in progress

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i spent the majority of the day at home in bed with a cup of coffee and my crochet hook.  i listened to french phonetics and repeated the words as i stitched away and wondered about myself and the life i've been creating vs. the life i want to create...

the way you (i) need to be loved...


i rounded the corner in to my 33rd year on september 3rd and seemed to instantly smack right into a new realm of self-knowledge like a fucking brick wall.  i spent the day after my birthday mildly hungover, a bit forlorn, more than a bit worse for wear, and wearing the same dress i had worn the day before to one of my french classes.  i fared well, all things considered, and had a great time in class (maybe being a bit brain dead even helped me absorb all the new information and sounds contained in this new language) but felt the closing of an era shake within me...  or at least the need to bring an era to an end.

when i first became single a year and a half ago, i needed to live brashly.  i needed to embrace my new freedom in a fiery, even outlandish, way.  it was healing to do so and provided me with so many opportunities to see the world (and myself) in a new way, in a truer light, and without the bad habit of judgement and fear that so easily pollutes us all.  it helped me shake off the expectations and hurt left over from a long-term relationship.  that strange residue of pain, of unfulfillment and goals left to die.  sometimes the death of a dream is more painful that the actual death of a loved one.  it is hard to watch a fairytale fall in to disrepair.  it is hard to watch a fairytale turn to total shit.  it's even harder to not let the experience embitter you.  i needed to be a bit wild for a time in order to heal from the effects of drudgery and heartbreak.  i needed to reclaim something about myself that i'd given up along the way.  but now, it's beginning to feel like the things that once provided me with a sense of healing are now becoming damaging.  excessive in a way that does not lead to a greater sense of freedom and independence, but to a flippant attitude...  a callous form of casualness that i absolutely do not want to adopt.  i do not want to be Charles Bukowski, waking up to 300 hangovers a year, and wading through an endless barrage of damaged human beings and semi-meaningless experiences in an effort to combat the loneliness inherent to human existence. it is true that maybe my sense of loneliness is bigger than others, but i must learn how to bare it in a new way.  i need to return to the work of devotion and exploration.  i need to attempt to learn the difference between Bravery and Excess.  both have their values and nuances but one should not be mistaken for the other.  i have clung to beliefs and images of the world and life that perhaps i've outgrown.  i crave a new sense of balance, a new expression of freedom, a new way to achieve comfort.  i return to my hooks and books and the love i feel for bigger, better things than what i've allowed myself. 

how do i need to be loved?


if i can manage to focus on that question, 33 will be a great year.

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work and repose

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nothing like a little semi-nude photography to get the evening started with a bang.  :)  

i had the day off and i spent it almost entirely in bed crocheting.  it's been wonderful.  no make-up, no schedule, no other agenda other than art-making.  days like this remind me of the goodness of my life and to be thankful for the wide-open freedom it contains.  this type of devotion - the slow progress of hand-made textiles - is a luxury.  it requires an expanse of time most people seem not to have or to not allow themselves even if they do.  there are lawns to be mowed and cars to be washed and another trip to the grocery store.  there is always something that must be tended to.  weekends lose their glamour easily.  and then there's that awful fatigue that finds us all from time to time...  that feeling that the effort simply isn't worth it, that what we have to say is stupid and that our loves (and lives) are somehow Lesser Than.  but not today.  today i was able to relish this moment of calm methodology.  i twisted the yarn around the hook and lost myself in the rhythm of the pattern.  i let my mind wander.  i let myself dream.  i let myself enjoy this quietude.  i've needed it.  there's so much to process.  especially since the trip.  

in less than 2 weeks i'll be 33.  my jesus birthday is here.  it's so strange to think of my age.  i feel like no age really fits.  what does it mean to feel a certain age?  no number seems to hold some sort of unnameable secret, nor does it belie any type of truth about an individual.  still, it does seem to ring true that the 30s are an era in which an individual truly does come in to their own.  at least it has been for me thus far.  the loop of time gets me thinking about my life and where i want to take this next year of my existence.  it's the ritual of growth, i suppose: another season opens, another season closes.  i re-read certain entries in the diary.  i leaf through the record of this wild, unimaginably good year and marvel at how different my life is; there is hardly any resemblance between my life now and what it was 2 years ago. for my birthday last year, i took myself to new york for the very first time.  that trip set in motion an entire wealth of changes, an entirely new outlook on life and a desire to live it as fully as possible, as true to myself as possible.  in the year that has elapsed since, i've been to new york four times and managed to take myself to europe.  it doesn't seem possible!  it seems like someone else's life i'm talking about here!  it amazes me that I got to do these things and pursue this path!  i'm still processing the effects and meaning of Travel.  i'm not even sure how to write about it yet...  it instantly changes a person.  i'm trying to settle back in to my life here in california but i don't want to somehow obscure the changes that have taken place within me.  rather, i'm trying to find a site of stillness, some sort of silence that will allow these changes to rise to the surface of my being and blossom. 

while i was gone, i thought of the next blanket i would make.  i'm glad to be working on it now.