In the desert
I saw a creature,
naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter – bitter", he answered,
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
--Stephen Crane
I am a bit jet-lagged and I have pictures to post and stories to tell about meeting up with very old and very close friends on the east coast this past week. But I can't find the USB cord to hook up the camera and I don't really even feel much like it anyhow right now.
I've spent a bit of time getting stuck on machines lately. Today it was waiting a few extra hours in Phoenix waiting for a plane to get all fixed up nice to take us back to Salt Lake. I thought a lot. I sat next to a 5-year-old flying alone, a bold and friendly girl named Meghan (she spelled it for me) who had plastic animals to play with. She never let me finish the last five pages of Bryson's epilogue on the Sydney Olympics from In a Sunburned Country.
Basically, I am confused and I am frustrated and I feel like I have let opportunities slip past me. I'm fumbling. I'm grasping for a quarter of a triple-dozen things at once because I want them all. I have nothing to complain about. I am blessed and lucky and fortunate beyond what I deserve. And yet I am frantically, moodily dowsing for SOMETHING, some sure sign, some tickling sensation that keeps me winking at the clouds and sunlight as if to say, "Ah, yes, yes, I get what You're saying....just a little to the left then, eh?" Instead, I'm moping belligerently in a stuffy airport and giving my parents a guilt trip for daring to hint that perhaps I should.....settle down? ....find a career? ....pay my part of the family cell phone bill?
I'm disgusted with my selfishness and for being an ungrateful daughter. I'm hurt and a bit pained that I can't just stick to a dream and grab it since I seem to be all opportunity and availability right now. To my friends back east, I envy you all your quaint but established apartments, your back patios and your babies. It was such an honor to visit and I am thrilled to the crux of my core that we still get along just like kindred spirit bosom buddies ought to. I truly am the luckiest to have knocked elbows long enough with you that passing time no longer affects the heartstrings that bind us, if you will. James Best asked me outside of Tiffanys in Manhattan if I was going to die soon, because I seem to be running around paying last respects all over the country. Trev interrogated me rather charmingly and paternally about what my immediate/long-term plans for the future are. Troy thinks I'm running away from my responsibilities. KP thinks I'll be popping out the first of twelve children by February. Well, I tell you all, I'm as directionless as a hookless compass or a Liahona somebody kicked over mistaking it for voodoo. I recall the image a friend of mine once shared about a boy who caught a bee in a jar and froze it--but didn't kill it--he just waited until it was good and drugged and sufficiently chilled. Then he tied a piece of thread around the bee's body, being careful not to snap him in two. As the bee thawed, he flew again, round and round on the thin thread that kept him bound to the young man who looked pleased as Hawaiian punch that he had a bee on a leash. I've forgotten my point.
But Jen, to you especially I want to thank for the short isolated car rides of conversation and advice. I miss you again already and it was such a pleasure to run around with you and your family for a week. I confess I kept turning my head on the plane whenever I heard a real little kid call out for a cracker. (They were never as cute as yours. Always more hair though, hahaha--don't fire me!)
15 comments:
Em, you are a lovely little neurotic, you know that? I like your concerns. They are completely valid and as dorky as anyone else's. Don't worry bout nothin. Just come out to AZ, chill out in the desert and start school next fall. Meantime, smoke some pot.
Em, you are a "lovely little neurotic." I will say that I agree with your parents...settle down. Like I have told you before, get comfortable with yourself, work on your weaknesses, do something that scares you a little. Oh and you are fired for saying Olivia is the baldest baby!
Oh yeah, when you get a second, will you send me pictures from your visit, especially of the carousel. I am dying to update our blog with pics, but our carousel ones aren't great.
I like Stubb's suggestion of smoking some pot, that sounds like fun.
I think Jaren said it all, Em. You need to be making out with random guys on planes, passing the dutchie on the left-hand side, smashing mailboxes, driving 90 at night without headlights, lighting the lake on fire to waterski, etc etc...
The paradox is going to devour you the second you stop caring about what to do.
And oh yeah, did you make out with Meghan?
Mr. Arafat, I'm shocked. ON planes? That's just reckless. Inside is much safer.
Not sweet me.
ON planes is no less safe than small pet amphibians in the mouth.
And Em, that's the spirit! Kill kill kill. Your days of singledom are reckoned and ticking away: shake off the dust and slay while the sun hangs high, sez I.
I couldn't agree with young Joe more...responsibility, a slower metabolism, achy bones, these all come with the marriage package. Union has its many perks, but so do the dog days of singledom.
the torch is yours...run with it while you can.
Jaren: especially sweet you.
All right, I'm off to go break some windows wearing nothing but a flower-print toga and combat boots.
I should clarify...when I said settle down, I didn't mean to sit around and wait for Mr. Right to come and wisk you away on his white stallion. What I meant was maybe grow up. That sounds mean, but Em, I know that you know me well enough to know that I'm not being mean. All I know is that I saw the look of longing when you saw the three little kids playing on the row in front of us at church and all I am saying is that you may have to put yourself in a position to get some of those things. I know that I am the "parenty" voice, but what else do you expect?
Hahahaha, Jen, no worries really. *replaces combat boots with sneakers* I'm calming down, really. Anasazi is the still the plan as of now, but my friend Debbie who I'll stay with is going to teach me to be more domesticated and I really do want to study hard and get into a good program and *gasp!* move into an apartment for more than a five-month stay. Maybe even get a dog.
But I'm still going to an all-day, literal dawn-to-dusk, Planetarium-athon with my cage-fighter friend Kev tomorrow. And I'm gonna cut my hair WILD. Or at least trim my bangs.
And geez, I've pulled the parent/mature-adult role out of both Jen and Joe in a matter of days.....this really does take me back memory lane! bah hahaha
BT, I didn't so much offer advice of the parental sort...I just didn't want to see you ill. Overprotective of friends? Perhaps.
Go torch something..like a young man's heart.
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