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30 September 2008 : A Text from Cera
Monday, September 29, 2008 11:25pm --
My neighbor just got mugged in the courtyard.
Editor's note: I started this whole "text messages from Cera" thing because she regularly sends me random hilarity with no context. This decidedly does not fall under the heading of "hilarious," unless you count the part where I strapped my knife to my belt to walk to my car this morning (hilarious only because my knife would do me absolutely no good whatsoever against an assailant, and would result in one of two things: it being taken away and used to stab me as said assailant laughed at my pathetic attempts at self defense, or it being a catalyst in getting myself in WAY over my head for no good reason at all. Also hilarious in that "wow, that's so not even a little bit funny" way).
Also note that the only reason my (pregnant) best friend lives in this forsaken place is because I lived here when she moved to Indianapolis. Also note that said neighbor got mugged AT GUNPOINT, which renders my flea market knife thrice useless. To be fair, at the very least, Cera has a gentleman living with her who could probably cut a bitch if it came to that. I, however, am (among other things), a woman who lives alone. I have already once this year gone through a period of feeling like my safety here was dubious at best (remember that week that my bike was stolen from where it was locked to the banister outside the door of my third floor apartment in my locked hallway? and then two days later I caught some burly Jamaican dude trying to break into said hallway? word) and I'm SO TIRED OF IT.
So, I thought this was a good opportunity to announce that it is official. I have signed a lease, handed over a chunk of security deposit, and delivered my thirty day notice in writing. On November 1st, Jen and I are leaving the ghetto behind for the hood, where we have (thanks to my wicked rental-procurement talents) found ourselves one half of a beauty of an old house with original hardwoods, a fenced in backyard already sectioned for gardening (and composting!), a driveway, a front porch, and a washer and dryer.
Best yet, Lisa, James and Anniepants are moving into the other half on the very same weekend, and Pal will be joining Jen and I on our side once her lease expires in January. May I just say: ten steps closer to commune! It is the best of all possible outcomes for me, as I get to reintegrate into my most favorite of all neighborhoods and I get to take all of my most beloved people with me.
Won't you join me in raising a middle finger in salute of Meridian-Kessler south of 38th street?
posted by lindsay at 17:18 :: 1 comments
20 May 2007 : chuck and ellery sing the blues
kentucky and i understand one another.
the drive in on thursday morning was perfect. it was cool and sunny, northern kentucky all rolling green hillsides and verdant valleys. the first half hour of my trip i ran alongside a babbling, stone filled creek.
once i hit the interstate, i began seeing signs. wild turkey distillery, next right. kentucky bourbon trail, next right.
lexington has a very specific sort of charm. driving in, i could have been on the west side of indianapolis but there was something distinctly foreign. faint accents, men who always hold the door for you, the knowledge that anywhere you go they'll understand if you order everything on your plate drowned in sausage gravy.
but after two days, some pbr in the parking lot of transylvania university, three hours solid of driving around calling every number on every for rent sign in the city, backup telling me "you want this neighborhood," or "you won't feel safe here," there was nothing.
beautiful apartments, there were a few. exposed brick walls, original pine floors, 12 foot ceilings - i saw it all. one was utterly affordable, ridiculously huge, gorgeous beyond belief. then came the warning "you can't live here. it's too shady."
come august 1, after all, the bicycle will become my primary method of transport - partly to save me from the weight of the university's hefty parking fees.
so i left town without a lease or anything to guarantee i'd have a place to go, knowing i'd have to make another trip and the pickings could be even slimmer.
then the phone call, 80 minutes into my 2 hour trip back. "you'll want to see it this weekend," jim said, "it's going to go fast. i'll show it to you before we advertise it." i hemmed and hawed and complained and groaned, and then slipped my shoes on and drove back to lexington the next day, fearing this was only going to be another shithole apartment for too much money.
so worth it. jim, whose gruff southern accent and chatty cathy tendencies led me over the phone to believe he would be aging, in cowboy boots, and gentlemanly as hell. jim was young, friendly and oh so entertaining. the apartment, it's currently occupied by chuck and ellery. when we arrived they were sitting in their living room playing bluegrass (banjos everywhere!). "come in," they said, "look around, do whatever, we don't care." jim sat while i wandered, the five men in the living room talking politics while i turned on the shower to check water pressure and climbed out the window of ellery's bedroom for the view from the fire escape.
an hour and a half - perhaps the longest apartment showing on record. i am sold. it has nothing that i've been looking for. it's small, third floor, carpeted, with only a few windows. across the street there's a small fraternity house with a couch on the front lawn (during the hunt for signs, backup said, "yeah write this one down - you definitely want to live here, across the street from the lawn couch."). the ceilings are kind of low and the bedrooms are miniscule. but something about the open staircase, the hexagon shape of the living room, the door that leads to open air off the front of the house (and perhaps a little bit the washer and dryer) has won me over. i'm in love with this completely strange, architecturally anomalous apartment.
it's a half mile from work, less than a half mile from the anthropology building.
chuck and ellery are sad to be moving out, but their misfortune is my outrageous luck. i'm as set as i'm gonna get - introduced, apartmented and ready for the show.
posted by lindsay at 18:19 :: 1 comments
25 January 2007 : clocks and eyelashes are not real life.
moving on is a strange, sly beast.
you don't necessarily want to do it. you've been dreading it since, say, november. but you knew it was coming, and you couldn't do anything about it. you couldn't even prepare, because it was too early - no one wanted to discuss anything so long before the fact.
this is not like dying your hair, or making the switch from ultra-low rise to plain old low rise. it's your entire life, every foundation.
but suddenly, one day, you wake up and know you're ready. it's sort of like, hey, this is going to happen anyway, and i'm tired of waiting. if i have to do it, then i want to do it my way - and i want to do it now.
well, i've got plans. mostly they revolve around red potholders and a giant map of the world, but they also have to do with strength. with knowing that at some point, i was always going to have to form a singular identity, to be funny and worthy and sketchy comedic without backup. to be me and just me, without anyone to model myself after or a common thread to hold on to.
and i decided on sunday afternoon that i was done waiting for that, and i was done holding on until the very last moment.
yesterday i put down a deposit on what is perhaps the most beautiful apartment in indianapolis. it also might be the cheapest apartment in indianapolis - how i got so lucky, i'll never know. but everything coming together so properly and so quickly seemed like a sign. so i took the chance.
i'll be moving in two weeks - which is a month before my lease here is up. there are a lot of reasons for that, including that the landlord was reluctant to offer me a short term lease (and i so desperately wanted the apartment), so i said "let's make a deal - you get a tenant right away and i get the apartment." another part of it is that i'm tired of being panicked about not knowing where i'm going to live come march first.
and part of that is that i want to get into my new life post-roommates as soon as possible. not because i don't love them dearly, and not because i won't miss them, but because they have been such an enormous part of my identity for the last two years and it's time for me to figure out if i can stand on my own two feet. it was coming anyway, so i may as well dive right in and see if i can come out on the other side unscathed.
paying rent on two places for a month is worth it if for nothing else than my peace of mind - i'm not going to have to couch surf, or move back in with my mom (not that she's not awesome, but she's 90 minutes away, and my life is solidly here), and i'm not going to wind up squatting in the theatre for six months with no place to go.
so tonight i say, three cheers for my first baby step into actual adulthood. wish me luck (and perhaps a quick boyfriend), since i've never lived alone before and my excitement only slightly outweighs my terror.
posted by lindsay at 14:26 :: 3 comments
21 January 2007 : an open letter
the previous post, however, does not apply to things such as apartments. in the nature of this afternoon's adventures, i submit the following:
dear beautiful apartment:
i've been watching you for a long time. i drive past you every morning on my way to buy coffee. you've been beguiling, all sturdy and brick with your yellow woodwork and fenced in yard. i've wondered for three years exactly what you were like on the inside. what you were really made of. what made you tick.
today, we met for the first time, apartment. and this is what i have to say.
i love you. i love your hardwood floors. i love your tall ceilings. i love your huge windows. i love your big balcony. i love your closet which is actually the size of my bedroom on michigan street. i love your clawfoot bathtub. i love your ridiculously low rent which includes all utilities. i love the cobblestone street upon which you sit. i love that you're less than a block from the theatre. in short, i love every single thing about you, apartment.
i am willing to do anything and everything that it takes to have you. i will beg and i will plead, i will be shameless and wanton. i will offer money and signatures and legal documents. i am opening my soul, baring everything i have. i would give up my new red mary janes and my bangs and my childhood skateboards hoodie just to spend six months in your arms.
please, apartment, do not forsake me. i know that there are many outsiders who would labor to keep us apart. the obstacles are high, the weather cold, the road harsh. don't give in.
i'm here for you. please say you're there for me, too.
with ever pulsating devotion,
lindsay marie.
posted by lindsay at 21:32 :: 2 comments
: someone's just not that into something.
step back, step down, step off.
it's been like a mantra the last few weeks.
backing down is something i've always struggled with; sometimes i do it too much, sometimes i can't get a grip on it no matter how badly i want to.
right now, its the latter. that feeling in the pit of your stomach that's about wanting something and knowing you're not going to have it, it gives me pause when i am making calculations about how to proceed.
i think one of my most self-defeating qualities is the tendency to hold on. to be hopeful. to wear my heart on my sleeve. to remember your name when we're old and gray and you haven't thought about me in 25 years, since we only met for five seconds in a busy pizza place in lima, ohio.
this is definitely a post about a boy, but it's only abstract because that flows in the same vein as my desire. maybe it had to do with my feeling like i needed to hide from everyone around us that i wanted him, or that i felt that way because i thought that's what he would want. either way, i sometimes detached from reality when i saw him; the man in conversation was not the same man who kissed me so voraciously was not the same man walking down the street.
i'm pretty sure that's not healthy, and i know i didn't like it. i didn't like how i could go from zero to ecstatic and back in 60 seconds. for once, i could see myself investing so much without any return, and for once, i realized that there is no way to make that okay. so i'm stepping off. stepping back.
not stepping down though; it snowed pretty hard today and i'm wearing really tall boots that make me ankle-wary.
posted by lindsay at 14:07 :: 0 comments
15 January 2007 : come on night
we have an unfortunate tendency to view change retrospectively.
we get used to that. we take it home and cuddle with it, make it our special banana smoothie in the morning. it's too many movies and too many books - when did we start expecting happy endings? when did it become necessary to tie up every possible loose end? a transition with a finish line so impossibly tight leaves no room for movement.
we've changed ourselves out of change, because we want those blue skies, that reconciliatory kiss. we want to look back on the last six months and say, "yeah, that was pretty dark - but look where we are now. it was all worth it."
i get that.
but don't you ever look up from a sentence or your teacup and think, HOLY CRAP. I'M IN TRANSITION AND I HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT BEFORE ITS TOO LATE TO INFLUENCE ITS COURSE.
it's tough, honestly. transition, like most things, doesn't rely on the individual, but on the individual plus friends, family, coworkers, environment and climate. you can bear down as hard as you want and it doesn't mean you're going to be able to turn that wheel to the right. i've lived so much of my life carefully at 10 and 2 and i've still been left speechless with the violation shaking in my hand, unable to decipher its meaning.
and right now, well, right now i am looking forward. things are going to change, but they haven't yet. they haven't even started to change yet. but every morning i open my eyes, i know its going to happen. in six weeks, i leave the happiest home i've been able to make since leaving mom's at age 16. i didn't choose that - it was handed to me. four months after that, my gas tank inevitably marked full, i will head as far south as i've ever dared. i didn't choose that, either - it kind of chose me.
i know its coming. which gives me the time to sit back and think about how good its going to be. how bad its going to be. i can do anything. no-one knows me in lexington, kentucky. i could be new, different, british! i could jog a mile every morning, or cook myself balanced meals, or paint my living room bright red. i could suck up all my timidity and be friendly, frenzied, manic. i could be successful, i could take chances.
but i don't know what's going to happen. and i'm frustrated by sitting here in january, not knowing what february will bring. i do not like all of these things i've had to let fall from my hands. i do not like that i am making plans based on maybe. and i do not like that all of these decisions: where will i live, who will i see, what will i study? are being made by people who are not me.
because i think we can, and we should, choose. how things are going to go. who we are going to be. what we are going to love, and why. i've been doing a lot of that lately. i said, i'll be strong, and confident, i'll be wise and i'll be brave and i'll be ready. i had to fake it for a while, but it's getting easier. i started slow, with a boy, and decided to work my way up from there.
it's not always working out the way i hope - the most i've gotten was a couple of dizzy kisses on a dirty old couch that left me feeling simultaneously innocent, sixteen, brazen and busted.
but there are other situations to be diffused. and i'm done with looking forward worst case. maybe its just that i'm in the world's tiniest, most adorable coffeeshop right now, in a town in southern indiana that leaves no room for wondering. just another place i could make a life.
i like knowing that. here? lexington, memphis, tucson, birmingham? i could be new, i could be different. hell, i could be british.
so i'm just gonna stop waiting.
posted by lindsay at 13:38 :: 3 comments
19 November 2006 : onward and upward.
i've never been one to shy away from admitting embarrassing things. for instance, all of you by now should know very well that i love bon jovi, buffy the vampire slayer, gilmore girls, pasty boys who look like jesus, and cats (yes, in that crazy old lady way).
but this particular movie, i've never been quite able to admit to - mostly because it has no redeeming value. you can't collect un-cool points for this movie.
so i'm not going to tell you what it is. i'm only going to tell you that it made me feel better.
like, someone with warm hands threw a large, soft blanket of better over me while i lay on the couch last night (it didn't hurt that both the dog and the cat were sleeping on top of me and i was very cozy).
and that blanket lasted through the night and has so far endured the entirety of this day. maybe it's because this is the first sunday in months that doesn't mean another week of hellish intensity is going to start in less than twelve hours. i really have nothing of importance to do until next weekend.
but most of what has been going on with the craziness in my head is about this: i am scared out of my fucking mind. everything that's coming up in the next few months leaves very little room for failure, for breathing. i've got to be on fire.
and i love my life here. pretty much everything about it, i love. i've been happier in indianapolis than i have been anywhere since i moved out of my mom's house at 16. so the thought of leaving all of it to start somewhere else, again, put the jitters in my belly and my toes. i would sometimes have trouble lighting a cigarette, i was shaking so badly.
then i sat down to watch this movie, because it's a dumb girly movie, but one of those with a mildly a-typical plotline that still has the ability to make me wonder positively about what's to come.
and someone said something like this: sometimes you have to force yourself to take a step for which you're not ready, because if you wait until you're ready, it's never going to happen.
and that opened up my chest a little, made my eyes stop stinging and unclenched my tired fists. i breathed, and i knew that it was true.
i'm not ready for this, i'm not ready to move on, to be alone or to start over. i'm not ready to wave goodbye to indianapolis and head south to a city that i haven't at this point even driven through. i'm not ready to live by myself.
but if i just suck it up and do it, it's going to turn out okay.
because honestly, i'm good at things. and i have yet to really fail at anything.
i'm not embarrassed to admit how much i'm going to miss it all, though. i'm not embarrassed to admit that i love all of my friends fiercely, and i love the theatre fiercely (and a job such as that is never going to fall in my lap again), and that i love every block of this city with an overwhelming passion that's a little bit ayn rand and a little bit country.
so just promise it'll be here when i get back.
posted by lindsay at 14:54 :: 2 comments
14 November 2006 : crisis averted, i hope
the sun came out today, which was a nice start.
things are feeling a little better, a little calmer, since i woke up this morning in an unfamiliar bed, all sweaty bangs and mascara stains on my pillow. just the way i like it.
like i said, all i've needed was to spend some time with a few people who would be genuinely thrilled to see me. and it took about ten minutes after i rolled into town, i must say, to run into three such people. a few more were found throughout the evening.
mission accomplished.
i giggled a lot last night, was turned on by music and entertained by charming gentlemen. hugged cera sunshine for about 12 minutes straight and drank some delightfully crisp cider. devoured a meatball sandwich that was actually larger than my head, and made way for culpability to march out the door. it was narrow, but he made it past without breaking me open.
and for the record, i'm sorry i've been looking at you so much.
i just really like your face.
posted by lindsay at 13:58 :: 4 comments
24 October 2006 : tidings.
i ran into an old friend this afternoon.
actually, an old best friend. someone with whom i was inseparable for the better part of five years.
obviously, we both changed significantly in those five years - in opposite directions. for a long time, i could barely stand the sight of her. she had trouble dealing with the fact that i was moving to the left. i had trouble dealing with the fact that she was moving to the right. i couldn't understand why she wouldn't accept who i wanted to be.
i was, after all, seventeen.
now, she has a four year old son (who's about six feet tall) and i'm a little more tolerant. actually, a lot more tolerant.
which makes it sound like she needs to be tolerated; this is not, in fact, the case. it speaks more about who i was than who she was (and is). i was on shaky ground during my later adolescence, desperately trying to figure out who i was while utterly terrified that the answer was going to devastate me. i had an image to maintain and she really didn't fit into it.
i could have let it fade out in a simpler, kinder way than i did. but i sort of dropped everything and ran.
i don't think i can take all the blame here, honestly. who isn't afraid of cheerleaders?
still yet, it was really nice to see her.
[ps: i just registered for the last six credits of my undergraduate career.]
posted by lindsay at 17:44 :: 1 comments
23 August 2006 : the snap judgment; part 3 of 6
4am
heat is radiating from every square inch of skin. i wonder, if there were enough light to see by, that i might not be releasing steam. it's the heat of a healing wound; my entire body has become an injury against the night. i couldn't say about the cause. it could be the whiskey i'm sipping straight from the bottle. it could be that i haven't eaten in 36 hours, during which i've had four hours of sleep. it could be the conversation. it could be too many cigarettes.
it's only been a few days since i sat on this porch and said to shari, "i just need to meet someone to be excited about. i need to make a new friend." i have no illusions about the man sitting next to me; probably i'll never see him again. i have no intentions for the man sitting next to me; if i made a move, either outcome could probably ensure that he'd never be back. but i like that he is new and i like that he is here, and he listens like everything i say is worth hearing.
12am
things are winding down at the theater. it's my favorite time of night, when everyone has filtered out save the staff and the bands, the lights are up and the floors have been cleared of couches, of equipment, of the swaying crowd of 20 somethings.
it's an old theater; the floor declines from the soundbooth to the stage, with nothing but a few old snags of bolt to interrupt a streamlined process. our chairs, they all have wheels. those without backs are the best, they move more quickly and offer less resistance. it feels like tradition as we line up against the raised platform on which rests the soundboard, prepare to push off for an audience and race to the bottom. i know what is coming, but each time i scream and giggle in tandem, thinking i'll hit a hole and tumble forward or stop too late, stop with my face.
i reach the stage last, but am unscathed by my loss. it is a hot, humid night and the rush of stale air against my face is enough to make me smile. i am full of an incongruous delight, the same that faces me at the end of each night i spend here. sometimes it is the music itself, a reminder that there are still people who create beautiful things for beautiful things' sake. sometimes it is the people i've met, or simply the taste of good coffee. tonight it is all of those things, my body responding to a freedom it had been craving through the duration of five stressful days. my head and everything below it were rioting against each other, looting and throwing homemade bombs around in loopy anger. nothing in my being had paused to say thank you for days.
i return to the top of the theater by pushing my legs, sandals sliding against the smooth concrete but even uphill and without traction i make good time. behind me someone yells "watch out!" but i do not turn around quickly enough to avoid collision with the man standing behind me. he halts my progress by putting hands on either side of my chair. my physical surprise should, but does not, prevent me from thinking quickly. he bends his face to my ear to mock me playfully for losing the race, and i lean my head back against him - partly for the thrill of feeling my long hair catch against his stubbled cheeks and partly so he will be able to get a nice, long breath of me. i know how good i smell.
it's so brief it almost hasn't happened, but something has changed here. and this is all i'll allow myself, this brief moment of contact.
8pm
i sit behind the table that serves as concessions with a book open in front of me, waiting for music to start, waiting to stamp hands should someone venture through the door. it's still beautiful daylight outside, no sign of the swelter that will mark the evening to come and i sit warmed by the sunlight as i read. i've worked maybe six shows but my instincts are already sharp, and the slight change in shadow makes me look up from the words on the page. he walks in tentatively, looks around and heads to me, asks "do you work here?"
i tell him where he can park and put his equipment, trying not to stare and trying not to be rude. there's something about him - tshirt so thin it may as well not be there, five or six days unshaven, long hair curling around his face. i have him pegged immediately, which says more about me than i'd like to admit. oversexed rock god, is what i think. this guy's gonna be a complete douchebag. he's barely as tall as i am, a fact i won't notice until several hours later when i realize that facing him, his eyes are at...eye level. he's larger than life, and i am unfair. the preceding days have left me feeling unwanted and unworthy, and it's my insecurities - admittedly few - that judge this stranger more than anything else.
but no matter my intellectual understanding; i am on the prowl tonight, for what i'm not entirely sure. i am full of prideful frustration and unspent agression and looking to disabuse myself of all this negativity. the moment, my fight-or-flight response to being intimidated by something i can't have, passes quickly but the feeling remains. i forget about him, dismiss it all and return to my book, all 400 pages of which i will read sitting outside the front doors while four bands play inside to my distracted ears.
one of these days, i'll learn to be grateful for these things that come along just when i need them, rather than being angry that each moment is fleeting. one of these days i'll stop imposing. in my adolescent anger, i moved too quickly and upon being proven wrong i was completely disarmed. situation normal: i'm an asshole.
posted by lindsay at 23:57 :: 1 comments
09 August 2006 : perhaps its just my palate
it is so easy to let go of something once you've made up your mind to do it. my problem has always been to cling on to those little last bits of hope until they were barely shreds, sweatstained from sleepless nights and forlorn in their own sense of burden.
that's what i've done this week - let something go. it was new for me, giving up that idea (maybe it was a conviction) without even really thinking about it. it should have not been difficult even from the beginning, something i never had but wanted, a few hours under flourescent lights with someone who represented choice. i had not the promise, but only the remote possibility, of something new in the background of the part of my mind which clings still to adolescence which pushed it away without regard.
simplicity too is new for me, having spent most of my years striving to ensure things remained as colorful and complicated as possible. i would think, these scars have to appear and you have to let them show - no one can ever look at you and risk thinking it's been easy, which should have made me dangerous but mostly just made me quiet. i would think, you'll never learn from this if it doesn't hurt, without realizing that i was putting myself within arm's length of destruction with my only consideration to how it would change my appearance to the world.
but i think that as you get older and time begins to pass so quickly that it's difficult to discern patterns or colors in the memory of recent days passed, you slow down a little bit and begin to breathe consciously in an effort to preserve yourself for what must be coming. life, isn't it? the end of adolescence and the beginning of something tangible, something you could feel gritty between your teeth. when your decisions could destroy everything but you have to make them anyway.
i've always been a watcher. i can know someone at a single glance, when it doesn't matter. i once sat on a bench in a brightly lit mall at christmastime, waiting for my mom and feeling in the vibrations of the wood underneath me the sheer power of some man's basso profondo. when i turned, i saw him only briefly ducking beneath his eyelashes every time he spoke - an adolescent only a few years younger than myself, so uncomfortable with his existence he wanted to curl up inside his skin, tightening himself until he disappeared.
where that halts is with myself. i do not know what i do or how i do it or why. i am constantly second guessing myself about how everyone sees me. on sunday night i had a conversation with someone new and after i went to bed i found myself wondering, does he think i'm lonely, desperate for anyone to talk to? am i? is that why i couldn't stop talking, telling him personal things? and it extends to how the people nearest react to me, i have no idea what they're thinking or what they want - especially if it seems important that i know. he was friendly and full of life, perhaps used to girls unable to hold their tongues around him but i'm not really a girl anymore, i shouldn't have to wonder about these things.
the most important part is that it does not matter, that i don't really care all that much anymore. i've become so much more comfortable with myself recently that i've actually noticed people responding to it. it's a nice feeling, to keep in mind that whatever happens around me doesn't define how i feel, and that someone responding to me in a way other than what i hope for doesn't lessen either one of us, but makes us who we are. i think that's why it was so easy to let go, to realize that the hope i was holding on to was far less important than the memory of how i felt that night almost a year ago, to be greatful that it had even happened in the first place.
in case you hadn't noticed, i've been sort of engaged in an existential crisis these past few weeks, perhaps culminating this past week with a particular crisis i've washed my hands of (efficiently eliminating several particularly pathetic years of my life from the record book). must be the good kind though, because nothing really hurts like it used to - well, aside from the ending of harry potter and the half-blood prince - so perhaps i've aged like good wine or maybe i'm just finally growing up. even scotch tastes better these days, and no one would have guessed that was even possible.
posted by lindsay at 19:20 :: 1 comments
07 August 2006 : steady, steady.
this weekend has nudged me into the bumbling (not humbling) realization that i am wildly curious to see just exactly all the things of which i am capable.
little tiny parts of me are changing without asking permission; there's a new piece down there somewhere that knows how to gracefully repel a drunken, would-be customer from the theatre and a new piece down there somewhere that honestly believes i wear myself with grace.
i rediscovered last night the way that music used to make me feel - the kind of deep down pain of loving something too much, or just being in the right place at the right time.
one particular song blasted everything in the world out of existence except this: warm wind, the sweet smell of my hair, nervous bubbles of laughter about the intricacy of emotion involved in the song, and the lights of east washington street late at night. i sighed, felt my soft skin from the inside out, glanced at everything around me and said "yes." it was mine.
another lovely weekend at the irving, replete with kind, friendly people. i love this city and i love this life. maybe "humbling" could fit in there somewhere; i'm surrounded by elegance.
everything's moving forward and for once, i like that.
posted by lindsay at 12:56 :: 2 comments
16 July 2006 : the hour yet to come.
this heat is making me drowsy, anxious, restless, predatory.
no one has it in them to comment, or at least no one i see. i want to plaster photos of myself all over town.
my dramatic and fatal statement for this week is: i will die if i don't learn how to play the piano this year. the songs in my head have gotten out of control and need to be made fit for public consumption; i will pay off my credit card and buy a fancy keyboard, i will play a show at the irving - if it kills me.
it has to be the heat; weather like this makes me dream. fall, corduroy, red lipstick are calling.
you've gotta move, you've gotta move, you've gotta move.
i've gotta move, i've gotta move, i've gotta move.
posted by lindsay at 23:06 :: 6 comments
29 June 2006 : linked.
so much has happened in the last eight weeks to change my perspective on what amounts to - everything. a quiet newborn baby made me cry hidden tears, remembering how joyful it is just knowing that you are alive. a trip to australia made me question the strength of my convictions, my understanding of natural selection, and fall in love with some pretty amazing people. an evening with a taciturn, sunburnt cowboy clued me in about my own sense of sexuality and loaded me down with questions about who i am and what i truly want. an afternoon spent climbing over rocks and the bones of someone else's ancestors reminded me that the sun rises and sets everywhere just the same, and i should consider myself lucky to be counted among those who have seen it.
most elemental is that i finally remembered what that feeling is, that indistinct breathless feeling that comes over me for a time nearly every day. i am grateful to be alive and living. i catch my breath because i realize at the end of the day, i have two working feet and a heart that keeps beating, and no one has the right to ask for more.
what remains after all this goodness is the pervasive sense of moving on that has smothered this life like an extra blanket. i am aware that this chapter is coming to a close. i have, honestly, things to which i am looking eagerly forward - my thesis work, graduation, a career. and things to dread, like leaving this place and these people around whom this life is built. necessity i understand. goodbye i do not. and i can feel it coming. i hope its another mistaken assumption.
so i work, and i wait. i worry about money and avoid the basement, i wear my routines like a cloak that protects me from the cold wind of uncertainty.
and i let every moment be, without rush or force. smoke a cigarette to calm me and feel the assurance of my own smooth skin covering my own strong bones that are held together with tough flesh.
flesh that wears, but never tears.
posted by lindsay at 23:18 :: 0 comments
15 January 2005 : a sense of adventure, now.
a few things have gotten in my way in the last ten days - some beer, and lots of cigarettes, ridiculous humidity and night where it was warm enough to sit on the porch and watch the neighborhood. a new semester with new classes and professors who remember me from semesters entirely previous. work, and taking care of a very traumatized cat.
also some thinking.
but here's what i have to say about california.
i (admittedly, and you may groan) went out there with an achin' in my heart. a wound that wasn't quite open anymore, at least most of the time, but one that was there nonetheless. when he hugged me hello and kissed me on the forehead, i looked down at it and knew what was going to happen.
slowly, we were going to pick at that scab, throughout the week. in turns, probably, and at random moments. until it hemorrhaged all over the two of us, and we could clean it up, make some jokes, and i could begin to heal.
it didn't happen that way at all. we didn't look at it, or talk about it. i made a few comments here and there, jabs. 'i have terrible taste in men,' i said. 'i have carefully constructed blindspots when it comes to you.' but mostly i spent the week being annoyed - with the rain, the lack of fresh air, the cold, the fact that he was too selfish to stop playing video games to take me to the beach, or to the grocery store. but nothing was really different and i hadn't expected it much. his hair, shorter. mine, longer. everything smelled the same and looked the same, except the way i felt.
at 7 am, i stood in line on the walkway, waiting to get on the plane and put the poor cat down where he could pant and drool in relative still. the phone rang, and he wanted to make sure that everything had gone okay since i'd grabbed his hand through the open window and said the only thing i could make come out - 'miss you.'
'hey,' he said, when i was about to hang up. paused. 'take care of yourself.' i hung up the phone and started crying - no problem. crying on airplanes is old hat anymore. the attendants smiled graciously while wondering if i was going to cause problems. the man next to me looked over and said, 'are you sad? why are you sad? don't you want to leave?'
how to explain that i did want to leave, and that was why i was crying? something i had considered interminable was over, and i was crying for the loss of my hope, for the loss of california, that summer, that dream. my pigtails, red lips. how to explain that i was sure that i would never be that girl again. 'you can always come back.'
i cried because i knew i couldn't come back, not to this california. i cried about the depth, the intricate layers of my self delusion. how delicate i was, how high i built those walls.
i looked down at that wound and noticed it wasn't really a wound at all. the entire time, it has just been a scar. a permanent one, certainly. white, and bubbled and textured. one i'd never forget. but a scar - something healed. i was intact, i had my self esteem, and my realizations.
i think i have been for a while.
so, a man. a man with no perimeter. comfort zones, yes. i get that. everyone has comfort zones, you know? even i am uncomfortable taking off my clothes in front of strangers, if the lights are on. but no walls, no razor wire, no landmines, tripwires, guard dogs, spotlights. a man with a sense of adventure, a man who can see playgrounds.
i'm no longer terrified of being involved with someone. i'm not carrying him anymore.
posted by lindsay at 23:37 :: 0 comments
17 February 2004 : reds.
i do not want to be here, today. i have found in myself a longing for california that is so very california in itself. so warm, so falsely fulfilling. so pretentious. i need to know what i really loved about the pacific coast. i need reassurance that it involved more than you.
in light of the last few days, i am considering my place in the scheme of everythings. i am too conscious of memory, those long legs and the weight of your hair across my face. what was it that made you so different?
how can it be that every little thing you did that i loved, every little part of you that made you the man who weakened me, is large and obnoxious in anyone else?
and now this.
2 years and 50,000 miles later, 30,000 dollars in debt and missing one cat as i traipse through the snow, you are still making my life harder than it needs to be.
perhaps you are just an excuse i use. a reason i have to explain everything away.
i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.
but i find it more likely that i just never wanted to come to terms with all the ways that you changed me. as a result, I found myself with someone else and unable to say yes. i find myself, emotionally, in the same place i was 6 months ago.
on some level, i refuse to feel bad. on some level, i always knew you were there. maybe you always will be. i know you still have a piece of me that no one else will see or touch.
maybe you always will. maybe i'll go through the rest of my life with red flags permanently at the ready, comparing every what-if to the sound of your voice in the dark, to the feel of your fingers around my wrist.
i am almost ready to admit that half the reason i loved you was your ability to force me to submit. to admit that i wanted to submit. your power, dark and seamy, loathesome and wholly unhealthy. it was what i'd always wanted. i am being too, too careful. maybe its a first step, however tentative.
i am finding scars in places i didn't know your hands were subtle enough to reach.
maybe this is the point at which i decide consciously to move on. i'll gather up everything you taught me about myself and every grudge i continute to hold and that tiny sad lonely little bit of hope that still thinks you might someday grow out of this and realize i was right all along. i was the one who could rework you. and i'll march forward with a life. i'll learn how to use you to make myself stronger, lively music playing in the background.
maybe that's what i'll do.
mostly i want to sit in bed and not speak to anyone. i want to peel myself open and let all this uncertainty bleed out. i want to breathe again, stop waiting for something to happen and just live.
i need to do more than just survive.
unfortunately (although for whom i remain unsure), i'm going to have to do it all alone. i can't found a new strength on the strength of others. for once and maybe once only, it will have to be all me. i can feed my body with the fruits and meats it craves and learn to live with those hungers that go deeper than protein, deeper than nicotine. i think i have to.
i am making a decision to be alone for as long as it takes.
i think its going to be a long time before i'm ready to really move on from you. you will probably not yourself be in my thoughts, but everything you robbed me of. every little detail of my life near you. everything is different now and i've survived the last six months because i was able to pretend it wasn't. i was able to pretend that you never happened, to dismiss those two long years. but i am now facing the task of looking straight at them and trying to understand what happened. and why. and why i allowed it.
i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.
this is the root of that walking away sort of strength i discovered when we were driving in my car. august, 2003, lonely on the interstate but never alone.
as for california, i am always going to wish for that summer. do you remember it?
i wore my hair in pigtails and ate popsicles to stain my lips red, entirely focused and calm with knowing who i was. being that girl. i laughed delightedly at everything and i had no inward shame. i was complete even before you. we stayed up until dawn eight nights in a row just kissing, giddy as little kids. drunk on the idea of being together.
there was no fear there. i'll find california again.
posted by lindsay at 02:23 :: 0 comments
16 October 2003 : lesson one, california (or, what i learned from leaving)
if you consider the word 'recently' (as i do) to be decently relative and for the most part negligable, then i think i can safely say that a lot of things big things have occured in my life, recently. i got a new tattoo, i moved to indiana, i wrecked my car, i made out with someone.
lets discuss them in chronological order.
i find that i get a lot of flack from people, in general, for leaving the 'sunny' san francisco bay area to seek generally colder climes. my closest friends and my family have nothing but support for me in everything i do (proven so well in the last two years, thank you) but i often find myself angry at the wrong end of 'but why on earth would you leave california for indiana?'
so let me explain something to you. california is not the mythical place of visions and dragons that hollywood loves to make it. northern california is dry and cool in the summer, and cold and rainy in the winter. yes, flowers do bloom by the freeway near thanksgiving, and yes the ocean is four blocks from your doorstep, and yes there is a beautifully appointed museum of modern art, not to mention a collection of sea lions like none other.
but how does this make california a good place to live?
this is how i see it: gasoline is always at least 1.70 a gallon, and everything at denny's costs 2$ more. you cant sit in a greasy diner until 4 in the morning and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes with your best friend while crying about that stupid boy (or sandwich) that didnt call you the morning after. it is difficult to make friends because while in the midwest, you are considered daring and forward and clever, in california you are considered passe. this is because nothing lasts there. the kind of people you love to be around are the kind of people who have been chased north by blond women and blue eyed men in ford expeditions who are determined that no-one play music outside on a sunny day for the sheer joy of it and that tattoo parlors are to be requisitioned to the ghetto where they will not have to see them and be reminded that one day, their children run the risk of growing up and making their own decisions (however unwise).
i lived in california for 15 months. june to december in foster city, january to august in daly city. i took two friends with me, i had three friends already there. after three months, two of them were gone. after six months, a third one left. most of the time, one of them was only there as a physical presence. and most of the time, the only one left of five and i were too busy, too fettered, and too far away to find time for one another. in my entire time in the sunshine state, i made one new friend. and she and i never managed to get really close.
so tell me about loneliness, please, tell me about Why California is Better than Indiana (tm). Tell me about the fact that i come home every night and sit down on my mothers bed and i ask her about her day. she asks me about mine. tell me about how i can get in a car and drive three hours south and find my heart and soul sitting on a couch and smoking a cigarette. tell me about how her eyes and my heart light up in unison every time i see her.
and let me tell you about the boy who drove five hours south to pick me up and take me back to where he came from, just because i wrecked my car and i had no way to come. let me tell about the girl with the long blonde hair who danced around like a child when we arrived and it was like the sun came out at 10:30 pm (wisconsin time). let me tell you about the other girl, the one with the long dark hair who knows what i am thinking without my having to say it, who says 'i already know' when i try to explain that look i gave her, forty minutes after the fact.
there are so many stories and they are all rooted here, in the flatlands, out somewhere in the newly harvested fields, under the leaves that i have not seen fall in two years.
and yes, i have loved california. i have amazing memories of a perfect summer and a perfect first kiss and a perfect night on the perfect beach with the perfect combination of people (plus one guitar).
i guess all i want to say is that beauty is not necessarily rooted in sensation, in ostentation. it doesnt have to be about high tide or mountains or palm trees.
it shows up just about anywhere.
posted by lindsay at 01:21 :: 0 comments
Monday, September 29, 2008 11:25pm --
My neighbor just got mugged in the courtyard.
Editor's note: I started this whole "text messages from Cera" thing because she regularly sends me random hilarity with no context. This decidedly does not fall under the heading of "hilarious," unless you count the part where I strapped my knife to my belt to walk to my car this morning (hilarious only because my knife would do me absolutely no good whatsoever against an assailant, and would result in one of two things: it being taken away and used to stab me as said assailant laughed at my pathetic attempts at self defense, or it being a catalyst in getting myself in WAY over my head for no good reason at all. Also hilarious in that "wow, that's so not even a little bit funny" way).
Also note that the only reason my (pregnant) best friend lives in this forsaken place is because I lived here when she moved to Indianapolis. Also note that said neighbor got mugged AT GUNPOINT, which renders my flea market knife thrice useless. To be fair, at the very least, Cera has a gentleman living with her who could probably cut a bitch if it came to that. I, however, am (among other things), a woman who lives alone. I have already once this year gone through a period of feeling like my safety here was dubious at best (remember that week that my bike was stolen from where it was locked to the banister outside the door of my third floor apartment in my locked hallway? and then two days later I caught some burly Jamaican dude trying to break into said hallway? word) and I'm SO TIRED OF IT.
So, I thought this was a good opportunity to announce that it is official. I have signed a lease, handed over a chunk of security deposit, and delivered my thirty day notice in writing. On November 1st, Jen and I are leaving the ghetto behind for the hood, where we have (thanks to my wicked rental-procurement talents) found ourselves one half of a beauty of an old house with original hardwoods, a fenced in backyard already sectioned for gardening (and composting!), a driveway, a front porch, and a washer and dryer.
Best yet, Lisa, James and Anniepants are moving into the other half on the very same weekend, and Pal will be joining Jen and I on our side once her lease expires in January. May I just say: ten steps closer to commune! It is the best of all possible outcomes for me, as I get to reintegrate into my most favorite of all neighborhoods and I get to take all of my most beloved people with me.
Won't you join me in raising a middle finger in salute of Meridian-Kessler south of 38th street?
Labels: Text messages from Cera, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 17:18 :: 1 comments
20 May 2007 : chuck and ellery sing the blues
kentucky and i understand one another.
the drive in on thursday morning was perfect. it was cool and sunny, northern kentucky all rolling green hillsides and verdant valleys. the first half hour of my trip i ran alongside a babbling, stone filled creek.
once i hit the interstate, i began seeing signs. wild turkey distillery, next right. kentucky bourbon trail, next right.
lexington has a very specific sort of charm. driving in, i could have been on the west side of indianapolis but there was something distinctly foreign. faint accents, men who always hold the door for you, the knowledge that anywhere you go they'll understand if you order everything on your plate drowned in sausage gravy.
but after two days, some pbr in the parking lot of transylvania university, three hours solid of driving around calling every number on every for rent sign in the city, backup telling me "you want this neighborhood," or "you won't feel safe here," there was nothing.
beautiful apartments, there were a few. exposed brick walls, original pine floors, 12 foot ceilings - i saw it all. one was utterly affordable, ridiculously huge, gorgeous beyond belief. then came the warning "you can't live here. it's too shady."
come august 1, after all, the bicycle will become my primary method of transport - partly to save me from the weight of the university's hefty parking fees.
so i left town without a lease or anything to guarantee i'd have a place to go, knowing i'd have to make another trip and the pickings could be even slimmer.
then the phone call, 80 minutes into my 2 hour trip back. "you'll want to see it this weekend," jim said, "it's going to go fast. i'll show it to you before we advertise it." i hemmed and hawed and complained and groaned, and then slipped my shoes on and drove back to lexington the next day, fearing this was only going to be another shithole apartment for too much money.
so worth it. jim, whose gruff southern accent and chatty cathy tendencies led me over the phone to believe he would be aging, in cowboy boots, and gentlemanly as hell. jim was young, friendly and oh so entertaining. the apartment, it's currently occupied by chuck and ellery. when we arrived they were sitting in their living room playing bluegrass (banjos everywhere!). "come in," they said, "look around, do whatever, we don't care." jim sat while i wandered, the five men in the living room talking politics while i turned on the shower to check water pressure and climbed out the window of ellery's bedroom for the view from the fire escape.
an hour and a half - perhaps the longest apartment showing on record. i am sold. it has nothing that i've been looking for. it's small, third floor, carpeted, with only a few windows. across the street there's a small fraternity house with a couch on the front lawn (during the hunt for signs, backup said, "yeah write this one down - you definitely want to live here, across the street from the lawn couch."). the ceilings are kind of low and the bedrooms are miniscule. but something about the open staircase, the hexagon shape of the living room, the door that leads to open air off the front of the house (and perhaps a little bit the washer and dryer) has won me over. i'm in love with this completely strange, architecturally anomalous apartment.
it's a half mile from work, less than a half mile from the anthropology building.
chuck and ellery are sad to be moving out, but their misfortune is my outrageous luck. i'm as set as i'm gonna get - introduced, apartmented and ready for the show.
Labels: Charmed I'm sure, life in the bluegrass, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 18:19 :: 1 comments
25 January 2007 : clocks and eyelashes are not real life.
moving on is a strange, sly beast.
you don't necessarily want to do it. you've been dreading it since, say, november. but you knew it was coming, and you couldn't do anything about it. you couldn't even prepare, because it was too early - no one wanted to discuss anything so long before the fact.
this is not like dying your hair, or making the switch from ultra-low rise to plain old low rise. it's your entire life, every foundation.
but suddenly, one day, you wake up and know you're ready. it's sort of like, hey, this is going to happen anyway, and i'm tired of waiting. if i have to do it, then i want to do it my way - and i want to do it now.
well, i've got plans. mostly they revolve around red potholders and a giant map of the world, but they also have to do with strength. with knowing that at some point, i was always going to have to form a singular identity, to be funny and worthy and sketchy comedic without backup. to be me and just me, without anyone to model myself after or a common thread to hold on to.
and i decided on sunday afternoon that i was done waiting for that, and i was done holding on until the very last moment.
yesterday i put down a deposit on what is perhaps the most beautiful apartment in indianapolis. it also might be the cheapest apartment in indianapolis - how i got so lucky, i'll never know. but everything coming together so properly and so quickly seemed like a sign. so i took the chance.
i'll be moving in two weeks - which is a month before my lease here is up. there are a lot of reasons for that, including that the landlord was reluctant to offer me a short term lease (and i so desperately wanted the apartment), so i said "let's make a deal - you get a tenant right away and i get the apartment." another part of it is that i'm tired of being panicked about not knowing where i'm going to live come march first.
and part of that is that i want to get into my new life post-roommates as soon as possible. not because i don't love them dearly, and not because i won't miss them, but because they have been such an enormous part of my identity for the last two years and it's time for me to figure out if i can stand on my own two feet. it was coming anyway, so i may as well dive right in and see if i can come out on the other side unscathed.
paying rent on two places for a month is worth it if for nothing else than my peace of mind - i'm not going to have to couch surf, or move back in with my mom (not that she's not awesome, but she's 90 minutes away, and my life is solidly here), and i'm not going to wind up squatting in the theatre for six months with no place to go.
so tonight i say, three cheers for my first baby step into actual adulthood. wish me luck (and perhaps a quick boyfriend), since i've never lived alone before and my excitement only slightly outweighs my terror.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 14:26 :: 3 comments
21 January 2007 : an open letter
the previous post, however, does not apply to things such as apartments. in the nature of this afternoon's adventures, i submit the following:
dear beautiful apartment:
i've been watching you for a long time. i drive past you every morning on my way to buy coffee. you've been beguiling, all sturdy and brick with your yellow woodwork and fenced in yard. i've wondered for three years exactly what you were like on the inside. what you were really made of. what made you tick.
today, we met for the first time, apartment. and this is what i have to say.
i love you. i love your hardwood floors. i love your tall ceilings. i love your huge windows. i love your big balcony. i love your closet which is actually the size of my bedroom on michigan street. i love your clawfoot bathtub. i love your ridiculously low rent which includes all utilities. i love the cobblestone street upon which you sit. i love that you're less than a block from the theatre. in short, i love every single thing about you, apartment.
i am willing to do anything and everything that it takes to have you. i will beg and i will plead, i will be shameless and wanton. i will offer money and signatures and legal documents. i am opening my soul, baring everything i have. i would give up my new red mary janes and my bangs and my childhood skateboards hoodie just to spend six months in your arms.
please, apartment, do not forsake me. i know that there are many outsiders who would labor to keep us apart. the obstacles are high, the weather cold, the road harsh. don't give in.
i'm here for you. please say you're there for me, too.
with ever pulsating devotion,
lindsay marie.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 21:32 :: 2 comments
: someone's just not that into something.
step back, step down, step off.
it's been like a mantra the last few weeks.
backing down is something i've always struggled with; sometimes i do it too much, sometimes i can't get a grip on it no matter how badly i want to.
right now, its the latter. that feeling in the pit of your stomach that's about wanting something and knowing you're not going to have it, it gives me pause when i am making calculations about how to proceed.
i think one of my most self-defeating qualities is the tendency to hold on. to be hopeful. to wear my heart on my sleeve. to remember your name when we're old and gray and you haven't thought about me in 25 years, since we only met for five seconds in a busy pizza place in lima, ohio.
this is definitely a post about a boy, but it's only abstract because that flows in the same vein as my desire. maybe it had to do with my feeling like i needed to hide from everyone around us that i wanted him, or that i felt that way because i thought that's what he would want. either way, i sometimes detached from reality when i saw him; the man in conversation was not the same man who kissed me so voraciously was not the same man walking down the street.
i'm pretty sure that's not healthy, and i know i didn't like it. i didn't like how i could go from zero to ecstatic and back in 60 seconds. for once, i could see myself investing so much without any return, and for once, i realized that there is no way to make that okay. so i'm stepping off. stepping back.
not stepping down though; it snowed pretty hard today and i'm wearing really tall boots that make me ankle-wary.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 14:07 :: 0 comments
15 January 2007 : come on night
we have an unfortunate tendency to view change retrospectively.
we get used to that. we take it home and cuddle with it, make it our special banana smoothie in the morning. it's too many movies and too many books - when did we start expecting happy endings? when did it become necessary to tie up every possible loose end? a transition with a finish line so impossibly tight leaves no room for movement.
we've changed ourselves out of change, because we want those blue skies, that reconciliatory kiss. we want to look back on the last six months and say, "yeah, that was pretty dark - but look where we are now. it was all worth it."
i get that.
but don't you ever look up from a sentence or your teacup and think, HOLY CRAP. I'M IN TRANSITION AND I HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT BEFORE ITS TOO LATE TO INFLUENCE ITS COURSE.
it's tough, honestly. transition, like most things, doesn't rely on the individual, but on the individual plus friends, family, coworkers, environment and climate. you can bear down as hard as you want and it doesn't mean you're going to be able to turn that wheel to the right. i've lived so much of my life carefully at 10 and 2 and i've still been left speechless with the violation shaking in my hand, unable to decipher its meaning.
and right now, well, right now i am looking forward. things are going to change, but they haven't yet. they haven't even started to change yet. but every morning i open my eyes, i know its going to happen. in six weeks, i leave the happiest home i've been able to make since leaving mom's at age 16. i didn't choose that - it was handed to me. four months after that, my gas tank inevitably marked full, i will head as far south as i've ever dared. i didn't choose that, either - it kind of chose me.
i know its coming. which gives me the time to sit back and think about how good its going to be. how bad its going to be. i can do anything. no-one knows me in lexington, kentucky. i could be new, different, british! i could jog a mile every morning, or cook myself balanced meals, or paint my living room bright red. i could suck up all my timidity and be friendly, frenzied, manic. i could be successful, i could take chances.
but i don't know what's going to happen. and i'm frustrated by sitting here in january, not knowing what february will bring. i do not like all of these things i've had to let fall from my hands. i do not like that i am making plans based on maybe. and i do not like that all of these decisions: where will i live, who will i see, what will i study? are being made by people who are not me.
because i think we can, and we should, choose. how things are going to go. who we are going to be. what we are going to love, and why. i've been doing a lot of that lately. i said, i'll be strong, and confident, i'll be wise and i'll be brave and i'll be ready. i had to fake it for a while, but it's getting easier. i started slow, with a boy, and decided to work my way up from there.
it's not always working out the way i hope - the most i've gotten was a couple of dizzy kisses on a dirty old couch that left me feeling simultaneously innocent, sixteen, brazen and busted.
but there are other situations to be diffused. and i'm done with looking forward worst case. maybe its just that i'm in the world's tiniest, most adorable coffeeshop right now, in a town in southern indiana that leaves no room for wondering. just another place i could make a life.
i like knowing that. here? lexington, memphis, tucson, birmingham? i could be new, i could be different. hell, i could be british.
so i'm just gonna stop waiting.
Labels: Two steps forward, When I grow up
posted by lindsay at 13:38 :: 3 comments
19 November 2006 : onward and upward.
i've never been one to shy away from admitting embarrassing things. for instance, all of you by now should know very well that i love bon jovi, buffy the vampire slayer, gilmore girls, pasty boys who look like jesus, and cats (yes, in that crazy old lady way).
but this particular movie, i've never been quite able to admit to - mostly because it has no redeeming value. you can't collect un-cool points for this movie.
so i'm not going to tell you what it is. i'm only going to tell you that it made me feel better.
like, someone with warm hands threw a large, soft blanket of better over me while i lay on the couch last night (it didn't hurt that both the dog and the cat were sleeping on top of me and i was very cozy).
and that blanket lasted through the night and has so far endured the entirety of this day. maybe it's because this is the first sunday in months that doesn't mean another week of hellish intensity is going to start in less than twelve hours. i really have nothing of importance to do until next weekend.
but most of what has been going on with the craziness in my head is about this: i am scared out of my fucking mind. everything that's coming up in the next few months leaves very little room for failure, for breathing. i've got to be on fire.
and i love my life here. pretty much everything about it, i love. i've been happier in indianapolis than i have been anywhere since i moved out of my mom's house at 16. so the thought of leaving all of it to start somewhere else, again, put the jitters in my belly and my toes. i would sometimes have trouble lighting a cigarette, i was shaking so badly.
then i sat down to watch this movie, because it's a dumb girly movie, but one of those with a mildly a-typical plotline that still has the ability to make me wonder positively about what's to come.
and someone said something like this: sometimes you have to force yourself to take a step for which you're not ready, because if you wait until you're ready, it's never going to happen.
and that opened up my chest a little, made my eyes stop stinging and unclenched my tired fists. i breathed, and i knew that it was true.
i'm not ready for this, i'm not ready to move on, to be alone or to start over. i'm not ready to wave goodbye to indianapolis and head south to a city that i haven't at this point even driven through. i'm not ready to live by myself.
but if i just suck it up and do it, it's going to turn out okay.
because honestly, i'm good at things. and i have yet to really fail at anything.
i'm not embarrassed to admit how much i'm going to miss it all, though. i'm not embarrassed to admit that i love all of my friends fiercely, and i love the theatre fiercely (and a job such as that is never going to fall in my lap again), and that i love every block of this city with an overwhelming passion that's a little bit ayn rand and a little bit country.
so just promise it'll be here when i get back.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 14:54 :: 2 comments
14 November 2006 : crisis averted, i hope
the sun came out today, which was a nice start.
things are feeling a little better, a little calmer, since i woke up this morning in an unfamiliar bed, all sweaty bangs and mascara stains on my pillow. just the way i like it.
like i said, all i've needed was to spend some time with a few people who would be genuinely thrilled to see me. and it took about ten minutes after i rolled into town, i must say, to run into three such people. a few more were found throughout the evening.
mission accomplished.
i giggled a lot last night, was turned on by music and entertained by charming gentlemen. hugged cera sunshine for about 12 minutes straight and drank some delightfully crisp cider. devoured a meatball sandwich that was actually larger than my head, and made way for culpability to march out the door. it was narrow, but he made it past without breaking me open.
and for the record, i'm sorry i've been looking at you so much.
i just really like your face.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 13:58 :: 4 comments
24 October 2006 : tidings.
i ran into an old friend this afternoon.
actually, an old best friend. someone with whom i was inseparable for the better part of five years.
obviously, we both changed significantly in those five years - in opposite directions. for a long time, i could barely stand the sight of her. she had trouble dealing with the fact that i was moving to the left. i had trouble dealing with the fact that she was moving to the right. i couldn't understand why she wouldn't accept who i wanted to be.
i was, after all, seventeen.
now, she has a four year old son (who's about six feet tall) and i'm a little more tolerant. actually, a lot more tolerant.
which makes it sound like she needs to be tolerated; this is not, in fact, the case. it speaks more about who i was than who she was (and is). i was on shaky ground during my later adolescence, desperately trying to figure out who i was while utterly terrified that the answer was going to devastate me. i had an image to maintain and she really didn't fit into it.
i could have let it fade out in a simpler, kinder way than i did. but i sort of dropped everything and ran.
i don't think i can take all the blame here, honestly. who isn't afraid of cheerleaders?
still yet, it was really nice to see her.
[ps: i just registered for the last six credits of my undergraduate career.]
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 17:44 :: 1 comments
23 August 2006 : the snap judgment; part 3 of 6
4am
heat is radiating from every square inch of skin. i wonder, if there were enough light to see by, that i might not be releasing steam. it's the heat of a healing wound; my entire body has become an injury against the night. i couldn't say about the cause. it could be the whiskey i'm sipping straight from the bottle. it could be that i haven't eaten in 36 hours, during which i've had four hours of sleep. it could be the conversation. it could be too many cigarettes.
it's only been a few days since i sat on this porch and said to shari, "i just need to meet someone to be excited about. i need to make a new friend." i have no illusions about the man sitting next to me; probably i'll never see him again. i have no intentions for the man sitting next to me; if i made a move, either outcome could probably ensure that he'd never be back. but i like that he is new and i like that he is here, and he listens like everything i say is worth hearing.
12am
things are winding down at the theater. it's my favorite time of night, when everyone has filtered out save the staff and the bands, the lights are up and the floors have been cleared of couches, of equipment, of the swaying crowd of 20 somethings.
it's an old theater; the floor declines from the soundbooth to the stage, with nothing but a few old snags of bolt to interrupt a streamlined process. our chairs, they all have wheels. those without backs are the best, they move more quickly and offer less resistance. it feels like tradition as we line up against the raised platform on which rests the soundboard, prepare to push off for an audience and race to the bottom. i know what is coming, but each time i scream and giggle in tandem, thinking i'll hit a hole and tumble forward or stop too late, stop with my face.
i reach the stage last, but am unscathed by my loss. it is a hot, humid night and the rush of stale air against my face is enough to make me smile. i am full of an incongruous delight, the same that faces me at the end of each night i spend here. sometimes it is the music itself, a reminder that there are still people who create beautiful things for beautiful things' sake. sometimes it is the people i've met, or simply the taste of good coffee. tonight it is all of those things, my body responding to a freedom it had been craving through the duration of five stressful days. my head and everything below it were rioting against each other, looting and throwing homemade bombs around in loopy anger. nothing in my being had paused to say thank you for days.
i return to the top of the theater by pushing my legs, sandals sliding against the smooth concrete but even uphill and without traction i make good time. behind me someone yells "watch out!" but i do not turn around quickly enough to avoid collision with the man standing behind me. he halts my progress by putting hands on either side of my chair. my physical surprise should, but does not, prevent me from thinking quickly. he bends his face to my ear to mock me playfully for losing the race, and i lean my head back against him - partly for the thrill of feeling my long hair catch against his stubbled cheeks and partly so he will be able to get a nice, long breath of me. i know how good i smell.
it's so brief it almost hasn't happened, but something has changed here. and this is all i'll allow myself, this brief moment of contact.
8pm
i sit behind the table that serves as concessions with a book open in front of me, waiting for music to start, waiting to stamp hands should someone venture through the door. it's still beautiful daylight outside, no sign of the swelter that will mark the evening to come and i sit warmed by the sunlight as i read. i've worked maybe six shows but my instincts are already sharp, and the slight change in shadow makes me look up from the words on the page. he walks in tentatively, looks around and heads to me, asks "do you work here?"
i tell him where he can park and put his equipment, trying not to stare and trying not to be rude. there's something about him - tshirt so thin it may as well not be there, five or six days unshaven, long hair curling around his face. i have him pegged immediately, which says more about me than i'd like to admit. oversexed rock god, is what i think. this guy's gonna be a complete douchebag. he's barely as tall as i am, a fact i won't notice until several hours later when i realize that facing him, his eyes are at...eye level. he's larger than life, and i am unfair. the preceding days have left me feeling unwanted and unworthy, and it's my insecurities - admittedly few - that judge this stranger more than anything else.
but no matter my intellectual understanding; i am on the prowl tonight, for what i'm not entirely sure. i am full of prideful frustration and unspent agression and looking to disabuse myself of all this negativity. the moment, my fight-or-flight response to being intimidated by something i can't have, passes quickly but the feeling remains. i forget about him, dismiss it all and return to my book, all 400 pages of which i will read sitting outside the front doors while four bands play inside to my distracted ears.
one of these days, i'll learn to be grateful for these things that come along just when i need them, rather than being angry that each moment is fleeting. one of these days i'll stop imposing. in my adolescent anger, i moved too quickly and upon being proven wrong i was completely disarmed. situation normal: i'm an asshole.
Labels: pretentiously introspective: a series, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 23:57 :: 1 comments
09 August 2006 : perhaps its just my palate
it is so easy to let go of something once you've made up your mind to do it. my problem has always been to cling on to those little last bits of hope until they were barely shreds, sweatstained from sleepless nights and forlorn in their own sense of burden.
that's what i've done this week - let something go. it was new for me, giving up that idea (maybe it was a conviction) without even really thinking about it. it should have not been difficult even from the beginning, something i never had but wanted, a few hours under flourescent lights with someone who represented choice. i had not the promise, but only the remote possibility, of something new in the background of the part of my mind which clings still to adolescence which pushed it away without regard.
simplicity too is new for me, having spent most of my years striving to ensure things remained as colorful and complicated as possible. i would think, these scars have to appear and you have to let them show - no one can ever look at you and risk thinking it's been easy, which should have made me dangerous but mostly just made me quiet. i would think, you'll never learn from this if it doesn't hurt, without realizing that i was putting myself within arm's length of destruction with my only consideration to how it would change my appearance to the world.
but i think that as you get older and time begins to pass so quickly that it's difficult to discern patterns or colors in the memory of recent days passed, you slow down a little bit and begin to breathe consciously in an effort to preserve yourself for what must be coming. life, isn't it? the end of adolescence and the beginning of something tangible, something you could feel gritty between your teeth. when your decisions could destroy everything but you have to make them anyway.
i've always been a watcher. i can know someone at a single glance, when it doesn't matter. i once sat on a bench in a brightly lit mall at christmastime, waiting for my mom and feeling in the vibrations of the wood underneath me the sheer power of some man's basso profondo. when i turned, i saw him only briefly ducking beneath his eyelashes every time he spoke - an adolescent only a few years younger than myself, so uncomfortable with his existence he wanted to curl up inside his skin, tightening himself until he disappeared.
where that halts is with myself. i do not know what i do or how i do it or why. i am constantly second guessing myself about how everyone sees me. on sunday night i had a conversation with someone new and after i went to bed i found myself wondering, does he think i'm lonely, desperate for anyone to talk to? am i? is that why i couldn't stop talking, telling him personal things? and it extends to how the people nearest react to me, i have no idea what they're thinking or what they want - especially if it seems important that i know. he was friendly and full of life, perhaps used to girls unable to hold their tongues around him but i'm not really a girl anymore, i shouldn't have to wonder about these things.
the most important part is that it does not matter, that i don't really care all that much anymore. i've become so much more comfortable with myself recently that i've actually noticed people responding to it. it's a nice feeling, to keep in mind that whatever happens around me doesn't define how i feel, and that someone responding to me in a way other than what i hope for doesn't lessen either one of us, but makes us who we are. i think that's why it was so easy to let go, to realize that the hope i was holding on to was far less important than the memory of how i felt that night almost a year ago, to be greatful that it had even happened in the first place.
in case you hadn't noticed, i've been sort of engaged in an existential crisis these past few weeks, perhaps culminating this past week with a particular crisis i've washed my hands of (efficiently eliminating several particularly pathetic years of my life from the record book). must be the good kind though, because nothing really hurts like it used to - well, aside from the ending of harry potter and the half-blood prince - so perhaps i've aged like good wine or maybe i'm just finally growing up. even scotch tastes better these days, and no one would have guessed that was even possible.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 19:20 :: 1 comments
07 August 2006 : steady, steady.
this weekend has nudged me into the bumbling (not humbling) realization that i am wildly curious to see just exactly all the things of which i am capable.
little tiny parts of me are changing without asking permission; there's a new piece down there somewhere that knows how to gracefully repel a drunken, would-be customer from the theatre and a new piece down there somewhere that honestly believes i wear myself with grace.
i rediscovered last night the way that music used to make me feel - the kind of deep down pain of loving something too much, or just being in the right place at the right time.
one particular song blasted everything in the world out of existence except this: warm wind, the sweet smell of my hair, nervous bubbles of laughter about the intricacy of emotion involved in the song, and the lights of east washington street late at night. i sighed, felt my soft skin from the inside out, glanced at everything around me and said "yes." it was mine.
another lovely weekend at the irving, replete with kind, friendly people. i love this city and i love this life. maybe "humbling" could fit in there somewhere; i'm surrounded by elegance.
everything's moving forward and for once, i like that.
Labels: Blog vomit, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 12:56 :: 2 comments
16 July 2006 : the hour yet to come.
this heat is making me drowsy, anxious, restless, predatory.
no one has it in them to comment, or at least no one i see. i want to plaster photos of myself all over town.
my dramatic and fatal statement for this week is: i will die if i don't learn how to play the piano this year. the songs in my head have gotten out of control and need to be made fit for public consumption; i will pay off my credit card and buy a fancy keyboard, i will play a show at the irving - if it kills me.
it has to be the heat; weather like this makes me dream. fall, corduroy, red lipstick are calling.
you've gotta move, you've gotta move, you've gotta move.
i've gotta move, i've gotta move, i've gotta move.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 23:06 :: 6 comments
29 June 2006 : linked.
so much has happened in the last eight weeks to change my perspective on what amounts to - everything. a quiet newborn baby made me cry hidden tears, remembering how joyful it is just knowing that you are alive. a trip to australia made me question the strength of my convictions, my understanding of natural selection, and fall in love with some pretty amazing people. an evening with a taciturn, sunburnt cowboy clued me in about my own sense of sexuality and loaded me down with questions about who i am and what i truly want. an afternoon spent climbing over rocks and the bones of someone else's ancestors reminded me that the sun rises and sets everywhere just the same, and i should consider myself lucky to be counted among those who have seen it.
most elemental is that i finally remembered what that feeling is, that indistinct breathless feeling that comes over me for a time nearly every day. i am grateful to be alive and living. i catch my breath because i realize at the end of the day, i have two working feet and a heart that keeps beating, and no one has the right to ask for more.
what remains after all this goodness is the pervasive sense of moving on that has smothered this life like an extra blanket. i am aware that this chapter is coming to a close. i have, honestly, things to which i am looking eagerly forward - my thesis work, graduation, a career. and things to dread, like leaving this place and these people around whom this life is built. necessity i understand. goodbye i do not. and i can feel it coming. i hope its another mistaken assumption.
so i work, and i wait. i worry about money and avoid the basement, i wear my routines like a cloak that protects me from the cold wind of uncertainty.
and i let every moment be, without rush or force. smoke a cigarette to calm me and feel the assurance of my own smooth skin covering my own strong bones that are held together with tough flesh.
flesh that wears, but never tears.
Labels: Australia, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 23:18 :: 0 comments
15 January 2005 : a sense of adventure, now.
a few things have gotten in my way in the last ten days - some beer, and lots of cigarettes, ridiculous humidity and night where it was warm enough to sit on the porch and watch the neighborhood. a new semester with new classes and professors who remember me from semesters entirely previous. work, and taking care of a very traumatized cat.
also some thinking.
but here's what i have to say about california.
i (admittedly, and you may groan) went out there with an achin' in my heart. a wound that wasn't quite open anymore, at least most of the time, but one that was there nonetheless. when he hugged me hello and kissed me on the forehead, i looked down at it and knew what was going to happen.
slowly, we were going to pick at that scab, throughout the week. in turns, probably, and at random moments. until it hemorrhaged all over the two of us, and we could clean it up, make some jokes, and i could begin to heal.
it didn't happen that way at all. we didn't look at it, or talk about it. i made a few comments here and there, jabs. 'i have terrible taste in men,' i said. 'i have carefully constructed blindspots when it comes to you.' but mostly i spent the week being annoyed - with the rain, the lack of fresh air, the cold, the fact that he was too selfish to stop playing video games to take me to the beach, or to the grocery store. but nothing was really different and i hadn't expected it much. his hair, shorter. mine, longer. everything smelled the same and looked the same, except the way i felt.
at 7 am, i stood in line on the walkway, waiting to get on the plane and put the poor cat down where he could pant and drool in relative still. the phone rang, and he wanted to make sure that everything had gone okay since i'd grabbed his hand through the open window and said the only thing i could make come out - 'miss you.'
'hey,' he said, when i was about to hang up. paused. 'take care of yourself.' i hung up the phone and started crying - no problem. crying on airplanes is old hat anymore. the attendants smiled graciously while wondering if i was going to cause problems. the man next to me looked over and said, 'are you sad? why are you sad? don't you want to leave?'
how to explain that i did want to leave, and that was why i was crying? something i had considered interminable was over, and i was crying for the loss of my hope, for the loss of california, that summer, that dream. my pigtails, red lips. how to explain that i was sure that i would never be that girl again. 'you can always come back.'
i cried because i knew i couldn't come back, not to this california. i cried about the depth, the intricate layers of my self delusion. how delicate i was, how high i built those walls.
i looked down at that wound and noticed it wasn't really a wound at all. the entire time, it has just been a scar. a permanent one, certainly. white, and bubbled and textured. one i'd never forget. but a scar - something healed. i was intact, i had my self esteem, and my realizations.
i think i have been for a while.
so, a man. a man with no perimeter. comfort zones, yes. i get that. everyone has comfort zones, you know? even i am uncomfortable taking off my clothes in front of strangers, if the lights are on. but no walls, no razor wire, no landmines, tripwires, guard dogs, spotlights. a man with a sense of adventure, a man who can see playgrounds.
i'm no longer terrified of being involved with someone. i'm not carrying him anymore.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 23:37 :: 0 comments
17 February 2004 : reds.
i do not want to be here, today. i have found in myself a longing for california that is so very california in itself. so warm, so falsely fulfilling. so pretentious. i need to know what i really loved about the pacific coast. i need reassurance that it involved more than you.
in light of the last few days, i am considering my place in the scheme of everythings. i am too conscious of memory, those long legs and the weight of your hair across my face. what was it that made you so different?
how can it be that every little thing you did that i loved, every little part of you that made you the man who weakened me, is large and obnoxious in anyone else?
and now this.
2 years and 50,000 miles later, 30,000 dollars in debt and missing one cat as i traipse through the snow, you are still making my life harder than it needs to be.
perhaps you are just an excuse i use. a reason i have to explain everything away.
i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.
but i find it more likely that i just never wanted to come to terms with all the ways that you changed me. as a result, I found myself with someone else and unable to say yes. i find myself, emotionally, in the same place i was 6 months ago.
on some level, i refuse to feel bad. on some level, i always knew you were there. maybe you always will be. i know you still have a piece of me that no one else will see or touch.
maybe you always will. maybe i'll go through the rest of my life with red flags permanently at the ready, comparing every what-if to the sound of your voice in the dark, to the feel of your fingers around my wrist.
i am almost ready to admit that half the reason i loved you was your ability to force me to submit. to admit that i wanted to submit. your power, dark and seamy, loathesome and wholly unhealthy. it was what i'd always wanted. i am being too, too careful. maybe its a first step, however tentative.
i am finding scars in places i didn't know your hands were subtle enough to reach.
maybe this is the point at which i decide consciously to move on. i'll gather up everything you taught me about myself and every grudge i continute to hold and that tiny sad lonely little bit of hope that still thinks you might someday grow out of this and realize i was right all along. i was the one who could rework you. and i'll march forward with a life. i'll learn how to use you to make myself stronger, lively music playing in the background.
maybe that's what i'll do.
mostly i want to sit in bed and not speak to anyone. i want to peel myself open and let all this uncertainty bleed out. i want to breathe again, stop waiting for something to happen and just live.
i need to do more than just survive.
unfortunately (although for whom i remain unsure), i'm going to have to do it all alone. i can't found a new strength on the strength of others. for once and maybe once only, it will have to be all me. i can feed my body with the fruits and meats it craves and learn to live with those hungers that go deeper than protein, deeper than nicotine. i think i have to.
i am making a decision to be alone for as long as it takes.
i think its going to be a long time before i'm ready to really move on from you. you will probably not yourself be in my thoughts, but everything you robbed me of. every little detail of my life near you. everything is different now and i've survived the last six months because i was able to pretend it wasn't. i was able to pretend that you never happened, to dismiss those two long years. but i am now facing the task of looking straight at them and trying to understand what happened. and why. and why i allowed it.
i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.
this is the root of that walking away sort of strength i discovered when we were driving in my car. august, 2003, lonely on the interstate but never alone.
as for california, i am always going to wish for that summer. do you remember it?
i wore my hair in pigtails and ate popsicles to stain my lips red, entirely focused and calm with knowing who i was. being that girl. i laughed delightedly at everything and i had no inward shame. i was complete even before you. we stayed up until dawn eight nights in a row just kissing, giddy as little kids. drunk on the idea of being together.
there was no fear there. i'll find california again.
Labels: Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 02:23 :: 0 comments
16 October 2003 : lesson one, california (or, what i learned from leaving)
if you consider the word 'recently' (as i do) to be decently relative and for the most part negligable, then i think i can safely say that a lot of things big things have occured in my life, recently. i got a new tattoo, i moved to indiana, i wrecked my car, i made out with someone.
lets discuss them in chronological order.
i find that i get a lot of flack from people, in general, for leaving the 'sunny' san francisco bay area to seek generally colder climes. my closest friends and my family have nothing but support for me in everything i do (proven so well in the last two years, thank you) but i often find myself angry at the wrong end of 'but why on earth would you leave california for indiana?'
so let me explain something to you. california is not the mythical place of visions and dragons that hollywood loves to make it. northern california is dry and cool in the summer, and cold and rainy in the winter. yes, flowers do bloom by the freeway near thanksgiving, and yes the ocean is four blocks from your doorstep, and yes there is a beautifully appointed museum of modern art, not to mention a collection of sea lions like none other.
but how does this make california a good place to live?
this is how i see it: gasoline is always at least 1.70 a gallon, and everything at denny's costs 2$ more. you cant sit in a greasy diner until 4 in the morning and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes with your best friend while crying about that stupid boy (or sandwich) that didnt call you the morning after. it is difficult to make friends because while in the midwest, you are considered daring and forward and clever, in california you are considered passe. this is because nothing lasts there. the kind of people you love to be around are the kind of people who have been chased north by blond women and blue eyed men in ford expeditions who are determined that no-one play music outside on a sunny day for the sheer joy of it and that tattoo parlors are to be requisitioned to the ghetto where they will not have to see them and be reminded that one day, their children run the risk of growing up and making their own decisions (however unwise).
i lived in california for 15 months. june to december in foster city, january to august in daly city. i took two friends with me, i had three friends already there. after three months, two of them were gone. after six months, a third one left. most of the time, one of them was only there as a physical presence. and most of the time, the only one left of five and i were too busy, too fettered, and too far away to find time for one another. in my entire time in the sunshine state, i made one new friend. and she and i never managed to get really close.
so tell me about loneliness, please, tell me about Why California is Better than Indiana (tm). Tell me about the fact that i come home every night and sit down on my mothers bed and i ask her about her day. she asks me about mine. tell me about how i can get in a car and drive three hours south and find my heart and soul sitting on a couch and smoking a cigarette. tell me about how her eyes and my heart light up in unison every time i see her.
and let me tell you about the boy who drove five hours south to pick me up and take me back to where he came from, just because i wrecked my car and i had no way to come. let me tell about the girl with the long blonde hair who danced around like a child when we arrived and it was like the sun came out at 10:30 pm (wisconsin time). let me tell you about the other girl, the one with the long dark hair who knows what i am thinking without my having to say it, who says 'i already know' when i try to explain that look i gave her, forty minutes after the fact.
there are so many stories and they are all rooted here, in the flatlands, out somewhere in the newly harvested fields, under the leaves that i have not seen fall in two years.
and yes, i have loved california. i have amazing memories of a perfect summer and a perfect first kiss and a perfect night on the perfect beach with the perfect combination of people (plus one guitar).
i guess all i want to say is that beauty is not necessarily rooted in sensation, in ostentation. it doesnt have to be about high tide or mountains or palm trees.
it shows up just about anywhere.
Labels: old chestnuts, Two steps forward
posted by lindsay at 01:21 :: 0 comments