Second New Year.

 

This was the forewarning of the Snowpocalypse that overtook Seattle this last week.  I hadn’t even made the connection until just now when the sky turned red.  Do you know the old sailor’s tale?  (How about that light fixture coming out from the clouds, ha!)

I woke up this morning seeing all of the New Year’s wishes from my friends here and abroad.  It seems like the holidays never end when you have a cross-cultural life.  Just when Christmas and New Year’s end on the state side, it’s the Chinese New Year and all of the celebrations start all over again.  J is traveling through Yunnan today to my favorite city…one of the only places that ever enlightened and inspired me.  I hope she finds that there too.

I’ve been here over half a year already and it’s funny how in the place where I am supposed to be home, I feel the most alone.  Let’s hope that with this second new year beginning that I’ll find some inspiration again.  2012, Enter Year of the Dragon.

Joy and Sorrow

“Then a woman said, speak to us of joy and sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

-excerpt from The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

This is Halloween!

I finally had a gig.

Seven sold-out shows with a troupe of cabaret dancers, a circus-like brass and drum ensemble and a few other singers.  Halloween-extravaganza.  Me – all of the witch, cackly, high-pitched soprano demon voices.  Tons of ghoulishly-painted faces, feathers, fake-eyelashes, glitter, sparkly bras and tutus and neon-green fishnets.   For the last few months I’ve been watching these guys perform, and finally I got to be a part of it.

The night of our dress rehearsal I had this wave of relief and butterflies and hyper-energy-rush spill over me when I hopped on stage.  A feeling of home/work/love.

In between and before and after, I have been struggling.  I think that’s why I’m not writing as much anymore.  I just write to myself now in my little journal.  It might stay that way until I have more stories to tell that do not involve this prison of my mind.  It’s enough to torture myself.

We are the sky and the ocean.

Yesterday at yoga while in shavasana, or corpse pose, the teacher said something, but I was in this meditative state where your eyes are barely open and you’re not sure if you’re awake or asleep, and it doesn’t really matter.  I could hardly make out what she said, or where she said it was from:

“We are the sky and the ocean, not the clouds or the waves.”

Then she continued to explain how our very nature was more like this core, this foundation.  I have always thought of myself as more like the clouds and waves, always changing and moving and unpredictable.  How can I make myself believe that I am the sky, I am the ocean?

I took the above photo in Xinjiang, China.  We were the only ones for miles.  I miss home so much.

Fall into my (new) home.

My body, for once, is so exhausted.  I keep falling asleep around midnight or two and waking up around ten, still feeling like I could lay in bed for another couple of hours, but then there’s a slight headache and I force myself out of bed just so I don’t feel like crap all day.  Laying in a bed alone was nice for a few nights, but once I hugged a pillow and imagined it was my stuffed turtle, then imagined the outline of her neck and shoulders and that tattoo, just like how many nights I fell asleep before, it just made me feel a little less alone.

A friend says to me today that it’s been a rough month, a feeling suicidal kind of month.  Those moments I wonder if this apathy, the lost-ness, is an epidemic everywhere now.  When are we gunna wake up and realize that we’re worthy?  How many more nights are we going to walk home after a bar at 2 a.m. choking back tears and hearing our own voices in our head reminding us how we don’t want to wake up tomorrow?

I have to make a schedule, details details details.  I always tell myself that if I keep moving forward then I won’t have time to be depressed.  That kind of thinking is so wrong, because you end up imploding.  The other night I dreamed I was getting ready to perform Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”.  I was pacing back and forth, listening to it on my headphones before I got on stage like I used to.  Someone comes by and wishes me good luck.  Then I’m on stage, and several people get in front of me and are jumping around, singing along.  Someone is throwing jewelry at them and they are putting it on.  I stand behind them and keep singing along, but my voice is barely audible.  It almost made me cry, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was getting to perform or just overwhelmed with too many people and sounds.

Fall is coming.  It has always been my favorite season, but I’m not sure I’m ready this time.

Banish the saudade.

“In the out-of-print book In Portugal, A.F.G. Bell defines the Portuguese word saudade as follows: ‘A vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning toward the past or toward the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness, but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.’  In my astrological opinion, Pisces, it is imperative that you banish as much saudade from your system as you can.  If you want, you can bring it back again later, but for now, you need to clarify and refine your desires for things that are actually possible.  And that requires you to purge the delusional ones.”

-From this week’s The Stranger Horoscopes

This hits a little too close to home.

Evening with May.

“I too have known the inward disturbance of exile,

The great peril of being at home nowhere,

The dispersed center, the dividing love;

Not here, nor there, leaping across ocean,

Turning, returning to each strong allegiance;

American, but with this difference–parting..”

–From All Our Journeys, May Sarton

Reset.

Do you ever miss yourself?

I woke up this morning and did one of my favorite things – hand-brew my coffee.  Snagged a blueberry bran muffin that I took from the cafeteria after the entrepreneurial workshop I attended yesterday, came downstairs into my cave, surfed the web, looked at clothes.  Gave my mind a break.  Backtrack to a karaoke bar on Thursday where I drank 3 sangrias and then some – my hands were shaking most of the day on Friday.  After nights like that, it feels like someone hit my reset button.  I grasp out for reality and feel so happy when I finally get back on the bus back to the house.

Aside from homework piles, there are other piles of books and book lists scattered all over the place, my usual “clean” mess of sticky notes, random business cards, my day planner with all its tabs sticking out.  I’m reading fiction less and reading things to enlighten more.  I miss poetry, miss that romantic self.  Where did I go in the last 6 months?  I had a twinge of hope this morning, and it was the first in a long time.  Maybe I’m doing something right.

It’s all trying to embrace my emptiness rather than eradicate it.  It felt so good to sit here this morning, and even though I’m alone, it’s okay.  That’s a lot.

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I can’t bring myself to do anything these days.  Instead of being creative and writing, I’m mostly trying to deal with feelings.   I think this is the space when you’ve hit rock bottom and you finally have to start dealing with your problems instead of ignoring them.

But right now it just feels like a lot of losses.

Kind of like I’m losing her, it, that place, those things, that house, those memories, all over again.  I guess it’s time to quit losing and start grieving.  Maybe once that’s over I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I mean, sure, no problem.  Will do all that grief work, try to sleep and exercise and eat right, write some amazing novel, knit, check out schools, apply for school,  pull 100 grand out of my ass and then figure out what I wanna be when I grow up.

Wait, why am I here?  I’m feeling so backwards these days.

 

 

In between.

Where are you when you’re nowhere?  No home, on the plane, 14-hour layover in Korea, conversation about life in Southeast Asia and the UN and farming with some friendly guy who’d been living in Laos for the last few years.  Half-awake, half-asleep on the plane, my usual insomniac state.

As we were coming down, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Washington lying below me.  This felt like The End of the last several months of in-limbo-decision-making-packing up my life.  My eyes welled up and I couldn’t figure out if it was because I hadn’t really slept in 3 days or because this was the first time I’d flown into Seattle on a clear day.