The Flying Machine

I didn't get to post any of this on actual Thanksgiving because I was too busy having a glorious 24 hours in Eugene with friends, happily laptop-free, but, belatedly, some things to be ever so thankful for:

- A job doing what I love that allows me to have a positive impact on my community

- My happy li'l Subaru, which got a record 32 mpg on my Eugene trip, thanks to Granny-style cruise control and moderate speed

- Getting to go home for just over 3! weeks! a week from today and see my family and Florida and to wedding-plan with Liz

- All of my friends everywhere

- Being able to sit around a Thanksgiving table with a few close friends and a bunch of near-strangers and leave feeling positively communal

- Great thrifting buddies

- This lovely fall, which has been so sunny and mild, relatively speaking

- Scruffy the cat, who curled up with me in bed every night and morning while I house-sat last week

- The promise of a hot tub to enjoy all winter long

- Hope, and all that it means

Posted by Sarah at 9:53 PM | Permalink

Tonight is my last night living here. I've been at this house for three months now - long enough for my belongings to have spread throughout the house, despite my best containment efforts, and long enough for me to have been made aware, in sometimes blunt manner, that this is maybe not the best long-term housing fit (even if all residents ARE a good long-term friend fit). I think I never really realized how good I had it when I lived at the Pebble, or Foley, or even 211 South Mass - laid-back housemates with a really flexible attitude toward a co-op food system and a modest amount of cleanliness.

I'm trying to come to terms with the clutter that dogs my life like a shadow, and to determine what's reasonable (one dish left in the sink) vs. what's not (leaving the Thule box in the driveway for over a month). This, of course, is supremely subjective, and I guess I'm more on the cluttery side of clean.

Next week I'll be homeless and crashing with N; after that, three weeks in Florida and then the big move into my 6-month house sitting gig. Here it is, another clean slate. I'll have a housemate for the duration and I'm optimistic that we'll be able to get it right.

It's a huge hassle to be moving again after just 3 months. I want to find a great place and do all the fun nesting things that come with it - as it stands, I hang a few prints, put my clothes in the closet, and call any old place home. Maybe it's an outward sign of my inner restlessness. This doesn't feel like the right place to settle down. That's something I'm going to have to deal with. Soon.

Posted by Sarah at 8:30 PM | Permalink

Has it really been a year? A year since I last got swallowed whole by this or that emotionally damaged young man? A year since I played the "I bet I can fix it!" game? Yeah.

In a way, I have the least reason ever in my life to resonate with this song. I am seeing the most normal guy I've ever dated.

He's not:
Prone to drinking to the point of blackout
Obsessed with violent dark death metal
Given to disappearing from all contact for weeks at a time with no notice
Into reading aloud journal entries about his ex-fiance
Mentally and physically crippled by chronic pain and resulting masculinity loss
Perpetually melancholy

Or any other of the laundry list of pathetic bullshit attributes from that bunch of yahoos who make up my past. I can smell a nutcase from a mile away after all that - and this is just the tip of the iceberg. (Yes, I've dated a couple of good ones, too, who don't qualify as yahoos)

But it's hard - no, impossible - not to listen to this Everybodyfields song, Worth Keeping, and get a little nostalgia for the emotional crack that is dating damaged goods.

After you listen to that one, skip ahead to A Gun, catch that opening line, and, more importantly, the way it's sung:

Take me down /
Shine me up /
I'm your favorite coffee cup /

I want to pack up and hit the highway to Tennessee tomorrow and go save Sam from himself. Maybe this time it will work.

You can watch the video from Paste here, and really, you need to hear it.

(Sidenote: the "I bet I can fix it!" game is quite similar to "he may be an asshole, but he's MY asshole!" syndrome, seen most recently in discussion around why the hell a modern feminist woman might dig Mad Men's Don Draper. More on this soon, I hope.)

Posted by Sarah at 10:15 PM | Permalink

So I had heard through the grapevine already (of course) that some folks I went to school with were on an HGTV home improvement show, but then ZOMG I had that very channel on tonight, because I cannot seem to turn the TV off while I house-sit, AND THEN SOMEBODY'S SAYING ARCADIA FLORIDA.

And there's these kids I vaguely recall from high school, now engaged, trying to move their new home across somebody else's pasture to their 5 acres of pasture. These kids are younger than I am but there they are, with their camo ball caps and Nextels on their belts, and their glorious rural Florida accents, on the TV as a young couple with a home.

And here I am, living out of boxes and nowhere even close to near to committed to this place or these people or this boy or this job.

But that's not what I'm really thinking about. It's the unexpectedly huge pleasure of seeing home - the cows and the particular look of the pasture, the quality of the light, the way the voices sound, the familiar highways, the live oaks and palmettos. Wow, it's hitting me hard.

HOME!

Posted by Sarah at 8:38 PM | Permalink

From Shannon, this video/transcript on Prop 8 really nails it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not… understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

KO on Prop 8.

Posted by Sarah at 10:05 AM | Permalink

A few ways:

1. Backburner that thing, dream, idea, plan you’ve had running around in your head since you were ten, twelve or twenty.

9. Make a criteria of what things need to be in place before you can begin.

22. Be devastated when there are no marching bands, accolades or public service announcements celebrating your progress and begging you to go on.

28. Eat another cookie.

30. Complain you don’t have enough time. Continue to say yes, when you meant to say no.

32. Refuse to make mistakes. Insist on doing things right the first time.

36. Read Blogs.

(more here)

I was out on a hike this weekend with my friend Josh and we'd been out for a few hours, merrily photographing the shaggy misty mossy Eagle Creek trail, when it started to rain. We stuck it out but ended up spending several hours soaked to the bone below our rain jackets (last time I'll forget the rain pants). At some point along the way, a thought occurred to me: I wonder what birds do when the rains come? How do their nests stay dry? Do they have holes in trees?

The thought of a snug and dry hole in a tree sounded perfect. I imagined myself as a bird and fluffed out my feathers, shifted my feet, felt the smooth wood against my body. I could actually feel all of this, and it startled me, this unfamiliar sensation of placing my consciousness in an entirely imaginary situation.

I'd used my imagination and it startled me. That's a pretty bad sign for creativity.

I spend a lot of time emailing, talking, problem solving, and organizing. I spend time cooking, driving, cleaning, and reading the news. I spend time shopping, drinking, and shooting the shit with friends. But I spend no time allowing my imagination free rein. I don't even remember the last time I picked up a charcoal stick or paintbrush or my mandolin. I might have written a poem in the last 5 years, but I don't know.

This is a problem, and it may have a lot to do with why I'm not really all that happy lately: I never let my mind out to play.

Hell, my body either. We met up with some Dartmouth people in Portland on Sunday and played round after round of screaming toes all over town. Just for kicks. And it was awesome.

I gotta get my imagination and my creativity back on track. End of story.

Posted by Sarah at 11:53 PM | Permalink

I am astoundingly proud and happy for my country right now, have been all week. Never in my life had I cried tears of joy over any political event.

Just think of what it means to have a president who says: "I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too."

And who invokes Lincoln:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

I hope that we can work together and keep our eyes on the greater good.

It means so much to realize that the work I do every day may soon be with the current, with the wind at my back, instead of against it. I barely know how to imagine a government that will take seriously its responsibility to the people to help make our home a more perfect Union - that will fund and support everything from universal healthcare to civil liberties to my humble piece: sustainable, human, locally-focused food systems. So much of the work that must be done will take place on a local level, and will demand commitment and effort from all of us for the changes to happen.

I hope that we can keep these promises.

The dark spot on all of this was Prop 8's passing in California. To discriminate against someone because you don't like how they live their lives flies in the face of American ideals. Whatever happened to liberty and equality? But I trust that tolerance and equality are on the winning side of history. And Obama may not be the gay rights champion we'd like, but I know he'll carry the ball a little further down the field.

I hope that we can carry this momentum forward.

Posted by Sarah at 9:51 PM | Permalink