subconscious

On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion
-Waking Life

I think my subconscious takes 'shrooms.

As previously mentioned, my nights are unusually eventful. I'm either talking in my sleep, having nightmares I can't wake up from, or dreaming dreams I can't differentiate from reality upon waking.

That said, my nocturnal wanderings have taken on a new twist. I've had a series of particularly vivid dreams that feature a friend of Grace's with whom I have absolutely no connection. We may or may not have had a class together at some point, but I don't think that's true and I'm 100% positive we've never actually been introduced. I've told Maggie about both of the dreams, and she seems to think I'm half cracked.

"Well. Maybe you're secretly in love with him."
"Unlikely. We've never actually met."
"You are the creepiest person I have ever met. You're dreaming about someone you've never met?"
"Well, yes. They're not anything to be ashamed of. He's just in them. Once he yelled at me. Once he slept in a hayloft. This could be awkward if we ever actually do meet. I'll probably introduce myself saying 'Hi! I've been dreaming about you for the past six months. Uhhhh. '"
"You really are going to die alone and be consumed by feral cats."
"At least I can die having fulfilled my dream of spinsterhood."

I'm less worried about the creepiness factor of the dreams and more interested in why this gentleman seems to have become a recurring character in my REM cycle when most of my dreams are about work or or can-can dancers (I can't explain it.) My subconscious obviously thinks there's some important link between this random guy and something happening in my life currently. I can't see the link between my (REM cycle) gentleman caller and my waking life.

For the time being, I guess I'll wait and see where we end up. And hope that if we ever do meet, I'll have the self-restraint to avoid telling him he's the man of my dreams.

Si se puede!

The audacity of hope indeed.

Seven

I.

Recipe

Data Entry Personnel

1 idealistic recent grad
56 hours sleep
15-23 miles of open road
37 hours mind numbing work
.5 Un-fufilling romantic liaisons
3 hours of meetings
1 case Premium
Dash of infrequent conversations with other idealistic recent grads


Take idealistic recent grad. Add 37 hours mind numbing work in equal parts throughout 1 week period. Add 3 hours of meetings. Slow pour one bottle Premium into the mixture every second day. Mix. Distribute sleep. Less in the beginning of the week, gradually adding a half hour or so until the weekend. Place mixture on open road and encourage it to breathe three days a week until desired mileage is achieved. Stir in infrequent conversations with other recent grads throughout the week. On Friday, add three bottles Premium and romantic liaison to stew. Saturday morning, remove romantic liaison. (Note: May be removed Friday evening if the taste becomes too strong) On Sunday, place entire mixture in Church for 1.5 hours. Remove when blood pressure drops back to normal range. Repeat process every Monday.

II.

Infinite

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png

It's Monday morning and a coworker walks in with a new Coach purse. It's hot pink, and doesn't have much to distinguish it as a Coach, just the pair of mirror image Cs on the clasp. I'd put its price at around $110.00. It's hideous; barely big enough to fit a small wallet and a compact, let alone a book, journal, nalgene, variety of pens, keys, cell phone, and assorted other paraphernalia I carry around in my bag on a daily basis. It's a totally impractical bag. More of a fake status symbol than anything, because Coach is the poor girl's designer bag.

I want this purse.

What? the rational side of my brain kicks in and demands to know what the irrational side is saying. When did I suddenly become able to identify purses based on their style? When did I start calling $110 purse a poor girl's designer bag? WHEN DID I START COVETING UGLY PURSES?

Astonished, and more than a little disgusted with myself, I slink back to my office and into the orderly world of data entry. While I blast Mason Jennings into my skull and disassociate myself from the data I'm entering, I try to process what has just happened to me. When did acquisitive become an adjective that I could use to describe myself? Sure, I've always had a bit of a an Achilles' heel when it comes to books, but that's something I made my peace with a long time ago. There's always Amazon and resale book stores and really, that's really a desire for something more than the book itself. The purse thing is wholly unexpected and totally unlike anything of which I could have imagined myself capable. I'm quickly soaking up a good deal of my environment, and I'm disturbed and saddened by the rapidity with which it's altering my desires. Where I used to want to make some kind of an impact on the people surrounding me, now I'm satisfied if no one yells at me during the course of the day. Self-assurance about my mission in the world has been replaced by doubt about my own gifts and talents and the desire to just get by. I actually feel like the Kel-Tron 6100 these days. Follow the recipe above and you'll have 600-1000 gifts entered in the course of a week, 23 miles run, and if it's a good week, three actually meaningful conversations--the kind that don't include stretch goals and memos to human resources.

There is more to life than this.

III.
Failure to Launch

My mother and I had a passive-aggressive, classically Prosen fight on Tuesday. I called looking for some support in a decision, and I was lectured by my father, which was unsurprising. The same lecture came from my younger brother and then my mother. I was nearly in tears when I hung up on Mother Prosen. We don't fight often, and when we do, it usually upsets me for days. What I wanted from her was a sympathetic listener. What I got was a mother who couldn't help but give suggestions and advice. We talked again on Thursday and I realized again how that human communication is fragile. A long day, poor cell connection, miss-chosen word can damage a relationship faster than a variety of other indiscretions. I'm troubled when I realize how much damage I may have inflicted with a casually cruel remark that I perceived as merely a joke or simply being tired after a long day at work.

I'm amazed that we ever manage to say anything to one another.

IV.
Delicate

Maggie's way into her gentleman caller. There have been a lot of casual jokes about setting me up with one of the gentleman caller's friends, but the other day she actually suggested it as a possibility before leaving for work. I had a mild panic attack as soon as she left. I've been single all my life, and have a level of independence I wouldn't change for the world. The thought of relinquishing even a moment's worth of that independence is enough to give me hives. I often wonder if I'm constitutionally incapable of having any kind of a lasting romantic commitment to another person. My smug coupled friends tell me that I haven't met the right person yet. I want to retort that the right person is going to have to have Sherlock Holmes's wit, Buddha's patience, Pablo Neruda's passion, and Paul Theroux's sense of adventure. A tall order, at best. An impossibility on most days.

Looks like I'm going to end up crushed to death under a stack of old newspapers and consumed by feral cats.

V.
Distance

The shower curtain is a map of the world. While I'm showering, I stare more or less directly at Asia. I often imagine Kevin and Grace are doing at that exact moment. I'm always confounded by the fact that when I'm rising for the day, they're drifting into sleep or vice versa.

Distance changes relationships in strange ways. Despite thousands of miles and an ocean, I feel closer to some folks than ever before. Others, with whom there is no ocean and only a few miles, I feel more distant. Old friendships are drifting away like Avalon (a million awesomness points if you can name that author) and I'm trying to make my peace with it.

It's Sunday morning in China. Kevin's probably at Chinese mass.

VI.
Pagan

Moonstones, in addition to a variety of of properties, are said to ward off bad dreams. I have a moonstone necklace I purchased in Duluth over Labor Day. Normally, I change it out when it doesn't match what I have selected for work. These days, I've taken to wearing it constantly, most often to bed. As work becomes more and more stressful, nightmares I thought I grew out of are becoming more frequent and are increasingly difficult to wake from or differentiate from reality upon waking. After staying with a friend in January and screaming so loudly in my sleep that I woke her, I've had to start cautioning people about my nocturnal habits and begging them to wake me if I start tossing and turning or crying. I've taken to my rosary as I fall asleep, and prayer settles most pre-sleep anxieties, but the nightmares are continuing to build to an alarming rate. Hence the moonstone.

I think my priest would say that it's a pagan influence and I should turn my mind only to prayer. It helps (probably psychosomatic, but who knows?) and my conscience is clear.

There are a lot of things I don't tell my priest.

VII.

Living in the Moment

Thoughts before drifting into a nap this afternoon:

This is the first time I've been warm in a long time.
I've don't appreciate my bed enough.
Mmmmmm. Saturday afternoon naps.

Really, St. Ben's?

In the name of everything holy. . .

I received a letter from the President's Office at CSB today. I was pretty excited at first, because I recently wrote Maryann an email venting my spleen about the Vaginia Monologues not going on this year. I hoped that perhaps someone was going to address my concerns about it not happening. Working in development now, I realized that she probably didn't have the time or the inclination to answer it herself, but I hoped that perhaps they put someone on it.

Oh, no, but that's all right too. Instead, it's a letter about how CSB/SJU are striving to become more green. Awesome! It's about freaking time. (Although, there's no mention of how professors were advocating for a green dining center and were told that they wouldn't get it.) All right. Swallow back this reaction. Here's what pissed me off to no end--

THE FREAKING LETTER IS PRINTED ON TWO PIECES OF PAPER.

Really, I know that in the grand scheme of things this probably isn't that big of a deal, but for the love of everything holy. You're writing a letter about how green you are and you couldn't even print on both sides of one sheet of paper? Or ask one of the 23,000 people who are still on campus and have my email for it? With all the freaking questionaires you ask us to fill out on our graduation you seriously don't have my email? Jesus H. Christ people.

I know this seems like a wacky thing to get pissed off about, but honestly. It's the overarching message that gets my goat. "Look at how environmentally friendly we're going to be!" while they overlook some of the simplest things you can do to make things a wee bit better.

Gah.

I'm off to write a sonnet.

I just sent the following text message to Mags:

Darcy and Eliz. are engaged. Pfffft. True love does exist. I'm so happy I could die.

No, Darcy and Eliz are not particular friends of mine. I just finished watching six hours of Pride and Prejudice. My heart hurts.

I've never been one for typcially "romantic" movies. Most of the time I think they're contrived--as one of my favorite English professors once shouted: "Come on, you guys! It's like dumping Lithium on your ice cream!" But Austen's book is so far beyond a happy ending I can't help but love it.

One of the reasons I adore the book so much is because of Austen's snappy dialouge. Elizabeth is pragmatic, almost to a fault, but doesn't let that get in the way of setting loose some zingers. Her wit is incisive and fantastic. Her exchange with Darcy when he first proposes marriage is one of my favorite passages in literature ever.

I love Darcy because, well, he's arrogant and emotionally unavailable, and apparently that's my M.O. Throw in the the fact that he's as quick as Elizabeth and the two of them are perfect verbal sparring partners and pffffffft.

In case you didn't know the "pffffft" noise is my heart exploding.

All right. Enough. I'm so incredibly content with life right now that it's unreal.

It is the first thing

I think I'm going to undertake a new project.

I'd going to read one poem a day; an old favorite, a new poem, one from a favorite author that I haven't read yet--whatever and I'm going to try to write a poem imitating the one I read. Mara once said that the best way to get to know a poet is to try to write like the. Jimmy said that the best way to learn to write is find writers you love and get to know them. This seems like an interesting endeavor. I'm going to try it for one month first. So, Jan 31st-March 2nd. The game is that the poem needs to be psoted by 10:30 PM CST, in whatever draft it's in at that point. If you're interested, you can find me at http://apoetryexperiment.blogspot.com/

The poem for today? An old favorite that felt like a good, challenging way to start.

"Light, at Thirty-Two"

Michael Bluminthal

It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:


How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it wasn't she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally, what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:

Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that everything depends
on how light falls on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.

And now, I'd like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke—God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window ... they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.
And there is.

Dirt

Wake up in the morning in the moonlight grey
We got dirt to break, we got a note to pay
Gonna plow, plow to the end of the row
Wake up in the morning and plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"

I have never seen my father's hands entirely clean.

Thirty years as a diesel mechanic does that to a man. Five years will do it. My younger brother is starting to have the same problem, and he's only been working as a mechanic for a few years. It's a combination of callouses, dry hands, poor working conditions, grease, oil, gasoline, antifreeze, you name it, and it's probably somewhere on their hands. Even on holidays, when Dad had a few days off to scrub up, his hands were dirty. He was usually trying to keep one of our five hundred dollar cars running, or chopping wood next to the house, or if he were really on vacation, digging worms and going fishing. There was always a faint line of dirt under his nails or ground into the callouses on his palms.

It wasn't until I started working at Common Ground that I realized the beauty of a good layer of permadirt. That good Sterns County soil found its way deep into the cracks on my hands and built up around newly made callouses. My nails were usually short and cracked and I have more than one scar from a mishandled tool that summer.

That summer I learned the value of working with your hands. I had spent three years removed from my blue-collar roots, and had become pretty soft. I toughened up a little that summer; remembered what it was like to drive a truck, tell stories, speak slowly, find the wisdom in a bee-keeper and a chicken farmer. I discovered what it was like to watch something grow out of a seed an into food that would make someone's week a little bit better. I picked squash, weeded beets, and cut lettuce.

I've started to distrust women with manicures or men whose hands are too well-groomed. There's something suspicious about someone who has never snagged a finger on a barbed fish hook or planted something and helped it to grow.

I think about my father's hands while I'm at work. The calluses from Common Ground have worn away by now and my nails are always clean. I want hands like Pa's when I grow up. The kind of hands you can tell a story from. I want hands that show that I worked for my life at something difficult and rewarding that didn't require transferring large piles of money from one account to another.

I want hands that never get entirely clean.

I got rocks in my shoes, dirt in my eyes
Working like a dog til the day I die
You got to plow, plow to the end of the row
I got rocks in my shoes when I plow to the end of the row
-Adrienne Young "Plow to the End of the Row"