick up the starter manual at birth.

I've seen some beautiful and awesome things possible in life. Two middle aged people, married, and still playfully in love with each other. The man would follow his wife around the house, playing songs and singing to her on his mandolin. She would bring him dinner in a crock pot when he worked late, wrapping it in kitchen towels to keep it warm.

I know people who find their jobs meaningful. I know people who wordlessly inconvenience themselves for a friend. These people have something, they are something. What were their trials? What lessons did they learn that this kind of beauty is their reward?

I want to know these lessons, because I think they are integral to being human. Show me, please.

Image hoisted from Sarachmet.

A long vein.

Let me continue on this vein, I think the topic is applicable to most of my generation.

What I know of being Grownup comes from a 2nd hand perspective, watching my parents as a child, when they were closest to myself now in terms of personal development. Now understand that I love and respect my parents, less out of duty than of honesty. And if I wind up as fun and well-adjusted as them when I'm their age than I will have done something right.

But growing up my parents appeared preoccupied with life. If they enjoyed it much, it was beyond my perception at the time. I was the one having all the fun and freedom. Now I see them on my own horizon. Were they zesty when I was young? Or did their spirits hibernate under the cloak of a career, marriage, and parenting winter? How did they ever weather that simultaneously?

I feel as though I'm only starting to know myself, just on the cusp of this Grown-up winter.

Grown-ups.

What a foreign species Grownups have been. Mailing their money away, owning fun stuff like cars and pools but never smiling gleefully over them, sometimes with little versions of themselves orbiting their legs or torsos.

I realize now that I've always had the presumption that Grownups would be another race entirely all my life. It was unquestionable that I would become like my mother, and stop wearing rollerskates in the house.

And yet, I'm increasingly mailing my money away, and when I drive it's never with the lawless abandon that I once dreamed of. My own sister, my template for living well, has what can only be called a 'family home'. For her family. There's a mortgage, and a lawn mower, and a dog, and a son, and a 'baby on the way'. All empirical evidence indicates that she is now a Grownup. What is this alchemy!

I think when she and Brent first announced the pregnancy I said something haphazardly like 'that's not supposed to happen'. I suppose it was an offbeat way to express my surprise. But at the moment my mind was being blown away that my enigmatic sister was now an enigmatic adult, and less like me than ever.

So maybe growing up is inevitable. But the implications of that have never been better expressed than by the great Randall Munroe:

Said I wouldn't...

But I've got this blog now. I found there were thoughts I couldn't fit onto Twitter that I wanted to be seen somewhere. Let's play both sides of the fence, say there are no angels looking down, glorying in my little flashing life. No celestial writer constructing my plot. Someone out there will look into my brain meats and see a spark.

Congratulations, viewer. Welcome to my head.

I realize that this can't be a standard college bitch-blog, and if I spend this bandwidth talking the nuances of my day then I'm missing the point. What I've picked up from my Aunt Diane, and gentleman friend Dave, is that I need a theme. I feel narcissistic picking myself as a theme, but for now I'll have to do.