Staying hot.

Um, how 'bout you do it yourself, yo?

Relationships are ridiculous. My relationship is ridiculous. How else can I possibly describe something that involves being with a whole entire complete other person, another human being, who has an entire life of their own, who thinks thoughts that are their own, who has been and done things for a lifetime that have made them them? Relationships are crazy and hard and anyone who says otherwise is wrong wrong wrong (but not really - I just like being right).

I struggle with wanting to control other people. I struggle to admit that I am wrong. I am defensive and angry when I'm scared, and other people scare me all the freakin' time with their otherness. I struggle to be myself in the presence of other people, to truly be myself and not adjust myself to be more in-line with the other person. I am weak in that way. It worries me.

All of these things are compounded exponentially in an intimate romantic relationship, in a one-on-one, no-one-else-sees-this-but-us kind of relationship. And my flaws are microphoned out on a loudspeaker with the person that I love. I am ugly when I don't get my way. Ugly ugly ugly.

I am drinking a cup of coffee from a small coffee cup, and it gets cold very quickly. It is hot for a moment, and then it is cold. I have to refill it if I want it to be hot, or have one of those constant-candle-warmer kinds of things. I need a bigger mug. It needs to be thicker and deeper so the coffee stays hot. I need my soul to be thicker and deeper so I can stay hot and grounded and steady. Some people call this an ego. It's all the same thing. It's my innermost part, my deepest me. This is the thing I am working on, this thing I carry around in my broken human body. This is the thing that matters. I have to trust that God is in control and can do all of those impossible miraculous things I've seen over and again, and sit in stillness and wait. This waiting will make me better. It will make me still. It will keep me hot.

Marry me. Own me.

Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only home.

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

My big term paper in 12th grade AP English was about Jane Eyre, specifically the concept of love in Jane Eyre. I've been trying to create my home my entire life. I never had one place that I could call home. I had a smattering of locations, and all of them together just wasn't home. But I found a home inside myself that I carried with me everywhere. It was safe. I made forts with pillows and blankets and my pink depression glass lamps I've had my whole life; and I would read The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. I don't remember a lot of snacks, but my mother often bought graham crackers, so those I remember more than anything else. That was my "home".

I was told that my real home would someday be with a partner, a husband. He would give my life meaning. He would take all of the idiosyncrasies about me and somehow create meaning from them. He, this unknown person, was the only way I could become whole and complete. He was the only way  that someone would care about me the way I imagined was possible. He would care that I hate watermelon and love swings at the fair. He would listen to me when I wanted to talk, because it would be his job to listen and care. In sum, my future husband would love me the way no one else could.

Well I'm 31 years old, and I'm not married. I've never been married. I haven't met this amazing person who is going to save me, change my life so completely I'll finally be whole. So I've had to learn along the way that life is too hard to wait for this person to arrive. Life is too long to wait for someone that may never come.

Whatever the truth, I've learned that one person doesn't "complete" another person, and so to even strive for that is a futile occupation. Don't I deserve to be complete all on my own? Don't I deserve to be loved all on my own? And don't I deserve to be fully known without a spouse? Yes, yes, and a resounding yes.

So I find my home all within myself, and I carry it with me wherever I go.

Avoid extremism!

Holy freakin' shit! Didn't know what I bought - listed for $250 on eBay.

When I meet new people who also love thrift, I often get asked the question, "What's the best store in town?" And, unfortunately, I can never offer a succinct response. "Well...it depends," I say, knowing that everyone thrifts for different reasons, and I can't possibly predict what's perfect for you. That being said, I'm beginning to recognize in myself a distaste for labels. What does best even mean? It certainly means something different to you than it does to me. I find that I make more friends when I allow every person I meet to have their own favorites, their own tastes.

Um, solid brass Eiffel Tower? So cool!

I'm an extremist by nature. I have to catch myself, watch my behavior, make sure I don't start living on green smoothies and doing yoga constantly. Because that's the goal, right? We're all supposed to be walking towards more perfect versions of ourselves? Meh, I don't agree. In fact, I disagree quite strongly.

I think we're all okay just the way we are, that of course over time, we will all grow and change, but that doesn't mean that we are worthless or not good enough as we already are.

Egyptian-ish choker collar necklace

So yeah, it usually takes me until after 3 o'clock to eat lunch, even though I'm hungry before that. I am oftentimes too stressed about something small to get a good night's sleep. I cried at a party yesterday for no reason and constantly say inappropriate things in polite company.

There are a hundred other things that make me imperfect, and one by one I work on them over time. I've been doing this my whole life, working on becoming the person that I want to be. I don't expect that person to look anything like anyone else or to save the world or be everything to one other person. I recognize that I am human, and flawed, and imperfect, and I'm quite okay with that. I'm okay with eating dinner with my small group when there is milk and bacon in the soup (omg. Best clam chowder of all time), not because I'm all awesome and hospitable, but because damn, even I have to let go of my rules sometimes. Of course, this is probably scarier than the other option, to create rules for everything so I can always feel safe. But it's that kind of safety that gets terrifically overrated, that people strive for so that nothing ever changes, so they feel no pain. But change is constant, and pain is a reality, and we're all in this together. Blah, blah, blah. Speech over.

I needed to give myself a pep talk, so I wrote it down - cheers y'all :)

Weekend camping :)

Lovely original vintage oil painting - I like it more the more I look at it :)

I spent last weekend up at the lake, a yearly tradition with my church wherein we all drive up on Friday evening, spend two days hanging out and doing whatever we want, and appreciate the time 'away from it all'. I was worried about all of the socializing I would inevitably be required to do, but then found myself loving 99% of it. I got to catch up with people I see all the time, but don't often have hour-long conversations with. I got to eat baked oatmeal and watch with interest at how much coffee all of the adults drank each morning. I got to kayak on a clear blue lake with a friend, and feel outdoorsy for the first time in ages. It was a lovely weekend.

Yesterday was spent recovering from all of the human contact by cleaning up my apartment, and listing stuff on eBay. I love my job, this whole reselling thing I do. I love the rhythm of it, the flexibility of it. I love that it is always changing, always shifting. It's been a good month.

Please take a moment to read the latest from the war in Syria and consider making a donation to Mennonite Central Committee, one of the few organizations providing direct aid to Syrian refugees.

Vacation is no party.

1980 - Small Vintage Portrait on Particle Board

A few days off have put me into thinking mode, one of my all-time favorite modes, as it were, and I'm sifting through my brain, trying to decide where to go and what to do next in my life. I wish I knew, truly. Today, I'm thinking about opening a thrift store. As yesterday's thinking revealed, dreams are sometimes only images flashing across our brains, without any structure to hold them together.

I wish I could step confidently into the dreams I've had for so long. But what I've found in my life, over and again, is that dreams are never what you think they will be. You fall in love, only to discover the hollowness of the other person. You buy an old car, only to realize that you aren't the hobby mechanic you'd hoped to become. You take a job you'd only just imagined in college could exist, only to find it radically conflicts with who you are as a person.

So I've become a little scared to dream, hesitant to take another step forward only to see a nubile dream die with a thud. I'm scared to discover that being human is really as difficult as it seems to be, full of failings and hardship, slim glimpses of true beauty, followed by slippery hope in something more, something big enough to hold, something more substantial.

I think I've stopped trying to find someone to fall in love with because I've realized it's impossible to manipulate, that some things cannot be made to happen, that some things really are out of our control.

Peace, friends :)

Oh the heat :(

I just found out that there's a new, super awesome, biannual flea market in my area, and they're having the first event in less than a month. First thought? Omg. Omg. Omg. I have to do it! Second thought? Oh shit. I can't. For several minutes, these two thoughts fought, but in the end, the second one has won out.

My body shuts down in 100 degree heat. And coincidentally, the past few days have been hellacious. So I'm not feeling very hopeful about the coming summer. I'm concerned that I'm reaching some kind of physical brick wall in relation to my ability to live in a super hot place. It frightens me to think that my body cannot live in the place where I live. Or maybe I'm overreacting, and the past few days have just been a strange response to a strange May heat-wave.

We'll see. But I don't think the flea market is going to happen. The rummage sale was possible because it wasn't hot. Also, there's a big three digit fee to have a booth, and I'm not rollin' in cash. Ok, I'll try to be more positive from here on out.

I sell damaged things.

Vintage magazine advertisement - love those togas :)

Over the past two years of my very short reselling career, I have received some pretty nasty messages from strangers. In the beginning, I may have cried, and now I find them comical. I have the power, I remind myself, the power to block.

I sell damaged things because I am not an expert in everything, but I am a finder of cool things. I like to be a conduit to other thrift-lovers, those who lose to upcycle and rehabilitate. I like being somewhere in the middle of the pack. I occasionally fix things, sew up little holes, but for the most part, I list things as they are.

The Salvation Army stores in my city sell mattresses. They take donations of old mattresses and strip out all of the schtuff away from the skeleton of the mattress, then refill it with new schtuff (foam? fluffiness?) and sell them for low thrift store prices in like-new condition. Another store in town just takes the mattresses apart, but they don't sell the mattresses, so I figure they like being middle-people too, like me, just a cog in the larger wheel of thrift.

Where do you fall in the thrift spectrum? Are you primarily a donater? Shopper? EBayer? How do you find your identity in the pretty-freakin'-large recycling world?

Green Smoothies :)

Casualware "Avocado" Green Knives - A first for me :)

I believe that there are receptors in our body that crave green nutrients, fresh raw green nutrients. I also believe that eating all raw is crazy. I had a moment a month or so ago where I found a website that told me that eating all raw would cure my Type I Diabetes, and I was consumed by guilt that I wasn't willing to do it. But I got over it when I remembered how short life is, and I think that we all have to make decisions about our health that allow us to survive and thrive. Being limited by a diet limits one's entire life. I learned this when I was initially diagnosed with diabetes, and I ended up living on lettuce and protein bars. I was miserable, and sick, and I couldn't fit in anywhere.

It took me a long time to try every diet for diabetes, and choose one that worked for me. Veganism works for me. I've figured out how to make it work, take care of myself, and not go crazy. The latter is probably the most important (see earlier comment on lettuce).

Anyhoo, the most recent way I've figured out how to flood those "raw green" receptors (maybe they're in my gut somewhere) is to make green "smoothies". You throw some green stuff in a blender with some fruit and some sort of liquid (I use water), blend it up and drink it. I know it sounds gross, but there is something about it that makes me feel really good, and that makes me want to keep doing it. It helps me eat a lot of spinach too, which I know is good for me, especially since I don't eat meat.

Anyhoo, there are a ton of rules about how to do it, which I don't follow very closely, because too many rules makes me less likely to do the thing I'm trying to do. And seriously, if you go from no spinach to a glass of green every once in a while, that can only be good, right?

I love you, all of you :)

It's a belt buckle! Isn't it so pretty?

I've always been tall and awkward, and being thin makes me feel less like a total troll, but I still feel it sometimes. Early on, I developed a tough exterior to cope with the teasing I received throughout elementary school, all of which had to do with how I looked. How I look can bother me. It matters to me, because it is the thing that can either lead to teasing, or help me to avoid it. I like to pretend that I have control, even though I know I don't.

Last week, the day before Valentine's Day, two thrift store employees had gotten off their shift and were looking through the lingerie to find something special. One was totally committed to the project; the other, less so and was berating herself in front of the mirror we were sharing, "I can't wear this!", My butt would look too big and he'd be distracted by it!" And for whatever reason, I felt like it was my responsibility to tell this woman, emphatically, that there was nothing wrong with her, or her body, and that anyone who thought so had a problem. So I did. And she listened. I felt good about myself.

I wish I had never been the recipient of someone telling me that I was fat, or ugly, or disgusting. I wish that no one ever did. But for whatever reason, most people have felt these things, experienced these things, and then we all, collectively, internalize those messages and believe them about ourselves.

So I am now taking brief moments, all the time, in thrift stores, to send positive messages to women trying on clothing, to join with the sisterhood, so to speak, in an effort to turn the tide, however slightly :)

Daaaaaaamn girl! You look gooooood.

The art of lounging :)

Bff got me a new lounging sweater for Christmas. She knows how I love to "lounge". I don't think I ever really let anyone know my secret "I live in my bed" until her. It's nice to be known.

I'm working on my taxes (I know - I'm proud of myself too!) and it's a pain in the ass, as I expected, but much more doable than I previously expected when I had an overwhelming rush of impossibility a week ago just thinking about it. I have a printer. I printed bank statements. Now I'm highlighting relevant transactions. Later I will add them up and combine them with my online Outright stuff from eBay, which is awesome and helps me do the impossible, like keep track of sales tax and expenses and income, and on and on...ad infinitum.

My vacation has truly helped my brain get to a better place. I'm compartmentalizing in healthy ways, i.e. not thinking about things that don't need to be thought about in a given moment. I just ate an orange off the orange tree in the backyard, evidencing my ability to feed myself, and I remembered to put extra blankets on the bed (finally), so that I won't freeze to death in my sleep.

All is well :)

'angsty' is a fun word :)

These surprisingly sold in a few days from my Etsy shop, which rarely happens.

The last few days have been amazing. Between reading, angsty puzzle-doing, and some painting, I've reached a really good place. I've figured out some things about my life, like long-term, super important kinds of things, and those things make me feel more at peace with who I am, blah blah blah.

I've decided that doing puzzles will be my new angsty project, instead of angsty poem-writing, since that pile just keeps getting bigger and only brings me more of the aforementioned angst and longing, etc. So now I'm going to do less meaningful things with my time, less emotional things, like puzzles, and reality television, and responding to angry emails via eBay. I'll leave you with this amazement that awaited me this morning in my inbox, followed immediately (and happily) by my response.

Weird stranger: Hi, Just a suggestion! THIS PICTURE ON THE COFFEE MUG IS NOT OF A TURKISH CHARACTER, BUT GREEK!!! A little common knowledge of national costumes would reveal this fact!

Me: Hi. Just a suggestion. WRITING IN ALL CAPS MEANS YELLING. YELLING AT SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW IS RUDE. A little common knowledge would reveal this fact!

I did miss some exclamation points. Oops.

Books are awesome :)

These old mugs are super fun, not for any particularly funny reason though :)

So having school be the top priority in my life over the past five years, I have whittled my life down to the bare necessities: eating, yoga, occasional sunshine, writing, and paying the bills. These things have kept me sane in a very rocky, turmoil-filled time, and I made it! Yay! But now, all of that stress and constant need-to-perform is over, and I'm left with this emptiness in my life that I have to figure out how to fill.

It's not that my life is bad, or that I'm lacking in love or nurturing in some particular way, but some other inertia that I no longer have. I no longer have an ever-present goal I'm reaching for. And that creates a displaced feeling in my soul that I can't quite rid myself of.

So I've been reading The Hunger Games trilogy like a madwoman. I stayed up 'til midnight last night reading like my younger nine-year-old self. I'm funny that way with kid books. I do the same thing with Nancy Drew. When I lived in the jungle, I stayed up so late, I had to use a flashlight in bed to keep reading. Nerdin' out. Like a mofo.

Everything is okay. I'm not insane.

Thrift store oil painting - there's just something about it I love :)

I had a less-than-wonderful day yesterday. Maybe it's the pending end-of-the-world. Maybe it's the fog, or the rain, or the fiscal cliff. Maybe it's the holiday season. Maybe it's the last month of unnecessary and expensive medical tests. Maybe it's female hysteria.

Whatever it was, it was something I'd done before, and something I'll do again. So I went and hung out with my favorite teenagers and the dogs. I went to bed early. I left work early. I wandered my favorite thrift store until Bruno Mars came on the radio and I had to flee. I took pictures of inventory in my driveway. I made jokes to make myself laugh. I reflected a wee bit about the source of my bad feelings. I listened to talk radio and Madman Across the Water. I did the things that make me feel better, bit by bit.

So that's life sometimes, and it's okay, to be sad and a little crazy sometimes. I'm probably a little crazier that most people, but I'm pretty fond of myself most of the time.

Hope all is well with you. Peace out mofos :)

Why does life suck?

Um, because not all shoes are red?

Siamo angeli con una sola ala: possiamo volare soltanto abbracciati.

Luciano de Crescenzo

Someone asked me this question this morning, at the ungodly hour of "before breakfast", and I think it's appropriate for me, who is now in the process of eating breakfast (at my desk, quite happily) to answer the question, now having the adequate blood glucose level to form whole words and sentences (exceptionally long ones, it would seem).

I think that, more often than not, it behooves us to acknowledge the "suckiness" of life, to admit that disease and war and hate exist, and that each of us, in our own way(s), lives each day carrying the remnants of these past and present realities.

It's okay to accept that life is shitty. Sometimes I think that the only reason I am able to see true beauty, is because I can recognize how rare and special it truly is.

Much love to all :)

Theology...blah, blah, blah

I presented my senior paper for the second time this morning. It's about the theology of place and how land and places and buildings and dirt can be knit into our souls. Blah, blah, blah. I reread parts of it last night, and became fairly convinced that I was stoned when I wrote it.

I kept thinking about people though, this morning, when I was sitting on that step stool looking all smart and shit. I kept thinking about the people that are knit into my soul, the people that feel like home to me. I had to stop myself from talking about things that I shouldn't have been talking about though, because there were only 45min, and I could have talked for hours about the places and people in my own soul, and the love and commitment found therein. My own brain is scattered with all the houses I've ever lived in.

I know I've talked about this before, but it's been hitting me in a whole new way, this idea that other people change us fundamentally, and that we cannot truly leave another person. We may not speak to a person for ages, but some people really do leave marks on us, proof that they were there. And to be sure, some people naturally leave deeper marks than others: parents, childhood friends, first loves, siblings. Good, bad, it's all there. There are some people you will just love forever (or hate forever, if you choose to do so).

Peace out :)

Look! It's a castle!

Vintage Fisher Price castle - 1970s - reminds me of toys at Grandma's house :)

So maybe it's the coming month of fewer hours at work, but I've been bulking up on inventory like a fun thrift store hobbyist. I'm actually quite content right now, listening to country, drinking some cafe au lait, and trying on vintage eyeglasses while I list them, and it's been quite a long time since I haven't begrudgingly listed on my off days. Less stress overall = more enjoyment in the little things I suppose.

I went in and got a CT scan yesterday. As time passes, I am becoming more and more angry about how all of this hullabaloo has gone down. One person that saw the incident said I might have had a small seizure, or I could have fainted and fallen down. Both are equally likely. But I defaulted, thinking it wouldn't matter, and shouldn't I call my diabetes doctor just to let them know? But thus began a series of events that cannot be undone, and now my driver's license is in jeopardy and I'm getting all of these tests run that cost a lot of money, and scare me a little.

Everyone who knows me, knows I'm high strung, intense, sometimes over-the-top. But I'm also very aware of it, and I suppose that makes me not-so-scary. Yeah, I panic, I freak out, but I also am the person you want to call in a genuine crisis, because while I freak out about the stupidest things, I do not freak out when shit is on the line. I am calm and cool, and focused. Yeah, it's weird, but it's me, and I'm okay with that.

I'm really missing the dogs today, and I wish they were sitting next to me.

Peace out :)

Delusional hope.

I can't decide whether to give these to my shoe-loving friend for Christmas.

I think I've decided (for a brief moment of time) to be hopeful, for the future, because why not? Hope might be silly, and embarrassing sometimes, but it's tangible. There is no ephemeral hope. There is only hope for change, hope for better, hope for something different already, geez.

I often hope for a day without war, without violence in name and deed. I hope for this because I believe that we, the people, have the power to change the world for the better.

There's nothing better for fostering hope than staring through the window of a moving car (or train, if you're so lucky). That's how I get recentered, I guess, seeing the same scenery I've been seeing all my life, the same highway, the same crazy religious signs, the same oleander bushes. And I think to myself, "Well maybe I could change, maybe things could change a little, and everything would be okay".

I have hope that emptiness will be filled, that loss would be redeemed, and that someday, everything will make sense already, geez.

Peace out :)

All is not lost, my dear

Oh man, I've been feeling down for a few days. I don't want to call myself a "downer" however, for fear this name-calling would only plunge me back into ceiling-staring-land (or as it was last night, star-staring-land). And I don't want to be hard on myself, since the temperature plunged overnight, the holidays are fast approaching (oh dear lord), and the director of the CIA is embroiled in scandal. Then there's Hurricane Sandy, legalization of being a pothead in Colorado, and the neverending depression of Obamacare. Need I say more? How can a simple girl like me go on living in all of this chaos?

But then, a dimly flickering light in the darkness: lunch at the Armenian place across the street, filled with fresh pita, tzatziki, and the most wonderful falafel I've had in a long time. Suddenly, the world was right again, my blood sugar normalized, and my days-long freak-out ended.

Peace out mofos :)

How long do I stay?

I tried to find some other reference to this topic in the archives, but I couldn't. I think it's something I've talked about with other people, but haven't discussed here. It's, eh, a vulnerable topic.

I didn't think I'd live in one place this long. I figured I'd be back in South America, or somewhere far more romantic and inspiring. But I've been here for five years, and my feet are firmly planted on solid nutrient-rich ground.

But then I think, is this what I want, for good? Do I want everything to stay the same, stay grounded in one place, of course not stuck, but committed?

It's not the most awesome city in the world, but it's my home, and my life is here. So many people that I love are here. The people in my everyday life are here. My thrift stores are here. The dogs I love are here. Whole Foods is here. My job is here, a job I love, with people I love, and each day filled with meaning and purpose.

But maybe I'd give it all up. Maybe I'd love something more than all that. Maybe.

Rilke, as ever.

Books about the rain for an elementary school classroom :)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and un-
suspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods —

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house — , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced
upon, —
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell