Globe

I have been trying to find a way to live in Alaska since about my sophomore year of college. I've searched for jobs there (who doesn't want to work in a fish cannery?) I've looked into transferring to a university there (University of Alaska Anchorage, to be exact) and I even got my mom on my small bandwagon (last summer and the year before she suggested that I try to go there to work). As of yet, I have been unsuccessful in pinning down a plausible reason to go. For a while I thought it would be terribly romantic if I could move out there and work on a local newspaper and starve away on a below-poverty-line paycheck.

For some reason I think that I belong there. In fact, I feel like I belong anywhere I want to go. Wales, for example. I definitely belong in Wales. I also belong in Iceland, Guatemala and Tibet (I had a torrid two-day love affair with the idea of going to Tibet. I even checked airfare prices. Who would fit in with the Tibetan monks better than I? I had visions of shaving my head and wearing orange robes. Seriously. And this was like last year). I also belong in the Middle East--definitely. And Antarctica. And Japan. And Denmark. And Iowa. And, etc etc

It was the same with Spain. All while growing up I dreamed of going to Europe. I felt sure that I would "find myself" there. I was certain that I belonged there. I went to Madrid and even though I spoke Spanish poorly and was clearly a tourist (our professor told us not to wear shorts--"a dead giveaway that you're American." Believe me, they knew anyway) I felt at home there. We'd walk around in those massive, BEAUTIFUL cathedrals and I felt a calm sense of familiarity. Every time I learn about some place and want to go there, I get this feeling that I have a niche there. That in some strange, quiet way, it's where I belong.

Can you be OUT of shape if you were never actually IN?

Tonight I went running for the first time in a number of weeks. It was pitiful. As I was painfully making my way around Provo I thought to myself: "Hey--remember last summer when you ran everyday and it FELT good and going for a five-mile jog was nice and refreshing? Yeah. Remember that? That was a long time ago." Look what winter and a busy schedule and refined flour has done to me. I also used to do the "Shrink Your Female Fat Zones" Denise Austin DVD with my sister (Denise Austin has the most bright-eyed expression I have EVER seen. It's ridiculous). One day we would do the routine with weights and then next day we'd do the one with the exercise ball. Those were the days. Man. Now I walk to campus and think how hard my life is. Wuss.

Sign up for the Summer Reading Program!

Summer is excellent for so many reasons. There's corn on the cob, sunshine, tans, vacations, loads of fresh fruit, the SMELL of sunshine/ coconutty sunblock/ dirt/ barbecue/ grass, swimming, hiking, white water rafting. Everything seems looser in the summer. Less crammed and less hasty. In Provo, 2/3 of the people leave--which I like best, I'll admit. There are concerts and s'mores and barefoot walks. But one of the best things about summer is that there is time to READ. Finally! After months of reading assigned literature and bowling-ball-weighted textbooks, I can read what I want. I went to the library after work about 2-3 times a week last summer. My library card has a purple dragon and says, "Imagination Passport" on it. How cool am I?

There are certain books that I read only during the summer. They belong to that time of year for some reason. I've decided that I need to purchase "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" by Joan Didion this year. I've read it a couple of times, and it just feels like a summer book to me. Maybe I'll re-read Harry Potter too. It's been a while. Mm. Maybe not. We'll see.

Woman Hollering Creek

"I wish I could rub the grief from you as if it were a smudge on the cheek... I know every cave and crevice, every back road and ravine, but I don't know where I could hide you from yourself." --Sandra Cisneros

Long Lasting Shimmer

I've been in the library for over three hours, sitting at this computer. There is a girl across from me who has been here for at least two and half hours. I can see her lip gloss GLISTENING from here--and I don't think she's re-applied at all! I'm impressed. Either she is super stealthy with her lip gloss renewal, or she's got lip gloss of the gods. I do not ever wear the stuff, but I feel like I should applaud her or catch her eye and spell "WOW" with my hands and mime putting on lip gloss or something. I won't.

Banana eyes

I hate sugar free pudding. I hate sugar substitutes. I also hate eating too much Easter candy, which I did today. I like cold milk. And walks. I never take walks anymore. You get to know a place in such a different way then you walk through it. I don't know Provo very well on the walk level.

I wore heels to church. I used to love to wear heels and sometimes I still do. I took them off on the way home and went barefoot. It was nice.

If you gave me a goldfish today, I would give him back. Because I would like to pick out my own goldfish. And today I would name him Sheldon Mirkle. I would always call him by his full name, except when I wouldn't.

75 Candles

I must be getting old. Like, seventy-five-years-where-are-my-eye-glasses-get-my-own-condo-in-Leisure-World-retirement-facility-old. Leisure World is the retirement "community" where my grandpa and my step-grandmother lived in Seal Beach, California. It is a veritable walled-in city of the elderly, like one massive neighborhood of baby-boomer parents. It has 8,000 residents or something unbelievable like that. It has a gated entrance and whoever you're going to visit has to call ahead and give the okay for you to get through. Traffic--that really should have quotation marks around it--is directed by little old people who wear gray-blue shorts and gesture to you with white-gloved hands and shout helpful directives like, "southbound!" Driving around in that place feels surreal. Everywhere you look are white-headed, prune-skinned people--waving, going on walks, entering one of the many recreation centers there, etc. There was a lemon tree growing outside of my grandpa's condo. I remember being totally in awe and picking two lemons. I took them home to Oregon and put them on top of my dresser. I would pick them up several times a day and smell them, until they dried out and were eventually thrown away.

Anyway. I'm old. Let me tell you why:

1. I can't stay up late anymore. I FELL ASLEEP last night when Lance and Andrea were over. Passed out. Snored, even (not really). The first semester of my freshman year at college I always stayed up late, getting three hours of sleep every night. Ms. Reasor and I would sit in our kitchen with blocks of cheddar cheese and carve away at them while discussing any and every thing. Ms. Reasor would sometimes paint me without her glasses on. I didn't realize how terrible I felt until I got home for Christmas break and slept for 12 hours straight. The next semester I got closer to 5 hours a night. Now I need 7. NEED. If I plan to get up at a time that will cut my number of slumbering hours to anything less, it does not happen. Unless I absolutely have to get up for something (to catch a flight, write a 9 page paper, save your life, etc).

2. I'm cold all the time. There's a slight drizzle outside and I think I need a fleece body suit and a cup of mint tea.

3. My back aches sometimes. I think this is actually due to bad posture and sitting on a love sac too much--but you never know. Arthritis is also a plausible cause.

4. I've always liked old movies. In sixth grade I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn from "Roman Holiday" for Halloween. No one my age had a clue who I was. My only validation was from my teachers.

5. I look at weekends as a time to fold my laundry, catch up on sleep, and try a new recipe.

6. I already know what I age I intend to start applying wrinkle cream. Ask Kegan. He knows.

7. I look at my roommates and think, "they're so young. I remember when I was that age. I was just like that." They are three years younger than I am (as opposed to three decades).

8. I'm bad at texting.

9. I keep worrying about my calcium intake. I drink a ton of milk. I like to take a preventative stance on osteoporosis.

10. I have a Snuggie. And I wear it (and LIKE it).

11. The hip foods these days are mochas and sushi. Please. I prefer things like licorice and meatloaf and pumpernickel bread.

12. I fear dentures. This is part of the reason behind my excellent dental hygiene.

If you're not convinced, I'll send you a certificate authenticating my membership in the Bingo club.

When you are still dreaming

I like Provo in the early morning when it's still dark. This city might be at its best when everyone is still asleep and I can sit in the glass-walled room on the ground floor of the JFSB and watch the rain reflect and glaze and the sky gradually lighten and yellow squares of light come on as professors arrive at their offices.

Put it on mute

I'm looking for quiet. It seems that now, more than any other time I can remember in my life thus far, I'm searching for silence. In this beautiful wonderful amazing life-from-concentrate essay by Brian Doyle called "The Meteorites" he talks about how "slowly [he] searched for silence, and by the end of the summer [he] had learned to sit quietly and watch the waves of sound crash on sticky tables." I don't think I've learned to watch the waves of sound crashing, I just feel like they're crashing down on me. I'm assaulted by sounds all day. People talking, music blaring from my roommate's speakers, the constant nag of over-loud TV, the constant nag of my own thoughts, the hammering of passing traffic. I wish I could take all the noise around me and turn it down to a low hum--or maybe not even that--the way you turn down the volume on a stereo by spinning a round dial with your fingers. I feel like I could figure out most problems or unanswered questions if I could just find some quiet for long enough time. I try and think things over in the shower, because the murmur of the water is almost as good as silence. But my mind usually goes blank once the water is turned on, as if I'm so stunned to have quiet that I go right into some kind of stupor. I have to consciously prod myself to think. I get distracted by nothing (as in, nothingness distracts me) and keep coming to myself to find that my mind is blank and I have to try, again, to think about something.

Silence isn't always a good thing. There are always those silences where I know I should say something ("are you okay?" "thank you" "I love you" "I hate this" "Can we stop the car so I can go to the bathroom?") but don't. There are the silences that mean that you asked a question of someone--or yourself--and there's no answer to it, or else it's an answer you don't want. There are those tense silences around a dinner table or over the phone in the middle of the night where you're just hoping to dissolve or explode--whichever is more effective. There are the silences that mean that whoever you just got the nerve to bear your soul to wasn't listening and you make your own silence, realizing that they didn't hear. There are the silences that mean that no one is calling for you. There are the silences that mean you're too angry to speak. Basically, there are a lot of bad silences.

But there are good silences.

I can point to specific things that gave me an appreciation for silence.

First: my dad. To say my dad is an introvert would be an understatement. He is not a talkative guy. I remember driving in the car with him while I was growing up; we didn't talk very much, but it was comfortable. I knew that we were both in our own, separate worlds of thought, but we could share a confined space in total quiet and total ease. My mom has never been as comfortable with this. There was one particular trip in which we were driving from Oregon to Utah and no one had said a single thing for probably an hour. I was fine. My dad was fine. But my mom said something about not being able to stand it, and flipped on the radio. I almost never feel like I have to force a conversation with my dad. Sometimes we talk, but a lot of times we don't. And that's really okay.

Second: Last summer the radio in my car broke. At first I was devastated (as much as you can be over a radio, for pity's sake). I was so used to having it on wherever I drove. But as days passed I realized that having that quiet as I was going from place to place cleared my mind. I'd get out at my destination and feel calm and like my brain had been kind of purged. It's like the way you feel after throwing up--like you got everything out, and you're cleaner somehow--but for my mind. Odd as it sounds, I starting having conversations aloud with myself. I figured things out. I got to know myself better. I was probably one of my own best audiences.

Third: The book, The Chosen, by Chaim Potok. A beautiful book. I get a crush on Reuven Malter and half wish I was Jewish every time I read it. Which is beside the point. Ahem. Anyway, the book talks a lot about silence. Duh. But in it, Danny Saunders is raised in silence. His father, the Rebbe, doesn't talk to him. They only time they talk is when they study the Talmud together. The Rebbe tells Reuven that in silence "you hear the world crying." He raised Danny in silence to teach him to listen to that crying, to learn compassion. I agree with that. Not that I don't want to speak to my children or something, but that when we stop running our own mouths and listen to and observe people, we learn about them. I think we get to know their hearts.

In that same essay by Brian Doyle he talks about how he had to clean up a boy (Doyle is a counselor at a summer camp for young boys) who has soiled himself. Doyle talks about "understanding dimly that my silence with this weeping child was the first wise word I had ever spoken."

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this. I like talking with people, I love music. But sometimes I wish I could turn it all off, because I keep thinking that if I did, a knot would untighten in me and rest--and I'd find something I was looking for.