Sorrow Is Surrender

where’s my party? (sorry to get political)

During my time attending school in Utah I repeatedly found myself irritated by people repeating the same republican beliefs as though they were irrefutably the correct way of thinking. I never thought that after hopping a few states i would be similarly annoyed with people’s devotion to democrats. Perhaps I am just drawn to playing the devil’s advocate, but mostly I think both parties are wrong. As a young person who thinks voting for “the lesser of two evils” just isn’t going to cut it anymore, I can’t help but believe that I have no party! I don’t want any of these people to represent me. The closer they adhere to a party the less I agree with them.

Where is my party??

I want very deeply for gay people to be able to get married. Not joined, married. Denying anyone anything I personally have the right to is wrong. There is no other word for it. So am I a democrat?

Furthermore, I believe that all woman deserve the right to decide they don’t want to bear children. Ideally, we would all practice safe sex, but safe sex fails. And if most of us have decided it’s morally okay to abort a child if you’ve been raped or you could die, I think then most of us are not calling it murder. So each person deserves to decide for themselves whether or not they want to bring a child into this world, even if an accident happens. I’m not saying whether one should or shouldn’t, I’m just saying I want each of us to have a choice should it come to that. Now this is considered a democratic belief, right? But doesn’t my wanting the goverment to be unable to deny me the right to do something make it republican? I’m confused.

Furthermore, I would like the goverment to work on spending less money, not more. (Republican?) I would like us not to go to war with foreign countries unless we are united with other countries to do so because it is irrefutably right. I was under impression that was why we were a part of a united nations. (democratic?)

Primarily, I want the goverment to disengage. Maybe I’m stupid, but I thought that the basics of economics were that economies do best, that the best product florishes, that the greatest production is allowed, that the best food is produced when the government does the bare minimum, like avoiding monopolies. Period. i don’t want subsidies, I don’t even want regulations on poultry conditions, though I am passionate about it. All this is up to us. If we don’t want a product, then don’t buy it! If you don’t want cage free chicken, don’t buy it! and if you do then let your dollar say so! If we put thought into our purchases we have a say and  if we expect our government to step in and decide for us then we give up that say. Isn’t this thinking in essence republican?? I don’t know anymore.

All these crutches, so many, i want to protect our poor but to what extent? How much of our programs are abused? I can count twenty people I know personally who have worked at least one of these systems. Small businesses, my Mom’s local bank going to down due to increased government regulation. Regulations that simply cannot be met by small businesses or at such a struggle that it decreases profit. This is the very legislation that was made to help those out of debt, but really encourages irresponsibility and hinders small business. Does this sound republican? Didn’t the republicans help pass this?

I don’t want anyone to vote based on religion or what one’s religion suggests. I dont want it to matter if our president is Muslim. I thought that was a ridiculous news story until I realized how many people cared and then I was just sad. I almost don’t want anyone to vote for any of these parties. What can I do to throw out this system??? What can I do? I don’t have a party? I feel caught up in a hurricane that I worry will eventually crash into us and I feel completely helpless. I don’t like it. What can I do? Is there anyone who thinks like me? I recently feel as though I’m the only one that affiliates with none. The only one who isn’t religiously following one side or worshiping colbert or jon stewart on the other. So please can someone tell me, what does one do? Besides move, because I’ve thought of that.

road trip chronicles continued

 The last five days have been spent hiking and exploring in Arches, Bryce, and Zion’s national parks. I’m ashamed to have lived in Utah as long as I have and to have barely grazed the surface of the beauty and warmth it has to offer. At last however I have truly tapped into the beauty that now seems almost overwhelming.

Today and I climbed up a trail that led to a viewing point that leaves you surrounded by jutting red rocks in what seems like impossible formations and colors. I felt filled with reverence, and then kept thinking about how such beautiful locations are nature’s temples. I use the term temple because growing up I was taught a temple was a place so beautiful and sacred God would dwell in it. I have a hard time believing in a such a concrete version of God but I also have a very hard time thinking that anyone, divine or not would rather be inside, or that doing so could make them better sense divinity.

I think that the places I have been over the past few days are a few among many of the beautiful outdoor locations that are holy places, whatever you worship. For me it was a place to go and breath and for a few seconds for once embrace the moment I’m in, for others visual stimulation or physical exertion might be your way to simply revel in being alive, for others I’m sure they believe are enjoying God’s creations and for some others they may worship the very earth they stand on. Either way, we worship. Some nature, some God, some beauty, some ourselves. Thus for each of us(or maybe just most)  it is holy, and we are united.

But then, it was just a thought.

It’s been a while. Here goes nothing.

It’s been a road trip that is constantly switching between stimulation and self discovery. I have made the choice to travel with two companions that have the ability to both suck me into their humorous childlike worlds and at other times to leave me alone in my own world, content to sit beside me as our thoughts flow between the trees and mountains, inside ourselves and out into the world.

 Montana was a brief dive into serenity. A quick return to the place where my mom does my laundry and dinner is at six. Waking up my first morning in Utah we had eight people crammed into a one bedroom, all of us in tents but the tenants. Thank God for Felice who is thrilled to let us invade her house. Haley and Adam had used to kitchen to make a huge communal breakfast.  I really feel like my home is where these people are. I’m homeless, unemployed, and so so happy. Brooke’s singing with the guitar. Gotta go.

midnight

dusk is lingering over downtown and I can see it from my apartment…. I can also see the ocean. I am in a room alone for my first time in days and I just set the record for the most hugs I have ever received in one day. What is it about hugs that feels so fantastic? Why when you have an admiration for someone does the act of  clinging to them and snuggling into their chest feel like a glimpse of  heaven (if there is one) When I left Utah hugging my fellow  co-workers felt uncomfortable. There were a few  that I hugged because they initiated and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would last and when it was socially acceptable to pull away, while today I just nuzzled in and hoped that by gripping them I could somehow absorb a bit of their fantastic-ness through osmosis. If I hold them tight enough maybe a bit of them will seep into me. I know this is terribly silly but I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the fact that the act of hugging has morphed over the course of a week and a half from an awkward obligation into how souls touch base…. my mind wants to catch up and ask about adventures but my body and my heart is content with an embrace and honestly more satisfied. Eckhart Tolle is messing with my head. Suddenly the magic of a physical manifestation is more meaningful than a long conversation….. the moral of this story is…. don’t tumble drunk???

Or perhaps the reason I began writing this out is because i am very grateful for the outpour of love that has suddenly come my way. Old friends. new friends.  I can’t recall a time when I felt the equivalent. A part of me believes that by acknowledging this and being grateful for it I can thus be worthy of it, but I doubt that’s how it works. Instead i think i am just incredibly lucky

I came home to my old house, but the walls were different colors, the furniture had been moved, and my bed was missing.

For the last two years, I have been under the impression that a certain person was in love with me. It’s funny to me how much of an affect that has had on my actions, whether I recipricated…. well I never reciprocated it, but whether i enjoyed the fact or not. There was guilt in my imagined transgressions against that loyalty. I guarded against growing affection for others, took confidence from the knowledge of an unseen but unconditional companion, and was comforted by constant support and pacts given via my email address, or the occasional cross-continental phone call.

 In person, this affection was always less of a comfort and more of a dilemma, but it feels so good to feel adored that I became very good at forgetting that fact. Having little experience with romance, I’d convinced myself that a relationship is hard work, that there are things about people that bug you and they always will, that I am person who needs space and time for myself no matter what my feelings toward the individual infringing on that space, that this all encompassing overpowering love is a lie, an illusion, a fairy tale made up to intensify stories, that it’s a trick and a wise person knows that such love is not the way life works and pursues relationships with people they admire and chooses them dispite the lack of constant zsa zsa zu.

 I was ready to tell the person who told me they’d be waiting for me when i was ready, that I was ready to try, like a big girl, to make a relationship work out of sheer will. So you can imagine my surprise when instead this person puts down his cup of coffee and tells me that I’d been the woman in his life…. until three weeks ago, at which point he had found the one. He had found the woman his inner child cries out for, the woman he plans to move to be with, stop leaving the country to stay with and plans to build a life with, specifically in the very town that two of my best friends in the world are currently starting to build a life as well. Part of me wanted to roll my eyes at said declaration, part of me was relieved to have escaped the whirlwind of pain and uncertainty that would have obviously ensued had i tried to force this relationship to work, part of me wanted to cry from rejection, and part of me was flabberghasted that someone who I admire so much was declaring that this, in my mind fictional love, existed outside of the religiously forced realm.

The warm blanket of expectation has been abruptly pulled off me and I find a draft blowing through the window. I had been so proud to have come to a conclusion about what I was willing to try for, only to find that conclusion to be a poor one. I suddenly felt the youth of my age and the immaturity of being so tight with my own love, slow to give it and reluctantly done so. I felt the immaturity of my cynicism, for wisdom in my mind teaches us to embrace every opportunity.

I am quite sure that everything will be okay, that endings such as these often lead us to better things. I have confidence that said person can stay in my life in a different capacity and remain a devoted and much valued friend. My intuition tells me that this swift change in the winds will blow me to a place where I can thrive. But in the meantime, in this second, I am experiencing the karmic punishment for the times I have wronged him. For now, it’s still a bit hard to look at him, despite knowing I would have never wanted him once we were in the thick of it. I wish I could fast forward into a routine where things get easier and new friends blossom. I wish Alex were here, because I know he’d understand and know before I did what i need, whether it would be a day out in nature or a night of drinking somewhere we wouldn’t run into anyone I could embarrass myself around, but unfortunately he’s not here. My biggest safety nets have been removed and now that I’ve fallen, I will have to sit in the dirt for a while and until I can recover my pride and gather my strength and start over. Start over with a new place to find comfort. Start over without any prediction or comprehension of what the future may hold. Start over because I must. Start over because I’m sure I’ll find in the next months or perhaps even years that this was the best thing that could have happened. But for now, for today I think I’ll sit here and draw pictures in the dirt.

Eckhart Tolle

“If you do not like your situation either accept it or change it. All else is madness.”

-The Power of Now

When I’m an old woman I shall wear purple

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

she walks in beauty

One day when I was fifteen waiting outside the gym for the bell to ring, a few friends and I were laughing that our mutual friend had asked out his girlfriend by passing her a note during English. Later that day, Taylor and Jesse, the friends I was laughing with handed me a photo copy of Jesse’s hand and pasted inside was the following:

She Walks in Beauty

by Lord Byron

She walks in beauty like the night

of cloudless climes and starry skies

and all that’s best of dark and bright

meets in her aspect and her eyes

thus mellow’d to that tender light

which heaven to godly day denies

one shade the more, one ray the less

had half impaired the nameless grace

which waves in every raven tress

or softly lightens o’er her face

where thoughts serenely sweet express

how pure, how dear their dwelling place

and on that cheek and o’er that brow

so soft, so calm, so eloquent

the smiles that win, the tints that glow

but tell of days of goodness spent—

a mind at peace with all below

a heart that’s love is innocent

will you go out with me?

I still have that piece of paper and still have half the poem memorized. It’s odd to me that such a silly and somewhat meaningless event has become such a vivid memory.