garden state

missing the dark. the quiet and not so quiet moments of the night that we lived together. the wonder of the first chapter of life etched out on our own terms. the newness of love and life. the mystery and the sadness. the joy and the surprise. guessing at what comes next. where do we go, the children of the directionless future. no fields to plow, no career to plan, no children to have. just part time work and aimless plans. fleeting passions and broken hearts. too young to settle. too old to stay home. the generation of me. the generation of you. sustained in flight because there is no where to land. all over educated and under valued. armies of wandering lost. we all feel off because everyone tells us we are preparing for something but no one knows what. the generation before the fall. the souls left to float. memories lined in shadows and handpicked soundtracks. painted sweeter with each passing year/play. recollections of lives reduced to playlists.

Home

Here it is 2:43 AM and I cannot sleep. Big shocker. I have been laying here next to my peacefully sleeping Henry turning over this set of thoughts like a smooth flat stone in my fingers. I'm thinking about a person who has haunted me in dreams and regrets for years now. This person was someone I held very dear to me. We became close friends quickly, the way that is only possible in the exuberance of youth. Not a day would go by without word from each other. For over a year, a blink in a lifetime, yet an eternity in your second decade, we were inseparable. We decide to embark on a great adventure together. An escape for both, similar in ways but very different as well. For her, the first time away from the home she'd known her whole life. For me, a way to flee my past and present, neither of which I had processed in any productive or mature way. Our adventure ended up separating us. I don't think it was because of any fundamental flaws between us, but more so because of the sudden shift in our perceptions this escape manifested. We were both experiencing something huge in the scope of our lives but instead of bringing us together, the subtle differences grew into vast caverns of misunderstandings and ill feelings. The details tire me. We both wronged the other but were too swept up in our own heads/immature/unempathetic/whatever to truly see the affects of our actions on each other. The part that bothers me this night is the question of why do I hurt so bad and she seems unphased by our parting. Why am I here, 3 years later, pathetically unable to sleep? I wonder if it has to do with my relationship with the concept of home. As a result of the particulars of my family, I have always substituted intense personal connections for my sub-par family situation. The friends I had in high school kept me going when everything I knew at home crumbled. This held true when I moved out of my mothers house just after graduation and instantly became completely independent. My friendships have held me together through everything. So, when said person and I became so fiercely close, she became a huge column of support in my structural well being. To lose her was like losing a brick in my foundation. While to her, who had and always will have a solid and comforting idea of home; losing my friendship was nothing. She still had a town to call her own. Family to make her laugh. A familiar house to envelope her. She has the luxury to not miss me because her home was still completely intact, while I am still occasionally kept awake at night with thoughts of what went wrong. Why I lost part of my home. This is my flaw. Forever vulnerable to the natural ebbs and flows and waning of relationships. I put so much of myself into everyone else when they are gone, a part of me goes with. Will I grow ever more hollow as the years and faces slip by me? Each one quietly taking a chunk out of me as they go?

Why didn't we take a picture together?

I don't tend to have specific recurring dreams. I do, however, occasionally have dreams that occur in the same places. The house in Ravensdale where I spent my adolescence. The streets I used to ride my bike on in Shoreline (of course then it was Seattle). My house on 3rd Ave with the apple and plum trees and the rockery my cousins and I spend hours climbing on. I also have dreams about the house across the street. The Emery's had two little girls, one a year older then me and one a year younger. Naturally, we ended up spending a significant portion of our childhood together. Mary was shyer then Kylene and I but we always seemed to get along. Kylene was, unbelievably, more bossy and outgoing then I. We butted heads constantly but that didn't keep us from interacting any less. We spent hours upon hours playing in their yard, in the basement, their rooms. These are the times I dream of. I moved away from 3rd Ave when I was 10. I kept in touch with both girls for awhile but eventually, without the pressure from our parents to interact, Kylene and I drifted apart relatively soon. Mary and I managed to maintain a fairly good relationship until the end of high school when it became apparent we ran in too different of circles. Later I learned that Kylene got pregnant her senior year and Mary started having kids a few years later. It had been years since I'd seen either of them.

During my trip home I told my grandma about my dreams of the old neighborhood. A few years after we moved out of the city, she moved into our old house. So she took me on an impromptu visit to the neighborhood. My grandma had kept in touch with Carolyn, the girls' mom and she thought she might like to see me. Maa sent me to the door to surprise her but instead of Carolyn I found a small girl who looked exactly like Kylene and Mary. I was so nervous I tried to get Maa to let us go but instead Maa took me to the door and asked the little girl if her mother was home. The girl called for her mom and Kylene appeared. Both of them were home. We talked awkwardly about life and the past and my dreams. Kylene talked about her daughter going to our old elementary school and the teachers that we'd had that were still there. We talked about my old stuffed animal collection. Her daughter brought me a few of her stuffed animals. Kylene said she wants to be a marine scientist and about a whale watching trip she took her on, even though it scared her to death. Mary called her mom and said she wanted us all to take a picture together. No one made the move to do it. We hugged and left. Maa called me on Saturday to tell me Carolyn found Kylene dead of an overdose in the basement a few days ago.

I hate that life is like this. I hate that every single moment of everyday, someone, somewhere is getting the news that someone they loved is gone. I can't tell if that comforts me in that no one is alone in their grief or if it angers me because it somehow lessens the tragedy of each loss. I can't help but look at the passing people and see a tiny label hovering just over their heads that declares their demise. Car accident. Suicide. Heart failure. Building collapse. It's the ever present elephant in the room for me. Mortality is a bitch.

Also, I love you all. Everyone.

Good night.

addicts and rose bushes.

Well looky here! An abandoned blog! Boy o' boy I am bad at follow through.

I am in Washington right now. Sitting in the office of the Alano Club of the Eastside to be exact. My father is shuffling around his desk at my side. I crossed the country in three flights, miraculously sleeping through each. Boston, Milwaukee, Denver, Seattle. "Discount" air travel is getting ridiculous. I spent the first few nights with my gma and gpa in North Seattle. Got to hang with the cousins, which was long overdue and pleasant. Went sailing with Maa and Wally. They are really working the trades with their website. Quite impressive indeed. Saw my mom. Never easy, rarely fun.

Friday I went up to Bellingham to hang out with Jordan, Tina and Mei Mei the precious. We went camping at the Subdued Stringband Jamboree for the weekend up at the Deming Log Show Fairgrounds. This was one of the most fulfilling weekends I've had in a long while. It was hothothot but not humid. Between filling ourselves with the sweet sweet tunes, we swam in the river everyday and watched the meteor shower every night. I danced with my niece and laughed with my brother. Tina and I talked and talked and I love her. I felt whole.

Now I am with my papa and Donna. We saw the step fam last night and they are wonderful as usual. I only have two more days left in the Evergreen State and my feelings are quite mixed. I have finally grown to love my east coast existence but this particular visit has shaken the previous reservations I held about returning to the west. My cousins are growing into adults and my niece is racing towards the double digits. This is disturbing to me. I miss my dad and my grandparents and my step family and the trees and the rain and the clean rivers and real mountains. But I hate the unrelenting, graceless sprawl and development that is ravaging the land. There is no thought behind the growth, it's only driving force is an aged and dying concept of the American Dream, that was never going to be anything more then just a dream, that has now been turned into just another product to sell. Bah. That rant is for another day.

Long story short, I will be glad to go home to my cat and my friends and thunderstorms.

i am procrastinating my studies, as usual. i can't believe that i am a mere two n a half semesters from having my very BA degree. took me fucking long enough eh? what will a "real job" be like? probably boring and lametastic. i'll probably just do MORE school and prolong the inevitable grown-up life just a tad longer.

my cat is perched on my shoulder like a parrot and is basically the cutest thing on the planet. i wish she'd ask me for a cracker though..

kimi, i went peepin' through old blogs (xanga n such) and it made me wanna give you a little hug n stuff.

i gots nothing else.

statslandtime.