Seasonal Plans

Perhaps I do most things with too much planning, but with that disclaimer, here are my goals for Fall/Winter :

1. Read. Read poetry and the New Yorker and children’s books and old classics and new ones, too. I miss reading. I used to read things besides the DSM IV; it is time to resurrect reading for the pleasures of language and story. I want rainy days and pages of good books, while I cuddle under my afghan and sip tea.

2. Dance. I want to buy one very good pair of dance shoes and make as many excuses as possible to dance as often as possible. I want to swing and salsa and maybe take a modern or hip-hop class.

3. Football. During my Sunday Sabbath, I will be religiously committing to blocking off three hours to watch the Seahawks, complete with unabashed cursing. I also hope to actually start winning in fantasy football, or at least achieve a respectable mediocrity. Finally, I hope to attend one high school football game with my friend Ben. We don’t care who we watch, we just want it to be cold and slightly miserable while we drink that syrupy hot chocolate and hang out on the outskirts of the student section.

4. Walks. I want to hear the little crunch of leaves underfoot and breathe in the crisp, Autumn air. I hope to visit the arboretum and other tree-worthy places to see the leaves in their fiery prime.

5. Scarves and boots and textured tights. I don’t think further comments are needed for this one.

6. Bubble baths on very cold days.

7. This one might be a titch early to speak, but I want to celebrate the holiday season with intention and preparation. This will include getting my first ever Christmas tree, decorating my own apartment, and baking Baklava, in honor of my grandmother.

Incompleted Thoughts

Why do I love and hate the desires of my own heart? Because they surge me towards what I want, at the cost of actually feeling that I am wanting. To live into my heart is to know the piercing of the unknown space between desire and the desired. It is to live into the unconsummated. It is to trust that my dreams will come true somewhere between now and never and maybe. Tonight, dreaming feels excruciating. I try to grip them tightly because I don’t want them to get away, but then I know they wilt for lack of freedom.

I want to embrace life’s unknowns but I have too much of a craving to control. I want results, satisfaction, arrival, or at least incremental steps that tell me I will arrive eventually. And yet, the journey is changing the point of arrival, so that I must surrender the destination even as I step towards it….

It is all rather risky business.

As Anne Shirley once said, and as a dear friend reminded me tonight, life has so much potential thudding, which makes soaring on the wings of anticipation rather hard, I’m afraid.

(Life context for this emotional purge: one teeny little morsel of an email from an editor, probably just a pseudo courtesy prelude email to the real official rejection slip that is coming…which somehow opened up the vast quantities of want I contain within me….)

Gratitude

Tonight, I am watching lightning over the city and raindrops making patterns on my window. It is lovely– very soothing for my night-before-the-first-day-of-school butterflies. I have had these since I was six and they just don’t go away.

Something about this weekend has felt so exquisite. Part of it was the 13-hour hang out spree with my old friend Andy, including chocolate and banana pancakes for Sunday brunch, writing time, laughing time, chatting time, and time to share our writing project together with a roomful of dear souls. We had a 4pm “happy hour” at my place and read the creative non-fiction narratives we have been working on that explore homosexuality and spirituality. It was just such a vulnerable and beautiful time for many of us– 2.5 hours of reading and amazing feedback and conversation. I was so honored to have a group of people so engaged with our writing, and so pleased to see it generated a shared space to wonder and explore together.

I think I am just feeling a little overwhelmed by the beautiful people in my life and the community I have as I start the school year. Tonight I was listening to Patty Griffin amidst new and old faces and just taking in the moment, which somehow felt very full of possibility and love. I am also a little overwhelmed that I get to live each day with so many things that give joy to me- teaching, writing, studying, commuting almost everywhere on foot, the daily, sweet moments of friendship, a family that is consistent and loving, new people who show up in the most surprising ways.