Trying To Dissolve

There are six or seven things Iā€™ve been thinking about lately and meaning to write about here (Pride and Prejudice, my heterosexual life partners, the end of crappy olā€™ 2009, how my hair lady gave me this weird winged mullet with which I am having a hard time coming to terms) but thereā€™s no time, thereā€™s no time to get it all down. Iā€™ve been out every night for the past two weeks, it feelsā€”between yoga and theatre and drinks and dinners and hot chocolates and more hot chocolates I can barely get it together to get on the bus in the mornings and fill up my hot water bottles at night. I never write any more and I want to write more but I donā€™t and I know if I leave it for longer it will be two weeks instead of one, and I canā€™t believe there was a time in my life that I wrote this here blog thing multiple times per week, like I had a lot to say and I would think about writing all the time and I would put it right out there where the internet could see it, but those were the early 2000s, kids, and now weā€™re in the late 2000s, so I better just give you a quick update, if you care, and I know that there are many more interesting things to read about than, like, my busy schedule, but if I switch out Monday yoga for Tuesday yoga I may be able to share my very important and interesting thoughts about the implications of timing vis-Ć -vis love and commitment in Jane Austen this coming week okay?

Things are going pretty well for me, Iā€™m happy to report: I am switching offices this week so I can work in town instead of in the burbs, thereby exponentially increasing my commute-related quality of life. I have lovely plans for both Christmas and New Yearā€™s, there have been a couple of lovely sunny days lately, and this afternoon I just went to my first bellydance class since April and was able to remember like at least three moves. I walked into town today over the hill and via Oriental Parade and got a lot of vegetables and two punnets of strawberries at the increasingly awesome Sunday market, and last night I celebrated American Thanksgiving a couple of days late with a traditional meal of gumbo and key lime pie. Iā€™ve been reading a lot of good books, lately, and having a lot of good conversations. There are a lot of parties on the horizon and I have a very good dress to wear to at least one of them. My hair continues to be a challenge, itā€™s true, but I have at least two referrals to new hairpersons so I am hopeful that by 2010 I will have not only a flying car but also a new relationship with someone who really understands curls. In a couple of weeks I will be putting on a wetsuit for the first time in over a year and diving the Cathedral Cove Marine Reserve, for which I am fairly champing at the bit.

So things are good, and things are fine. I donā€™t have anything to complain about, not remotely. I am glad for that. I am grateful for that, and for everyone and everything in my life that contributes to that very agreeable state of affairs. Yay for everything, you know?

Thrumming underneath the quick everyday joys, barely perceptible, is the restlessness that wonā€™t leave me alone, the constant shiver of the increasingly opaque future. Itā€™s been almost a year back in Wellington, almost a year since the culmination of that heartā€™s desire, and I still, still, still donā€™t know if I did the right thing. I donā€™t know what I would have done otherwise, though, if I hadnā€™t come back here. I like to tell people here that Iā€™m an economic migrant because usually people with my skin color and my passport arenā€™t conceptualized as such, but itā€™s literally true: I couldnā€™t find work in the States when I came back. I accepted the first job offer I got after three months of looking, and it happened to be in this hemisphere. Plan A didnā€™t work out; I am lucky that Plan B did because I did not (and do not) have a Plan C. I donā€™t know what I would have done, and I donā€™t know what Iā€™ll do next, and thatā€™s the part I canā€™t stop thinking about.

So thatā€™s me, trying to stop and let go and calm down, trying to dissolve myself into the every dayā€”parties, friends, work, books and movies and plays, hot chocolates, conversationsā€”trying to let the noise wash through and pass on. Sometimes it works.


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6 responses to “Trying To Dissolve”

  1. Sylvia Avatar
    Sylvia

    I am so excited that you’re moving offices! And that you came to dancing today, as I have said multiple times ;~)

  2. Katie Avatar
    Katie

    I care.
    You are so good at putting words to those itchy feelings that are hard to pin down.
    Good luck finding somone who understands you and your hair!

  3. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    I so enjoy reading about your everyday things as well as the not-so-everyday things. Your writing is sooo good. Thanks for sharing with the internet

  4. Amy Avatar
    Amy

    I also want to know where my flying car is. Or at the very least, where is my car that packs into a suitcase? I thought the Jetsons WERE the future, you know? Not some dream, but reality.

    I also can relate to the hair situation. My bangs are thinning (age? hormones? trick of the light?) so I need to decide to grow them out or cut them really short. And what about the rest of my hair? I just want to be carelessly beautiful, why is that so hard for hairdressers to understand?

  5. Steff Z Avatar
    Steff Z

    Yay, diving. In New Zealand. Among all the other good things.

  6. Paolo Avatar
    Paolo

    It’s called ” tinnitus” ….. that constant ringing in your ears that you become aware of, only when the everyday noise dissolves, when parties, friends, work, books and movies, plays, hot chocolates and chit chat subside after the last ” good night…!!! ” is wished and acknowledged…
    Then, it is silence’s turn to take the floor, but oddly enough, you find out that there’s NO real silence to speak of, because the ringing emerges from the background it was confined to until then and becomes the arrogant crooner destined to put you asleep… and the song it whispers says:
    ” You don’t have a plan C…
    Opaque days are all you see…”

    Gloomy enough, but only apparently… it is your heart’s turn to take the spot light now and sing back, in reply:
    ” But I know I’m good… you cannot move me…
    I know I’m good… and I can prove it…”

    and show this blog, point to Ampersand, where all the good is annotated almost daily and makes for a powerful reference, a mighty fine tool for telling a gentle soul apart from a mediocre mass…
    The ringing might not cease, but the song could change to:
    ” Somewhere, over the rainbow…”