fast like tape

holiday shopping makes my heart rate soar, my throat clench, and my mouth dry. I am pretty sure this qualifies as a panic attack. I am shopping for people I have never, ever met. Okay the lines and the carols and the incessant beep of the scanners has worn me down. I have never done "chirstmas" before. Ideally I would spend the next six days recuperating from the trauma of this morning. Alas it is time to meet the strangers.
How do people do this year after year? and for heaven's sake, why?

puddles

Rain is a northwesterner thing. "I love the rain, I'm an Oregonian," I say for the 37th day in a row. Rain and trees and Gortex are what make us Oregonians and, to dislike any of those would be down right uncivil. On a darker note we have exactly nine hours of daylight, but who's counting? Winter is time for sleep; my schedule of classes and work muck up my natural inclination to sleep with the sun.
Did you know I have a second life as a fish? my new PR is 31:23 for a mile. That's down 3:35 from earlier in the term. I am hoping that with some serious dedication and a little bit of oomph I can break the thirty minute marker in a few months. I know you're gripping your seat in anticipation; don't worry, I'll let you know.
Being an athlete has been the biggest challenge for me. It is hard to keep swimming when the pool turns into lukewarm Jell-O. I used to quit, but not anymore. Now I keep going. My arms windmill and my legs they keep churning. Stroking and breathing and kicking and gliding across the pool, I look fast in my new suit.

parrallelism

Days are succinct, flowing quickly from one to the next. What strikes is the momentum of a thought: this is time, passing. Then it's gone. Dreams linger into the morning, colorful nodes of my pure logic. Life is fair, just, sacred. Life hasn't got a remedy, save to live and more if possible. I suppose it is the fear of crossing the shadow to happiness that keeps us from it. The unknown's shadow, too, is lurking a day beyond tomorrow. This moment should be different or, I more in control. Is life ever completely in or out of control? no, it just sort-of-is. I think that is the most difficult fig to savor. I can accept that life is in or out of my hands; to accept the polarity of assertiveness and flexibility is formidable.
If I could linger a moment longer in my tensions I would crack. These tensions, they have a purpose. To remind me I am alive. I know I am alive, because I feel the tightening screw in my chest cavity. A better way to feel is to be active. If I chose to be active, then my life is full and my chest is loose. I breathe deeply and feel even the tops of my lungs expand. I experiment and bring in as much air as possible, then pause, and take in more small sips until no more air fits. I move the air around my lungs; lungs are not balloons, that is a misnomer. Lungs are spongy. The air filters into my blood and my organs work. I breathe deeply and force my lungs to aerate: this breath is life.

oh friend

linger- sister-
breathing wind and oh the wind
boughs reach, ahh pleiades
if love could hold

ease this-
no desire, comfort
eiderdown nest-
oh memories are weak

no charm holds
oh desire, it is you
whipping the moon-
linger sister

words

People are the topics of books. This is not to say that people are interesting. The majority of people with whom I come into contact with, adjunct professors at community college and the various rowdies which naturally congregate in such arenas, are as interesting as old sticks. Which is not to say that they do not conceive of themselves on a daily basis. I am sure they do. I can just see them sitting around self-actualizing. This process does little for their rapidly receding hair lines or the expansion of their waistlines.

All of this is to say that I prefer books to people, even loud, bookish people. I abhor the self proclaimed "bibliophile". The throaty voice of a hundred favorite books and three favorite authors makes one a dabbler. A bibliophile is a collector, not a reader. The same as an adjunct is not a professor.

Time for me to get back to my book.

The Divide:

Communication is perhaps an insurmountbale peak. Sometimes speaking with a man is compreable reading Emerson. Short, pithy statements fall from their lips: "I am an eyeball." And, left to wonder at the meaning of this remark, we women think: well, you certainly aren't an ear.

Silence in my ear
Hot and salty eyelashes
Reverberating

mirror

Walking in a brisk october afternoon, the buildings rise around me. The sky hides behind brick and steel. I arrived in Paris yesterday, the airline lost one of my cases. I am left wearing an ill-fitting pair of crocodile flats. My right heal has a blister the size of a dime, which tore. I curse airlines and the irregularities of Paris's streets. The maze of Rues and Boulevards meet at democratic angles. I live at 46 rue du Montparnasse. Which in glory years meant cafés and artists; now I am stuck with the only skyscraper in all of Paris. The Gare is confounding, because it stands singular in the sky. I find it impossible to use it as a landmark; it looks identical from every side.
The blister on foot burns. I stop in one of the identical cafés and have myself a tiny coffee. I put in cream and a tube or two of sugar, smoking a couple of cigarettes before I leave. On the way home, I make a point of buying wine. I am at an impasse. My lost luggage has my cork and my teeth are inadequate for such antics. The bonhomme was kind enough to appreciate my delicate situation. He corked the bottle for me, and told me to come in the morning for fresh pan. This is my idea of a neighborhood grocer. I have wine, soup, and cheese for dinner. Sleep comes quickly and smells of the boulangerie downstairs.

Relief?

I must admit relief. Dems. take the House and Senate; Bush declares marshal law...

The flood I was hoping for came in a different form. The river is receding and the roads are being shoveled. School has not been canceled.

Words and emotions are clogging my esophagus. At this point, I have given my emotions characters in the saga of my semi-comic existence. Today they are folk dancing in wooden shoes.

Perfection is one of those ten-lettered words that gets to me. I cannot concede that I am the only female who is constantly in a battle. Women are less prone to corruption- only if there aren't chocolate cupcakes involved. Our battles are more silent types. I reflect on my lack the lack of fulfillment in my daily life. Perhaps I am trying to do too much. Be smart, but if I could be smart in a more analytical way, that would really be more convenient. Be driven to succeed, but don't succeed so much that it would take me away from a hypothetical family. Be committed and reasonable. What am I supposed to be committed to: a loose promise; my dreams; my fatality? and please not forget to be beautiful, flexible, serene, nurturing, artistically inclined.

This is, perhaps, my didactic rant or it is the elephant that won't stop following me around.

concentric circles:

Sitting in my rainbox house, I hope for a flood. Watching the water rise, rivers choked with detritus, standing and waiting. There was a small earthquake last night. I am not in charge of any of this: no one is. I drove slowly down 217, my new wiper-blades throwing water impressively off my windshield. I read my future in the leaves that clog gutters. I sat in my car this afternoon. The heat from my drive lingers after I turn off the ignition. The rain is loud in that box; I sleep.

I am back on books. They are my drug of choice. Time is lost between their leaves— sated.

three-car pile-up

Days, weeks almost, go by and I rarely see the light of day from the four walls of my home. It's vaguely depressing. AM's are spent eating a hurried bowl of instant oatmeal and finding socks. I get home at a decent hour, 7is, but I am so tired I usually am sleeping within the hour. By home I don't mean any of those. I mean home and doing the things I love: cleaning the floor or making my bed. Seriously, the state of my house...
I believe that if I spent more waking time here, I would be more grounded. But, there are only so many hours in a day, week, year. Sleep and wake and dream are tangled together in the sheets of my unmade bed.