When I grow up-

I have this friend who has, since I’ve known her, had and executed a plan for her future without hesitation or deviation. She has always known what she wanted to do and has planned out her future right down to where she will be living in the next few years and how it is all going to work. I’ve never had the luxury of a well thought out and meticulously planned out life. How safe it must feel to know what you will be doing and where you will go. I’ve never been a planner, mostly because of the fact that I’m a really impulsive person. But it never fails to amaze me each time she completes one of her planned tasks. Perhaps I am so in awe of her planning and completion of those plans because of the way I was raised. Plans were made and rarely kept. To me plans just left more room for disappointment. So planning was more like daydreaming. We always said we would do something someday, but I the plans never got to the production point. So now she is well on her way to becoming the very thing she chose when she was younger. She has no idea how much I look up to her and admire her hard work. She also has no idea how much I almost hate her for making it all look so easy. I feel a slight sense of fear knowing that I’m still undecided about what I want to do with my future. I feel like a little kid who put off doing their homework until five minutes before the teacher walks by the desk to pick it up. It is painfully clear to me at this point of my life that I have failed to plan for my future and that my future is just around the corner. On the first day of class this quarter I actually walked into a math class two minutes late, and everyone thought I was the instructor. Never mind the fact that most of the boys in my college level class don’t yet have the ability to grow facial hair or that the girls in the back don’t have their license yet. I’m fifteen years behind… God that sucks!
So here I am, swallowing my pride and trying to just focus on the task at hand. Figure out what I want to be when I grow up. What do I want to be? Why when I have all of these things that I’m good at can I not just choose something and go with it? I’ve learned a great deal from her these last few years about life and the ability of one person to push through the road blocks and make things happen. She inspires me to go for the things that I want. I only hope I’ve helped her as much as she has helped me…

The begining of an Infatuation with Art

I was sitting in the upper staircase on the third step. The sun was shining through the gossamer curtain and warming the century old wood on the window ceil. The dusty smell from fifty years of built up spider webs and dead lady bugs seemed to be a constant undertone in the warm aroma that hung in the air. Somewhere below me I could hear my Aunt Linda laughing and my Grandma talking. The house was silent, and it always struck me as odd that the house never groaned during the day, seeing as it was such an old house. It was as though the house was sleeping in the warmth of the autumn sun. The oak and willow trees that surround the house would dance slowly in the wind as the leaves swirled around in the air in bright colors of orange and red. The mountains were blue and ominous in the backdrop surrounded with thunder heads that were dark and threatening. But it was warm and sunny as I sat on the step looking out the window. The crisp red apple I held in my hand was one of the last from the tree in the back yard. As I ate the apple relishing the sweet and bitter taste I gazed drunkenly at the painting in front of me. Various classical paintings lined the staircase; they were all there, my favorites. DaVinci, Monet, Rembrandt… I was never sure who picked the wall hangings in the stairwell, weather it was my grandma or someone else,but who ever she was, she had impeccable taste. I would stand there looking up in awe, with my bare feet on the glossy wooden floor. They would always find me there staring, memorizing, and imagining as I looked at the different creations. There were colonial battle scenes, ladies, men, ballerinas, people on horses, and one very small painting of Napoleon. Who ever picked out the art for the walls, they were not fans of sceneries. I liked that all of the paintings were of people. The eyes were always my focal point. I believed that the souls of the people that sat for the paintings could look out of the paintings and perhaps stare at awe at me as I stood there looking up at them. This notion got a little creepy on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night though. During the day the house was a warm magical treasure of history and art, by night it was the stereotypical haunted house that adorns every Halloween decoration. I loved that house; it was the only constant place as I grew up moving from place to place. I have such vivid memories and so detailed that if I concentrate long enough, it’s almost as though I can time travel back to those moments in the grand staircase to stare lovingly at my art. I would give almost anything to stand in that staircase and breathe in the smells and feel the energy off of the house and see the paintings again.

My love for water.

During the summer I kayak the river a lot. Kayaking has the ability to be a very dangerous and deadly sport if you slip up for even one second. The adrenaline rush that comes from the wild experience of the river makes me feel truly alive. It’s as if a veil has been lifted from my eyes and suddenly I am awake for the first time. All of the petty everyday shit melts away and all that is left is me and the river as it wraps its self around me. The water around me is suddenly the only thing that exists or matters as the currents pull and push me this way and that. At that momen I feel the reality that I am also made mostly of water. I feel completely one with the river around me. I know that I could sink into the cold darkness of it and it would take me. Then the calm quiet turns to a deafening roar and the gravity suddenly grabs on hard, holding my body close to the crashing waves on the rocks. The feeling is amazing. It’s addictive and wild. It stirs something deep inside me that brings out the person I really am, and for that one moment on the water as the waves crash and threaten my very existence, I know exactly who I am.

Is it ever Clear?

Have you ever felt something you shouldn’t feel? It’s confusing, on one hand things progress in a manor that it is only natural to feel the feelings you are at that time. But on the other hand you have circumstances that say you shouldn’t feel this way yet. I have this internal argument that wages wars against each other daily. “Not yet, wait a while longer, what are you thinking?” “Be patient,” one side says. The other side doesn’t care and goes on doing and feeling what it wants to. I’m probably completely crazy at this point for admitting that I argue with myself all day long. But then, isn’t everyone a little crazy sometimes? I keep wondering if this is a path of self discovery or a path of self destruction that I am on. I do know the following to be true. As of today, in my life I have fought for what I wanted and lost. I have tried which is more than some can say. I have learned many a lesson because of the choices I made in my past. I have worked long and hard and earned little. I know the value of the little things and take pleasure in being a real human. I can say I have hated and been hated. Now I can also say that I have really loved, and that means a lot to me. Feelings are complicated things that seem to only complicate themselves more and more until one final moment when all is supposed to be clear. Clarification eludes me.

Fall....the death of Summer.

It's funny how at the begining of every new season I always feel nostalgic for the years past. It always just catches me by supprise and I look around at the beauty of the changing leaves and the wonderous colors that are brought on by the slow death of summer. I breathe in deep the smells of the changing life around me. The fall always makes me want to sit and curl up with a couple of books under a warm fluffy blanket and sip hot tea or cider while the wind and rain beat against the window. I bake alot in the fall. It's strange how the weather can alter our moods and mental state. Life around us is always reinventing it's self in the relentless march of the seasons. I love the fall with the warm tones and the drastic differences between light and dark, cold and warm. I know people who hate this time of year, but I think it's one of the most beautiful. Funny how beautiful the world can be as everything dies for the winter. The leaves are so tempting and I re-live memories of childhood jumping through endless piles of orange and red maple leaves. I love the fall..The death of Summer.

MK

The spaces in between

It is completely silent in my new place but for the tick, tick, ticking of the clock in my kitchen and the gentle hum of the refrigerator. I think life is like that ticking. It is only as the second hand arrives at each new minute do we hear the tick. The spaces in between are silent. No one ever really notices those little silent spaces. My life feels like that ticking. One moment I am driving away, tick. The next moment I am standing in a camper, tick. Then I am at a school, tick. Next, I am here and the ticking continues. The ticks are the things that stand out in my mind and not so much the spaces in between. They become a blur as the ticking continues. The space that fills the gap between one tick and the next are what I do to get to the next tick. Time seems endless, relentless, and unforgiving. If I could turn back the ticks of time would I change it? Honestly I would think about it, but in the end, I would have to go through the same motions. I am what I am because of the ticks of the past. I will be what I am supposed to with the coming ticks. To me the reality of my world can be viewed in a series of moments, or ticks of a clock. The things that etch themselves into my memory are the events of importance or sentimental value. Because they are important they become that tick. Rarely do people remember dressing for a party, but they almost always remember the party. The ticks are mostly good moments, I seem to discard the ticks that I can't use. I think this year I will try to make the ticks happier. I think I would like to have my ticks closer together also. So with the comming ticks we will see if I can make them happier and more frequent.

Tick, Tick

I’ve been sitting for four hours in a very boring sociology class where the teacher drones on for the duration like Ben Stein. The only saving grace is that the information he is trying to convey is for the most part interesting to me. I’ve always had an interest in sociology since it is in essence the study of human society. I’ve always questioned things that were widely accepted by all around me to be true. As a child I sat on a church pew with my aunt and I clearly remember thinking how odd it was to have grown adults act so assumingly. I recall wondering how they knew for sure that everything the pastor was saying was true. My aunt shushed me and whispered that the Bible was the word of God, and everything in that book was true. I was vexed and suspicious as I looked down at the bible in the back of the pew. I picked it up and opened the cover, I was sorely disappointed to see that “God” didn’t publish the bible I was holding, but instead it was some company in Pennsylvania that had published the book.

I know now why my mother used to answer most of my questions about life with one simple answer. “Look it up.” She would say. I know because I have had the same problems trying to answer my own daughter’s impossible questions. But since that day in the church I’ve been skeptical about books and their credibility. In school we teach our children that what ever the book says is concrete and that is just the way of things. Have you ever sat and thought about what you were reading and accepting as truth. How do we know that the person who wrote the books we have sculpted our society around were not raving mad men? It’s always been one of those questions I’ve wondered in a class room setting. And again as I sit in my sociology class flipping through a book that was written by another simple human, but is supposed to be taken as the way society is. Shouldn’t we just take this as the way the author sees society? Again as the teacher and my aunt assume that everything in this book is true, I sit and ponder a question. What could I write that others would use to shape their reality? What a terrible and wonderful thought…..