Journal & Musing

  • Sleepless nights

    Why is it that I can’t sleep when school starts back up? Anxiety, maybe. Constantly thinking about what I can do better this time around and all the things I need to do immediately to avoid getting behind, maybe. Yes, and yes, and yes. My mind spirals down a rabbit hole of past failures as I tire of these contemplations.

    Knowing my alarm goes off in two hours and that lack of sleep makes my brain less usable isn’t helpful..

    Neither is this lit screen I’m looking at as I type and erase and retype with clumsy thumbs.

    …

    The book I recently finished left me unnerved. I started the book over a year ago. No, two years ago. I put it down for a year after reading halfway through because as the story progressed I became less interested. But not finishing ate at me over time. I read another quarter of the book last year and then put it down again. I recently picked it up again because I got bored with Game of Thrones (how?), and as I approached the end of the book, I became more determined to finish. I couldn’t give up so close to the end. The snowball gained speed as the end drew near, and faster and faster I became more engrossed in how this perpetual, agonizingly plot might redeem itself and whether anything good would come of the protagonist’s suffering. The book ended with the same uncertainty it maintained from the start. Did he trap her into a bondage that would play out the rest of her days out of spite? Did she welcome her destiny?

    The captain looked at Férmina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost.

    Was it that her grey eyelashes showed the sign of her last days? Was winter coming? Not likely in the Caribbean. Was the shudder she gave when she heard the familiar, desperate love in Florentinoo Ariza’s voice an indication that her heart had suddenly become cold? Was she happy to finally live the life she rejected 54 years ago? Was Florentino’s decision to live the remainder of their days together revenge for her denying him a lifetime of love?

    …

    One hour and ten minutes is what I have left for sleep. I will try again to close my eyes, but now I have that confounded book in my head.

  • Atypical Saturday

    A desperate and inescapable loneliness has overcome me this morning. Last night I woke up so many times that it’s though I haven’t slept. With everyone gone for fishing tournaments or three-day drunken frolics on the seashore or living new lives with new babies, here I am at home listening to a dishwasher that a young person with the energy of five loaded at 8 AM before getting in a car with her dog to head to Galveston with a whoosh of a goodbye. For once, reading seems like a thief, as I immerse myself in fiction while the real world lives and breathes around me, without me, and now I without it save two cats, the sound of a dripping faucet, and the life of a dishwasher that is remnant of the actions of a person I wish was still here. Not even the veil of sleep can relieve my ache, even if I could bring my mind to give in to it.

  • Today’s profound insight

    One often meets his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it.

    Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda

  • Today and lots of Saturdays

    When are you most happy?

    I woke up this morning with a familiar feeling of contentment. When I was a teenager, aside from the typical tug of war with my parents over my growing need for freedom, I was happy. Waking up on a Saturday morning was invigorating. The day brimmed with potential. On crisp winter mornings I would don my Guess jeans, leather boots, and cute sweater and head to the shops to buy more fashion accessories. The first drag off my cigarette as I took off down the road was my first step toward the freedom I craved, and the nicotine hit differently in that moment than it did all the next first drags throughout the day. I don’t smoke anymore, and Giorgio perfume is only a conduit to my memories rather than a part of my current beauty routine, which is limited to washing my face, brushing my teeth, and putting a comb through my hair. The need for freedom no longer exists because as an adult, I have it. The money not so much. But the potential for a great day met me this morning like it did all those Saturdays long ago. The feeling of having no responsibilities with a blank slate ahead of me brought on the nostalgia and made way for the Christmas spirit to finally hit. I’m going to make some cider, decorate my tree, and wrap presents for my grandson. I think I’ll put a few tunes on the record player and make new happy memories to wake up to.

  • The irony…

    Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.

    My life experiences have lead to the moment soon approaching when I will have to demonstrate great resolve without emotions clouding my view and polluting my words. I have endured by the grace of God. But now, having been given a precious jewel, I have let my guard down. I find myself standing in a doorway to a room I’ve been in before. It’s a room of fear and misunderstanding. A room of desperation and attack. But I don’t have to step inside. I can shut the door. What good are my past experiences if I let myself relive them? The art of learning defines my life. I owe it to myself to reframe the picture I see before me because I have earned the stripes.

    I will not step through that door again. I will be resolute. And regardless of the outcome, the words that will have mattered are the ones I will have told myself.

  • Note to self

    Let’s leave the rants in the drafts pile.

  • Ha

    If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

    In fact, I didn’t sleep. I’ve been awake since 3 am, and now I have to go to work. Boy, this is an easy one. I’d totally go back to bed.

  • I’m peeved

    Name your top three pet peeves.

    1) when people misuse reflexive pronouns

    2) when people mispronounce realtor

    3) that I’m okay with the evolution of language as long as reflexive pronouns aren’t tampered with and extra vowels aren’t shoved into places they don’t belong

    Bonus) that bad grammar irks me when I’m not qualified to judge

    But, honestly, why bother sounding educated if ignorance squeezes itself into dictionaries? Maybe that’s my greatest pet peeve. This willy nilly misuse of words cheapens the genius rebellion of great wordsmiths.

    So annoying.

  • July

    What’s your favorite month of the year? Why?

    I like the middles of things. Middle of the cake, middle of the day, middle of the night when time disappears halfway between sundown Saturday and sunup Sunday—the black hole between last week and next when the world sleeps. It’s the things between the things I like best because those are the things that are least noticed. One of the perks of being a middle child, if you like that sort of thing. Of all the middles of things, I like summertime most of all, because the sun gobbles you up and hides you from the world for a little while. July is smack in the middle of Hidden and is where all the least noticed things live. July is boss.

  • So I’ve been thinking

    What if I just wrote a cheap novel, something simple and catchy like an 80s pop song, the kind no one wants to admit enjoying. I have to stop being such a book snob. I will never be a Fitzgerald or a Salinger.

    I could use a fun pen name—maybe the one I give at the fast food window or at Starbucks. Maybe I should use something more 1940s like Eleanor—the lonely spinster who hides behind a typewriter and emerges now and then wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door. The sloven, grey malkin with a steamy secret she has tucked away in the attic waiting to be discovered in a dusty box after she dies. Eleanor isn’t like that at all, actually. I just like the way the words write. See there? She lives now. I wonder what is on the page that is snapped into her typewriter.