I love you, Infinity

I was talking to my aunt on the phone this evening. She's had a rough time just lately; she's had to stand by and watch as several people she loved fought their battles, unable to lend anything but hope and sorrow as each won or lost their individual struggle.

So when she told me that she went to the beach to recharge her batteries, and that she felt more at peace and close to God there, I knew exactly what she meant and what the ocean had done for her, because it does the same for me, only in a different way.

When life is just too hard, when things have come to a place where I feel that the box full of emotions I keep locked tight inside me is about to burst its chains and spill forth on everyone around me, I make for the ocean. When I stand on the shore looking out to where the sky and the water become a place of mist and illusion, each echoing the other until they are an indistinct, twinned line, I feel as though my seemingly insoluble problems are a waste of infinite space and time.

When I watch the endless, repeating cycle of water lapping the shore, pulling away and overflowing back again forever and ever and ever, I think: How is it that I feel that my little problems are so large? On this scale, where these waters will come in and go away again until the Earth ceases to hold tight to the Moon, my worries are as fleeting as a breath.

When the wind blows the tingle of salt into every pore of my skin, chilling me and sealing out the babble of all of my more trivial thoughts, I am set free from old ideas and old fears. I am able to be alone inside my head, in some way more alone than at any other time. I am able to dispassionately view the things that have haunted and harried me and put them into perspective.

As an irreligious person, I don't feel the need to be close to a creator, but I do feel a great sense of wonder and awe that I am a part of such a beautiful, complex system as this shore, this world, this galaxy. My tiny little self is a part of something so immense, so wonderful, so amazingly complicated, I can't help but revel in that sense of delight, of oneness with all things. I can never forget that I am made of star-stuff:




Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft... by wamane


So when my auntie tells me she feels better and closer to God after her visit to the ocean, I get it. Oh, I get it. She was reminded of her part in the great Infinite, and how beautiful it is to get to be alive as a part of it all.

Actually, that makes me want to get away to the ocean myself, and as soon as I can. I need to refresh my sense of my place in the infinite, as well.

Capitalist PEEG

I want so many things I can't afford.

I want to never have to think about paying the rent or an insurance bill or a phone bill or any bill ever again - bitch, take it out of my bottomless bill account and don't bug me. Seriously.

I want to travel to all those places I see on television: I want to watch the sun rise in the Virgin Islands. I want to walk in a soft Irish rain. I want to hike the Great Wall of China. I want a Sherpa to guide me through Nepalese mountains. I want to learn to surf in Honolulu.

I want a wall of amazing guitars and a recording studio in the basement of my airy, sunlit house - you know, the one on a couple of acres out in the boonies someplace? The one with a self-contained cottage a few feet away where my dad can live and be private but still get his meals carried to him by a doting grandgirl? The one with a huge kitchen garden and a chicken coop? Yeah, that one.

I want a Winnebago. Goofy, right? Well, I do. I want to load everyone up on a whim and travel to Yellowstone or Crater Lake or the coast.

I want to select one of my two or three great digital cameras and go take amazing pictures so that each memory I capture is as close to perfect as the moment itself.

HOWEVER, I am so thankful that I have the things I do have.

I am thankful that, with some exceptions, I can pay my bills at all.

I am thankful that in the little round of daily travel I do make I see things of beauty, like Mount Tabor and the cityscape across the Willamette River and the St. Johns Bridge.

I am thankful that I have a little apartment that is a home to my children - and one or two pretty cool guitars, as a matter of fact. I am thankful that, despite our sticky butts that are in love with our sofas, my dad can come see me or I can go see him and it's not a hardship to do so.

I try to remember every day all of the things I do have. I try to remember every second how lucky I am to have the people in my life that I do. I work at being at peace with the small round of small events that I experience every day. And most of the time I succeed, with varying levels of success.

But lord, lordy lord, I sure would appreciate winning the lottery. Oh, yes, this little capitalist is as piggy as they come, I guess.

But I can live with that, too.

Guest Post: MAH BABY

You guys, you guys, my kid is a writer. Holy crap. Here is her composition for English class, called "How It Feels To Be Me." (I've changed names to protect the innocent, and she's going by Brel for the purposes of this post.) Share my joy! (Except the woman part. She's seventeen, so I DISAGREE with the woman part. But I'm a mom. What do you want from me?)

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I often wonder what people think of me.

By often I mean constantly.

Constantly means when I'm taking a shower. When I'm getting on a bus. When I'm wrestling my coat into my locker. When I'm putting on makeup in public bathrooms.

Sometimes people say what they think of me, but when I hear it, I often decide they're wrong.

I've heard people call me a bitch. I'm not, though, really. I am a know-it-all, I am bossy, I do complain about people who irritate me. I don't go out of my way to hurt people. I don't talk about people behind their backs. In my little neighborhood between Martin Luther King and Dekum street, I learned better than that. I am not a bitch.

According to some I'm a hipster. After watching “Portlandia” I sincerely hope not. I don't think I have the holier-than-thou attitude hipsters come programmed with, and I don't own any old English riding boots or look good in tiny floral skirts.

I spend most (all) of my time with a group of boys. They spend all their time playing Magic™ and talking about their Dungeons and Dragons™ characters. Looking at my friends, it'd make sense for me to be a nerd.

But guess who isn't a nerd?

I'm not so lost in a fantasy world that I can condone myself blowing off priorities and failing classes. I'm not so tangled up in a game that I allow myself to spend upwards of thirty dollars a week on cards. Where I come from, in a little red house full of brown-skinned abuela and a blonde-haired mama, I learned better than that.

People seem surprised when I say I have Latino heritage. I don't think it's so hard to believe. I've actually found myself in arguments over the subject—“Shut up, Brel, you are not Mexican.” I didn't say I was. “You are not Hispanic.” Yes, actually. “You ain't got nothin' but white in you.” You don't know me.

It's almost worse when people believe me, especially adults. It seems like after the fact is public that I'm Hispanic, people expect something different from me—like somehow my entire self changes because they know my racial background.

Well, where I come from, where half the people around me are white Southerners and the other half Hispanic Coloradans from Pueblo, I learned better than that.

If I'm none of these things, then what am I?

I'm a big sister. If I was asked my best friend, I'd say [redacted] or [redacted] or [redacted] (sorry, readers, protecting the innocent, etc. - M.). If I was asked who I'll love for the rest of my life with no conditions, I'd say my baby sister. In a way, she's also my baby. She's my number one inspiration, second to none. She's made of the same stuff I am, only different—she got more of the Southerners, with her honey hair and sturdy body. She's gonna grow up and be tougher than me, but right now she's just irritating, aggravating, impossible, and the best thing my parents ever gave me.

I'm a woman. I'm not a little girl anymore, but sometimes the veil that separates is blown aside, and I can be both for awhile. It takes a woman to look at a situation and say “Let's make the best of this” and then do it. It takes a woman to run interference between a group of seven teenage boys and three teenage girls. It takes a woman to know exactly what to do when [redacted]'s carsick and [redacted]'s homesick and [redacted]'s just plain sick. Where I come from, kitty-corner from J. and her five kids and their however-many kids, across the street from M., down the street from C., and with a little sister of my own, I learned that.

I'm a singer. I sing in multiple choirs and multiple bands, as well as being notorious at home for loud, midnight-showertime concerts. I know how to croon jazz, I know how to open up and sing opera, I can turn my vocal vibrato on and off. I am in the honor choir at my school, I am part of a family that is held together by music. Where I come from, singing bluegrass while stacking dishes into a cabinet, I learned that.

I'm a Brel. I don't know what a Brel is really, but am I supposed to yet? It sure seems to me that if I knew exactly what I was already, there'd be no reason for me to live.

That's how it feels to be me. It feels like nobody knows, not even me yet, and by the time I've figured out what I am, I'll have lived that definition out. It feels like a book where the end's gone and got lost, and now I've got to go find it. It feels for all the world like I'm alive—and I wouldn't have it any other way.