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| My heart wakes to the human condition.
It quivers in my chest and stretches and pulls and cries out for something to wrap itself around. I read somewhere that Love Has The Longest Arms. I can't remember where or when, but I remember those words and I know that they are true.
Everything moves me - babies and weddings and soldiers coming home from war. Choirs, the six o'clock news, and people who drink coffee alone. I am moved by the colors on the trees in the fall, and by little kids who have no idea how brilliant they are. My heart wakes to these things, my heart loves and loves and loves like there is no end, only a means. A means that is made up of heartbeats, and touches that are sewn together carefully to create an embrace.
Love is on my fingertips when I play the guitar and when I drag them across ivory piano keys. Love is on my lips when I kiss my nieces forehead goodnight. Love is black and runny and spilling out of my pen when I can't sleep, and love is quiet and soft when I sit in silence and just glow.
One time my mother said to me: "Anya, some people are just made to love."
And a believe that. With every quivering, aching beat of my heart I know that I am some people and that I am made simply to love.
There is logic that says I should pursue a career, and lock down a future, and have a home with two windows and make my garden grow but there is something stronger and far more absolute that drives me to open my eyes in the morning, and beckons me to follow it through weeds and wars toward a different kind of sunset.
You're given this one life. This thing of a malleable beauty and you can mold mountains with it if you'd like and I for one am through with just living life by going through the motions. We live in a time that screams now or never, and I'm choosing now because never is incredibly far away.
Johnathon Safran Foer wrote some books that crawled inside of me and in one Oskar Schell said "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I'm not living." In that way, Oskar and I are the same. I am creaking and buckling and crying out for life in the most absurd and desperate of ways and I am learning that happiness is very temporary, and very circumstantial. I am learning that you can think your way out of happiness one thousand times, and you can fall into valleys of sadness and emptiness if you are not careful. But fullness...fullness is a different thing. Fullness is a bold and beautiful thing that has learned to shine when all it has seen is darkness. I want to be full.
Don Miller says we are called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding.I have big hands, and I am going to try to cover every inch that I can.
There is something so profound about love, even though the word tends to be tossed around. There is something so honest and true and brimming with beauty about sharing your love, especially if you have more than what you know to do with.
I'm going to Africa this summer, to figure out if thats where my love is supposed to lead me. I'm going to be challenged and changed, and I am going because I have to know if I am wasting my now, and if there is a place that my love can wrap its arms around, a place that I can press my hands to like one enormous band aid.
My heart wakes to the human condition, and my heart has been conditioned to stay wide awake.
Thomas Edison's last words were - "It is very beautiful over there."
I don't know where there is, but I know that it's somewhere, and I hope that it is beautiful. | | |
| ..that I'm going to let everybody down.
Just when I think I'm comfortable where I am, just when I've resigned myself over to reckless abandon, I remember that I still do care and that I don't think I'm ever going to stop caring. Lately the parts of me that have been balanced have been growing and swelling and fighting with one and other, becoming more prominent and more pronounced and more defining. Party Anya is taking me over, and although I know that my friends don't mind it and I don't REALLY think I do, what if the rest of the world does? How can I be the Anya I want to be without letting other people down? How can I say I'm being true to myself? Or in this instance, would being true to myself coincide with being completely immature? I want to be all of the things people want me to be. I want to be Party Anya, who is renown for being a the one of the funnest people around to waste your recreation away with, I want to be the best baby sitter and the sweetest Aunt and a loving daughter and an understanding friend. I am so scared that I'm going to fuck everyone over, or let everyone down. I do things that I know so many of those categories do not support, but I feel like that is the core of me. This reckless, crazy Anya who stays out every night putting too many chemicals in her body...that is the Anya that it feels good to be. That's the Anya who's been raging since Freshman year of high school and doesn't want to be stifled, especially not now. But the Anya who wants to be a good role model and a good friend starts to trip over her guilt after these rendezvous and then I'm stuck here, trying to figure out what direction I'm going to let this violent wind blow me around in.
And then there are friends, the friends I used to have, the friends I've made and the friends I'm trying to make. There are so many people that I want to see, that I want to make feel important. I have so many friends that I want to please, that I want to give my time and my love to, and I can't figure out how to distribute it without letting anybody down, without ripping anybody off. I can't stop thinking about this, about how I'm ever going to be able to give everyone more of me than just a tiny piece of my attention, of my time and my listening and my heart. And then there is the one person that I'm giving the most to, and I don't even think they deserve it or care about it for that matter.
And I fucked over one of my closest friends on complete accident, and now his parents probably hate me and I'm marked man and this is the first time I've ever been the "bad" one. This is the first time I've ever been the girl who you have to make an excuse for when you're hanging out with her because your parents always assume the worst. To be perfectly honest, that's a huge blow. I've never felt like that before, I've never felt like a bad kid. Despite all of the things that I do, I've been able to maintain and wonderful sense of innocence and I'm not ready to loose that. So why do I do the things I do if that's not who I'm comfortable being? Because it's fun. Because I was made to dance and to sing and do things that make it possible for me to love even more freely, right? Maybe.
So where am I now?
I'm trying to decide what is more important to me, so I can start defining those points. I know that I'm supposed to let life come at me, and forget to try to control and monitor and define everything but I am me, and I can't do that. I have to start learning where I flourish and where I fade and stop getting the two confused.
Wish me luck.
I wanna get myself attached
to something bolted down
So these winds of circumstance
wont keep blowing me around
from when I land
to when I leave
there is enough time
to sleep and sing
I keep running around
and all I want to do is lay motionless | | |
| ...to just write about how much I love things. Mostly music and words.
I love music. I love it, I love it, I love it. I could sing and strum my guitar and drag my fingers over the piano keys until the day I died and feel so full, like I was swollen. Typing about it makes me want to cry, because I don't think I could ever explain it. It's like a symphony is playing in my head all of the time, music and words and chords and keys and my heart is beating along with it, totally in sync. And then there's those lyrics...those fucking lyrics. They make you feel so human, so delightfully unoriginal. I love lyrics like I love my family...
It sounds so stupid, I realize, to pine over the act of loving something. But that's what my job is, as a writer, I think. To pine over things, feelings, actions.
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. // Joan Didion
And now onto the section where I tell you how much I love writing. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I love everything about it, I love every keystroke, I love every word and every phrase. So much of me is in the words that I write. They define me, they organize me, they make me who I am. They make it so my eyes have the strength to close at night and my heart doesn't weigh me down too much.
Jacob wrestled with Angels, and I with sentences. There's a big difference, I know. Still, to me they are angels, this crowd of syllables // Max Apple
And I love other people's words. Because sometimes no one will ever say it better.
And one day we will die,
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me
What a beautiful face
I have found in this place that is circling all round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't Believe
How strange it is to be anything at all
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| This phase of my life is almost over.
I'm not DEPRESSED or anything, but I'm certainly not happy. But next semester holds a whole fucking gambit of possibilities which I will now outline in a segment I like to call "IT CAN ONLY GO UP FROM HERE: Semester 1 vs Semester 2."
Semester One: Classes
Now my classes suck a lot. I'm taking Women & Gender Studies (feminist theory = bullshit), Anthropology 206: Human Origins (bane of my existence), Math 110 (sounds easy, feels like someone is peeling my skin off), Ethics (more commonly known as: Let's-Talks-In-Circles-and-Trick-Ourselves-Into-Thinking-We're-Smarter-For-It class with an IMPOSSIBLE term paper), and Social Problems (which isn't actually that bad, just sort of a waste of time.) This makes a grand total of 17 ass raping credits.
Semester Two: Classes
Next semester I sink down to a VERY manageable 15 credits, and I'm taking classes that not only fulfill my bullshit Gen Ed requirements, but will probably feel like elementary classes in light of this semesters hell hole of a schedule. Firstly, I've got Communications 101 (how can this even be difficult...as far as communicating goes - I'm pretty good with it), Foundations of Music (Another Gen Ed... it teaches you beginning theory - note values and maybe a little bit of counterpoint. Considering I've taken music theory from age 5 to 17, I think I'll fare just fine), Writing 150 (It's the same if not easier than my AP English 12 class), and lastly Geology 111 (which may be the only actually difficult one, since it's a lab too, but my sister and I are taking it together, so really it's more like an adventure.)
Semester One: Living Situation
I live on the fourth floor of Kistler Living Center, hatefully renamed "Squiggly Hall Living Center." I live with a roommate who likes dirty rap music and Miley Cyrus and sleeps all day if she's not screaming at people on the phone. It's always too cold or too hot and I have to walk too far for clean drinking water. It's smelly and cramped and nothing is ever on TV. The halls are filled with screaming girls and girls with attitudes and girls leading other guys through the hall and trying too hard. Long story short - I have never hated ANYTHING more than I hate the fourth floor of Kistler Living Center, Room 265.
Semester Two: Living Situation
Although my living situation is up for debate, it still only goes up from 9th circle of hell that I've been dwelling in for far too long. Option A is ideal - living with some friends at Campus View where I could do whatever I wanted. That sounds fabulous. It cost about as much as living in the dorms does. Or Option B, which is moving home. Now, if you would have asked me this summer, I would have told you ANYTHING is better than moving home. But then I met Kistler Living Center, 4th floor, Room 265 and I have never admitted to a wrongful statement more than now. Option B makes it so I don't have to pay rent for anything, but then I have to pay gas to drive a half an hour each day and pay for a parking pass. I also have to live at home - which means I have to shovel Mt. Zentmeyer when it snows and put up with my parents bullshit. But I sort of like being home - I have my own room and I have free food and I don't have to worry about playing my guitar too loud or waiting my turn for a shower.
Semester One: The Lanthorn
Although just working for the Lanthorn in general is a privilege as a freshman, I have a lowly Staff Writer job for news, and I get paid next to nothing. This is a simple explanation - it's an all-consuming job that really offers no money to make up for hours. It's a labor of love right now, but you can only love something so long without any sort of reciprocation.
Semester Two: The Lanthorn
Starting in January 2010 I'm the new Assistant News Editor for the Lanthorn. Although this means my workload increases considerably, I make close to $200 every pay period (as opposed to the $40-60 I make now.) I have more respect and more opportunity around the office, too. I get desk space, a key card, a different e-mail and just more overall responsibility. Besides, moving up the ranks in newspaper makes me feel like I'm actually accomplishing something at this godforsaken college.
So, there you have it. As plainly seen, next semester will be better, and I will be - in the words of Radiohead: "Fitter, happier, more productive, not drinking too much...sleeping well, no paranoia...no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows, nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate, nothing so childish - at a better pace."
It's funny. Nobody reads this, so I'm purely writing this for myself. A reassurance, I think. Motivation to get through the next month of my life, the next week of my life. I take it in strides, hour by hour and day by day. Just get through this and try not to loose yourself. Just get through this and try to keep being funny, witty, charming. Just get through this and try to keep your sanity intact. Just get through this and try to sleep a few hours at night, eat a few meals a day, turn on some lights. Alter your state of mind, whatever that means, whatever that takes. Just get through this.
I get surprised when the people I meet here like me - I feel like I'm half the person I used to be. I feel like my spark is fading, and all I was ever worth was my spark. The hopeful part of me is moving forward, slowly and desperately, waiting for the next thing to come.
But that's life isn't it? Waiting for the next thing to come, waiting for the upgrade, waiting until the last big promotion when you can finally "settle down and be happy." And who knows if you'll ever settle down. Who knows if you won't just keep running and keep running until your poor little heart gives out from beating too fast. Who knows if you won't keep climbing until that one day when you just get too tired and loose your footing. But that's life. You live it because on the way up, on the way across the world with your hummingbird heart you'll see things, and you'll feel things and sometimes you'll even stop and stay a while.
And that's why I don't think I'll ever stop loving things, no matter what happens to me, or no matter what conclusions I draw. No matter how cynical I am, or how angry I am, or how unfair everything starts to feel - I know that there's a purpose behind it. I know that it's life, and I know that I'm tired, but I also know that it's what happens to me when I'm running that will make me who I am. There's so much time, and we have to run or else we'll never get anywhere, we'll never grow. We'll never meet new people, and we'll never learn new things, and we'll never discover what we hate and what we love. And love, really, is everything.
"A purpose of a human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." - Kurt Vonnegut
And though they were sad, they rescued everyone
They lifted up the sun, a spoonful weighs a ton
Giving more than they had, the process had begun
A million came from one, the limits now were none
Being drunk on their plan, they lifted up the sun
Forcing it off with their hands, the trapdoor came undone
Above our heads it swung, the privilege had been won
Being drunk on their plan, they lifted up the sun
Yelling as hard as they can, the doubters all were stunned
Heard louder than a gun
The sound they made was love
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