Everything But the...

"It's the reason people stand struck too long at their kitchen sinks."

This is a line from a poem a girl in my Intermediate class wrote last semester, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. It's the reason people stand struck too long at their kitchen sinks....the poem was about love. But that's not what I associate this image with. Usually I attach it to that deep part of myself I sometimes...often fall into these days. I try to think of it as one of the many states of being. Just one more sensation among the many we are capable of experiencing as humans. Neither superior or inferior to any other state of being.

It's a bit of a descent though. Think of attaching a weight to your foot and sinking deep, deep into dark water, but with no chance of drowning. You just allow yourself to be pulled downwards into forever, one long exhale stretching up into forever. Or you know how you can never remember the exact moment sleep takes you? Imagine if you could though. Just try to look into yourself and remember what its like to literally be falling into sleep. I'm in that state of in between a lot these days. Like...suspension? Do you know what I'm getting at? My roommates have been asking me what I'm thinking about more often than usual. I couldn't tell them if I tried because usually I'm just in space somewhere. Orbiting, sinking. Gravity. Earth. And dark blue water, swirling down into the drain. Taking me with it.

"Does Barry Manilow know you raid his wardrobe?"

I once cussed a girl out in the ninth grade. I know, I'm surprised too. But she really, really pissed me off. For the last fuckin' time. It wasn't a big deal in retrospect. Basically she was in my friend group...(well I guess you could call it a clique; it was 9th grade after all) and she made a big deal about me sitting next to her at lunch even though I was sitting where I always sat at lunch. I stood up, threw my bookbag to the other side of the lunch table, knocked over a chair, and said "Why are you such a...friggin'...BITCH!!?" The words just came out; I was actually trying not to cuss. Then I calmly picked up my chair and sat in it, trembling and on the verge of tears. Everyone looked at me like I had the plague. Even the teachers sat in a sort of stunned silence. That kind of behavior has never exactly been characteristic of me. Aside from my direct family, no person since has ever been on the receiving end of my "immeasurable wrath." Mainly because I felt like such an idiot after the first time. But I have to respect the kind of people that don't avoid confrontation. Its good to know that somewhere in the world, all the jerk off bosses, coworkers, ex-friends, snot nose kids, and sonsabitches have it coming, and I don't even have to do it.

To You, Milledgeville

I see the same view a lot. There is this coffee shop I tend to habituate. You may have heard of it; Blackbird? (That was a joke, honest.) I like to sit in the front where it's quieter and the big window makes the light a little more natural. Except for the weather changes, I could be looking in on the same day always and it wouldn't make a difference. The log trucks keep rolling by, sometimes bringing with them the sharp, sweet smell of redwood. There is always always a bicycle bound tight to the bench, although I doubt anyone would steal it if it wasn't bound. People are always going. Driving, walking, jaywalking, sometimes stopping by but always continuing on. And then, there's me. I can feel myself becoming a part of this place. This little two step town with its history and its old walls. Its unkempt ally-ways that are anything but threatening. You know the way old houses look with ivy climbing up their sides? I'm the ivy, or the town is. I can't tell if it's growing into me or if I'm finding my niche in some of the more obliging cracks in the sidewalks. Can both be happening together? The point is we're becoming one; the same thing. In the same way that I can't quite shake the smell of salt water on my skin, and how Spanish moss hangs off my fingertips. I think I might be home.

I'm listening to The Avett Brothers, Weight of Lies on Emotionalism; if there is a topic I don't think I'm on it right now but anyways,

The weight of lies will bring you down and follow you to every town 'cause nothing happens here that doesn't happen there. So when you run make sure you run to something and not away from 'cause lies don't need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere.

I guess it's just that when I left Savannah to go away for school, I was running away. I wanted to be someplace different. I wanted to be different. Now I feel like I've got something I'm running too. It's true though, you don't change just because you've changed your surroundings. I am subject to the same neuroses, same fears, same inadequacies. Personal growth is always something that comes from within. But now, I've got two homes. And that's got to count for something, right? 

Bear With Me

This one is gonna get a little weird. I think I probably think too much but here it goes. As we all know by now, DNA is basically the language in which life is written. It doesn't matter is you're a tree, or a daffodil, or a human or one of the lesser known species of protist; you are an arrangement of four nucleotides in definite pairs stretching out into the infinitesimal void, or wound up tight and copied in countless little cells. Whatever. The fact is that all of life has been written into existence. The question is, bywhom? Who is our author?

I got to imagining that people were like books. In some other dimension, we're all lined up neatly on some god's bookshelf in his bedroom. So what about my books? I like to think that the more cranial ones have somehow managed to peer into themselves, to realize that they have been created. Maybe they too are about the business of decoding the language in which they are written. "Everything," they say, "Everything is just the same letters over and over arranged in infinite ways." Maybe they are decoding sequences of letters that seem to be related to tragedy or comedy, forming the vaguest outlines of their own natures, trying to predict whether or not they'll have a happy ending.
Maybe that's a better example of what we're like, just trying to figure out what kind of story we've been written into. I get to picturing the human tapestry sometimes, trying to find my thread with in it. Trying to decide what I offer to the greater picture. That's called systems biology by the way, attempting to look at the greater picture. Anyways, zooming out, looking at the way we intersect, I think we might all just be one great big story; part of one masterful dissertation on how everything came to be without our consent, and how by speaking the lines we were given, we'll meet our end. Let's all hope this one is a comedy.
And there is so much more than that. Apparently a biologist can spend their entire life's work following the movement of a single protein. This was my one protein, and I'm not sure I've even seen it through to its end yet.
I deeply apologize for taking up so much of your time with nonsense. Also...

The Canon that has Served me Well

I am an elitist. I'm not saying it's a good thing; I'm just saying that it's what I am. I am discriminating in my taste of books, and rarely deviate from the literary canon, or at the very least, the good opinions of those friends I think should be allowed to have them. I really do prefer a good red wine, and French pressed coffee. Maybe I'm using the term too loosely, but there it is; I am an elitist.
But I have to wonder what's lost when I ignore culture. If you want to find out what people are reading, you go to the best seller list, or pick up one of many shmarmy romance novels/ mystery thrillers. If you want to know what they're watching, you turn on CBS.  If you want to know what they're eating, you go to your nearest obliging Applebee's. Who doesn't go to Applebees? Or Walmart for that matter. You can find every type of person in a Walmart.
I don't really know what I'm trying to say. I have never once had a desire to read a novel from the romance section (except maybe a little), and I stopped pulling from the best seller list a long time ago.  I guess it's just that there is this whole group of people out there that I've ruled out and I don't think I like that. Everyone has value. Glee is a pretty damn good show if you like choral music. Sometimes, people in the top forty deserve to be there. Only sometimes, but sure.
So I guess you could call this my new year's resolution. And no I don't mean that I resolve to eat at Applebees more often. I might read a romance novel this year just to see what's up. But the point is, I resolve to care less, and maybe in doing so, become a little more open to the weirdly wonderful complexity of life that lies in the ordinary.