Ancient Japanese anatomical illustration

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pasts? presents¿ futures?

My room is the aftermath of a tornado; trying to make room to organize all the stuff I use (which is now lying all over the floor) I pull all my old stuff out of the closet, wardrobe and desk. Now my floor is covered in piles of the ancient and the current.

I found this, written on a ripped scrap of paper when sorting through things:

"A little too abstract, a little too wise

It is time for us to kiss the earth again,

It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,

Let the rich life run to the roots again

I will go down to the lovely Sur Rivers

And dip my arms in them up to my shoulders.

I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers

In the ocean over the river boulders

I will touch things and things and no more thoughts

That breed like mouthless mayflies darkening the sky,

The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks

So that they cannot strike, hardly can fly.

Things are the hawk's food and noble is the mountain, Oh noble

Pico Blanco, steep sea wave of marble

-Jeffers "Return"

reminded me of you, Elena

-Jullianne"

Seemed to me to really correlate with my most recent blog post.

Perhaps the state I'm in now is partially a reaction to being entirely immersed in abstract ideas (majoring in philosophy) for a time.

beginnings? middles¿ endings?

Something incredible happened to a friend of mine recently. We were sitting on hay bales in the back of a truck, driving thru fields to a bonfire in the Arkansas c0untryside. I was talking to a little girl named Avery about hunting animals and shotting BB guns and dumb guys who hits deer with cars to kill them, and in the background, I heard my friend say something about how strangely nice the hay smelled. I didn't pay too much attention because I was preoccupied with my own thoughts all night, and my senses felt dull.

But later that night I was sitting next to my friend on a bale in front of the fire, and he took a hit of San Francisco pot. He left minutes later to search for water, and there were rumors that he wasn't doing well. Near-fainting in a truck bed somewhere. (Meanwhile I was kicking it with the queer folk at the party, wishing I was queer too.)

On the car right home, my friend, who left San Francisco over twenty years ago when an embarrassing incident made him to quit high school, told me what had happened. After hitting the pipe, he had immediately felt ill to the point of passing out. He stumbled around like a man whose death was super-imminent, and finally climbed into the back of the truck (this was incidental; he just needed a soft place to rest). The hay was all around him, and as soon as he inhaled deeply enough to really smell it, something clicked into place. "I could see every star in the sky. I went from feeling the worst I've ever felt to feeling amazing. And I knew it was the best I'd feel for a long time..."

The thing is, the incident was based on (almost) a strange prescience. He told me that somehow he's known earlier in the night that the smell of the hay was special--that it carried some poignant significance. "I stole the smells from you."

Are we still on middles? I love the story itself, but it also had a nagging effect me. My friend is a complete nut. He's so nutty that he's actually, in many ways, saner than everybody else. He lets the world act on him instead of forcefully trying to shape himself. And so he believes in supernatural forces and whatnot--and he's also a pain in the ass, because he's impossible to predict. But after he told the story, he launched into this seemingly tangential rant about rituals, and how American's suffer because of our LACK of rituals. His example: wouldn't a sixteen year old girl have an easier time of adolescence if her family threw a bonfire ceremony to signal her transition into X-phase of her life. She'd know, by rite of the ceremony, that the texture of her life was about to change. I'm not quite sure what he was getting at--how ritual related to what had happened to him withe the pot and the fire and the hay (he's 47), but I guess it's possible that he was trying to signal something personal without coming right out and saying it...

Ok, I really wanted to tell that story. But there is sort of a "moral" that can relate to middle, or endings, or beginnings. Recently I've been experiencing radical shifts in mood: life is hard and treacherous one day, then it's totally beautiful the next. To some extent, I do feel as though I control my outlook. I know that I control my reaction to events. At the same time, I appreciate and value the power that external events and things have over us. I think I like that idea of surrender, of letting go and reacting. Elena, you spoke about this a bit. My boss and his gf are in their late 40's, but at the same time, they can be totally childlike. They get erratically angry, flirt shamelessly, joke constantly. At first, I thought it was immaturity--and to some extent, it is, in the way we're conditioned to regard immaturity--but I also see it as a kind of openness (and acceptance of one's self) that I really like.

Some middles

Self analysis; the lens of middle.

Reading your guy's posts I found them very contemplative and as I was thinking about my own post I realized it was very different: cheery pictures of the inside of veggies!

But this is very much in tune with how my life has been lately; cheery pictures of veggies basically sums it up. I haven't been thinking as much, haven't been contemplating or analyzing. Like when Jullianne mentioned that I told her I wanted to reconcile change and stability--I have not given that any thought in months. I have been very happy and excited about things like sunsets and the colors of the vegetables and beautiful market displays. I have been letting my emotions out, being honest with how I feel to myself and others. I have been letting myself get frustrated with people and snapping at them. I feel like a child living my life this way.

Then I started thinking about my recent history using a metaphor of an ocean (warning: this becomes ridiculous). During high school I was an undersea creature. There was a lot of pressure down there and it was dark; I couldn't see very well, or move around freely; I felt trapped. Then I floated up into the middle of the ocean waters; this was exciting--there were so many new things, more light, more movement. But these ocean currents were scary and overwhelming and chaotic. Plus I felt like I was drowning a whole lot. Then I swam up all the way to the surface. It's very bright up here and there is a whole lot of happiness. But the brightness makes me lazy and stuns the thoughts out of me. I spend a lot of time staring at the ripples in the water and the clouds moving slowly by. I have forgotten most of what I was preoccupied with beneath the surface. I have become superficial.

So what's next? I hope it's flying around. I like flying. Maybe I'll think about flying really hard tonight before I go to sleep and then I'll have flying dreams.

middle schmiddle

Jet black jungle bunny...

I'm keeping that one.

I'm sitting in my apartment drinking Jasmine tea and listening to Brandi Carlyle. My skin is so dry, my lips are dry, my body misses Austin's humidity.

My own understanding of "middleness" relates to my experiences with travel. I often feel as though I'm in the middle of a variety of things, like: two places (the place I just left and the place I'll go to next), two identities (the person I was in the old place and the person I'll become through my experiences in the new place), and two other identities (how I feel myself most intimately vs. how I'm trying to relate to the culture of the place I'm in <--I find myself between those identities).

Sometimes the feeling of middleness, or in-between-ness, is liberating; I'm not bound to the rules of a single place, to the culture based group-mentality that many of its long-term dwellers come to occupy. Sometimes middleness feels isolating; when I want things, like a sure community or a stable lover, and rules start to look like the way to go (i.e. do this, or act this way, and you'll get this).

I think that ultimately I'm in between two natural human desires, though maybe I'm more sensitive to the tension than some. These two are a desire for variety and change and a longing for reassurance (stability, constancy and balance). Elena, you've told me about your wish to reconcile the two.

I want to be at peace with this kind of middleness; to not feel as though one thing--constancy vs. variety--is better than another. My mom stayed with me for four days, and she spent a lot of time dreaming about my future. To her, Arkansas is only a middle-place: the gap between college and the rest of my life. To her telling, this is how it'll go: after this brief stint in the south, during which I'll learn valuable job skills at my internship, I'll move to NYC or San Francisco, get a job, apply to graduate school, meet my true love (according to her I'll only ever have a normal dating life when I decide to move to an intellectual community. All I have to do is give in and go to Columbia). "Then you can stop this gypsy lifestyle," she says.

I understand all the appeal of her dream. Some of it sounds attractive to me. But I don't know if I can do it. Even if I do go to New York, it'll be with gypsy intention--to live an exciting, unrooted life. Maybe what I'm referring to as "middleness" is a seed deeply sewn, one that all my actions & outlook grow from (in which case it shouldn't be called middleness at all: it's more a beginning, middle and end).

I met this guy at a film screening I attended alone in Little Rock two nights ago. He was from Arkansas, moved to L.A. to attend film school, lived in a bus for a while, then moved back to Arkansas five years ago. He was open, frank, warm and funny. Those are qualities I respect and want to emulate. I think I see them most in modern "gypsies."

if i type "jbjbem" into the search box, it takes me to the urban dictionary entry for jbjb : a jet black jungle bunny

i'm still in middle america. i was about to make some crack about being a middle child, but none of us is one.

i've been thinking a lot about death. my grandmother, who's 95, told me a little while ago, "old people don't have a future, they only have the past and the present." this was kind of immediately depressing to me at the time, and i kind of made her this sad face and she just looked at me and said "its true" in a very matter-of-fact manner. the past year particularly i've had this growing fear that my grandparents were going to die and i was going to forget a lot of things about them, and that i wouldn't be able to pass on the memory of how amazing they were to potential future generations. i felt this heavy weight, and that i was likely going to fuck up and drop it. this time i've spent with them now has kind of reduced that fear, in some ways. i think this is in part because i'm getting more comfortable with death (but more uncomfortable with the fact that i was uncomfortable with it to begin with), and in part because i'm figuring out some balance between beginnings, middles and ends.

i recently started meditating regularly, and while i'm sitting there, trying to clear my mind and focus on my breathing, i repeatedly catch myself thinking about the things i should be doing instead of actually doing them. and therein lies the problem.

i don't know how much of a blog writer i am, i kind of feel like i'm writing some shitty inspirational speech.

an idea

Joanna, I know you're back in the states.  Why don't you post something about MIDDLE America?

Middles

A couple of weeks ago Amanda, one of the interns, brought some of her city friends to the farm. She got up at 5:30am with the rest of us to help load the van for the market. Once Michaele left she went back to bed in her tent with her two city boys; she slept for another three hours while the rest of us went to work in the fields. Once the sun had risen higher the three stumbled out of their tent and out to join us weeding in the fields. One of the boys mentioned a question his housemate asked him recently: "which do you like better: the beginning, middle or end". I think this is an interesting way to consider things. The other boy, more of a cynic, said "yeah, then you end up talking about nothing for hours". I retorted "So what do you prefer talking about, starvation in Africa? Is that talking about something?"
But he had a good point--that it is quite a vague question and it really depends on what it is. If it is something you dislike you will prefer the end; and you will like the beginning and middle best when it is something you really love.
Thinking about this question I realized that generally I love beginnings and I don't usually mind ends too much, but I have a problem with middles. I love the excitement and anticipation that comes with beginnings: they are times of potential and pure possibility. I probably like ends of things because they are also the beginning of something else. But I often find that in the middle of things I am not content--I am continuously looking forward to the next beginning. I have trouble being in the moment; enjoying the now. The unexciting, the normal, the middle of things. And this is what most of life is: the middle. Middles are where things are built and where things grow. I often get myself through the middle of things by planning new things, new beginnings. But is this a good way to be? Always consumed with plans for the future; preventing me from focusing on what is happening to me right now.
So I suppose this is why I suggested it as a theme; I would like to try to come to terms with middles and get better at appreciating them.