Love Thursday
Love Thursday kind of reminds me of an old tradition between a group of friends that hung out at the all-night coffee joint in Loveland, CO. After getting tired of drinking coffee, it became "Drinking fill-in-day-of-week-here" e.g. Drinking Monday Love Thursday feels kind of like that, the day love was declared happened to be a Thursday, but I hope it doesn't feel tied to Thursdays. I hope it comes on Wednesdays, too. Wednesdays are really my favorite days for many things: tyrannies of boredom, divine inspiration, Taco Bell just before midnight and late night Bebop sessions with the one I love..
I couldn't decide which picture to put up, so I put them both: one is of my love--looking at me with come hither eyes which to me equals love in a deep way..And the other..Is of my love and I, he was leaving the next morning and this was right after we met..I was trying not to cry. That's love, too.
Anais on the brain
"We have a right to select our vision of the world. In my life this choice has been deliberately present. This is the choice of the lover determined to love. If you are determined to hate, then you select obsessionally what is hateful around you, in people, in yourself."--Anais Nin
I know what you're thinking, but this is not a quote from the inspirations that wait dutifully in my inbox every morning. I have a sick love for Anais Nin, especially her journals. I feel related to her, connected to her. Like she's ripping thoughts out of my brain so they appear before me on the pages.
Right now, four of her books have taken up temporary residence on my boyfriend's computer desk. Cities of the Interior, Collages, The Diary of Anais Nin Volume One 1931-1934, and The Journals of Anais Nin Volume Six 1955-1966. Little Birds lives in my armoire.
Today I was reading Volume Six and I realized that although it's taken me a few short years to read through these volumes, she wrote them over a thirty-some-odd year period. Volume Six chronicles her making intense progress in "analysis" and finally letting go of her neurosis. She was 52 at the beginning of Vol. 6. No offense meant to the lovely Anais Nin, but I hope I start to let go of my neurosis before then. I am 23 and have been worried for quite some time. About everything in general. The world at large. Whether my boyfriend thinks I'm pretty still. What I look like to everyone around me. And my biggest struggle of late has been to learn to let things go and just exist. So as I read the words, "To sum up an extraordinary change caused by analysis. A month without depressions, anxieties or nervousness. I feel installed in the present. I give myself to it. I no longer feel angers, walls, hostilities in relation to the world. My criticalness has lessened. I enjoy what comes. I am not nervous beforehand. I am gay and free. The fears have decreased, the fears of being unable to earn a living, the fears of losing love. There is less rebellion, more smoothness and lightness in living. There is an ability to throw off anxiety. There is no bitterness, no friction...Having fewer conflicts I get less tired and accomplish more. I can do housework half a day, write half a day and still go out at night. Lightness and a feeling of strength. It all consolidated this month. It is true I may die without seeing Bali but then I have other things to make up for that. I can make one human being happy. I am close to one human being and closer than before to others. My genuine gentleness is coming back...It took me a lifetime to learn that happiness is in quiet things, not the peaks of ecstasy. I am grateful for what I have. I feel reintegrated into the human family...I have overcome the neurosis at last."(pg 8, The Journals of Anais Nin Volume 6 1955-1966) I felt as is I might really have a shot at life. I just quit my job and decided to go back to school and become a barista at a coffee shop around the corner. I think I'm crazy. But, I also think I will be happier moving in the direction of higher education even if it means more menial work for a few years. I am often so worried and anxious that I forget to enjoy the moment in which I am living. But not anymore. "Tsk. tsk." Anais seems to say. My literary hero showed me today that if you can do it at 52 ..you can do it at 23.
overwhelmed and with warm, gooey insides
I just want to say "Wow." After all the comments on my last post I feel like I have so many friends. I never realized (and am in all reality still just beginning to grasp) how wide this community is. And how warm and accepting. It's like my own personal version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan. A life inside of a life, where I have just pulled the string and it is beginning to unravel in wonderful and alarming ways.
I want to thank everyone for coming by and reading what I have to say--and giving such wonderful and encouraging feedback. Truly and sincerely, Thank You.
To the person who requested the site name where I get my inspirational quotes just google "Kate Nowak" and you will probably nearly instantly find her 'blessings' website and it is there that you can sign up to receive inspiration in 30 second snipets. They go well with coffee in the morning, I assure you.
I am still a little bit retarded when it comes to making links on this blog. I am green in the ways of HTML. Forgive me. I will definitely read up on the "help" section of Blogger, when I am not using a hotel computer. Tonight's exotic destination? Redmond, OR--the Rama Inn. Even though it's a Best Western there is a bronze sculpture of Ganesh in the lobby and I found it fitting as he is the Hindi equivalent of a patron saint of travel.
Also..thanks to Meg and Karen for their initial nudge into blogging and continued support. You ladies rock the casbah. hard.
I will now leave you with today's inbox inspiration, "I am somebody. I am me. I like being me. And I need nobody to make me somebody." --Louis L'Amour
Maybe that's why my Grandpa always read so many Westerns.
raison d' etre at 10:51 a.m. PST
Every morning in my inbox, I receive an uplifting quote from Kate Nowak as part of her "Count Your Blessings" program. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're cheesy. Sometimes they just plain make me laugh. To whatever end, they serve their purpose in my daily life--just a quick "Blech!" from someone else's brain, ya know?
Today's quote however, did more than act as a 30 second, pseudo-spiritual distraction; it resonated with something inside of my underdeveloped little brain. A hopeful gasp escaped my lips as I read: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Do you know who said that? Steve Jobs--the CEO of Apple Computers. I just kept thinking, "How does a guy who is head of one of the biggest computer companies in the world, who probably has money trickling down his nose hairs, say something so pure and human?"
I'm still not quite sure, but maybe his heart led him to success and so he can say that without being a total fraud. I am a flight attendant, I'm pretty sure my heart and intuition did not lead me to this. I think it was more my lust for travel.
I should have been smarter, though when I made my choice of employer--you can't really go very far when you're working for a regional airline, and suddenly places like Pasco, WA aren't all they were originally cracked up to be.
It's Tuesday morning. The time is now 11:03 a.m. PST. There is an unopened copy of the Sunday New York Times sitting on the couch. The date on it reads: July 23, 2006. Even old news serves it's purpose, I guess, with things as they are in the world today. It's nice to know we haven't blown each other all to bits, yet. I can read last week's newspaper with a sigh of relief, because I already know what happened so far.
After everything I just said, my raison d' etre at what is now 11:08 a.m. is the fact that I am wearing thigh-high baby blue tube socks and the sun is out in Portland, Oregon. It's shaping up to be a pretty good day.
