simple pleasures

Day One Simple Pleasures. 

Since it's the beginning, I won't agonize over offering a two-for-one.

Simple Pleasure #1  The First Sip of Coffee

This, paired with Simple Pleasure #2 The Last Bite of a Bagel...

...makes these first autumn days such a delight. 

summer in the city

i remain convinced that everyone wants to be a dancer, or at the very least, feels that pull at one time to be physically so beautiful, so enchanting, strong, liquid. to be at once as ethereal and otherworldly as they are defined by blood, muscle, breath. 

i stayed in portland with my dad the other weekend, and on our walk he insisted we peek inside a tent erected just inside the park near his appartment. the nondescript, white, and totally uninteresting tent. 

and then i heard Tchaikovsky. 

i love portland. the oregon ballet theater has had its ups and downs. 

but i love portland, and i love the ballet, and i sat with my father on a beautiful portland summer saturday

for what seemed like centuries. 

obt exposed. http://www.obt.org/outreach_events_exposed.html

i sat in the cool spot of sun and watched them at the barre, and then run through

the finale of swan lake. 

i sat there with my father and smiled and sighed and we both cried like we always do

when he takes me to the ballet

she has the most impeccable sense of timing, and asked me just last week

what i would do, have as a career, if i could do anything

 i blushed a little and smiled: 

"i want to be a ballerina."

i know that not everyone wants to be a ballerina, but i do feel like maybe, 

everyone wants to feel the power in their bodies and to move

http://www.thescarproject.org/

a minute is a very long time

yoga now augments the short list of things during which i am more body than mind 

or that the mind in which i am contained is much larger than any other moment

these experiences more out-of-body than in

moments when  i'm close to or immersed in welcome hallucination

when the universe is simultaneously expanding and contained

known in all of its vibrations by each red blood cell my breath pushes to and through my fingertips

perhaps waxing sentimental over yoga is a sailed ship, an out of date trend. 

but i wouldn't have gotten it before now. before today, this morning. so that's alright. 

swimming dreams
the tenacity of sand
transcending parents

last night i dreamt...

what a tune. i dreamed of swimming. of sunshine and blue water and diving and struggling lungs and kicking legs, clawing arms.

my swimsuit kept coming off, but i wasn't embarrassed, and surrounded by friends old and new, i felt very very warm and safe and seal-like in the water. i dove deeply. i was frightened once when i dove, skimmed the bottom for the length of the pool, and then upon my ascension at the other end, felt as though i didn't have enough air. not enough air. then a strange breath, still underwater.

"sometimes, i think if i try hard enough, that i could breathe underwater."
I was sitting in a bathtub in a hotel in london, trying to relax before the flight that would take me back to the states, away from my life in france, away from sam as i had tried to preserve him, away from the ability to pretend as though i could continue the pattern. I poured small handfuls of water over my bent knees and watched the water trickle down my legs.
"that's stupid."
never have i been so small, so exposed, and so young. we didn't work anymore. i watched the teabags set on the ledge of the tub, the ledge where he sat watching me, release their inky stains into the water.
"that's the meanest thing you've ever said to me."

i don't remember what happened next. in my mind he got up and walked out of the door. most likely he stayed, tried to apologize, said something nice or told me he loved me. but when i think of this moment i watch him get up and leave, and i think about the moment when you realize that the bath water is no longer warm enough.

it was sunny and i was swimming. so many faces were there that i have loved, idealized and glistening.

this scene appeared after much more anxious dreams. JL had shown up while sam and i were talking. Sam was so very angry, and i had to tell JL to leave, i had to hide him. i was guilty and sad and i don't remember any of the colors.

and then i was swimming in the sun.

i couldn't commit to my imaginary best friend. i couldn't convince myself.

realist

i didn't write in a diary, but i did read fictional recreations of those of historical figures. 

isolationist?

i don't dedicate the proper attention, time, or presence of mind to this blog. 

lazy bones. 

to maybe, potentially, perhaps one day have a job, i should probably shape-up. 

could it be that children are so interested in the ocean, in space, because they are realms completely unconcerned with human activity, and children are not yet disconnected from that original apathy, that original disregard for human opulence and depravity? they've not breached the barrier into reality. they're not yet far enough away from the throb of the womb, the submersion of nonbeing, to be completely concerned with the real world or have gained to much distance from those greater spaces. 

what i listen to and hear

I listen to OPB when I do nothing, I listen to NPR when I'm really doing something, I listen to RadioFrance when all I want to do is feel angry and terribly lonely and insufficient and sad.

I'm listening to OPB, about a Portland author. She's fantastic, smart. My professor told me about her because she mentions nature, northwestern landscape in the interview as she features it in her novels. I don't think I'll ever be able to write fiction. I just can't.

"There are a lot of serial killers menacing the Portland, Oregon area, in my mind."

Sheeeesh.

Non-fiction is incredible. I'm so intrigued by the genre, and so keenly aware of the opportunities it presents. I'm slightly offended that it's something I feel I can actually do, succeed in, contribute to. But that won't deter me from enjoying other work.

Her antiheroine is a sexy psychopath. She says there is appeal in a woman-killer, and I think that's a bit insane. I once watched one of those 20/20 MSNBC Dateline reports about a woman who killed her child. It was not sexy. She's talking about criminals revealing the intimacy they feel with their victims, real life. The power dynamics of a woman committing violence against a man, making him depend on her isn't some sort of empowered role-reversal, some trump of patriarchy or some revolution. It's sad. the fetishization of women, their power, their sexuality, is still fetish if it's coming form a woman.

She thinks her books are "very funny. many people do not." I once said that i "think I'm really funny."

well goddamn