A River Runs Through It

The following is something I wrote a few years ago, during a winter in Spokane:

Yesterday afternoon I bundled up and walked to the park downtown, ostensibly to jog, but after less than a quarter mile of running down the path, I got to my favorite bridge and got caught in the sun.

The waters were high from runoff after our big snowstorms in December. Though I’m sure it was well under 40 degrees, it felt like springtime because the sun was shining. When was the last time I felt the sun on my face? Over Christmas weekend at my mom’s I took a nap with the sun shining through the windows, but outside, with sun and fresh air and mist from the river – it’s been a long time.

The Spokane River is sick. The Upper Falls that I stood at often run dry in the summer because they’re fed by our aquifer, and much of the water is also diverted to the hydroelectric plants. Low water levels means the river’s toxicity rises. Meanwhile, Lake Coeur d’Alene to the east brings heavy metals through the river in Spokane.

Our area’s Indian tribes considered the falls to be sacred; my favorite scene in Smoke Signals culminates in Victor releasing his father’s ashes into the falls right where I stood.

I think one of the key elements in my life is moving water. (Feel free to interpret this according to my status as an Aquarius; bear in mind I also do not know how to swim.) Be it river or ocean, I get a little stir-crazy unless I can stand next to a powerful body of water from time to time. I feel this way about mountains, too, but I think I could sooner survive without those than I could in the middle of a desert. Standing in front of a rushing river or a vast ocean reminds me of my own mortality more than any other natural feature that I can think of, makes me realize that “nought may endure but mutability,” lets all the noise in my brain shrink down to a reasonable size as I take in something very much bigger than my life.

So my jog turned into a stroll and then I stood at the bridge for at least fifteen minutes, silently looking with my elbows resting on the rail and my face turned toward the sun.

Looking Out

My living room is where I spend the majority of time in my apartment. I’m at my desk in a corner of the room for 8 hours at least, most days, and I flip my big fancy monitor around sometimes to watch Netflix while I lounge on my couch or loveseat. I talk on the phone and read in here, sometimes, and even being in my little closet-like kitchen is practically like being in the living room.

So – the big window here in the living room is an important factor in my daily life. I look through it for hours and hours a week. I watch the weather and the traffic and the neighbors walking their dogs and jogging and going to work.

I was trying to think of an adequate metaphor for my living room window and the first thing that popped into my head was, “It’s like… my… window to the world!” Drrr. It unfortunately doesn’t provide me with sophisticated thoughts and writing ability, apparently.

Amor Vincit Omnia

I’ve always been a bit of a romantic, or at the very least, someone who values the heart along with the head as a guide for navigating through life. I resisted this aspect of myself for a long time, feeling that it must be irrational or unintelligent. But in recent years I’ve come around, and realized that leading with an open heart is never wrong.

This is all just a lead-up to say that I’ve always liked Valentine’s Day, whether or not I’ve had a sweetheart to celebrate with. Some of my favorite V-Day celebrations and gifts have been with and from friends, from gorging on chocolate and having a Johnny Depp movie marathon in college, to receiving a mystery package on my doorstep a few years ago “signed” by a friend’s teddy bear. When I lived in Spokane I often went to my mom’s to create love-themed collages and other art. There’s a lot of love in this life to be celebrated.

There are many love poems that I like, but here is one, a quirky cummings verse in honor of Valentine’s Day:

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Good Sportsmanship

I like to say that I’ve never been a huge football fan, but I enjoy hanging out with people who are. As a child, Sundays and Monday nights meant the TV was reserved for the game(s), and up until a few years ago, I always had to fight with the Super Bowl for attention over my birthday weekend. Even still, it wasn’t until a few years ago that I actually learned the rules of the game – and, shockingly, it’s a little more fun to watch now.

Football is a brutal sport, I know. I’ve read a lot lately about how our culture around athletics is dangerous – not even just culturally/ideologically, but actually physically quite dangerous for the athletes involved. It troubles me. I’m troubled any time there’s a tension between what our culture celebrates and the safety/security/well-being of the individuals involved. That seems to be happening a lot these days.

Nevertheless, I enjoy days like I had on Sunday, surrounded by enthusiastic friends and unhealthy snacks and beer and football on a big screen. I do hope we as a culture can lessen the danger to young men and women who participate in this sport.

​”It’s going to be a good year.”

Aging has never freaked me out that much. I’ll probably be singing a different tune in a couple years, but for now, growing older means more financial security, more premature gray hairs that I cover up with too-expensive salon trips, and slightly creakier joints when I get up from sitting down for a long time. But I still get carded sometimes when I’m buying a bottle of wine, and I feel young enough that my future is wide open. Sure, I don’t have time to, say, go to the Olympics for gymnastics. But I could still take up a new hobby or sport, make new friends and form new relationships, move abroad or closer to home, get a new tattoo, get a kitten… lots of things! The world holds a lot of possibilities.

Me realizing there’s a trick candle in my Guinness-and-Bailey’s cake

See, my birthday was last Saturday. And I’m pretty sure I always say that: it’s going to be a good year. And it always is.

Fast Paced

Yesterday and today were whirlwind busy days at work, heads-down on a last minute deadline that I am proud of myself for tackling. I emerged at the end of the day hungry and dehydrated and a wee bit cranky, despite the accomplished feeling. My rehabilitation included a Zumba class, a FaceTime date, some trashy TV, and a big glass of wine. Tuesday done.

I’d like to create some recurring topics or categories for blog entries I post here. I jotted down some general subjects in my first post but I want to streamline even more than that, which will hopefully also provide inspiration when I’m facing writer’s block – oh, I haven’t written anything in the “places I’ve traveled” tag lately? Might as well. <– that kind of thing.

Hey, did you know “hopefully” is now in the AP Stylebook with “it is hoped” as acceptable usage? We’ve all been using it that way for years, right? Now you know that the ol’ AP think’s it’s a-ok.

I’ll probably post here about language usage and grammar, interesting (to me…) things I come across during my job as an editor. Things I probably won’t post about? Specific details about my job, specific details about my love life, politics, religion, excessive complaints… well, I guess I can’t promise that last one. We’ll see.

Full Circle

I haven’t posted in three months, and in that time, much has changed. All the changing isn’t quite done yet, and as I am wont to do, I hesitated about posting until I was in a settled frame of mind. But if there’s any lesson I’ve learned over and over throughout my twenties, and yet never seem to truly learn, it’s that I shouldn’t wait. That mythical settled state may never come – probably will never come – and who knows what I’ll miss out on in the meantime, if I wait?

Here I am, sitting at Third Place Books at the north tip of Lake Washington with my new laptop (let’s not even talk about the cobbled-together electronics situation that I came to Seattle with) in a large common space that I haven’t been for… oh, about ten years? As a teenager I got pastries at the bakery and saw Sherman Alexie for the first time and crept over to the poetry shelves, and here I am again. The process of become re-acclimated to this area has been a minefield of introspection, for sure.

So yeah, I moved to Seattle.

Kind of.

I’ve been joking that I’m homeless and jobless, but that’s not really true (and you know, kind of trivializes stuff that people are actually going through). I still have my apartment in Spokane for a few more weeks, and I put a holding deposit down on an apartment that I already love. I was supposed to start my new job, at a Very Big Company who shall not be named, either part-time last week or on Monday, but I hit a snag with paperwork and have yet to start. Isn’t that dumb? I’m sitting around burning through my savings because my *paperwork* hasn’t cleared yet. But I’ve shown my face at the recruiting agency’s office, and the Account Manager and I physically tracked down the admin assistant responsible (at the aforementioned V.B.C.)  to see what the deal was. It seems like everyone’s doing their best to get me rolling, but until then I am feeling a bit like a lost sheep. I’ve been spending a LOT of time in my car (seriously: both Monday and yesterday I drove 100+ miles), coffeeshop hopping, and generally trying to grit my teeth and hold until things get… you know… settled.

I miss my coworkers, I miss my boyfriend, I miss my mom, I miss my apartment, but I’m slowly beginning to relax and succumb to the fact that this move is THE RIGHT DECISION – the speed at which it was made is something I’ll cover in another entry, perhaps – and soon enough I’ll be able to embrace the support system of friends and family I have waiting for me here (in my frazzled state I’ve been lying low, so to speak), tackle new challenges at my job, and settle in to a lovely new apartment. I’ll get there.