I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but, every now and then, I am happy. Like when my friends finish off a bottle of wine and agree to do the fork-in-the-garbage-disposal dance.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the original:
I think they really nailed it.
“When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;
be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
– as it surely will.
Then act with courage.”
-Ponca Chief White Eagle
Tonight, I’m obsessing over this page of Native American quotes.
It is possible I did not fully appreciate Native American culture or oral tradition when I was first introduced to it in middle school. I think I was too busy sketching the Nirvana logo in the margins of my book to pay attention to the actual spiritual wisdom within. That’s ironic on so many levels.
Notably less wise: auto-start music on a web page, as exists on the one I just linked. Beware.
On a dating website, when a man specifies that he wants to date a woman who “can carry on a conversation,” who is he expecting might read that and think, “Well, that rules me out”?
I had dinner tonight with my friend Abby, who recently got engaged to my other friend Kortny. They’re old pals of mine from LA, in town to watch Notre Dame play a sport against another team that plays that same sport. They invited me to come along to the game and I couldn’t say no fast enough.
Tomorrow we’ll meet up with Trish, another old friend from LA, who got engaged a few months ago to her boyfriend.
Other friends who have gotten engaged and/or married recently: Sarah, Melissa, Carmen, Cristina.
I remember sobbing with each and every one of these girls over past boyfriends. Abby ditching a work event early to drag me out of my apartment to a movie and a bar after my live-in boyfriend moved out and I barely knew how to get out of bed. Holding her hand when she feared she’d made the biggest mistake of her life by ending her relationship with her college boyfriend, that she’d never again fall in love. Trish, frustrated for months by a crush who refused to notice her and later by a boyfriend who refused to tell her that he loved her. Sarah, mascara smeared, sobbing over the loser guy we all hated when he dumped her (we were relieved). The supposed love of Carmen’s life left her to go back to his ex-girlfriend. Cristina caught her first fiance cheating with a colleague on a business trip. Melissa wondered for years if she’d ever find a serious boyfriend.
I want to graph it — to plot, somehow, the break-ups and first kisses, the proposals and hysterics, the nights we drove up and down PCH for hours, consoling or congratulating one another. I see our love lives as multi-colored sine curves, intersecting and embracing. Their lines have terminal points now. I want to solve for mine.
is bananas /
B-A-N-A-N-A-S /
this shit /
is bananas /
B-A-N-A-N-A-S”
Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”
I’ve been inconsolable for days now, mauled by the realization that my life lacks, as I define it, direction. I woke up this morning furious at the cloudless Seattle day — isn’t the sky supposed to be DARK and CLOUDY in Seattle this time of year? Isn’t it supposed to commiserate with me? Isn’t that why I moved here? To be a part of a climate that understands me? There’s been a relentless physical pain pulsing through my upper body, the manifestation of a sadness I can’t do anything but wait out and the fear that it won’t pass.
I received in the mail today the following items, which I’d previously ordered on eBay:
1) Thigh-high black suede Michael Kors boots that lace all up the front and
2) Gold-rimmed non-reflective Ray-Ban aviators
And now everything is okay. Even the sunny day is a compatriot.
Am I simpler than I realize?
Or more complicated?
