a moment on adulthood
I don't feel inspired to write here anymore.
The woman who kept this journal alive was part girl, really. Maybe even mostly girl.
These days I bust my ass with a few different jobs: the one that tries to pay the bills, and the one that actually inspires me, that makes me think, that teaches me about women leaders from around the world and lets me interview Hawaiian filmmakers.
There is a part of me that hasn't changed, though. Sandra Cisneros once described it as a keening, a desire stronger than desire, more of a half-soul wail into the world: "HELLO! WHO OR WHAT IS OUT THERE?"
The answer echoes back to me in pieces. This is what's out there:
The one million Indian women who lead their panchayats, or local village councils, and make campaign posters with drawings of women working and men smoking.
Homeless men and women who alternately compliment me on my hair and yell GET OUT THE WAY BITCH as I bike downtown.
Men and boys that I want to approach because of the way they put their hands in their pockets, or pump their knees rhythmically to whatever tune it is jazzing through their brain as they ride Bart.
Clips and phrases of other words and other countries and other everythings that people just like me had to leave behind, or can't wait to escape from. Eavesdropping on the bus when people speak Spanish on the bus usually gives me an entirely new insight on someone's day. Today two old men talked for five minutes straight about the differences in heating systems between the bus and their own chilly apartments. Women work long hours and straighten their hair very early in the morning.
I want to reach out and grab it, snag it, find it, whatever it might be. A job, a boyfriend, a friend, a campaign, a sport, an event, something soul-shakingly fine, and absorb it in my life. I am an amoeba. Growth feels terribly slow at this part of my life, and I know it is just a lack of perspective. One year from now, I will feel as I do now about my year in Fuengirola: all these quiet moments of frustration, or plodding afternoons as I bike uphill, will be sentimentalized into a swirl of urban memories. The boys I like who don't like me, the women I admire who at long last know my name, the publications and the grades and the money (oh the money) and the health insurance that plagues my brain.
I learned last weekend at the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose that ancient Egyptians believed that one's heart was judged before she entered the afterlife. This is why embalming was such a crucial step after death: once the deceased's heart had been placed upon a scale, it was measured against the feather of truth. If it swung the scale, the heart was thrown to a medieval beast that was part hippo, part alligator, and part lion. So, no pressure. This judgment was such an important part of the afterlife process that Eygptians actually wrote their own cheat sheets (prayers, really) that might help lighten their heart for the moment of eternal justice.
Why is this relevant? Maybe some part of me has constructed a parallel balance deep inside: that maybe whatever it is I am judging myself against is a standard so stellar, so fine, that even divine intervention might not measure up. I've been considering it lately when I go to yoga class, every time I fill my lungs I can just picture that little hippo waiting to suck the carbon dioxide back in. What standard am I trying to meet? What bills am I trying to pay? How old am I again? Why does adulthood have to be so serious?
At one point I actually transcribed this journal into a Word document that was a good couple hundred pages long. I can't say how many entries start "I want, I want, I want," like I'm a greedy archeologist soul just scooping the dirt for self-determination. Maybe so.
There's a reason Third Eye Blind wrote a song called "What's My Age Again?" And maybe they suck, but lately that song means more to me than I can quite explain.
I should go to bed.
Nobody reads this anyway.
A moment of meta-literature:
To the girl (or woman) who at some undetermined point will transcribe this into that neverending Word file on my dying computer:
Do you remember this moment, when you were writing this? How you said you were going upstairs to take a shower, but really just sat down on the floor with those ugly waterproof boots and your brother's school scarf trailing down your neck, and suddenly your journal became your friend again?
What moment are you having now?
Stop.
Write it down, whatever it is, because that's what you need to do. Write.
And now I'm really going to sleep. No hippos tonight.
The woman who kept this journal alive was part girl, really. Maybe even mostly girl.
These days I bust my ass with a few different jobs: the one that tries to pay the bills, and the one that actually inspires me, that makes me think, that teaches me about women leaders from around the world and lets me interview Hawaiian filmmakers.
There is a part of me that hasn't changed, though. Sandra Cisneros once described it as a keening, a desire stronger than desire, more of a half-soul wail into the world: "HELLO! WHO OR WHAT IS OUT THERE?"
The answer echoes back to me in pieces. This is what's out there:
The one million Indian women who lead their panchayats, or local village councils, and make campaign posters with drawings of women working and men smoking.
Homeless men and women who alternately compliment me on my hair and yell GET OUT THE WAY BITCH as I bike downtown.
Men and boys that I want to approach because of the way they put their hands in their pockets, or pump their knees rhythmically to whatever tune it is jazzing through their brain as they ride Bart.
Clips and phrases of other words and other countries and other everythings that people just like me had to leave behind, or can't wait to escape from. Eavesdropping on the bus when people speak Spanish on the bus usually gives me an entirely new insight on someone's day. Today two old men talked for five minutes straight about the differences in heating systems between the bus and their own chilly apartments. Women work long hours and straighten their hair very early in the morning.
I want to reach out and grab it, snag it, find it, whatever it might be. A job, a boyfriend, a friend, a campaign, a sport, an event, something soul-shakingly fine, and absorb it in my life. I am an amoeba. Growth feels terribly slow at this part of my life, and I know it is just a lack of perspective. One year from now, I will feel as I do now about my year in Fuengirola: all these quiet moments of frustration, or plodding afternoons as I bike uphill, will be sentimentalized into a swirl of urban memories. The boys I like who don't like me, the women I admire who at long last know my name, the publications and the grades and the money (oh the money) and the health insurance that plagues my brain.
I learned last weekend at the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose that ancient Egyptians believed that one's heart was judged before she entered the afterlife. This is why embalming was such a crucial step after death: once the deceased's heart had been placed upon a scale, it was measured against the feather of truth. If it swung the scale, the heart was thrown to a medieval beast that was part hippo, part alligator, and part lion. So, no pressure. This judgment was such an important part of the afterlife process that Eygptians actually wrote their own cheat sheets (prayers, really) that might help lighten their heart for the moment of eternal justice.
Why is this relevant? Maybe some part of me has constructed a parallel balance deep inside: that maybe whatever it is I am judging myself against is a standard so stellar, so fine, that even divine intervention might not measure up. I've been considering it lately when I go to yoga class, every time I fill my lungs I can just picture that little hippo waiting to suck the carbon dioxide back in. What standard am I trying to meet? What bills am I trying to pay? How old am I again? Why does adulthood have to be so serious?
At one point I actually transcribed this journal into a Word document that was a good couple hundred pages long. I can't say how many entries start "I want, I want, I want," like I'm a greedy archeologist soul just scooping the dirt for self-determination. Maybe so.
There's a reason Third Eye Blind wrote a song called "What's My Age Again?" And maybe they suck, but lately that song means more to me than I can quite explain.
I should go to bed.
Nobody reads this anyway.
A moment of meta-literature:
To the girl (or woman) who at some undetermined point will transcribe this into that neverending Word file on my dying computer:
Do you remember this moment, when you were writing this? How you said you were going upstairs to take a shower, but really just sat down on the floor with those ugly waterproof boots and your brother's school scarf trailing down your neck, and suddenly your journal became your friend again?
What moment are you having now?
Stop.
Write it down, whatever it is, because that's what you need to do. Write.
And now I'm really going to sleep. No hippos tonight.