monday again. time slips away from me faster than i'm quite comfortable contemplating. it is almost april already, which makes it almost may. then june comes swinging up from behind, and i realize that a very few months stand between me and my summer internship, provided that all works itself out and i am actually able to go. new student orientation at ww is in the middle of august; classes start that final week. then i am a student again, a year passed and was it worth it? i think so. i've felt myself changing each step of the way, felt parts of me that had been hidden demand their light and time. i am not quite who i was before, or perhaps i am moreso. i've done and become things that i wouldn't have expected, sitting in that too-loud philadelphia room ten months ago. i've found things for which i didn't know i had been searching, and lost things i never quite knew i had. isn't that what growing up is all about?

i just got a big, fat envelope with "congratulations!" stamped on the front from what is, i think, my first choice college.


my mood is substantially improved.

there's been a lot of poetry lately, which seems to appropriate all my headspace so that i can't quite write anything else. there's been a lot of dancing and very little sleep in my recent past, which only serves to exacerbate the problem. i'm halfway through reading frankenstein, and i can't quite convince myself to finish it. all in all, i'm feeling pretty dry. but here goes:


the fog is home, and i find it is a balm. the toomuch sun was making me nervous, itchy, waiting for a tidal wave or an earthquake to explain or make up for it. i'm purely soothed by the flat grey sky, made calm by its familiarity. it is march and the flowers making their shy appearances, the equinox two days ago and summer coming fast. a tree along el estero has fiercely and flamboyantly bedecked itself in white explosions; the iceplant along the beach is beginning to pink. last weekend, my brother decided to stalk our cat along the neighbor's roof. she jumped from the roof to a bin that usually holds firewood but happened to be empty; he followed but did not land so lightly. my best friend was here to visit for her birthday and i'd forgotten two things: how well she knows me, and how annoying that can be. there's no pretence and no chance to evade, we know all each other's buttons and exactly how to push them best. she went kickboxing with us. it was good.

so what do you think, is garamond a good choice?

trying to delete some old mail, i find all the correspondence that led up to my trip to costa rica, and i find myself suddenly feeling almost homesick. i miss the feeling of pure opportunity that i was so full of then; right now i'm happy but worried about applications, frustrated at work, feeling sometimes like i started a big rock rolling down a big hill and now i have to keep running fast enough to keep up. i feel a thousand miles and a hundred years away from who i was at christmas, much less when i was in costa rica, and much, much less who i was in philadelphia. certainly it always creeps me out to read old journals - the intensity of emotions that now seem so benign or cryptic references to incidents i no longer remember - but the darkness of that last winter, the desperation of that last summer... it's hard to align those memories with how i feel today, to realize that i lived through all that and am still that girl. costa rica feels immesureably far away, like a moment outside of time. which was, i suppose, what i wanted it to be. all i have to remind me is my steadily-worsening spanish and the fact that i still can't eat a snicker's bar without feeling sick. the jungle keeps shoving itself into my poetry, but the experience itself feels very distant, almost impersonal.


i find that i am very much an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person. it requires a pretty conscious and continuous effort for me to maintain relationships with people whom i don't see very often. the old, old friends are pretty easy because they know me, and because they fill such important roles in my life. there are some things about which i must and can only talk to silke about, some things that will always and forever make me think of nika. but i'm bad at correspondence, and bad at lingering. i just never realized that it applied to whole life experiences as well as people.

note to self: when you are playing responsible adult and watching the house while your parents are out of town, please remember to get up and let the dogs out in the morning so that the first thing you encounter upon getting out of bed isn't a big pile of extremely fragrant dogshit. also, don't forget to eat before kickboxing so that you can go the whole class and not have to stop and avoid passing out. and while we're at it, remember to call jason sometimes, because it's nice to talk to him.

i love how my shoulders look when i throw a hook. this was probably one of my best classes ever today. i had so much negative energy all built up in me yesterday, and while i was able to let go of most of it last night, i'd been jonesing for a good boxing session all day today. we only had about twenty minutes on the bags, but my new gloves are perfect and my arms felt really strong. my knee is still giving me trouble if i don't plant my foot right when i kick, but if i remember to turn my hips out it doesn't tweak. i'm better about not hyperextending either my knees or my elbows, and my calves are finally up to an hour straight of bouncing as we jab.


our rockstacking session was fantastic, too. we clambered down over a wall to a beach on the other side of lover's point, where there wasn't any wind, and set to work. between the three of us we made probably a dozen and a half stacks, including two ten-stacks and a precarious-looking nine that was still there the next morning when i went back to check. around two in the morning it became time to go home, but first we stepped back and looked at our stacks in the moonlight. perfect. i took some pictures the next day, and once i find somebody to develop black and white film i'll put them up here.


and to pretty much cover the only other thing that takes up my spare time anymore, i'm gonna be performing at the slam tomorrow night. i've been writing more poetry than i quite know what to do with lately - much of it not very good - but i've got three pieces that i'm pretty happy with, and at least one of them will go up tomorrow. i'm not putting any here because slam poetry (or mine, at least) has to be out loud or it doesn't quite work. it seems that i've got a dichotomy in my poetry now: there are quiet poems and there are slam poems. the quiet poems are the ones i've always written, and they are written, whereas the slam poems are composed. slam poems i begin out loud and say out loud over and over until they're done. then i write them down. they look silly on paper because they need force and voice and movement. they're performance pieces, essentially, and they almost always rhyme. if i'm reading a poem in my head, i hate when it rhymes. so if you want to hear the new stuff, come by tomorrrow night.


ps: silke, don't forget to bring your boots with you when you come. i'm gonna remind you until you slap me.

it changes like this: i begin to think of my body not as an object to be admired or disdained, but as an active and valuable tool to be used and cared for. without quite realizing it, i begin to worry less about whether my thighs jiggle when i walk and more about whether they can deliver a good roundhouse. i want strong abs because they will support a strong left hook. i want my calves to be flexible enough to let me touch my heels to the floor during downward dog. my form improves. my biceps ache. i notice my body more, not just when i'm confronted with a mirror. at work i move my weight forward and pull my shoulders back and i feel lighter. i notice my breathing. fat days nonwithstanding, my body is becoming a part of me, again.


we're going rockstacking now, twelve-thirty at night, just-past-full moon. i am learning a lot about balance these days. i'm learning a lot.

i don't want to write today. today, i feel stymied and brittle and jealous and weak and mean. but a practice is a practice, right? today i felt like neruda's ode to laziness; i wouldn't get up off the ground. certainly, i went to work, was witty with customers and coworkers, but nothing. i don't want to write today, i hate it, the very words of it, i don't want to think about applications or plan an outing next month or do anything but lie in bed. i want a day off, and it's only monday.