The last week had been incredibly difficult, but I feel like a new September sky just after a big monsoon has lifted.
I feel soaked to the bone in life and everything it presses on the human soul but at the same time, I know that rain will start to grow new life and from that life will sprout the blossom of beautiful things. I haven't felt this alive in years and I think for the first time in a long while, God is smiling down on me. Not that he was frowning at me before, but I have to believe His heart aches with mine or else He would be a pretty uncaring father.
BUT!! Sunshine and happiness of less than mediocre importance!! (since this is my blog for all matters of the heart)
1. I went to the mall today. I don't really like the mall and I even less like shopping for clothes when I have to but with all that's happened lately, in letting go of a dark past it seems to have taken a few dress sizes with it and I need smaller cuter jeans that don't fall off...
Shopping for anything out of necessity is always slightly self-abusive because in my experience, one woman's "cute" is another woman's "Good LORD get yourself away from that Bedazzler!!" and apparently the new fashion trend is to rip up a perfectly good pair of jeans, bleach the front and back thigh areas and COVER the back pockets with plastic sparkly buttons, beads, threads and other junk most likely created in a sweatshop in China.
Needless to say, Allie did not walk away with new jeans. BUT! I got a new shirt. It fits everywhere perfectly except for the shoulders and completely fall off in an awesomely 80s style. I'm more than certain that wasn't the designer's intention but when I tried the next size smaller I looked like a ridiculously chubby bumble bee... with great shoulders... ha!
2. I'm cool. :)
I know this is an entirely arbitrary statement but as of late, people seem to feel compelled to tell me of their perceived notions of my coolness. This seems to be emphasized during trips to the mall. I wandered through Hot Topic looking for new 2g earrings and had my hair pulled back in these funky half-pigtails with streaks of blue and purple hanging down in the front. Some poor store clerk who couldn't have been more than maybe 22 years old followed me around trying to impress me with his wit and complimented on the awesomeness of my sapphire-streaked locks.
Now, at a place like Hot Topic, I would expect nothing less. But last week I ran into the vice president of the pretty conservative company I work for and when he saw me with green bangs and blue and purple hair, I fully expected him to tell me to tone it down (which would have been fine, given my job) but he said he LIKED it and that I looked "tropical" which made me bust up laughing. I think I might start a new religion. We'll call ourselves the "Tropical Christians" and everyone will have rainbow hair and tattoos and lots of piercings and our denominational flag will be tie-dyed. :) I could so make a fortune... :)
3. The sky was blue today! Not for very long, but I think about 15 minutes of the day didn't have rain and I actually saw the SUN shining down. It was like Easter. :D
4. The Bukkit List is shrinking! I created a list about a decade ago of people to track down in my life before I die. Yesterday I found one of my favorite high school teachers and wrote him a message about what I learned from him about believing in myself and being 100% of myself in a world that likes to intimidate you into being in the lower 40th percentile. And today he wrote back.
I was inspired to once again continue the search for my all-time absolute most favorite English teacher and I think I might have FINALLY found him. I have a freakishly detailed memory and I ended up doing a search based on information he once told our class (more than ten years ago) about where he went to college. I mean, who remembers that stuff? I ran into another old teacher of mine a couple years after high school and when I told her I was trying to track that certain teacher down, she said he'd moved to another country somewhere in Asia. Search for a white guy with an apparently very common name, who lives in nonspecific Asian country who went to a corn-fed college and has little to no paper trail on the internet, despite my very best geekgirl hacker skills.
Dear life, thanks for making things EASY for me...
There are some people though, who just radically alter your life. Not a day goes by that he isn't still some part of influence. Every time I listen to Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" I remember how he gave that song to us as an assignment for poetry interpretation and he completely stole my dirty hippie 17-year-old heart.
When I worked in tech support and found myself telling a customer "Your computer isn't broken and your software doesn't need to be reinstalled. It's like a car. You think you have a cracked engine block and need to replace your whole car but in reality, it's just a flat tire and a bent axle. We can fix it" and the customer asked if I was a mechanic in a previous life because I was able to so clearly make him understand exactly what was going on. I told him I was blessed with a really cool teacher my senior year who recognized my love of poetry and asked me to help out some struggling hispanic "gansta" boys in class who couldn't understand the meaning of John Donne's poetry and I somehow helped them pass by relating the structure to rebuilding an intake manifold or something.
In the summer of 2005 I FINALLY made it to my personal Mecca at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Fransisco and felt myself face to face with a mega Gap store and wondering when peace, love, and happiness were replaced by skinny jeans and polar fleece. But he was there. Because in my yearbook he PROMISED he'd come find me someday playing my guitar on that specific street corner and he said I could go find him raising ocelots in Australia.
I don't know why I remember these things or why I've held them so dear to my heart all these years but I know the first time I stood in the front row and watched Dylan sing I thought "this moment will change my life forever" and it did.
The day I finished the first draft of my first book I thought "this moment is something I'll never forget" and when legendary slam poet Jack McCarthy introduced me for my first paid gig at an out of town poetry venue there were only four people who I thought "I REALLY wish they could see me now" and they were all former teachers and they all taught English. One of them is dead, one of them never responded to the message I sent to (who I thought was)them, one is still MIA somewhere in southern California (based on the last tips I got) and the final one is Justin, the ocelot lover.
For as excited as I am, part of me is also afraid he won't remember me and I'm pretty sure "You're one of the biggest and best influences of my LIFE!" followed by "I'm sorry... who are you?" would be a pretty awkward conversation. I definitely should have had "tropical" hair at a younger age. People never forget me now! :)
I think that's why my list so so important though. For as much as I'm afraid of someone not remembering me, I'm even more afraid of someone living their whole life and never knowing the fullness of the positive impact they make in this world. Plus, how COOL would it be to know that ONE act you did more than a decade ago for some nerdy bookworm high school girl ended up helping THOUSANDS of people all over the world. Seriously. That's pretty rad. I don't do tech support anymore but I was LONG known for being "The Car Lady" and other coworkers even asked me several times to teach them how to "talk about car stuff" but supposedly no one could ever really nail it the way I did. And that makes me proud. Not because I'm awesome of my own accord but because my awesomeness grows from the root of someone else's influence.
When we die, we take nothing to heaven but our souls. What we leave behind could save or destroy the next generation. I feel like I've got a lot to offer the world because a lot was left in my hands. And that's super rad too. :)
"When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks."
-Bob Dylan
Tomorrow, I'm gonna wake up and be the coolest tropical 80s bumblebee this world have ever seen.
And it's going to be beautiful.
:)
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