"I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it?"

“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan





Last week I was at my parent's house. No one else was home at the time, and I, in my musings, found an old box of photographs in our office/workout room/blue room (My parent's let me pick the color. It doesn't match anything in our house and sticks out like a sore thumb. But I love color). I pulled the box from the book shelf and pulled out a stack of photogrpahs and turned them over one at at time. Memories I'd forgotten I had. Summers at the beach. Dance recitals. My Father's 50th birthday.

As children we think about growing up. What we're going to be, or who we'll marry, where we'll live. Our time is marked by grade levels, sporting practices. Prom. Graduation. Baby teeth to braces. Puberty. First kisses. Hair Cuts. So much spinning and changing around us. Drivers licences at 16. Legal at 18. Drunk and not hiding it at 21. I've always been aware of my own time. I've been labling, counting it down, marking it, waiting with it, and spending it at my own leisure, my whole life.

While flipping through these photos I realized something. It struck me all of a sudden and took over every other emotion I'd been feeling, replacing them with gut wrenching saddness and anxiety. All this time I'd spent grwoing up and getting older I'd failed to realize that so had my parents.

My hands were trembling as they held a picture from Dad's 50th. It was him and Mom, dancing. My mom was smiling, my dad, very obviously counting steps in his head
1,2...3,4 1,2...3,4

He's a terrible dancer, my father. and he's very graciously passed his lack of rhythm onto all of his children, myself included. My mother on the other hand, she lights up when she dances. She can be silly and sexy and entirely free when she dances. She's infectious on the dance floor, everyone watching has a better time when she dances. They catch her bliss. Her liveliness. She's really quite pretty when she dances.

My Dad has never cared for dancing but he took lessons and learned as best he could anyways. Not for my mother who never lacks a willing dance partner, but for himself. He couldn't bare the jealously he felt when he watched Mom dance with anyone else. Adorable, I think.
I remember every Sunday morning Bob and Elsie the dance instructors coming to our house to teach him. I'd wake up to the sounds of Samba, Foxtrot, West Coast and East Coast Swing, Salsa, Two Step...
They danced the whole lot of them.

Which my parents were dancing in the photo, I'm not sure. It didn't matter to me at that moment. What mattered to me was that my dad still had hair on his head in the picture.

Funny, I thought he'd been completely bald for as long as I could remember. I forgot, his hair was brown, same as mine. And his skin, it was so smooth. When had the tired lines I've grown so accustomed to first ripple across his face? Hadn't they always been there? And my mom. She was so skinny. I'd never noticed that she'd...
Well, I'd never noticed any of it.
All this time I'd been so preoccupied with what I thought was MY time, I failed to see that it wasn't just me but ALL of us that were subject to it. My sisters. Our family dog, Shelby, she can't get up and down the stairs or jump up on the couch anymore. We used to run around the block together.


All these years, it all went unnoticed, and then with one photograph it came crashing down all around me. It was so obvious. How did I not see it? I held the evidence of it in my shaking hands. Frozen in time, a couple that looked like my parents but weren't. Not really. My parents didn't dance together anymore. I didn't wake up to music on Sunday mornings anymore.

I was a 20 year old girl, or maybe, woman? young lady? No longer child but some strange child/adult hybrid. And my parents
they were,
Old?

This realization unsettled me to my core. Time, once an unseen, and unobtrusive fact of the matter, a freckle you've always known you had but hardly remembered you had, was suddenly in actuality a looming specter, a ticking bomb, and exposed artery that could burst if you made a sudden movement, sneezed, laughed...

I wanted to cry and I wanted my father to hold me. I wanted to be 5 years old, getting picked up from kindergarten in our beat up van. I wanted to drive past the Jr. High and look to see if I could see my big sisters running the track. I wanted my mom to make dinner again. I wanted to roller blade to my grandma's house, being pulled by Shelby on her leash.

I felt as though I'd been sleeping all this time, and woke up to a strange world where nobody skipped anymore, and didn't have time to watch Boy Meets World in the mornings before school, and everyone thought about money, and boxes were for packing your toys away in to put up in the rafters, instead of playing make-believe inside of. A world where your Dad goes to bed at 9:00 because he's tired. And where your mom doesn't have time to dance anymore because she's too tired. Because I woke up and was older. And they were older. And I was sitting there, hands trembling, trying to think of just when it was that this all happened.

And then I took a deep breath. Looked at the culprit that brought this terror to my attention, and ran my thumb across my father's face. I surprised myself by laughing. I laughed because despite it all, and despite the years, on the occasion that my parent's do find the time to dance together, my dad still needs to keep count in his head.

This comforted me in some strange way. I smiled at them, my parents, and put the picture back in its box. I put the box back on its shelf. And I went to find which of her three napping spots Shelby happened to be occupying.

It's silly to worry about time. It's certainly a poor way of spending it. I've decided to be aware of it though. Use it more wisely, more gratefully. Tell Mom that she's pretty. And tell Dad I love him more. I've decided to make time for skipping on occasion, because who says I'm too old to? Its quicker than walking, and I challenge anyone to skip without smiling. You can't. I'm going to make time to laugh more. Because one day, like my parents, my face will wrinkle and when I catch my own reflection, or stumble across an old photograph, I want to be reminded that what caused those lines, etched so deeply in my face, was not the passing of time, but was a life happily lived.

i'm not sure what's gotten into me but i havent be able to write a coherent piece in a long time. i'll start with an idea and then it fizzles out and lead no where imparticular and then i end up going off on a completely random tangent.
everything has been very ... free versy as of late.


i'm not quite sure what it all implies.
but really when am i ever?











___________________________________ A pang. A thought. A glimmer.


here are words for when you find you can not find your own.
for when your tongue is trapped between your teeth, your lips pursed tight.
your breath held.

here is is grace, for when you find yourself faltering.
align your chin with the nearest star, and follow it.
head high.

here is a a song to sing you to sleep on nights when silence stings your ears.
it was the first song you heard.
it began when you did.
it plays for you. its never stopped.


remember this. remember the man that ran from home? so far. he ran until his feet bled, until his muscles cried. he ran across the vastness of it all, the earth and seas and mountains the plains. he stopped only to scatter pieces of himself by the wayside as to lighten his load.
he thought only of the distance.
and how to get as much of it as he could.
and he did.
until.
he found that he'd circled the earth quite entirely
and landed exactly at his own front door.



here, take this, it is my gratitude
for days when you go unnoticed
forever i am thankful


and this, this is humility for when you're pride is shattered
it lays in pieces at your feet but such is life
so brush it away and now without it you have nothing to preserve
now you can laugh again.


here is a sparkle. i saw it in you and i took it for myself
it glimmered in the light, it rested just behind your ear and you didn't see it.
so i took it and kept it and buried it within myself
and i've had it all this time.
but it was never mine to keep.
it doesn't shine for me like i thought it would.

rambles.

Free Association: My Train of Thought:

I could never keep rythm. I can't clap on beat.
I see my sister struggle to fight time. Cling to what was simple and good. I see her see the world grow old around her. They aren't children anymore.
Houses. Careers. Marriage.
The natural order of things?
I'm not a child anymore.
I see my parents.
They're tiered.
I see them for what they are and not what I thought they were.
I thought they were parents.
And they are. But they are also
Human.
I want to marvel at something. I want to stand in front of a being and be encapsulated and consumed by felicity at their existence. I want
I want to be something someone marvels at.
Marvelous.
Magic.
Wands. And wizards. and Once upon a times.
My favorite stores used to start with once upon a time.
Now my favorite stories end with the protagonist laying face down in a pool of his blood.
Gatsby. The Great Gatsby.
Great.
Greatness.
Great.
I can't say the word without sounding sarcastic.
I love sarcasm but I can't help but to be sadened by it. Why can't we ever just mean what we say and not say the opposite of what we mean.
Mean what you say.
Say what you mean.
Mean. Meaning.
Mean.
Isn't silly how the word we use for what is actual, what is the the truth, i.e. the meaning contains the word Mean instead of Nice as if what is true is never nice. because the world isn't nice and the facts aren't nice because realistically speaking no one is ever as nice as you hope they are going to be.
Because Gatsby gets shot and Daisy rides away with that ole brute Tom and we're left wondering what the devil its all supposed to mean.

I know i'm a bitch but when you call me one its hurts my feelings and so I throw my feelings out and decide that i'm better off without them.

I feel like when I lost them, gave them away, lost them, like my innards had been scooped out like a pumpkin for the carving, and the rest of my body collapsed in on itself because I had no soul.


I used to I think

Reach.

When each year ends its customary for me to write something cute and optimistic about how I've learned so much and how I'm so looking forward to another year filled with life and love and all things shiny and new.

I normally do a lot of reflection about who I am, who I was, who I hope to be.

I do a lot of reflection about who's important to me and what I wish this coming year brings them.

And then I jot it all down and string it together in sentences filled to the brim with semi colons and commas.

When 2010 ended I had felt so assured that I had gained this incredible understanding of the world. I felt as though I knew so much. "It's been a challenging year," I thought to myself, "but somehow, I ended up on top." I felt so equipped and able to handle any of the multitude of obstacles that would be hurled at me.

Oh irony, how is it we keep bumping into each other like this?

Just as I was wrong about Lance Bass's heterosexuality, just as I was wrong about which freeway exit to take every time I drive home, just as I was wrong about how many shots of tequila I can stomach, I was also wrong in my expectations for 2011.

It was not a rosy year for yours truly. Those obstacles I thought I was oh so prepared for? They caught me quite off guard. Not only did I trip, I stumbled, fell, rolled down a metaphorical flight of stairs, and landed bruised and battered at the bottom of a metaphorical well.

Le sigh. Tis life.

Wait! Don't go! The optimism you're searching for is coming! Bear with me a moment longer! Please!

Here is the familiar cheerful, whimsy you all turn to me for.

What, my dear friends, do we find at the bottom of a well, but wishes?

I love wishes. I've been making them my whole life.

I used to wish for kittens and ponies.

Then for princes,

Then for good grades.

Then for cars.

Adventure.

A bit of luck.

I've wished for safety.

I've wished for romance.

I've wished for health, and happiness, and time, and strength to get though the day.

I've wished on candles, stars, lucky pennies, dandelions.

I've wished at 11:11, wished upon waking, and wished before going to sleep.

I love wishing.

At the bottom of my metaphorical well I found my old wishes, and resolved to put them to good use. I stacked them on top of one another and climbed up them, one step at a time, each leading me closer to the next, each guiding me further out of darkness and closer to light.

You see, even when you've reached rock bottom, as long as there is something you want, something you need, you can find it in you to keep going. Go after it. Chase it. Use that wish, that dream, that desire, and never stop until you get it.

Don't stop at the bottom.

Never stop at the bottom.

Never stop.

That's what 2011 has taught me. Keep wishing. Keep climbing. Never stop. Even when you're tired. Even when it hurts.

My resolutions are

To be braver

To be kinder

To be stronger.

And to every single day, be thankful for every single day.

And to never stop believing in the power of wishes, and stars, and dandelions.

I want to think good thoughts. I want to laugh. I want to make other people happy. I want to be happy. I want and I wish and I will. I will not stop and neither should you.

We've got something incredible at our fingertips. So reach a little, try to grasp it. One step at a time.

Happy New Year.

ache.

Sometimes i think that life is nothing but the compilation of different aches. The more we grow the more we have of them. We collect them like magpies collecting blues. We get them in our backs, and our joints. Our heads. Our Hearts.

They cut away at us. Sometimes they are sharp. And other times they are a dull insistent droning, slowly eroding away at our sanity.

We ache so much.

With each loss and joy we are left with the hurt that got us there. A memento of the painstaking labor that amounted to everything, or maybe a bitter reminder of what amounted to nothing at all.

Why does it hurt so much, life?

Why does it punch and jab and bruise and sting?

Even the most resilient has been broken and cracked along the way, why?

Maybe it's so that, through the cracks, we can let the sunlight through.

up in smoke

There was lightning that jolted, not pulsed, through her veins. With every beat of her heart it was as if her soul was being poked like baby's fingers through an electric socket. There's no child proofing some things. We try.

We put plastic coverings over our skin.

We ourselves become that white carpeted room guest are only allowed to stand outside and marvel at, but never enter.

"Only for special occasions."

"Oh we don't go in there"

There's a mat outside that we all must wipe our feet on.

Trail as little of the outdoors in with you.

Its dirty there.

You don't know where that's been.

But then there's a storm. And the power goes out.

And the things you kept clean, kept to look pretty, locked to keep safe. You can't see it anymore.

It disappears.

Becomes imaginary.

In the dark it is no more or less real then the creatures birthed from your dreams. The creatures run out of your mind, they run across your white carpet, that's now black in the dark.

"You'll leave foot prints! You'll leave mud! You'll leave dirt."

then the creatures of his mind run out of his ears and cry out from the near invisble hole in your eye. Funny how floods can squeeze through something so small. They come swimming and tumbling down. And the floor is wet and muddy and they dance across the rooms together. mixing. breeding. conversating. howling. moaning. singing. screaming.

and the only glimpses of the maddness you catch are from the strobe light lightning thudump thudumping with each beating of your heart.

electric electric. and then you realize. a jolt of lightning from your heart struck his. and the muscle caught fire.

the heat of the flames made your plastic skin melt drip drip down and pool at the souls of your feet.

and the room only intended for special occasions went up in smoke.

and the smoke stung your eyes.

so you closed them.

and the howling grew louder.

and your nose burned with the smell of unbridled

animalistic. chaotic. joy.

raw.

and wiled and passionate joy.

and you grabbed a hold of one another's hands.

and you realized you too had been struck by lightning.

and you're heart was burning same as his.

hot and bright

you danced in the flames

you joined the creatures born of your fantasies and danced in smoke and fire until your joy consumed you.

and you weren't a room at all.

you were smoke.

and you rose until you mixed with the atmosphere.

no longer two flames.

but pieces of one same sky.

Ebb and Flow

Its funny how the inertia of expectations can sweep you up so quickly that by the time you've realized you've lost control, you've landed someplace completely unrecognizable.

Just a moment ago I was here. And now. And now my head his spinning and I can't walk straight. And i'm hardly even sure if i'm the same person I was that one moment ago.

We allow ourselves to become pushed a long by so many decisions that aren't our own, and in doing so we lose pieces of ourselves a long the way.

In the toss and tumble things like ideals, and hopes for the future, get lost in the dirt and you get rolled into someone else's desires and someone else's goals. You're left standing in the rubble, some Frankenstein concoction of other peoples ideas of who you are or who you should be.

Somewhere along the road I chose the path of least resistance. In doing so I freely gave away pieces of myself that made me who I was. Knowingly, willingly, I relinquished aspects of my life that brought me joy, simply because it was easier then fighting to keep them.

I never would have been able to guess what the repercussions in doing so would be.

Hindsight is an interesting thing, and with it I wonder if I would have done anything differently.

But time spent dwelling on the past is time wasted not taking an active role in your future. If any lessons have been learned it is this,

No matter your situation, no matter however limited you may feel, there are always options. There is always a choice, and we are never powerless to make it.

Choice is a gift that we have been granted and it is foolish to blindly ignore it.

Choice isn't easy. Every decision in life is give and take.

Ebb and Flow.

However difficult it may be though, make it. You decide. You be responsible because it is your life and you're the one that has to live it. Make it for you. Refusing to make a choice, in standing idly by while you are swept away by someone else's decisions, you will find your self on foreign shores and you will have to make a home there.

Consequences are ever occurring, regardless of whether or not they are the result of a choice, or of the failing to make one.

I've allowed myself to be swept up,

to quote a movie I'm too proud to name, I stood at the bow of a ship about to jump simply because of "the inertia of my life. and me powerless to stop it"

But you see, that's where I was wrong. We are never. Never powerless. We may be limited. But we are never powerless.

So although I've allowed myself to be blown a bit off course. I will, and I recommend you do the same if ever you find yourself in a similar position, gather my wits about me, brush the dirt off, and carry on, in the direction of my choosing.