green light

it usually happens at a stoplight: a swell of contentment that surges out of the sudden stillness. arrested motion. typically it proceeds a moment of taking stock of my life–a split second acknowledgement of all the successes and failures that have brought me to this particular intersection, waiting for this one light to turn green. and in the insulated space of the car i sit in my small world, outside sounds at a safe distance, breathing in whatever music is on the stereo, resting in a gentle acceptance of a life i usually try to nit pick to perfection. but in these moments, all that static is gone from the line and i just savor the thick flavor of happiness and certainty that i am exactly where i should be.



today i was in a massive black jeep. the stoplight was a left turn arrow to merge onto hwy 101 in santa barbara, california. the soundtrack was my friend's cd of rodrigo y gabriella. and the sense of peace was a calm and quiet wave. beautiful as usual.


the light is just about to turn green. i leave for my project in alabama at 7:30am monday morning.

the story of sieve

i'm reposting a piece i wrote a year ago because it's the back-story to sieve.

it explains the moment the short film project began and the surge of responses that welled up in the wake of its conception. despite a year passing the story is still current. the thoughts, fears, hopes, excitement–all are still relevant.

and here we are.

in a week's time, i'll be in dallas, finalizing the script and packing up the car with andrew, ready to depart for bayou la batre, alabama the next morning. tuesday, october 2nd.

{and a small plug because i have not yet mentioned it here, we are very close to having our project funded, so if you are so moved to contribute and help out, the kickstarter link is here. there was such an overwhelming response to the kickstarter campaign that i went ahead and dove right in and bought the flight southbound.}

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a week ago, a facebook friend messaged me late at night. and when i say friend, i mean he’s more of an acquaintance, the older brother of a classmate in college. a good guy, really, but no one i’ve ever spilled my guts to or gone out of my way to spend time with. no, more just someone i’ll laugh with when i travel to see his sister, a passing friend who’s “sunset a day” photo series i’ve been admiring from afar all year via said facebook. 

we all have these kinds of friends, collecting them in mass quantities, shuffling through their updates about what boring thing they ate, what boring thing their dog or baby or friend’s friend did, whining about how boring it is yet doing it compulsively all the same. it’s inane, i know, but the only reason i subscribe to this use of technology is because of photographic works like this "friend", andrew, has been displaying all year, but even more so for the magical moments of connection like the one i’m going to tell you about. it was the kind of magic where a simple late night question “are you back in seattle yet?” lead, in less than 5 minutes, through a series of the twists and turns of meandering late night conversation, to the confession of a driving desire on my part to go down to alabama to create a piece about memory, family history, time and place. 

and then, the critical moment happened when this man, this person i can count on one hand how many times i’ve hung out with, offers to come and document the project. and then, when i ask if he’ll help me make the short film i didn’t really realize i had been trying to figure out to make until just that moment, he even manages to get excited about it even more. giddy. the two of us typing away enthusiastically into the wee hours of the morning, andrew completely unaware of the emotional breakdown i had earlier that evening watching the last harry potter movie {sappy but true}, seeing the entire magical community mobilize behind one person, tears streaming down my face realizing that i want that experience of people believing in me so much they would die for me, then simultaneously realizing in the flash of an epiphany that i crave that belief from others because, dammit, I don’t believe in myself! and then fastforward back to the present moment, me at a keyboard, a mere hour or two later, being given the gift of this one person’s belief and commitment and oh-my-gosh-i-don’t-think-i-can-sleep kind of excitement in me and my project and my vision.

after waiting 18 years to return to my childhood home and 6 years to make a piece of artwork about it, everything is happening and happening with the ease that synchronicity brings {that’s not going to be a problem, nathania, i have all the equipment i need sitting 5 feet from my body}.

so here i stand, suddenly at the precipice, looking forward to this place i have been looking back to for so long. and let me tell you, it’s a scary precipice. because all that longing, all that patina of loving polish and care i have added to all the memories i have maintained over the years, all those things i cared for and have contemplated for many years that may no longer exist, or even worse, exist still but so changed as to feel defiled--all those things might be taken away, violated or not as i recall them to be.

and as the time and space between me and bayou la batre, alabama compresses, gets smaller, the anticipation is often overwhelming and i feel the pressure building, the hope and memory and excitement and inevitable disappointment already converging until all i can do is breathe. breathe. breathe.

breathe space and air and light and life into the memories i do have, take them out and look at them one by one before having them irrevocably changed by the reality of what these places look like now. because 18 years in geographic time has passed, where a town was built up by the tourism surrounding the placement of bubba gump shrimp company smack dab in the center of town {even though it wasn't actually filmed there}, bringing interest and wealth to a town that probably deserved neither, to the violence of katrina who ravaged more than just new orleans, and especially to the uncontrollable yet gentler forces of time and change.

and on top of all that there is 18 years of personal time, of me growing up, becoming an adult, seeing and feeling the world from 3 feet taller and decades older all the while hording the memories i had of this sleepy little town in the south that inhabited me more than i inhabited it as a 3^rd culture kid, never speaking the southern language of mooobeal {mobile} and the bi-youuu {bayou}, never eating the southern diet of everything fried in two inches of bacon fat and never really understanding the southern mentality of “traveling a ways” meaning going to the next zipcode.

but the south, it has always lived in me in ways i can’t fully understand even as an adult. maybe because it was the most reliable way of feeling beauty and connection from within a family with three older siblings who would really rather not have anything to do with their littlest sister, a mother too spaced out to mediate and a father too imbalanced, fighting the world, fighting his wife, fighting his children and most of all fighting himself, where i was perpetually submerged in that feeling of loneliness that was more of a chronic disease than a passing emotion. the kind of loneliness that comes from feeling so small and separate in such a big world. a feeling i find kind of ironic since as an adult woman i can’t seem to get over how big I am. 

so where could i turn to but the south? the spanish moss laden trees passing by outside the open window of our car, the yellow wash of light soaking the faded fabric of our living room, the louvers of the windows that we would hastily close each night the bug sprayers would sweep through the area, the pungent yet sweet and horribly toxic smell they would leave behind that i would drink in to saturate my vivid childhood senses. the jeweled crimson of magnolia seeds. the gentle chime of the draw bridge being brought back up that i would strain to catch the first sign of each time--these images sink deeper into the spirit than i fully know how to go, pumped with life by the thready pulse of my memory that so lovingly crafts the experience each time i draw them up and back into me. and it worries me that i have instilled in myself a confidence in my memory, not for the methodic memorization of numbers and words, though i’m not all too shabby at that, but for that visual and sense memory, of knowing a place i have been to only once and years ago at that.

what if i go now and it is not how i remembered it not because it’s changed, but because my memory failed?

so i ask myself now: how do i let go of what i know or think i know? how do i come to this place open hearted and free? because whether or not i want to, i come burdened with an abundance of nostalgia. but not the sweet kind of nostalgia, cloying and untrue, no, this is not the saccharine variety but rather the sacrificial. the kind of nostalgia that churns up dark waters, where everything that has been lost or taken or forgotten washes up in its wake to be burned as an offering for all that is to come. because as much as i go down there for the past, for what was and what has been, to honor and name it, present it in vivid colors, i am here to discover what it holds for the future, to see how it lives on in my life as it is happening right now and how that will all grace what is to come.

dessert: cookies with shame a la mode.

the skin of my hands is that special kind of papery dry. the wrinkles fading from being submerged in water for so long. there were a lot of dishes left from the night and i was the only one still up to wash them. but i was using the task to elongate and savor the fading flavors of what was already one of my favorite dinner parties in a very long time. the night was more than worth the task.

five friends and one mom gathered around a table. some food on the grill. a little bit of wine. my first attempt at gluten free baking from scratch and a lot of conversation. at first we jumped and skipped between topics, starting with movies–the latest hits, the ones missed, a few really cheesy ones from years ago–and moved on to genius, geniuses, theoretical physics, and hillary clinton's texts.

until things shifted.
the sounding of a gauntlet thrown down to lay staring up at us six from among the rubble of half empty glasses and cookie crumbs.

but the surprising thing is we took it up. each and every one of us. we joined hearts and hands and spoke out loud to one another those stories of shame and fear and desire. and more shame. and more. again. and still. and it opened into a night like i haven't seen since a quartet formed out of nowhere in the wee hours after eden's wedding.

we lingered knee-deep in our stories, a different kind of round robin with higher stakes, more vulnerable hearts: things shame keeps us from doing, the things we tell ourselves we can't have because we're ashamed, the things we won't even think about because of shame.

and even if i started the questions, even if i was surrounded by five people i count as my kindred, count among my dearest, the questions weren't any easier for me to answer, and i am disappointed to say i found myself chickening out of speaking in clear and vulnerable words the places where shame rests most in my story, and admitting, without shame, the thing that i am most ashamed of at the moment. and so now, a few hours later, to a wider audience i state what i wish i had said earlier:

i am ashamed that i have settled so often for less in relationships.
ashamed the deeply interesting ones have always just disappeared.
and finally:
i am ashamed that the reason i am single is that i am not good enough for anyone {and never will be}.

there.
those are my secrets of shame.
and they beat a deep and measured rhythm beneath the opposite belief i have steadily been listening to over the years {even if i lose track of its cadence sometimes}:

i am.
plain and simple.
i am. i exist. me.
and that is glorious.
and enough.

and the fact that one day someone will recognize that and want to share their am-ness with me and take part in my am-ness is not something to worry about. my job is to just breathe, be, and remember which rhythm to listen to.

---------------------------------

it's funny how hard it still is to confess. here, safely tucked away behind the screen and sheltered by the internet. i look at the words and throw blankets like cliche and petty over them, judging them and me. or perhaps giving myself a little dig about still not having confidence as i toe the line of thirty. but that's just the shame fighting back, trying to hide away again as it sits there and squirms beneath the light of day shining down on it giving it words and definition and spindly limbs. it looks up at me with beady eyes knowing it's just a matter of time before i gather up the courage to squash it with a paper towel and take it to the trash.

beirut - september 2012

i saw beirut last wednesday and came away filled as any good show should accomplish. usually that's enough to find a path to words and in turn recreate and preserve the night but i came home and kept erasing the words i had written. nothing seems to capture it. maybe i was just tired.

or maybe it's just because there were two stories happening at the same time.

1. the story of the show:

the show was perfect. strong. free. joyful and heartbreaking all at the same time. a fantastic setlist played by a row of brass blasting out their notes to us with such force sometimes i imagined i could feel the wind of their instruments brushing my face. and only a few feet back from the stage, a body or two between the band and me and i couldn't stop moving, smiling, pursing my eyebrows together in direct correlation to the shift between their vivid intensity and soul stretching joy.

my hand stayed over my heart the whole show. though occasionally it was there to keep my heart from cracking itself open on the piercing edges of the music. at one point my neighbor, this little slip of a thing who, until that point mostly annoyed me by her something-induced dancing, looked over at me holding on to my chest and gently tapped her hand on my heart empathetically. she knew. she smiled. i smiled. and for the rest of her show her dancing lost its annoying edge.

but most of the time, i didn't need to hold my heart together with my hands and they could joyfully play the heart and thigh drums by thumping them both in time to the music. shortly into the show i noticed the lead singer, zach condon, doing it as well {when he wasn't playing his trumpet or guitar}. we had became a mirror image to each other: my right hand on my heart and my left thumping my thigh as his left hand played his heart and his right drummed his thigh. and in our shared musical enthusiasm he became my long lost mirror twin i didn't even know until now i had been missing.

2. the story of the song:


the night of the show life folded in on me in a few ways* most of them around this one short song: a sunday smile.


a small tangent: the last time i went to a show alone, i was at the moore theater seeing regina spektor in 2007. it was a show i was supposed to see with two others but they bailed, selling their tickets last minute and so i went alone. i remember being put off by the fact that the people next to me gave me the cold shoulder, thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to at least be congenial with someone you obviously share a certain level of music kinship with. and it was that experience in particular that lingered with me four years later and motivated me to break the barrier of stranger and reach out to my neighbor at bon iver last september. it's been nearly a year and not only did i make someone's night that night {as well as my own} but i scored music friend #10, someone who quickly became a dear friend. to take this in a tidy little circle, tonight i went alone to a concert for the first time since 2007 and of course it was back to the moore theater to finally see beirut live. and halfway through, i called music friend #10 to share with him a sunday smile since he could not be there in person to hear it with me.

and so it was that a sunday smile was handed back to me that night, folding time and space once again to string together all the intense moments it has carried me through in my life. as soon as i knew i would be seeing this band, i knew i wanted to hear this one song the most. the first song of there i ever heard, given to me by another great spirit in my life: my favorite professor who sent me a mix of songs in early 2008. it was right as a relationship ended and my world came crashing down on me, leveling me for about a year at least, probably more. and it was the opening lines of this song on repeat for weeks in my car, perhaps months during this time, that helped carry me above the tides of my life. a lifeline out to better times.

all i want is the best for my life my dear
and you know my wishes are sincere
what's the say for the days i cannot bear
a sunday smile, we wore it for a while
a sunday smile, we paused and sang

while that was how we first met, the song has come up again throughout the years, marking several finite moments of courage in my life. these two stories are both from my 9 month acting course that was basically a study of pushing oneself beyond one's boundaries. they can be found in the archives here and here {the latter post being a far more interesting class, perhaps one of my favorites}. or if you are up for a little recording of me singing it pre-voice lessons, here is a silly little video {that still took a lot of outtakes and even more courage} with an ending that still makes me laugh.

and at the show, coincidentally {or not, depending on how you view the world} the song found me once more on a day when i needed it badly. one of those days i stared down fear in a way that made my stomach and heart shrink inside me, trying to squeeze themselves into hiding from what the rest of my body and spirit could not avoid. i had been so fiercely swept up by the anticipation of failure, of pain, and of shame just as i stood staring at the cusp of so much that can either build or break my heart. i even considered bailing on the show but i think it was the song that got there, got me out, got me into a crowd and exactly where i needed to be doing most: listening to amazing music and writing a long overdue screen play during set changes. ironically it was the usual behavior of scribbling away at a notebook that got connecting me to the audience around me who wanted to know what i was writing. and in turn they drew me into their excitement and enthusiasm, drew me into that soft warmth of bodies standing close, happily waiting for a band to take stage. so that when the band finally did come on, i was there. i was ready. my stomach and heart and spirit cautiously unfurled, catching the winds of change in my life rather than hiding from them.

about halfway through the show, zach did a long, gentle lead up to a song, inviting us to sing along, smiling in anticipation of giving us this true gem of sonic heartbreak. and all i can say is that halfway through i realized my knees were weak in a way i haven't felt in a long time. it was good. it was heart breaking. it was perfect.





*i must not take credit for this lovely image: life folding in on itself. that moment when you retrace the steps from the past unexpectedly, or find yourself tied to a person, particular relationship dynamic or song mirroring the past. you probably know what i mean, but regardless, these words are words of a friend i repeat here because they were so perfect.

a view from the top

i am afraid of so many things. some days i stay in bed an extra five, fifteen, thirty minutes checking email, facebook, playing solitaire on my phone, whatever it is i can distract myself with and insulate myself from life. a futile effort to hold at bay the waves when fear takes over.

luckily though these days don't come often, but they do come, and then they come back again in some unpredictable turn of the self-evolutionary cycle. i should be used to them now. should, would love to, but am not.

some of the things i fear:

failing
never even trying
not beating my previous half marathon time
never achieving all i hold in my ambitions
settling for less

wearing high heels and tripping myself up
worse: wearing high heels and being taller than everyone

pulling the emergency door on an airplane because for some reason i forgot my life depended on it being in place
getting shot on a run through central district {not so paranoid given this year's death by shooting count}

bowling
pool
karaoke
and all things that are sexy when you know how to do it well but i suck at or haven't tried...see "failing"

spiders

being left
leaving

heights
tall buildings
sky scrapers


these last ones are a bit of a theme for me and have featured in many nightmares throughout my life. it's the vivid pressure of gravity, of potential gravity, a visceral understanding of the force the fall would garner that comes out of nowhere and pulls at my body and fills my flesh. it is not a comfortable experience, but none of the above are whether they ever actually happen or i just sit in my fear of anticipation. a fear of potential realities could be added to the list.

short of being shot or opening the door on an airplane at cruising altitude, i need to remember i can handle all these things, live through large spiders leaping out at me from piles of junk mail {true story} or surprising me from under beds and landing on my leg {sadly, also true story}. i can weather the discomfort {or even humiliation} of a mediocre round of karaoke or game of bowling. i can run. i can be run from.

so when did i stop living at the edge of my fears, staring them down and telling them they can't win? when did i start tip toeing through my life? a month ago? six? when i settled back down and gave myself a space to call home? a place to return to? when i began living again in a daily reminder of my entitlement to safety both physical and emotional?

in a gentle effort to push myself, i went to the top of the columbia center last week and stood on the viewing deck of the 73rd floor. and all i did was let myself be pulled, just let it happen. and the terror i thought would come, the terror that finds me in the middle of sleep as i stand precariously on the roof of some skyscraper or another, or attacked by a massive spider, or just alonealonealone, that terror wasn't there. or rather, only came in small moments that rushed through me faster than i thought possible. a flicker here. a passing thought there. a good reminder that the reality of my fears are not impossible, and in facing them, i discovered that surpassing them all was a sense of awe. awe of the discoveries this new place had to offer. a bird's eye view. silence. warmth. the reminder that we are just so small in this great big universe {and that's only looking down at one medium-sized city} and that the story inside my head, that narrative that follows my every move and lords over every thought and feeling, it's not as important as it would like me to believe. and the quiet of peace and contentment, that quiet that says there is nothing really to fear here or anywhere, just take a good look and breathe, she speaks so softly in comparison.

there is always something here in these fears. the real battle is just remembering who to listen to. and breathe.






currently listening to "goshen" by beirut.


you're on in five, it's time you rise or fail.
they've gone before, stood by your door all day.
for what it's worth, defend your kind from shame.
the lights are down, go on inside, they've paid.
you're the face in stone, through the land i own.
you never found it home.
you're not the girl i used to know.

what would you hide from such a glow
if i had only told you so?

you're on in five, it's time you rise or fail.
they've gone before, stood by your door all day.
but you never found it home.
a fair price I'd pay to be alone.

what would you hide from such a glow
if i had only told you so?

the {un}welcome guest

i went to a family reunion this past week and met an unwelcome guest: mortality.

like a nuisance, he was everywhere, dressed in everyone's clothes, smiling behind everyone's eyes, lingering in small comments {gosh, we're seventy now, i wonder how many more of these there will be for us}, and ambushing me in jokes {you know when you turn 30 this year you'll be closer to 60 than to birth}.

he was telling me the same story with different words: the mortality of bodies and the mortality of things.

my great-aunt's family included us mikesell's {her brother's family} as they said goodbye to their lake house and more importantly to the bigger life she used to lead before she had a stroke this spring. but the sadness, the bitter in the parting mixing with the sweetness of all the memories, it wasn't a pall over the time, merely a depth to it, a call to reality. their own. hers. mine.

my great aunt's possessions were distributed: her travel memorabilia, jewelry, photos, knick knacks, china, silver, and the mundane – old playing cards, speakers, sewing basket. it was heartbreaking to watch as the connection between her and her things was pulled until thin and then softly broken to give them a new life, new meaning and a new home with one of the forty-five family members there. and even though reason {because she's sharp and together despite her age, 91, and her post-stroke body} has told her these things need to go, that she can't take them with her, it was hard to watch, hard to ask for this thing or that thing even though it would otherwise go to goodwill after tomorrow. hard knowing what it cost her, even amidst her never ending good cheer.


but these things we all carried away in the back of cars, onto planes, across countries, they carry with them the lingering residue of that sweet spirit of hers ensuring their destiny to be loved. though one day too soon, even if we are lucky enough to follow the mikesell way and live into our nineties*, the best these things can hope for is to be passed through weathered hands, onto the next generation. a little older, more love-worn and tired, but optimistic for their next life.


after all the work the family did over multiple visits and from both sides of the family, there was still a house full of things, possessions, sundries, and food. it was overwhelming. it was exhaustive. and i come home, to my home, so lovingly inhabited, lovingly designed, find it's also filled with things, even more than when i left for virginia, and yet there is a lot i want to clear out, let go of, pare down. limit myself so that the patina of my love and care is not spread too thin over too many objects, that it can steep into those pieces of true resonance, those possessions that somehow seem to make manifest a part of my spirit you wouldn't see otherwise. like the set of scales i inherited from grandpa, the antique ivory bracelet i have instantly fallen in love with from my great-aunt, my installation of birds i have yet to hang here at my new place, my jade tree that will one day be massive.

so i call do is begin the purge. that bottle of conditioner i'll never use, the shirt that has a small hole in it that i didn't like wearing much lately anyway, the wine glasses left from a mis-matched set, the vases i always thought weren't quite pretty enough. and as i struggle with the typical decade-turning questions of what am i doing with my life? and how can i get where i want to go fast enough? i can at least feel like my physical life, of my house and body, will be in tidy and in shape coming into this new year.

so here we go, starting now.

*even our descendants in the 18th and early 19th centuries lived into their nineties.

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a little self-reflective self-portrait shoot from the end of the dock at the lake house just after my final swim in smith mountain lake.

11 weeks

in eleven weeks, to the day, i turn 30.

this decade shift has been a long time in coming, slowly sidling up to me these past few months, whispering promises in my ear. but even so, it will still be scary and it will still be significant, more than just a number. so here, tonight, i want to mark the beginning of the final stretch as i rush forward to meet something i have been eyeing for a while now, tasting the flavor that lingers each time i say this new number:

30.
thirty.

i still have so much time.
i still have so far to go.

but right now, i have a few ambitious goals for the next few months {almost three}:

1. this week, as i promised myself, i have started training for my second half marathon, this time giving myself the full 12 weeks of ramp up and training instead of just one. i have a fairly ambitious goal in mind which i set before i considered the practicality of choosing a race at a high altitude. oops. i hear bend, oregon is pretty so at least i'll have a great view as i'm wheezing down the course. i'll be running two days after my birthday and it feels like the timing so perfectly marks the last stretch of my 20's with the focus and drive of the training as well as sets a good precedence for my 30's with a race two days in.

2. earlier in october, i'm going to fly down to texas, drive with my dp {director of photography} to alabama, then proceed to document my homecoming to bayou la batre, my hometown i have not seen in 19 years. ever since i graduated from undergrad in 2005 i knew there was a project waiting for me down there and finally i go down to find it. i am excited. i am terrified. more on this later.

3. i want to shift my sleep schedule so i am getting a healthy amount at a healthy time. {i also want to meditate more, but one change at a time.}

4. my apartment is a bit disheveled under the luxury of so much space. i want to clean up my act. poke around in the corners. hang up my birds. finish settling into the springboard of this space that keeps telling me all that i can look forward to in our relationship together that is really just beginning. and i want to invite you all in a few weeks to come and celebrate the summer, celebrate the journey and celebrate my new space {all meanings of the word}. more on this later too.

wish me luck.

sigur ros - seattle - 2012

what is there to say after you spend two hours slipping and swaying between the melodies and beats of one of the most viscerally experiential bands? left in my hands, rattling restless in my head, keeping me awake long past my bedtime are the colors, the sounds, the harmonies that arrested my spirit.

individual moments stand out in perfect focus and flawless clarity: that golden silence they wedged into the middle of a song, shocking us all into breathless surprise, holding it long past you'd expect it, longer still until a clap broke out hesitantly {as we shook our heads to silence the offender}. a sold out audience's worth of collective anticipation lengthening the seconds even further, then further still to the very edge of our capacity to be patient, to not breathe. and still they made us wait. it was almost too much. my breathing returned loud and excited, squirming and full in those final moments of waiting. then payoff, the surge of sound immediately following jonsi's microphoned inhale was one of countless moments of glory.

countless.

others include:

the soft valtari greens of the opening song's visuals.
the hazy ship floating hauntingly across the projection screen.
the filament lights on stage.
jonsi's gentle curl of hand, encouraging us to sing along.
singing along.
the lines and shapes inside my closed eyes as the light danced through my eyelids, refusing to be shut out.
the excitement of hearing the opening sounds of a well-loved song {svefn-g-englar}, almost too good to be true, and the affirmation from one of my concert mates*, the one who is so good at answering my unvoiced questions.
the smiles passed around between my neighbors.
the colors. the colors. the colors. even if they were just sounds parading around as a color.
the final song at the end, untitled #8, that always starts off deceivingly slow until it builds, and builds, and builds beyond one's capacity to take in the sheer volume of sound and lights and noise and harmony pressed into us, until the spirit cries out to participate. the cheers erupting from the crowd around us were not a distraction but purely a primal reflex, an extension of what was happening on stage. a response to the unspoken realization that the vessels of our bodies cannot hold all that they give at the end of this one song. we must explode, release, even if it's just a rhythmic tapping of my hand across my heart. even if it's just a burst of noise from my neighbor's gut. the spirit cries out to participate. the spirit cries out: participate.

the band always comes out at the end to clap their hands warmly back at us, link arms, and then bow. the sweetest part of a bittersweet goodbye. sigur ros, please don't take four years to come back to us. please.


*music friend #1, joining me here almost exactly 4 years, two trips and six shows later {only six??? i guess we have shared quite a few others even if we weren't both at the same show at the same time including atoms for peace, sigur ros, bon iver, modselektor, radiohead...}.

 

setlist:


ekki múkk
varúð
ný batterí
i gær
vaka
sæglópur
svefn-g-englar
viðrar vel til loftárása
hoppípolla
olsen olsen
festival
hafsól

encore:

dauðalogn
popplagið {untitled 8}

the perfect stranger

oftentimes, it is a perfect stranger that helps me find my way back to myself. tonight it was the well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman weaving his way between the white acura next to me blocking the crosswalk, and my car, politely drawn up to the line but not beyond it. he walked around the back end of the other car then headed toward me as i quietly looked out at him through my slightly open window. we made eye contact and i looked back knowingly at him. it was a look and small smile that acknowledged my own experience with drivers inconveniencing pedestrians and i hoped to encourage him in his maneuverings.

but he read something else in at that moment, some secret my spirit told that i had no intention of sharing. it might have been my freshly sweated skin and flushed cheeks still warm from an arduous hot yoga practice, or more likely it was my right hand that gave me away, clutching at my heart, trying to still its aching throb that had, moments before the gentleman caught my eye, needed the pressure of my palm to calm and contain it.

but whatever lines he read between, he read them instantly and he read them well. just as he turned to round the front of my car and return to the crosswalk, he said so simply yet so tenderly: 


you're beautiful.

because inertia is just "transition" jumbled with an e added for good measure

zoe keating is on repeat tonight, switching back and forth between optimist and sun will set. i find this combination to be an appropriate mix of encouragement and fatalism as i try and overhaul my life, making a list of habits i want to form* and goals i want to reach this year. what's left of the year that is.

and as i look at the tidy handwriting stretched taut and tidy over large pieces of clean craft paper, i find, tonight, that i am ready to be reckless, ready to take my arm across all the carefully placed pieces of my life and slide them right off the end of the table. what a satisfying sound they would make shattering on the wood of my floor...then i'd be free to pack up shop and cooly move to a new city. hell, a new country even {europe, you will still have me and my dutch citizenship, won't you?} because somedays it seems no matter how hard i try, no matter how hard i push the understood boundaries of myself, stretch into uncomfortable new places and learn from my mistakes, i still get nowhere.

because really, where am i?

where am i?
where am i?
where am i?  
and what am i doing?

do you know? cause i sure don't.

and really, today, right now, what kills me most, and truthfully is the source of my deep-set frustration, is that i can't tell the difference between inertia and transition. and for the record they both suck anyway with their uncanny ability to kick my teeth to the curb when all i really want is a warm hand to hold.

i don't often pray. not in the way i was taught as a child, but tonight i will bow my head and ask for a sign. something small. something sweet. something clear. just tell me which direction to go, even if it's not what i want to hear. just make sure to tell me with symbols i can read clearly and words i can understand.

and please tell me with a hug to soften any blows.

and really, what i truly want is my happy-laugh to come back. the joyful, easy laugh that flies cleanly and frequently from my body when i am relaxed, when i am well rested, and when i am firmly connected to my sense of wellbeing. it surprised me after a long absence in the first weeks of the film festival and made a cameo appearance on my friend's wedding day and long into that night, but i want it back. for keeps. i want it to be the default laugh, not this convincing shade of a laugh that secretly isn't attached to my spirit.



*one habit being sleep i am still neglecting as my fingers move across the keyboard to vent this post into existence well beyond my bedtime.

the quartet

we were the talkers. we were the dancers. we were the laughers. we were the after party adventurers, the late night bar-hoppers, the cattle riding, car-window-crawling bridge seekers congealing somehow, suddenly, during the course of the wedding night. we read poems. we mocked the texans. we poked at ourselves. disagreed a bit, loved a lot, held ourselves up and out for each other, tried each of our friendships on for size and found not a one wanting.

with only a few connections in place beforehand, we added a perfect stranger to the mix and found something surprising and wholly new – the result of some sort of spontaneous combustion requiring an unrepeatable mix of alcohol, personalities, and photo booth spontaneity. and this thing we found ourselves inside, this many limbed entity of friendship, stood and breathed at the intersection of six dyads, three triads, and our single, splendid quartet. in a brilliant night watching two brilliant people gather their individual lives inside their arms and tie them together, this was our extension of their happiness – so fitting, so sweet, so playful in a way one could spend the rest of their life looking for it and never predict when or if it will show up next. 

the night was lush, the night was long, and eventually we found ourselves under a king-sized blanket, on an overly air-conditioned couch, resting in the quiet corners of the stories we were telling one another. exhaustion lapped at our feet stealing away the words we were speaking as we tried to stretch the hours in each other’s company until they were so thin we could see the morning sun through them. even after our neglected sleep chased us reluctantly to our beds, we woke, still firmly attached as others mingled in our midst. 

our goodbyes lingered as we hugged, clutching each other as much as the photos and phone numbers we had exchanged – all of them tenuous and unsatisfying objects functioning their best as evidence we existed together in a new way. 

and as space and time wedge themselves firmly between us, perhaps the most substantial thing left in our hands is the certainty that somewhere in that mysterious negative space between our quickly moving bodies and even quicker moving spirits, something glorious lived, however fleeting, and for that we are grateful.

moving on

a salt lake city sky and a dallas sun.

stepping away for the wedding and then some work travel (in portland) for the next week of being away. away from life. away from thinking too much. away from routine and the grind.

so once again my nomad shoes are on and my heart is free to the horizon.

simple wisdom

if i am not for myself, who is?
if i am for myself alone, what am i?
and if not now, when?


-------------
a quote from episode 13 of the tobolowsky files. it has been clinging to me since i heard it today. if i am not for myself...

dallas bound

in a few days i fly to dallas to see one of my favorite people in the world get married. i will be joined by two of my other favorite people in the world and together we will hold hands and dance and cry and laugh and drink and eat and speak and think and feel. definitely feel. already i almost feel too much.

i remember the first time i met e's fiancee. i even remember the very start of the crush, when all she could do was hope from afar. i remember the clear drive i felt to get to know him and the lengths i would go to to hang out with them long before they ever became a couple. sometimes these lengths included hijacking his meal from the microwave, bringing it outside to e's car {they were housemates at the time} and getting him to join us in the concert of music her speakers were blasting into the cavern of her SUV named henry. sometimes it was collaborating with e on a gift for his birthday when she was too shy to give on her own. sometimes it was front row seats at concerts we could all go to together. for the record, i was a very good wingman.

and the years have passed since then, since they've gotten together and begun to shape what their lives look like connected. and while their histories i hold so gently in my hards are not really mine to tell, what i can share, what is all my own to savor and name, is the gratitude, the overwhelming gratitude that i got to have a front row seat from the moment they entered each other's lives. the very moment.

and i try not to think about how someone else will sit in my front row seat to the stories that unfold after we no longer share the same region of the country. and someone else will be there for the long years of their children's lives and beyond. but i will be there in spirit and i will console myself that i was there in the beginning. and to be exact, it started before the beginning when this relationship was just something for e to dream about, when i was encouraging her with the words from bjork's song i miss you {but i haven't met you yet...so special but it hasn't happened yet}.

and the ghosts of all the hope i poured into her so many years ago are wraithing up to me, slipping invisibly through my skin to curl tightly around my heart, appearing suddenly out of thin air, surprising me late into in the night. their presence is exhausting and endless and i'm not quite sure what to do with them, but in the meantime, i get a few days to slow down and take pause, to honor and bless their new journey and to put on a pretty dress, have my hair and nails and have an incredible time celebrating with quite a few of the best people i know.


to be continued...

from the neck

i've died twice in my dreams.

the first was years ago. it was a death modeled after my memory of a childhood friend's mother who died slowly at home, each sense slowly fading until only her ability to hear remained. they spent the last day or two of her life playing her favorite musical on repeat. in the dream, i was lying in bed, slowly feeling myself fade. it was like i was leaving layer after layer of myself, inhabiting less and less of my body until i was only this small kernel of existence inside my heart. and then even that was gone and i was cut off, discarding the shell of my flesh as i realized with a little sadness that i had died. a ghostly, diluted version of emotion of my former self. i lingered as a wraith for a few moments, hovering near my body, then i woke up.

last night was not like the first time. this was a sudden death. a death born from violence.

we had been trying to find something, meet up with someone or find a location. i am not sure what exactly, but there was a journey or a search, a sense of going toward something with a goal. and then we were on a train passing stylized houses and buildings reminiscent of images from wes anderson's moonrise kingdom i had seen the night before. after the pressure to do something surrounding the first part of the dream, it felt like a calm and steady ride, peaceful to just be in one place and be taken somewhere. but suddenly the train was stopped and scruffy men in tattered black clothes rushed in telling everyone to get down. my companion next to me quickly complied and maybe even tried to help me {there was concern from me coming from them, i could feel it}, but i wasn't fast enough and as the hijackers fired a shot into the cabin i knew i was hit. they got me at the base of my neck, just above my colar bone and i felt my death as a rush of warmth and red spreading out quickly from my throat. i had just enough time to register the finality of my death, witness it in slow motion replay from outside from the murderer's perspective before i woke up.

i believe death in dreams is a harbinger of change. in order to become something else something must end, a part of you must die. and in a way, i feel like the writing is on the wall, on all four walls, actually, coming at me from every direction as many important people in my life voice the same few words: you need to relax.

yes, i need to relax, breathe deeply, and trust. it's time to learn to trust again. starting here, now, with me. trusting myself. trusting my instincts, trusting my gut even when my brain is yelling to run for safety in the opposite direction. trusting that i've done my best, that my worth is not dependent on anything i am, think, or do. that it is this moment, the one i'm living and breathing into right now. now. now. now. nownownownownownownownownownow is all that matters.

i start my meditation practice today. now.

a little piece

i see that i am a little piece of a big, big universe, and that makes it right. 


hushpuppy from beasts of the southern wild

ocean portraits

highlights of a trip to the water {in no particular order} included {but were not limited to}:

--throwing handfuls of stones at the water and watching the variation in the speed and trajectory of each stone's arch toward the water's edge based off of its unique size and shape

--happening upon a herd of elk

--discovering the water to be tolerably temperatured, stripping down to my swimsuit i had so optimistically donned in the morning, and spending a while being coy with the waves that were flirting all the way up the length of my legs

--finding stories inside myself i haven't told anyone and a freedom to tell them now

ocean orange

i went to the ocean to seek out and bury myself in greys, walk through their tidal strength, and feel them cling in all their sandy vigor to my feet. what i didn't expect to find were the oranges of the shore delivered by the sea, stripped away from the bark of trees and laid bare under the misting sky. 


it was a good day. a very good day. and a necessary reminder to keep an eye on and embrace with warmth what's right before you.

a house of grief

i am pet sitting up in the sammamish highlands in a house i have returned to many times over the past four or five years. and as i drive out here each time, i think of how many of my stories this house has witnessed, most particularly, stories of separation, space and loneliness. how often severance {of varying kinds and importance} has struck while i have been here is almost eerie, but in the end, i have decided that it has been a blessing to be able to leave the grief behind, turn a key, turn my back and let it all rest in the bones of a house i do not inhabit every day. the only thing i have to take away is the adoring eyes of the pets i walk and feed. these are the same pet who often have crept up to my dangling hands, butting their noses into my fingers as i cried. unconditional love at its best. so i guess i am saying there is gratitude here for this space that has taken as much care of me as i have of it.

today i come a little raw, a little worried, questioning some significant parts of myself even as i pull from a steady stream of confidence and certainty i cannot entirely explain. i am grateful to it as much as it scares me as well.

so here i am, writing from a foreign bed, kittens walking across my keys*, curling up to my typing fingers and purring their miniature purrs.

and i am still happy.
still.
still and happy.


so i say goodnight {or good morning} and leave you with a song on repeat for me of late from cocoon. it's called cathedral. lyrics below.







I came from the valley
And you came from the sea
You smell like the sand

How far up the river
Would you go, would you go
To meet me again ?

And I built the cathedral
With the shelves that you held
In the hole of a tree

And I love the words you said
When I told you what the ravens
Sing in my dreams

You pushed on my heart
Every night and every day
To keep me alive

And you kiss my mouth
And I learn to walk
And I learn to try...

Can you hear the horses
It means the seasons changes
It means the seasons changes

When the rivers overflows
I run to the bridges
I run to the bridges

And for now don't be afraid
If the sun never rises
If the sun never rises

There's a time to let it grow
There's a time to let it slow
And a time to let it go..




*one just strolled across the unmute button blasting music suddenly scaring both it and me. 

part of the metamorphosis

one of my closest friends gave me these words today:


nat, you've returned to yourself. i hear it in your voice. you're there again.

and then i asked her how long it had been since me and i, this truest true part of me and the soft machine she animates, were last seen together in such harmony, and her reply was:

months. probably before europe.


and it's true, it has been months.

months.

but for the past three days, no matter how much or little sleep i have gotten, no matter what the pressures or stress of the day, i have woken up with a bit of sunshine pouring through me like a waterfall as i find each day charmed in its own way. and today, while out for two hours on a run along alki beach, i received more waves, more smiles and nods, more high fives {for the record, first high fives during a run ever} and thumbs up from strangers in those ten miles than i think i have ever received in over a year of running. it felt like i was in a mentos commercial or something. seriously. i was almost weirded out by it but my heart was too happy and full to do anything but radiate. except maybe in my mile-9-i-haven't-been-running-enough-lead-legs phase, but then that's when i looked up just in time to see the high five offerings coming my way. my heart was lifted again.

a few weeks ago a friend typed out these simple words to me on skype: are you happy? and in all that welled up in response to those three small words, i realized i have long felt alienated from the grounded sense of wellbeing i used to carry with me pretty much always, and even farther away from that extra bit of beauty and joy that goes along with happiness. but today, now, here, i would love to get that question again.

am i happy?

yes.

yes, i am.

what is it about the nature of happiness...that it came when i was least expecting it. maybe it's a mistake to expect happiness to be a product of the high moments of our lives, maybe it's more like movie music, invisible until a beautiful theme arises from nowhere and surrounds you unexpectedly. like love at first sight. maybe part of its charm is that it takes you by surprise. or maybe it's part of the metamorphosis. another clue that you're on the right path, even when that path is just a walk around the block on a lovely night.

episode 47 of the tobolowsky files.