Beginnings & Ends

When I was in Missouri I broke the news of my moving to Grandma. More about that day later. I planned on that day’s story being my next entry, but “Emo Dogwood” is going to cover tonight’s photopost instead.

On the way home from my trip I was hit with the reality of May being “just around the corner.” Up to this point, the month of May has always been my last mental speed bump in the road to Ghana. It floored me when I realized how very, very fast this next month is going to pass by. It feels as if this is the end of my Peace Corps Beginning (Chapter one: In which I am interviewed); it is also the beginning of my United States-dwelling End (Chapter two: In which I discover the true weight of 80lbs).

…but mostly, I titled this entry “Beginnings & Ends,” and usurped Grandma’s Story with Emo Dogwood, because something happened this week that signified the end of something much bigger, and not in a good way. Not an ending I expected, and not one I can define easily. Someone crossed a line to cause irreversible hurt, and my relationship with them was such that they were one of the last from whom I ever expected such an assault. I was cut loose feeling hurt, angry, confused. Shell-shocked into an anaesthetic fog.

I realize that was cryptic (and living up to the Dogwood’s namesake), but by telling everyone I tell no-one, satisfying the craving and repelling dichotomy that is my soul simultaneously. I can spill to Whimsi and lose frustration without gaining guilt for overburdening another. I will now move on, and we will never speak of this again.

Isn’t self-referential whining fun?

Twenty six.

2008-1982=26.

26 years old.

When I say “my oldest friend” died this week, it’s not hyperbole. Not “oldest” as in age: he was only born a year and a half ahead of me. My mom babysat his mom when they were teenagers (and only a few years apart themselves). Until my family moved our clans were rarely apart. I didn’t know we weren’t somehow related until I was in college. I have pictures of him & me that were taken before I can even remember. He’s in our home videos and I’m in his. I made him run through sprinklers in the summer (because I couldn’t actually swim, so pools were out of the picture), he introduced me to the magic of Nintendo & Ghostbusters. I punched him in the face when he called my mom “wussy”, he convinced my little sister that dialing 911 would be fun times.

I was 10 when my family moved, and for a while our two families lost contact with each other. Then the magic of email brought our moms back together, and eventually the rest of us followed. The last time I saw him was a year ago this month, when I drove to Missouri last spring break. Our families went out to eat together, and the very very loud group took over the back half of some random restaurant. I remember saying to him “our family is insane!”, and he joked “yeah! …how are we related again?”

I’ve been “meaning to” email him for months, to tease him about his new engagement. I never did.

Patrick was a good guy. Everybody will say that anyway… but it was true.

wo bu shi ‘tian tian kai xin’

I am tired.

And sad.

Swearing into the ether.

Apparently posting aimless-status-update-things in bad Mandarin.

That is all.

Ashes in the Desert Place

It’s been a long day — not any moreso than usual, really; it’s Thursday, and the week generally decides to catch up around now. I hit “write post” with the intent to hash out a thoughtbubble on my mind, and checked my email while I waited on the page to load. Funny what a few minutes added onto that ever-so-long day can do.

I’m a list-maker. I like to know what I’m doing, and when I’m supposed to do it. I like schedules, and I take a horribly perverse pleasure in knowing I’ve made a really efficient schedule for any given day. So because I’m taking a full load this semester, plus working part-time, plus tutoring (2 singles, 1 group), I have about 5 different spreadsheet-schedule versions floating around my binders/satchel/car “office”. Don’t take this the wrong way: I’m really not that busy; I’m totally happy this way. Downtime equals time without, well, that cliched quality time – and guess what, Sara’s fairly isolated this semester. So lists, specifically full lists, make her relatively content.

Not everything gets memorialized via neatly-typed ink. Lessonplans happen while driving through the dark, rough drafts outlined mentally through dusk. I think lighteningbugs lend favour to pseudo-flashes of creativity. A lot of the so-called “efficiency” comes from scribbled calendarising during phoned-in 8:00am lectures that take the focus of a single brain cell.

Tonight, as I passed a freshly-baled hayfield, I had the overwhelming urge to pull over. The view tonight was absolutely stunning: after a week of overcast evenings, the stars were showing their eyes for the first time in entirely too long. I only live a few miles up the road from that field, but the light polution is enough to keep that sterling wonder firmly from our back yard.

Instead, I drove on. Too much to do: put the laundry in, write the lab, read the papers, and so on. In the end, I grant salve to a still-restless soul: via a half-hour of presumed rambling. Check email in the process. And find more in a series of unanswered Words, hateful — damnedably, scathingly motherfuckingly hurtful words. That won’t be erased, will haunt, and will go on Permanent Record with the List Committee at Large.

Why do we think we know better, what will soothe and give respite? How can we value 20 scant minutes of all-too-precious peace over the More Efficient, when the end result could only be all-too-predictable?

The Lists are perpetually flawed, and so far: haven’t offered me much in return.