Revelation...duh

It's a dream I've been having for ages. I'm running frantically, trying to escape or get somewhere. I'm able to leap vertical, but make no movement horizontally. I'm going nowhere even though I'm taking tremendous strides. Up, down. Up, down.

As I was doing some real-life running this morning it hit me. Maybe it's not just an anxiety dream. It's trying to tell me something. Even though I may be having great successes, achieving great heights, I'm really just running in place.

Three beginnings, one end

Here's the beginnings of three different stories. You tell me which one you want me to finish.

1.
My paws are cold. The grit at the side of the road we've been trotting feels like thorns each step I take. He kept us going all night. Nowhere to rest anyway so I guess it's not so bad to keep going. Except a thunderstorm is building. I sniffed it. Smells like a lake up there it's such a big one.

He's got me worried. Just like the rain ends up in my nose, so does he and I can tell he's not feeling so good. When we do stop, he sleeps long hours. He sleeps so deep that trains don't wake him. I have to stay awake then, or I can drift off to sleep but keep one ear up and ready. I sleep on my tail so it's not so comfortable or I lick my paws to stay awake.

Once, during the best time we were together, we were in the mountains. It was summer. The air was cool though and we slept on pine needles and thick bed of them. My fur would smell like a tree and I'd bite the slivers out of my fur. There were wild strawberries and he'd spend hours collecting them and I'd find mice and small birds and gobble them up. It was quiet at night and I could drift off pushed up against his side under the dark night, a canopy of trees. I'm not scared of big animals like I am people.

We walked all the way here from there. Except sometimes we ride in cars. When we do he opens the window for me and I get to stick my head into the wind and feel it whoosh through my teeth and over my tongue.

When I dream I dream I'm running that fast I'm hunting mice and rabbits and birds and swimming in mountain streams.

I dream of wild wolf howls and I howl back an answer I run away with them. He becomes a wolf too. We are part of the pack we live in the den. We hunt at night and sleep in a huddle during the day. He chews through my collar and it drops to the ground. I lick his wounds.

2.
Bun was a doubtful cat. Always questioning her feline abilities. She'd hesitate before jumping on to a chair or window sill as if she were judging, then rejudging the distance; gauging the height she'd need to jump again and again.

I never doubted her. She always made it. She always heard my keys at the door and sat waiting on the step as I entered the house. She knew me and she was always there.

Even now, buried underneath the bright forsythia she is ever reliable. She is there in my dreams each night, brushing past her scratching post, curling around my ankles and warming my toes as she perches near my feet.

Bun still needed to tell me something it seemed, and so I paged through the yellow pages looking for pet psychics. I needed to know! What was it she was meowing to me in my sleep?

There was only one. Reginald P. Bryce, C.P.P. (Certified Pet Psychic). And so I dialed his number.

"Hello?"
"Yes, I'm calling to make an appointment."
"Oh yes! Your...bird...She's not eating."
"No. My cat."
"Oh, of course! I see it now. Your cat's not eating."
"No! My cat's dead!"
"Well, good god, honey! Why are you calling me then?"
"She keeps coming to me in my dreams! I think she's trying to tell me something."
"That's serious. You better come in right away."

3.
Jack stretched his long legs out and unwound them from around the bar stool. He kicked them out in front of him and looked around.

Smoke filled the rool, making the far side filter out like it was behind a gauzy curtain. He loved this place. Nothing better than a stiff drink in a seedy New Orleans' bar.

Madame Julia sat in one corner at her usual table. A blinking tourist sat across from her enraptured by her dramatic tarot reading. The Madame was a little black cat of a woman who could bristle and purr on and off like an alternating current. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she read the magic cards and wove them into fate.

The old bum from the corner crouched other end of the bar. Seemed he was always there spending the change he'd collected by honking out some made-up garbage on a rusted harmonica. The songs were so bad that Jack swore the man must be deaf. He never talked to anyone--just sat there swilling cheap beer all night long.

Jack got up and walked round the bar and sat down next to the old man. He could see the wrinkles in his face, creased with grime. Jack threw a few coins down on the bar. "How about you play us a little tune?"

Suspended

I am a friend to deep lakes and running rivers.
I swim out to their middles and tread water,
spin 360 to take in the view. The low view,
my body sunk beneath the x-axis of the earth,
only my head above.

I am a friend to soft sand, piling up over my feet,
buried deep beneath it. My brother covers me and runs
away and now I feel my heart beating through my whole body--
pulsing.

Someday I will be a friend to moist earth.
Earthworms and tree roots at my side.
Tucked in for the everlasting night.

I am a friend to the sky.
What color is the sky?
Silly--the sky is the color of the sky!
As a child, hanging upside down on the monkey bars
I would pretend sky was down and earth was up
and feel the universe spin around me.

Vacation tchotchka

Bee dance

Bees
The bee hive lives. I returned home on Thursday from Portland Nursery to a swarm of bees in my back yard. I had just been remarking to T. that morning that we should call Tom, the beekeeper, because the dead hive was attracting the attention of local bees. Well...those local bees were scouts for a hive that had outgrown their current digs. The scouts led the pioneer honeybees to their new home, and marked the occasion with a swarming ceremony. It was terrifying and beautiful. The world around us works to it's own logic and rhythm, even as we humans attempt to ever increasingly control it.

Sadness
I've done little writing this week. Sadness. Especially since I've been on vacation. I think my body and mind both needed a break though. I drive so hard throughout the week, and then I don't even let up on the weekends. I'm the girl who wakes up at 6 am even on Saturdays. After a week of vacation though, I'm amazed to find that I can sleep in. I woke up at 9:30 today.

I'm afraid to go back to work. Not only because I've been having a hard time and I'm not looking forward to what and who awaits, but the idea of getting back on that moving train. Do I even know how to have fun now? Do I know how to relax? I watch The House of Elliot, and think "I'm just like Beatrice..." who obsesses about her business, whose marriage has failed, who is angry and worried all the time. Egh. We even have the same hair.

Movies
If you haven't seen Cache yet, you should. The best film I've seen in a while. Subtly political. The conflict between France and Algeria, and the current conflict in the Middle East form book ends to the story, and the film manages, through the story of a bobo family that starts getting creepy parcels and anonymous phone calls, to call attention to the way conflict can build up over nothing. Paranoia, distrust, leaping to conclusions without evidence...human failings that have global consequences. It made the war in Iraq feel very personal, in a way that no amount of CNN coverage can. Don't go if you're sleepy though. It moves slowly.

Fog
Early Friday morning, T. followed me out to Gresham in his truck, so I could take my car in for repairs. But he had a meeting at Leach Botanical Garden to start some web work for them, and didn't have time to drop me off at home. So unshowered, uncaffinated, unbreakfasted me took a hike through the garden. I was hoping it was early enough to avoid humans, but I was greeted by the groundskeeper Scotty, who told me just how many species of ferns and birds were living in the garden. I nodded politely, and sought escape in the woods. Every spider in the garden must have spun a web across the trail, because after awhile, I could feel them building up on my skin. Tiny invisible filaments everywhere. I'm sure I had a spider or two in my hair as well.

I also saw a snail crossing the trail and a cat hot-tailing it down the path as it was chased by some very angry birds. Eventually, I picked a bench and thought about what it would look like if I were to take a little nap. Would I get kicked out for vagrancy or something? But a bus of grade school kids on a field trip soon saved me from appearing homeless. And in past years, I would have felt uncomfortable under the critical eyes of children, sitting there alone on a bench--hair wild, and drowsy--but maybe I've truly grown up because I didn't really care. I just sat there and listened to the teacher until T. was finished with his meeting.

Destination: Austin

Hmmm. Let's begin with a technical confession: the software I use to loads photos on to blogger isn't working, which sucks, because I have gazillions to share. I'll have to load them later when I have patience and T. is not annoying me by prowling the kitchen, wondering whether to eat the rest of the tortilla chips, or glug milk straight from the carton.

We spent the last few days visiting our friends, A&E (so appropriate an abbreviation for them) in Texas. We timed the visit specifically so we could go to the Houston art car parade (pictures! lots of them! imagine Wacky star shaped cars and cars with huge, pink poodles on top, and funny rollerskating characters!) It's surprising Portland doesn't have anything like this, but maybe the freaks here have grown too comfortable and don't need to announce their freakiness anymore. In Houston, the land of the air conditioned tanning booth ("Darque...so good you can almost eat it"), the freaks need a once-a-year event to rally around. I felt right at home.


My fave of the art cars


M peach bush...a bold move in W-loving Houston


Who wants a tasty cupcake? Me!

We saw a few of the crazy cars later, all the way in Austin, when we were crossing South Congress. "Hey! We know those cars!"

Besides eating and drinking our way through Texas, we did some super cool stuff, including hanging out at the TGI Friday's on the river. Hey! That's not cool. Except we were there to wait for the moment just at dusk when a colony of 1.5 million bats that lives beneath a nearby bridge made their way out into the night sky. I was anticipating they would come out as a cloud and begin swarming the area around the river. Instead, a slow and orderly stream of them rushed East, beginning at one end of the bridge and made its way toward us. It felt choreographed, as if each bat knew when to take its turn and fly off, away from the fading sun. The whole thing took almost 20 minutes. It was stunning. I've never seen animals so seemingly conciously organized.

They were certainly more organized than the four of us, who by this time had each consumed two ultimate margaritas and at least one fried mozzarella stick. We headed to a local music and soul food joint and shoved our faces full of fried catfish, cheese grits and beer and listened to a great, twangy, swingy band. We clapped and hooted and hollered. We closed the place down. Then more beer at the Spider House. I floated my new story idea by E. "Hey! Do you think it'd be a funny story if there were this big old dude, and he was in the bathroom, sick with food poisoning, and he heard someone breaking into his house?" She laughed, perhaps politely. And after all the beer, we topped it all off some the sugariest donuts in all the land at Ken's donuts. Wow. Can you say "shitfaced"? How else can you explain that I ate two of those sugar bombs in less than five minutes?


Donut zombies

As if I didn't eat enough, now I can think of nothing but tamales and tequila. I can't complain about the cuisine here at home. I get all the strong beer and coffee I want, the salmon is fresh, and the berries are divine. But sometimes...I crave heat. And now that I've had some, it's gonna be hard goin' back.

A clear sign of gentrification

It's raining, and my neighbor is running her brand-new sprinkler system. Last week, several brawny hispanic men dug trenches in her lawn to lay the pipe. Now, it runs every morning and evening, whether the grass is parched or not.




Oh yeah...and the newly built rowhouses that are starting at $495k. Half a mil for a freakin rowhouse???? Ohmygod i need to run away to the mountains and never come back it is all too much.

I never thought I'd say this but thank goodness for the other neighbor who has a washing machine on his lawn and I've never been so glad to see a stray dog taking a crap in our front yard.

Fingers on silk scarf

The skin on my fingers catches against the silk--rough skin, hangnails, dry fingerpads--hands worn with work.

The little red hen ground the grain, made the dough, baked the bread. The fruits of her labor fed her chicks. The goose, the cat and the rat stood by as they ate and felt their bellies rumble.

My hands are more and more like my mother's with each passing day. A surprise to me--to recognize her there. The pattern of her veins, her red knuckles, the skin with hatchmarks like they've been drawn in rough pen and ink. These are mine now. Passed down without ceremony. Received with prayer that they will know better when to hold tight and when to let go.

I still recall a warm summer day when I was only thirteen. I stood at the washtub in the cool, moist basement, sorting laundry. I asked my mother I should use bleach on the whites. She said yes, but never get it on your hands. She regretted the damage it had done to hers. It made her look old, she said.

But she was old. At least that's what I thought then. But she was not much older than I am now. She was young and looking at her own hands, thinking of her own mother. Looking at the wide, smooth scar from her wrist all the way up to her thumb on her right hand, and once again hearing the sound of flying metal and warm, wet trickle of blood running down her fingers. Seeing the scissors he mother had thrown now lying at her feet. Feeling the rage of her mother. A bull, not a hen, but a bull.

Monkey business

Watch this.

Tooth

Dear Erika,

We've known each other such a long time. Long enough that I know you've lost your big toenail more than once. In fact, you lost it the very first week I met you, after you dropped a table on it. But I don't know much about your teeth. Did you ever have braces? How old were you when you lost your first tooth? Did you ever get a tooth knocked out? I suppose you use whitening toothpaste. And I've seen Crest Whitestrips in your bathroom.

Take good care of your toofies.

Pamela

Dear Elizabeth,

I know you're a keen observer--it's the Virgo in you--fetching out the tiniest details and cataloging them in your brain. What do you notice about teeth? Have you ever thought about them? The stained ones, the uneven ones, the ones that are too big or too small? What kind of teeth does the walking man in Chicago have? Do you think the people at the clown house brush their teeth? With what? Balloon toothbrushes?

Pamela

Dear Doug,

Tooth. It's a funny sounding word. A double "o" brings humor to an otherwise mundane meaning. Say it. "Tooth." Extend the middle and croon a little. At the end, your tongue meets the back of your teeth and gets a little lispy. Some words are like instruments. They carry a melody all their own. Funny, I just realized the act of saying "tooth" involves the use of them. Maybe that's on purpose. Who, exactly, planned it that way?

Pamela

Burgerville on a sunny day

A warm, spring day in the PNW and Burgerville is hoppin'. The parking lot is jammed with contractors--their dry wall-caked boots and carhardts line up to feed. The cashiers call your name when your order is ready. Three men before me are all named Steve.

Bee carnage

inside the hive


bee carnage

Last weekend, I took the blue wooden top off the hive. Dead, mouldy bees were scattered about. Looking down into the hive, I could see honey dripping from the frames. It smelled sweet but tainted. It felt like walking into the scene of a mass murder. Bodies everywhere. I could imagine the bees in their final moments, crawling feebly to where they finally lay.

Gotta love Portland

New story, yet untitled, still unfinished

It was once a convent. In its heyday, it must have been imposing. Nuns in their black habits looking up to the wrought iron crucifix mounted to the roof as they came and went. Now it was just a three-story, rectangular red brick building with empty lots on both sides. The grass grew high in the summer and collected the trash that blew in from other parts of the neighborhood. That’s the thing about MollyOlga. It was the anchor of the neighborhood. The only building on a street of boarded up houses that had any life and it pulled everything toward it.

Four wide stone steps led to the front locked door. It was always a few degrees cooler at the top of the stairs. The doorbell made a shrill sound that hurt my ears, and usually summoned Duncan. He would let me in and then return silently to whatever it was he was doing.

You would think I’d most remember the paintings. It was an art school after all. But even more, I remember the smells. I learned to smell alizarin red, cobalt and ochre. The smell of ivory soap and the rusty tap water at the sink where you cleaned your brushes. The pungent fix solution from the darkroom. The smell of Bridget Robinson’s seldom-washed hair.

Bridget was a fixture on the second floor. She’d have already been there for an hour or two by the time I would arrive. She sat almost the whole day at a small table in between two floor-to-ceiling windows, only getting up to go the bathroom, I imagine, although I can’t really remember ever seeing her move.

Bridget would carefully choose one pastel and then another, working them into the thick cotton paper, stroke upon stroke, making tapestries of bright chalky color. She once drew seagulls resting on the shore. For anyone else a sedate subject, but her birds were giants, and she had them presiding over a raucous mosaic sea of red, violet and green. At noon, she’d pull out a crumpled paper lunch bag and without washing her hands, eat a bologna sandwich, dressed in the pigment residue from her fingers. It took me a long time to realize she was twice my age.

She was always the first person Molly would check on.

“Alright, Bridget?” Molly would stand and look over her shoulder.

“Yeaahh.”

“Nice. Very pretty.”

Molly loved Bridget. You could tell. They both saw the world the same way, I think. Even though Molly would never let me see her paintings, I could tell she saw things the world as big and magical.

The seed of the school sprouted sometime in the 60s when a group of neighborhood children knocked on Molly Bethel’s back door and asked her to teach them to paint. They kept coming. She used her own money to buy supplies and never asked for payment. Twenty-one years later, she and her friend Olga Lownie bought the former St. Boniface nunnery for $2,500 and called their new art school “MollyOlga.”

I loved the drive there. I’d leave my quiet white-bread town safely tucked 30 minutes away from Buffalo and head in on the 400, hitting the Thruway, then through the 190 toll booth requiring fifty cents to pass, and finally down to Locust Street where MollyOlga was located. I’d come off the ramp into the part of town called the “fruit belt” and you’d expect with a name like that the streets would be lined with the trees they were named for: locust, mulberry, peach, grape. Now I think of William Carlos Williams’ poem, “A Locust Tree in Flower”
Among
of
green

stiff
old
bright

broken
branch
come

white
sweet
May

again

But then I thought of Biblical plagues and it seemed appropriate because the street was stripped bare. But I didn’t care too much because it stripped me bare too and I was glad for it. I was a young white girl in her mother’s cast-off Nissan Sentra but I felt like maybe I could be anyone.

Molly tried to shape me. She tried to stop me from holding my paintbrush like a pencil and instead hold it with my forefinger and thumb so I could use my whole arm, and not just my wrist to paint.

Thunder and lightning

It has thundered and lightning-ed two out of the three nights I've been in Chicago. After being away for years, the old nightmares started again last night: a tornado is coming. I am looking for shelter. Last night, I ran into a Safeway and headed to the back of the store away from the windows. But then I realized I forgot my brother. He was in the highrise across the street on the 40th floor. I needed to tell him to get out of the building.

Maybe the dream is telling me I'm worried I've left my family behind. Maybe I have. When I talk to my mother, she never asks me about myself. She doesn't know who I am. I might tell her about a movie I've seen recently, but that's it. She doesn't know me otherwise. We spend our time talking about her life. S. is easier. We have more in common. But still I feel so far away sometimes. If I just chose to live closer...in the same city even...where we could shop together, or eat in the same restaurants, or drive on the same roads, would we be closer? Why should I expect my mother to be any different than an old friend who I awkwardly begin a conversation with after 10 years apart?

I do like art. And so does S. We went to see Kelan Phil Cohran play at an almost non-descript Ethiopian restaurant. The chartreuse walls made it stand out. Phil was playing the thumb piano when we walked in, and from where we were standing, it didn't look like he was doing anything. Just rocking back and forth. But then he moved on to the trumpet and later the harp. He played for an hour, collected his tips like any street musician, and walked out the door without attracting the attention of anyone there. And maybe you don't know who he is, but jazz fans will, and you'd think they would applaud, or call out. Gather for autographs. But nope. Practically anonymous.

And then a day of walking from gallery to gallery in the early spring sun, before dropping me off at Northwestern for a business workshop. I get out of the car, and say goodbye, and I'm thinking as I stand in line to check in and see him drive away, "who am I?" and "who are we?" and "why do we know so little about one another?"

Bzzzzz...zzzzz..z....z.....

Tom was out to check on the hive yesterday. He proved my theory right. They are dead. We have a hive full of bee carcasses. It's been a very wet winter and they were infested by evil, honeybee-murdering mites.

I've been waiting to see some signs of life. Spring has arrived late here in Oregon. The apple trees are just starting to flower. But we've had a few warm days. I expected to see the scouts venture out into the sun. But it's been quiet. I even lobbed a stone against the side of the hive a few weeks back, to see if I could arouse the guard bees. But nope.

Poor little bees.

Poetry

Origami in my brain,
worries keep folding up.
Stupid human worries.
Red, digital numbers burn
into the back of my retina:
It is 2:35 in the morning.
I will get up at six
and drive through the blue rain
in a sea of more red taillights.
Asphalt highways flow into
other asphalt highways and
the steel girders, concrete barriers
keep us all moving in the same direction.

Once I saw a grey ghost cross the highway.
A floating plastic bag
caught in the wind—
No—a great bird
sailed over four lanes of traffic
into a meager stand of trees
and I couldn't stop myself from crying.
I felt its bones in the cold,
the way it tucks its head underneath
its wing for warmth, the hum
of traffic ten feet away from
its nest. My stupid human problems.
Nothing in comparison to survival.

I am thankful for poetry,
that insomnia and birds
can lie in bed together
while I stay awake.
No storytelling road to follow.
No chain of logic because
this does not make sense
and not much does.

Tell stories to the whales
trapped underwater with the din
of motors and beating drills.
They swim up rivers and onto beaches
to find some peace.

Oh yeah, I forgot

Yesterday afternoon I got my mind back. I feel so much better.

I snuggled into the corner of the couch with a strong cup of irish breakfast tea and picked up a book of short stories I was given for my birthday. I flipped randomly to a story by Rick Bass called, "The Hermit's Story." It starts out simply enough: four people are sharing Thanksgiving together. They are eating pie and drinking wine. Then one of them tells a story that gets more and more fantastic as it goes on. Birds and dogs and stars and ice, and sleeping under a the icy skin of a lake where all the water has drained away. It was beautiful. There's no time in the story. The narrator tells us it was 12 years ago and then later tells us it was 20 years ago. And it made no sense. And I loved it.

After I read it I thought, "Oh yeah. I can write stories that don't make complete sense. I can write anything I want." I can write anything I want.

I've been stuck trying to tell this stupid story about this boring woman. I was trying to write it, because the boring character made the whole thing make sense. Some sales woman who has tried her whole life to get ahead but then one day realizes her whole life is meaningless. But it was boring, and I wasn't having any fun writing it, and I would keep freezing up and then trying just to push through, but then get frustrated and bored. I would think, "No one wants to read a story about a woman like this. And I don't really want to write it either." But I had two really strong images on either side of the story, and I needed the woman to connect them--to make the story logical.

Maybe I let this happen because a few weeks back, I gave a copy of Lost to an acquaintence. I didn't expect anything except for her to read it but she gave it back to me with written comments and everything. She didn't like the part toward the end where the girl dives down under the water and sees a whole town down at the bottom of the river. She wrote, " I could belive in the bat boy, but not the town at the bottom of the river." And when I read it, I thought, "Oh well...that's just her opinion" but I think it influenced me more than I realized. Because lately I've been trying to write stuff that's more "believable."

I don't want the girl to just swim back across the river. I want it to feel like she's getting dragged down by the river, the town is like the Sirens in the Odessey, tempting and dangerous, and she has to drag herself out of it.I'm not so interested in the logic as the feeling.

I hate logic in writing. I want to write the stuff that makes my heart hurt. The stuff that makes a wolf's howl form at the base of my throat. That's delightful. That's why I write. Oh yeah, I forgot. Thanks, Rick Bass, for reminding me.

Meditiation on an old photo

She has worn this dress, especially for today. It's the most expensive dress she's ever had--white, gauzy layers with delicate edging. She moves more gracefully in this dress, it seems. It makes her want to dance, and she'll have the chance soon. She'll enter through the doors of the magnificent hall and be surrounded by the most gallant gentlemen in all the county. Oh! She is taking a moment to get her breath before she goes, here in the garden next to a sculputure of a great white bird. It is beautiful and reminds her of everything she wants to be tonight, and everything she wants to feel. Like a wild bird she wants to be free to fly. She wants to be the creature that's most admired.

...

Like a wild bird, she wants to be free to fly. It's no fun in here with these parakeets. The cramped cage, the smelly, damp newspaper. She seems to be the only bird who minds, though. All the others are happily tinkling the bell or looking in the mirror. Paco is beaking his way up and down the right corner of the cage as usual. He never does anything else. She's the only bird that wants to be free. She dreams of nestling down in a patch of grass every night instead of the newspaper shreds she's got. Then she'd wake up to the sun and catch a wind current and just soar all day, riding one gust after another.

She once asked Polly about escaping. Had she ever tried it? Ever know anybird who did? She wanted to know the details. What's the best way to get past the shopkeeper Steve and his little Vietnamese girlfriend? Once you do that, how do you get past the big door? But Polly just stared at her with her beak wide open, so she hadn't brought it up since. Every night though, she dreams of being free.

...

He really did not owe an explanation to anyone. Certainly not her. She always wanted one though and she would keep asking and asking until she got one. Well this time he was gonna fix it so she couldn't ask. So that she'd never be able to ask again, as a matter of fact.

He started making a list. Shells from a tribe of hermit crabs, the eye of a newt (standard fare), the inner frond of a sword fern. Lots of purified water and the special words. That oughtta do it.

Positive reinforcement

I realized yesterday that the blog entries lately have been a wee bit too negative. So I'm gonna counteract that with a list of things that make me happy. I'll just keep adding them as they come to me.

1. Tortoise's song, "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were women and men." Both the title and the music. I was at the gym yesterday, and it slipped into the shuffle on my iPod. The title of the song is so long the iPod had to keep scrolling it.

2. Lovely, pale pink yarn from the softest, little alpaca lamb that ever lived. Eight dainty hanks arrived on my doorstep yesterday. I just wanted to shrink myself down to mouse-size so that I could use one of them as a bed.

3. I am the same age as Dave Chappelle.

State of the union

I should be getting ready for work right now, but I just spent the last two days coddling my client, and so I'm not so eager to get back for another day of thinking about someone else's needs before mine.

My horoscope for the month says that I'm in the mood to upset the apple cart. That's for sure. As I sat in those meetings, I kept thinking, "Who am I?" I could be a kick-ass marketing guru. I'm good at it. I could funnel all my energy into my business career, make a ton of cash, and just stop struggling. Hell...gimme a BMW and a yearly vacation to Maui and a mind that does not question what it all means. A simple, quiet mind.

Or, I can be a writer.

I am not sure I can do both. So with yesterday marking the end of the thirty-first year of my life the reset button got pushed. This year, I need to spend some time building a life that supports my true self. Every night, I have to go to bed thinking about what I'm going to do the next day to be my true self. This is the end of the line for my marketing career. I'm not pushing for a job at Nike as a marketing exec. No. The world wants me to go that way, but no. I either make it as a writer or nothing.