(no subject)
the news has soured in my mouth, waiting to turn to wine. "i just took the gre. i am applying to UIC's graduate entry program. i am an americorps health educator. i want to be a nurse and public health worker." (a parrot. a marionette. a tape recording.) i feel as though it would be more efficient to make little notecards, a la a blind/deaf merchant trying to save a child or parent, and pass them out to whomever i may be interacting with in order to expedite empty pleasantries. probably tack on "i am ungodly poor and cannot engage in fun with a fee."
exhaustion came and went, yet lingers right outside the door. there is a lot to be done, though--i can say with relief and a grin--i have done most of the work there was to do. now it is finishing touches, a final once-over, the plates and forks before the meal. then a tense few months in waiting. on condition of getting an interview, i will find out if i've been accepted in may. my life revolves around hazy dates in the future: that sometime in may, the last day of my americorps contract (21 aug) and the start of the graduate entry program in january 2010. between those hefty landmarks, i just hop from day to day like so many river stones.
there is at least one good thing to find exciting every week. sometimes it is a full night's sleep. sometimes a perfectly executed meal. a good, good friend who makes me laugh, who gets it. other times it is some event or another which pulls me out of the monotony of survival and reminds me why i bother--the 'building a healthier chicago' conference last friday at the hyatt downtown and the chicago public radio winter hiphop block party on sunday at which billy upski (author of bomb the suburbs) spoke on community organizing in the age of the obamas; and then even more simply when i go out dancing or ride my bike and, despite feeling profoundly disconnected from a former body that could dance for hours nonstop and ride 100 miles a week without complaint, i am freed by movement, by the unrivalled joy of just being in my own body, this one that i know now, and letting it be itself in its favorite contexts.
slowly i am regaining myself after the deluge of mandatory hoops and the contortion required to jump through them. once again i am remembering that after so great a pressure one emerges something different. a newly freed continent. a precious stone. and so i continue, component parts intact yet changed, always struggling to understand what i was, how it is that i can transition again and into what. i can trust that the end of every month signals that i am still alive.
this is not something to struggle against but something i am struggling to deserve.
exhaustion came and went, yet lingers right outside the door. there is a lot to be done, though--i can say with relief and a grin--i have done most of the work there was to do. now it is finishing touches, a final once-over, the plates and forks before the meal. then a tense few months in waiting. on condition of getting an interview, i will find out if i've been accepted in may. my life revolves around hazy dates in the future: that sometime in may, the last day of my americorps contract (21 aug) and the start of the graduate entry program in january 2010. between those hefty landmarks, i just hop from day to day like so many river stones.
there is at least one good thing to find exciting every week. sometimes it is a full night's sleep. sometimes a perfectly executed meal. a good, good friend who makes me laugh, who gets it. other times it is some event or another which pulls me out of the monotony of survival and reminds me why i bother--the 'building a healthier chicago' conference last friday at the hyatt downtown and the chicago public radio winter hiphop block party on sunday at which billy upski (author of bomb the suburbs) spoke on community organizing in the age of the obamas; and then even more simply when i go out dancing or ride my bike and, despite feeling profoundly disconnected from a former body that could dance for hours nonstop and ride 100 miles a week without complaint, i am freed by movement, by the unrivalled joy of just being in my own body, this one that i know now, and letting it be itself in its favorite contexts.
slowly i am regaining myself after the deluge of mandatory hoops and the contortion required to jump through them. once again i am remembering that after so great a pressure one emerges something different. a newly freed continent. a precious stone. and so i continue, component parts intact yet changed, always struggling to understand what i was, how it is that i can transition again and into what. i can trust that the end of every month signals that i am still alive.
this is not something to struggle against but something i am struggling to deserve.