It's Alright, It's Alright, It's Alright

Dar Williams' song "It's Alright" from her Promised Land CD album is rollicking along on my stereo tonight, and I find that, indeed, "it's all alright." After a first semester of graduate school in which I took a bit of a walloping and struggled to keep on kicking, I've found my stride here, in more ways than one. I actually love that phrase because when I'm feeling out of sorts, stressed, or a little lost I oftentimes walk great distances, and even though it is something I frequently do as someone who backpacks, it always takes a bit of walking and a bit of struggling before I finally find my stride.

Our second semester began last week, a fact I can hardly fathom. The way my graduate program works, the second semester blows into the summer (which is filled with research - for me, a summer-long trip to Asia), which blows right back into the fall. It feels a little bit like all that time is already lost to me, as I know the pace at which things will move once this weekend passes. But so it goes. Time always goes more quickly than I would will it to.

I reviewed my old blog posts earlier tonight, and was reminded of a friend I met this summer while working in Costa Rica. He was a videographer on the field research project with which I assisted, and we shared a bunkbed in a family vacation house out of which we were based. I had the luckless upper bunk, and every night after I stepped off his heavy duty camera box (locked by a heavy silver chain to the bed itself during our days in the field) and up onto the rungs of the bed, he would take a few minutes to scribble something in a small notebook before shutting the light and wishing me a good night.

Not known for my recalcitrance (not one bit!), I asked him what he was up to, and was caught very much off guard by his answer that it was his "diary." Now, this is not some skinny hipster boy, and not some soulful, introverted nerdy boy (at least not on the outside) either. This is a strong, rather attractive, outdoorsy type. The solid built, Nordic skiing, wrap-your-arms-around-my-chest-and-hang-on-little-lady, type of guy. Consummate professional, passionate about his craft, committed to nailing the shot. No way would I have guessed that under his pillow was a five year diary.

It turns out that his father and I believe grandfather before him had kept these diaries, scribbling down not what the day felt like, but mostly what happened, where, and with whom. He told me that his father had a diary entry for most of the days of his life, including his wedding to this fellow's mother, and the days he and his sibling were born. When the kids became old enough his dad shared what he had written on those life-changing days, and it was something my friend had always valued and respected. So there he was, 27 some odd years old this summer, a committed diarist, recording the days' events for his own recollection, if not public posterity. Come to think of it, there's a day or two I would be curious to read his thoughts on...

I thought of that little bound book of personal history today as I reviewed this site, mulling over a conversation with a friend about where and how we share our thoughts and reflection, and caught myself grinning (still!) at the story about Greg and Alaska, aching for the loneliness of the days after Paul (and there were so many), and cracking a grin at the fishtank story. Maybe my blogging quietly and infrequently over the last almost three years hasn't been the lackluster effort I've characterized it as, but simply an implicit acknowledgement of what I might have guessed - that in a big way, I'm telling these stories for myself. In which case, it's not a symtom of my failure that no one reads this blog (since I've not done anything to link it to anyone else), but a document that so far has existed for me, as a chronology of who I am.

But I do have stories I want to tell, and to have heard and more importantly read by others, and I spend countless and inappropriate hours pining for the courage to take the steps to make that happen. Sometimes it feels like I am made up of no more than a long series of sometimes endless stories. Maybe all of life is made up of such epic tales. In which case, we shouldn't hesitate to fail, or thrash, or struggle along the way, as I did last semester. Maybe some of the stories are about failures, and maybe their juxtaposition with the successes is what makes the latter shine so brightly in the telling. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

But tonight, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright. A new semester lies ahead. I spent the weekend in DC, and returned feeling refreshed and revived by the friendships and shared energies of conversations I have and had there. I've changed my advisor, I've interviewed for a scholarship. Everything is looking up, even as I remind myself to be cautious in celebration of little successes. And of course, as with all moments in which things look up, I've somewhat recently meant someone I could really care for, given timing, communication, mutual will and, perhaps, alignment of the cosmos. I really don't know if it's anything or if he wants it, and that's okay. The only thing that's for sure is that we will see, and time will tell - truths previous posts belie.

But it's alright, it's alright, it's alright. For tonight, I can wait.

Free, With a History

Ryan Adams wrote a beautiful song called "Harder Now that it's Over," which I listened to perhaps a dozen times a day when Paul first broke off our relationship. Feeling mellow tonight, I put on the playlist I created when our relationship ended, and let myself look through some of the old GMails I found while double-checking that my 2007 tax returns were definitely submitted and received (and they were).

Love is so funny, is all I can come up with. My GMail account is the story of my life in Washington, and in particular is the story of my many loves. Not all true loves, not by a long shot, but loves in the way that I was filled with love by the experience.

I scanned past the early history of my and Paul's relationship - there was so much love and silliness throughout, that it still sometimes takes my breath away that it's over. Even in my emails, you can tell that I never saw it coming.

Before Paul was BB, the crazy one, the one no one (least of all me) understood. Charming yet demeaning, he didn't last long.

And prior to BB was PP (love those alliterative boys, don't I?), the college boyfriend who set me free to do what I already knew was right by cheating on me my very first weekend here in DC, when I didn't even know enough people to mourn with. I had briefly written that he broke my heart in the previous sentence, but that is untrue. He set me free. And when I doubted my freedom six months later, and contemplated reuniting with him, I broke his heart.

How revealing, though, to read those exchanges, and to mull over the little elements of truth that emerged over the years, and how those elements became molded into something bigger, and stronger, and unavoidably integral to my person as I worked harder and harder to face my own truths, in love, work, and otherwise. I feel like I owe GMail one for still being able to be a witness to that.

I am amazed to realize that it has taken me three months of mourning everyday to be able to resign myself to Paul's having left. Had I been told before that I would be so deeply effected, I may have believed it, but I could never have imagined what that would mean. I feel like I spent the last three months living in a very dark cave, and struggle to remember feeling joy at all throughout that time. It makes me feel stuck in the dark even to try to recall how I passed the days.

I still feel sad about Paul several days a week, now, but the change from the all-encompassing sadness of late winter is so drastic that I feel light, and...joyous, even while I am sad, these last few weeks.

And yet today was a sadder day than has been my norm, of late, because yesterday my housemate Judith and I went for a long, unutterably hair-brained bike ride (my idea), which ended in cold defeat, on the side of a small highway, in the dark. And somewhere in there, I thought of Paul, and what he might think of me were he to see me, and I carried that curiosity into today. I still think about whether he would be proud of me, although I know he is no longer thinking anywhere along the same lines. I still wish for him to be proud of me.

And yet there was a bit of happiness in that, too. My other housemate, Ben, came to pick us up in his car (hence our static presence on the side of the parkway), good-naturedly coming out after nine to rescue his outlandish housemates. And when I saw his profile lit up by a passing car as he pulled up next to us, I felt this little stir of something. A crush, perhaps? Excitement and fondness, and perhaps a small amount of pleasure or - better put - desire.

I was glad to see him in part to get out of the cold, but there was more to it than that, so I stepped up to give him a hug and it turned out to be warmer and longer than I might have imagined or intended. When we parted to grab the bicycles, I found I instinctively wanted to reach for his face with my hands and very tenderly kiss it, very differently than I might have wanted to in the past. The feeling of it warmed me up, so perhaps that may bring something worthy of a good look forward.

And, hence, the title. I find myself free, but with a history.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The amount of time and activity that has passed between each of these all-too-weak blog posts is embarrassing, and amazing. I am constantly in a state of surprise at how quickly the time passes, even while seeming to drag along. I constantly wonder what it is I am racing towards, and if, when I get there, I will feel as if I missed some important part, some space that was supposed to be populated by a deep breath, some fresh air, a renewed sense of self, and an actual decision about my future.

Decision-making has become more important to me, as of late, because in January I lost the ability to make decisions, and became a bystander to my own...fate, for lack of a better word.

When I last blogged, I was in love. Terribly, wonderfully, totally taken with it, in love. I actually (I blush a little typing this) didn't know love could feel that way. I didn't know how deeply I could be consumed by my affection for another person, how completely it would permeate all the different layers of the person I thought I was.

And as a result, I couldn't begin to understand how badly it would hurt me if I lost it, which I did. In December, the man I love(d?) returned from two months in Mexico, to a version of myself that seems remarkably distant, and ended our relationship, in a fiery showdown in a hotel lobby, two weeks before I moved to Minnesota to be with him.

It almost reads like a movie, but it wasn't, and it was heart wrenching. It still is heart wrenching, every day, and I'm still trying to work through it. But as I recover, or perhaps rediscover myself -isolated from the large whole into which I had so happily and unwittingly been subsumed, I am trying to return to that list of things which "I've always wanted to try." And this blog is one of them.

I lost decision-making capability on another front in January, as well. In the day before Paul and I finalized our break up (I resent the use of 'I' as an actor in this sentence), I submitted a single graduate school application - to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, a program about which I cared passionately, until Paul came home from Mexico, at least.

On that front, I am pleased to discover that my decision-making capacity has been restored, at least temporarily - I find myself admitted to Yale for 2008, although I'm not sure I can enroll without taking due time to mourn, some more, and to find myself, first.

So that's where I've been, and that's why the title. I was off between a rock and a hard place.