all hopeful on you.

The current state of the world reminds me of a short story I’d write, or a very, very unedited first draft of a novel. So far, none of those dark writings has seen the light of day, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of remorse for them now, as if my little individual powers of manifestation could have set up such a colossal and devastating chain reaction.

Look at me, exaggerating my own importance in the grand scheme of things.

Last night I had a drink, took a walk, stumbled upon and startled a couple of javalinas, fell in love with the landscape of jagged Arizona mountains, listened to music that pumped me up so thoroughly that for a moment I truly believed I could fly and lifted my arms skyward for takeoff. (I don’t drink much; give me a break.)

But it was also like a dam broke in me, and all this bad stuff that I’d been clinging to (both with and without consent, for days or weeks or years or a lifetime) was swept away in the mightiness of that current. For the moment, I was weightless.

Why couldn’t I legit move here to rugged and wild southern Arizona where everything is so real all the damn time that it hurts until it doesn’t and then you’re so much stronger for it? Why couldn’t I get a job in a library and join a yoga studio or a book club or visit the Grand Canyon whenever I felt like it because I have a national park passport and I don’t have to pay an entrance fee? Why couldn’t I just settle down?

“Because my wanderlusting heart must wander!” my tipsy brain proclaimed.

“Because the world is shutting down and maybe you should just calm the f*** down and go home,” said the rational one.

Not that it’s surprising, but I’ve struggled with taking the pandemic personally. And then I remember the second agreement in The Four Agreements, which is Take Nothing Personally.

It seems I’m not alone in this. Er, well, I’m alone, but everyone else is alone too. Is there ever any real solidarity in loneliness?

Truth be told, it’s hard not to feel fear, or hopelessness, or panic. I have had to distance myself not just from everyone physically, but virtually as well. I cannot carry the panic of the masses as well as my own private terror. I cannot feed or witness the hype or the frenzy. Perhaps it does nothing, but I hang out in fields with alpacas and shut my eyes and imagine myself as the little match that struck in a field and started the wildfire of hope spreading out across the world. I imagine this disaster being the ashes, and the world that follows it the phoenix that rises. I cling to faith and hope as if they are the water and I am the thirsty wanderer in the desert, and drink them down at every opportunity.

For the moment, I believe in my own soul as capable to bring about the change I wish to see in the world. Haven’t much smaller things changed my life? A book, a conversation, a song, a sunset, a smile from a stranger – all of these things and more have the power to tear a rift in the fabric of who you are and create something new.

Just be still, have a little hope, wait. This too shall pass.

***

"What could be heavier and more impenetrable than a rock, the densest of all forms? And yet some rocks undergo a change in their molecular structure, turn into crystals, and so become transparent to the light. Some carbons, under inconceivable heat and pressure, turn into diamonds, and some heavy minerals into other precious stones." 

to Louisiana ("finding" myself?)

It’s laughable to me just how out of order I’m writing about my travels, but then, that disarray might be more indicative of my life these last months than tidy chronological order would be.

It’s been several weeks since I was in Louisiana. I drove through the whole state of Texas in a day, lingered a few days in El Paso, spent another day in New Mexico, stayed these last weeks in southern Arizona, and went to Mexico for a teeth cleaning, which belongs to a future writing.

But, as the rain pours in Arizona today, my mind is on Louisiana – that cold, wet winter place where I got my heart broken and had plenty (I mean plenty) of time to ponder my identity and whether it would crumble or remain steadfast.

Evidently Louisiana winters are wet. Lesson one. So wet, in fact, that I had to call my wwoof host upon arrival to see if it was safe to venture down his driveway, because, like that episode of “The Office” where Michael and Dwight drive into a lake, that’s exactly where the GPS appeared to be taking me. At least, if nothing else, I had more sense than Michael and Dwight (although that isn’t saying much).

My time in Colliston, Louisiana was sort of living the high life, at least by wwoofer standards. Our host took us out to eat at a local Italian place, and at a highbrow taco joint. He took us to a screening of an independent film, all the way in the hip town of Shreveport. We wwoofers had a whole house to ourselves, with so much time to read or write or draw or piddle. There was a yoga room, and I was very thankful to incorporate such a regular yoga practice back into my days.

Other than keeping the very hungry horses fed, there weren’t as many farm chores as I’d grown accustomed to. Some days, he’d say, “It’s much too cold to be outside,” and that would be that. There was a great deal of weeding where I angry-pulled those suckers and took it very personally when one would refuse to be uprooted. “I may not have a man or any money when this is all over,” I thought to myself, “but I will have muscles and a tan, so.”

There was a large composting pile in which fresh onions were growing. “Life is tenacious,” my host said when I showed him. (By the way, I want to be this man when I grow up. He works internationally and was in between trips to Tanzania and Thailand during my stay. #goals, amirite?)

I was productive in a very personal way. I drew a whole lot. I exercised. I sat with my own mind and tried to rewire the whole dang thing. I thought about splitting up with people, regardless of the form the relationship took, and how I always had the tendency to divvy up interests afterwards, like physical possessions in the aftermath of a divorce. “Well, he liked that band; am I still allowed to like it?” “I wouldn’t have known about this famous funny mortician if it hadn’t been for ____. Am I still into her?” “Ugh, he’s an artist too? Well, screw my artistic dreams! The world’s not big enough for us both!”

This may come as a surprise to some of you (though probably fewer of you than I’d like to think) that I’m actually very dramatic.

This is not a blog about mental health, other than when it comes up in my own journey. I took a great interest in psychology a few years ago and attempted to delve in deep, only to find that, the more I discovered, the more shaky my foundations became. The more I knew the less I understood.

All that’s really relevant to this post is that I have a disorder with a very shaky sense of identity. I have a tendency to mirror whomever I’m spending time with, to trade out personalities fluidly like a chameleon changes colors (although this isn’t very fluid for me internally; it’s actually rather jagged and jarring, and leaves me with a great deal of whiplash).

Ergo, there were lots of thoughts about identity in this cold, wet Louisiana haven.

I am still myself, I thought, despite everything I am still her. I worked damn hard to find her. And then I scoffed at that, at that word. “Find,” as if it’s something that I just stumbled upon while out on a lackadaisical stroll, “find” as if I chanced upon it in a thrift shop, “find” as if it was something I lost and rediscovered only through serendipity. Ha. Oh, no.

There were blood and sweat and tears as I carved into myself like a sculptor slices into wood or stone to find whatever it is that slab is supposed to be. It's not a discovery; it's a decision. Let’s be intentional about who we are, shall we?

I became; and I am becoming.

on a rant. (We're all someone's crazy ex.)

The night I met my most recent ex-boyfriend I said some atrocious things, like where I did and did not shave, that I did not adhere to misogynist cultural norms, and how I wouldn’t mind having a sugar daddy if I didn’t have to perform sexual favors for him.

(What can I say, he must have found me at least a little charming. And, in my defense, I was out with a lady friend - a date on which he was the third wheel, not me.)

But I have had a realization in hindsight, as so many realizations are only realized after the fact (which is to say, too late to matter), that I was on a the high end of an overcorrection, a phase where I took nothing slightly resembling BS from anyone, that I was deep into an I’m-a-strong-independent-woman-and-don’t-need-no-man period, and now I wish I’d dialed it back just a little bit so I could look back and think to myself, “Ah, I was the least bit rational; I’m so proud.”

Alas, no, rationality is not something I can reminisce about or claim I ever possessed.

This, this overcorrection, is the reason I went from taking so much wishy-washy will-he-won’t-he-come-back and pining for poor treatment and half-love to running away, sometimes literally, from nice guys who just wanted to take me out for coffee or dinner or for a walk or something. If only there had been reason, or at least a little balance, perhaps things in my most recent romantic endeavors would have turned out differently, or at least amicably.

Perhaps I could have said, “yes, I’ll have a drink with you and we can have a conversation; I might say something weird, but oh well!” I could have said, “sure, I like coffee, wanna buy me one.” Instead it was like, “no, you have a penis, stay the hell away from me, you’re just like all the rest of the other sordid lowlifes and I want nothing to do with you forever and ever.”

I could have been like, “yes, we kissed, but let’s not overthink it,” instead of putting my phone on airplane mode for an entire day and wandering aimlessly around a park lamenting, “woe is me, what have I DONE?” I could have said, “hey, we’ve seen each other four days in a row, and maybe I need some space now,” instead of having a full-blown crying meltdown and not speaking to him for three days.

Cleary I had and have some things to work through.

And that was just the very beginning of that story that now appears to be over. I see now over the weeks and months the vast number of things I could have done differently. But the pendulum swings, and, up till now, I’ve found myself just along for the ride.

Now… now I’d say it’s high time I just took a step off the ride and watched it swing for someone else for a little bit. Until I figure out if this thing has an on/off switch or speedometer or something.

When you’re traveling solo across the country and staying on farms with really just animals for company, your mind has a tendency to rebel against itself (or at least mine does). You want to doll yourself up and go out and be all, “I’m still clever and okay-looking even though I’ve been dumped, right? You, random man, validate me.”

You want a massage, a bath, a pedicure, a haircut. You want a pint – nay, a tub! – of ice cream. You want a whole stuffed-crust pizza to yourself. You want an endless supply of rom-coms that will restore the faith in your delusional little girl mind that meet-cutes exist IRL and you will someday very soon find yours.

Did you ever hear about that experiment with the kids and the marshmallows? The kids that were willing to wait to devour their treats got a second marshmallow in addition to the first one. Evidently this patience and willingness to wait for good things was very indicative of later-life success. I see now that I’ve always been among the group of kids who eats the marshmallow as soon as it is within reach (even though I don’t even eat marshmallows at all now, because, you know, gelatin).

All this massive rambling is to say, maybe it’s a beautiful thing to think that we can grow and change and become more than whoever it was we were born as. And now is as good an opportunity as any to take the time to realize that maybe it’s better to wait for the best, for the bigger reward, instead of settling for whatever just comes along.

... to Alabama (a sanctuary of sorts)

In my journal, I wrote, "Time passes slowly here," but now, in retrospect, I'm wondering if I didn't abandon the concept of time altogether for the week and some change I spent on a farm in southern Alabama.

Highly organized and community-driven, there was always much to do. Weeding, transplanting crops, digging holes, raising fences, herding chickens, watering the greenhouse, tending to the animals (seventy chickens, two piglets, three dogs, and a cat), preparing food, cleaning up after meals, etc.

There was time for adventure, too - there was a wonderful meditation center, an expedition to Mississippi for the De Soto National Forest, a trip on kayaks down a cold and crowded stream, a jaunt to Mobile for a Mardi Gras parade (where I had a thorough but quiet environmental panic attack). There was a lake behind the house - with two kayaks and a canoe. There were hammocks and campfires.

There was space for the stillness; there were these perfect days where I could tilt my face forward to the sun and bask, moments I'd chuckle to think I was doing better things for my tan in Alabama than I ever did in Florida (though I was, in fact, diligent about sunscreen). When you are in the dirt, surrounded by plants and animals and QUIET, the monkey in the mind is still present, but it sitting still, for once. There was space for that quiet, for the expanse.

And the community, the closeness shared by my host family and those surrounding them... Perhaps my lifelong isolation has been self-imposed, but my lone wolf status felt shaken, as I was welcomed into a community overflowing in goodness. If I must be like a sponge and absorb the energy of those nearby, it would be wise to henceforth surround myself by this quality of people.

I watched my muscles grow. I felt my mind become dearer to me. I ate onions directly from the ground and got dirtier than I’ve ever been in my life. I collected chicken eggs and made exceptions for my vegan-like sensibilities to allow me to eat eggs I'd gathered myself.

ABUNDANCE, that was my mantra: shed the rubbish, so you will have room for so. much. more. Since my time in Alabama, I've been clinging to things that no longer serve me, and I could really take a bit of my own advice. I could certainly use another dose of that farm's medicine. But I cherish that time and that place, for what it was then and for what it stands for now.