Tag «#nablopomo»

…and it comes with a goodbye.

November 27th, 2009 by steph | shades of perspective , , , , | No Comments »

i’d like to rest my heavy head tonight on a bed of california stars. i’d like to lay my weary bones tonight, on a bed of california stars.

i’ve talked about my inherent need for travel. it’s like the spin cycle to my daily wash. i can live life without it, but i’m a big dripping sloppy mess. it clears my head, wrings me out, and leaves me fresh and clean for more daily use.

and most of the time, this travel includes some form of spending time with someone that i care immensely about. lately, that someone (or someones) live in the locale that i am visiting. as opposed to traveling to a locale with someone in which i care about and with which want to spend time. which means i get my fill of spin cycle rejuvenation, but it comes only at a cost of having to say goodbye. and though the cost of having to say goodbye does not outweigh the benefit of spending time, it’s still a little thorn in the heart that seems to be getting deeper and deeper.

mostly, i am blessed to have friends that live across the country. good friends. true friends. connected friends. i could essentially visit any (cool) place in the US and have a friend to visit, stay with, see, or at the very last resort, accompany me. and for a travel bug like me, this is more valuable than endless quarters to do my laundry.

i suppose it is the nature of those friendships that make me able to visit in the first place- good, true, and connected. but the relational foundation being so positive and important, means that there are equally as strong feelings of icky, false, and disconnection when leaving those friends. balloons float away

and as i wrote about feeling alone last week, i looked forward to a thanksgiving week spent with the type of friends that are as close to family as friends can get.

but as the week came to a close today, i was ultimately filled with a sense of loss, and sadness to say goodbye. because the thing about friends as close as family is that they chose you. they chose to continue relationships with you, and therefore they chose to accept you. as you. if we are lucky, we are able to define family as people who accept us exactly as we are. but we do acknowledge that family is one of the most uncontrolled relationships in life. so, having friends as close as family denotes almost a higher (well, different) level of importance and acceptance. because, we could have chosen to disengage from that relationship anytime, unaccept the people with whom we are in friendship, and we didn’t.

therefore, seeing these ‘friends as close as family’ fills me up with hope and courage to continue being me, continue moving forward when it seems like no one cares if i move mountains or if i stand still. but this makes saying goodbye to those friends that much harder.

this year i am thankful for my connections across the nation, or world for that matter. thankful for those genuine times of goodness spent with people when i was not worried about being something else, or being misunderstood. or more importantly, when i was worried, and those connections solidified that there was no need.

i’d love to feel your hand touching mine and tell me why i must keep working on…so I’d give this world just to dream a dream with you on our bed of california stars.

california stars- billy bragg and wilco.

it is what it is. and it’s just instantly there.

November 18th, 2009 by steph | shades of perspective , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

and if you shake your heart enough, she will appear. tonight i think i’ll be staying here.

ok, so i know i promised you a super sleuth story. but, after a big huge date night like meal (cheese, wine, salad, wine, butternut squash linguine, wine, and some chocolate thing in a coffee cup that was like half cooked brownie mix, ie:heaven) i am in a food coma, which is affecting my patience for my own stories. alas,  my friends, the crime scene murder mystery will have to wait. ok, you’re right. not murder.

so, this ‘feeling’ thing i guess gets you somewhere. like, through things. embracing them has apparently made me move forward. not on, because well, that suggests like, getting over. and this is something (and i wrote someone just then, and had to correct. total freudian slip) i don’t want to get over. 

so yea, i’ve moved forward. and it is what it is. but this time, in a ‘i’m not putting up a wall’ it is what it is, ignoring feelings as a way to avoid disappointment, or heartbreak. but a different kind of is what it is. like a ‘it is what it is,’ forgot i wasn’t thinking about it way. like it pleasantly, and nondescriptly dropped off my list of things to remember to think about. and that was, nice. well, i didn’t even realize it really.

until this morning. when i got out of the shower, at 6:22 am, and *f*l*a*s*h* you were there. in my head. like, why? just there. in the front of my brain. and then i realize that 14 minutes earlier i awoke from one of those completely and utterly real dreams that later, when you remember it, you can’t remember right away if that memory was because it happened, or because you dreamed it.

and i sighed, embraced it, and kept going, kept moving. and proceeded to have a totally, outrageously busy day at work. meeting with my boss’ boss, employee year end performance reviews, 45 minutes total of non meeting time in ten hours, plus ninety five “must do today”s on my list kind of day. an life went on.

until in a double whamie kind of way jason schwartzman began singing to me on the burnt orange sunset drive home through berkeley while staring across the bay at my city. he sang, “for a second there i thought you disappeared. it rains a lot this time of year… and miss you, i’m going back home to the west coast. i wish you would have put yourself in my suitcase.”

and i forgot again, if you were right there, in the front of my brain, all over again because it happened, or it was a dream.

i felt, and therefore learned, two things today: the west coast is home. and it was a dream.

going back home to the west coast…

west coast- coconut records.