Lent sort-of halfway point

It is long since I sat down with a keyboard under my fingers and typed to write this way. I spent much time with the manual typewriter November, but had no laptop, no personal computer and so could not have this moment. I am uncertain about it, to be perfectly honest with you.

It is more quick than I would like, but that probably reflects more on the amount of time I would like to take on my writing than it does on the technology itself. Self-control is what is required.

I began Lent with some aim of exercising self-control for 40 days. I do not know how well I succeed thus far. It is halfway gone once tonight is done. I do not know that the next 20 days will be any easier than the preceding, though I’ve been so jazzed about the cooking and the reading and the time that I’ve spent in my home doing more than staring at walls, and getting something like healthy (although that was never really the goal), and I’ve had more focus. Focus is the constant struggle. I would rather look at life as something less confrontational than ‘struggle’ and generally I do, I would not mislead myself simply because the words flow more easily from fingertips on a keyboard than they do from a pen onto paper.

Left-handed writing has become less difficult since I began doing it every day, but it is still not as polished as my right hand. I have thought of many things in conjunction with the books I read and lectures I hear. I think of knights and valor and honor and the feudal system and how entrenched behaviors can really be. We do not even question them or seek to change them, it is not the nature of humans to notice that they can adapt to their own notions of life. We spend much energy in our lives, especially now that many of us have figured out the self-control of living, teaching and telling and showing and generally doing just that: adapting to our lives as we would have them and then living the life as it has molded itself around our living. Self-actualization was not the call word of the Crusades.

There are practical decisions that must be made. They are about learning languages: Hindi, Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Norman French, etc.

There are also practical decisions about money spending to be made: as in, the date is sent for wedding in Calcutta (not mine): December 21st, 2010. And I have no idea how much money I will need or how I will make or save that money. It is heartbreaking to me that I may not be able to go. I will live through the heartbreak, but that doesn’t change its reality in the least. I was hoping to get a chance to be hired as an LAII at the library. Six months of employment would be enough to allow me to save a good amount of money and spend some time wandering about the world before going to graduate school. Of course, that depends on getting into graduate school.

A thing which I’ve begun working on: I’ve finished the first draft of my Statement of Purpose. It is not bad, and I think that there are some good sentences worth keeping and perhaps expanding into something else, but it needs to be focused and determined and stellar – I will not send in a an application that does not rise to my highest standards. I have a lot of explaining to do, and I intend to do it and give myself the best possible chance to learn more of my trade. I am thinking that it will make sense to get more than one degree, so that I can do interpretive work as well as physical work. That is a bit idealistic, but it is a notion that finds much favor with me.

The last several days have been so full of moments of déjà vu that I hardly know when I am awake or asleep. My dreams flee from my in the morning, giggling as nymphs at the tidbits they have left me, tidbits which I find it more and more difficult to remember to pick up. I do remember that last night I dreamt of meeting Danielle in France, at an intensive language course/school. The scene was so real to me that I began to question my waking history and wonder if I really had experienced such a school and if our personal history was really that connected and perhaps we’d just forgotten and needed the dream to remember it. There was another dream that left me with much the same story not too long ago. Questions that it raised stayed with me for some time. I enjoyed them: were the girls dreaming their future as friends? If so, how did the phone numbers that they all remembered still work?

Facing the future

It is almost impossible to think of tomorrow while stretched out on a hammock feeling the sun like a blanket and the breeze from all sides. It has been a lovely respite from attempting the impossible, being here. My mother mows in a straw hat with a black band around the crown. She has cleared something like 4 acres of yard and mows it in sections as often as she can. My father has potted plants and planted flowers all around the house. He bought mums for the pots on either side of the driveway. The cats give love and chats with very little meaning to me or any other human. The feral cats adore my mother and her gentle voice and manner. They stand still and let her pet them, rubbing against her ankles and throwing me dirty looks.

I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.

I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.

As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.

Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.

It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.

I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.