Like a Wagon Wheel

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop. I had my headphones in and flicked my thumb up the small screen of my iPod. What to listen to...I paused on Old Crow Medicine Show. Why not?

Of course, I was naturally inclined to scroll  downdowndown to Wagon Wheel. Play.

_______________________________________

I am sitting in the Beehive, listening to Dylan August play at a fundraiser coffeehouse. Dr. Amy sits next to me and makes a small joke about the song. I nod my head, and Jonnell hums in smiles.


I am driving from Pennsylvania. I lightly hum along with the car stereo. It is near midnight on Christmas day, and the dark hills of Kentucky swallow me in their climbing curves. Katlin is sleeping in the backseat as my mother sits next to me, trying to keep her eyes open.


I am walking around the house. Sam is walking around the house. We are getting ready to go hiking. As we pass each other, our bare feet on cold tiles, we don't even look at one another; I hear him murmuring the words as I let the melody hold in my throat.


I am sitting in a bright, familiar dining room. Martin plays guitar. I thwack terribly on a pair of spoons. Elias pops a shaker in the air. We don't all agree, but we are smiling. Kim and Julia join harmonies. We can feel the summer clouds pumping humidity into the windows.


I am sitting around a campfire in Northern California, singing with my sister and now brother-in-law. We try our best to harmonize, but the notes seem as far away as the stars that peek through the trees: smoke, fire, song.

_______________________________________

Funny how 3 minutes and 51 seconds can go so far away. I can feel the road's curves, the solid tile, the coming rain, the scent of campfire. Where are we all now?

East to Southwest. East to Northwest. North to South.
People out here measure location quite specifically with the cardinal directions. The streets are lined with signs reading, "No Parking West of Here" as if it were so clear which way that was. My friends here say they can always tell where they are because of the Sound. The Sound is always West.

Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, Washington.
Sometimes I wonder what is in-between. I've driving along the main roads there and back and back again. I've flown over the wrinkled hills and cookie-cutter fields. I know the in-between is there.

Sometimes that in-between has a way of disappearing. I have been grounded in Washington for a bit now, and some days, it's hard to remember that there is a small town called Waynesburg or that there is a big blue house tucked in the woods on the top of a hill in Westmoreland County. It's hard to realize that on that hill, the vine-coated and rusting "Handicap Pedestrian" signs no longer apply. It's hard to let it sink in that in the cleft of the road's bend, a young man in a wheelchair no longer lives. And a tall, skinny girl with short, straight hair, wandering eyes, and itchy feet has grown and fled to a foreign life.

On top of my new hill, Queen Anne, I see mountain and water. The peaks and crevasses never seem the same, yet they are somehow, day and day again. I spend my time going up and down the hill. The wave of my life, undulating in tides of hills: Mamont, Waynesburg, Seattle. Each is bigger than the last, and I wonder when the soft white cap will form a breaker. Which soggy patch of sand will swallow me in high tide?

And those 3 minutes and 51 seconds have taken me farther and closer and re-circling through the patterns of here and there.

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop, and suddenly, the whole world didn't seem so far away.

Sexy: Sweaters, New Year's, & the Color Yellow

 I look good in yellow. I’m not one for appearances, and I really hate shopping, but I look good in yellow. It’s the one color that I look for when I have to buy a top. After my first day at this new job, I learned (unsurprisingly) that my wardrobe is hardly suitable for even a week in the real professional world, especially when the dress code requires long-sleeves. A co-worker recommended H&M as an inexpensive place for quality clothes. I’d never been, but Derek loved to get clothes there. As a result, I have an H&M sweater, but I left it in Pennsylvania. I left a lot there.

Before I left last year, I decided that I needed to entirely sort my life’s possessions. As I went through my clothes, packing only the cool clothes for Arizona heat (of course I had to re-pack when my compass shifted to true North), I made a pile of donate-able clothes—old ones that just didn’t fit, things I never wore but kept around just in case an occasion popped up. At the time, my closet was full of many of Derek’s clothes, mostly sweaters and tops and a few pairs of sweatpants: all of the comfy clothes. I fought with myself for a long time about it before finally deciding to donate them too. I thought I needed to get rid of them all. I put them in a trash bag, and they sat there in the bathroom for weeks. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped open the bag and grabbed just a few sweaters—the ones I wore the most, the ones that kept Derek close in some way: I remembered helping him into them and the way he would say, “You aren’t going to break me, Nat” when I would cautiously bend his stiff arms through the sleeves.

I wore one of them in the days following Christmas. I wore it four days in a row. A friend commented that she liked it. Even though we had just had a conversation about polite ways to respond when someone likes an outfit, like “Oh, I got this at ___,”  I couldn’t admit that it was his. Sometimes the little things are so very difficult.

So the sweater kept me warm the whole drive South last weekend.  I drove from Seattle to Grass Valley, GV to Joshua Tree National Park, Joshua Tree to Mesa.

Joshua Tree National Park, California

I felt rejuvenated: sunglasses, mittens, Vampire Weekend blaring through the speakers, a pack of Marlboros on the passenger seat. I thought about Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, “Sexy” and how the little boy character defines “sexy” as loving someone you do not know. Turn that someone into something and you have me: I love the road. I love seeing what I have not seen before, filling in the voids like in old video games where you had to get so far to see further into the game’s layout.

I felt sexy driving into unknown territory, through mountains I have never seen and places I have never been. I felt sexy with greasy hair covered by the hat I crocheted last winter, with my mittens worn so thin that both thumbs have holes, with a fading cigarette between two fingers with calloused tips and short, crescent-less nails. I felt sexy with a smile and an old sweater.

I drove in the dark a lot. On the drive down, I spent the second day wondering if the sun would ever show up. Maybe it had called in sick. Fog hung around the hills like a puppet’s string, hovering and guiding life below through its misty, gray stage. Come ten-thirty, it nearly felt like dawn, the heavy curtain lifted to release a solo spotlight in the East. I sighed relief: day would come. I had been driving since 3:30am and was beginning to wonder what daylight felt like. The previous day, I learned that here in the North, the sun tends not to break the clouds until around ten o’clock, and by ten-thirty, it seems to reach its peak, never rising further, despite the tug of the hour hand’s insistence on afternoon.

Tejon Ranch, California

On the drive home, an equally strange fog hit me in Eastern Oregon. Driving through the hills mid-afternoon, I approached a warning: Dense Fog Ahead. Low Visibility. Reduce Speed. Ha! It’s midday. They must have forgotten to turn the sign off; surely there isn’t fog now. I drove another mile. No fog. Suddenly, as I peaked another rising bend, it happened. Like a penetrable wall, I soon found myself surrounded by white as if I had driven to some level of heaven. I could barely see twenty feet in front of me. To my left and my right, my windows were nothing but this blank lack of color (--or is it all color? I never remember). 

Those two days were full of silence. I found myself driving for hours without radio or music, just listening to the silence of the road, the silence of god. Utah, Idaho, and Oregon seemed so open, so vacant. At Bryce Canyon the first day, the silence was so overpowering that I could hear my own blood rushing through my skull. Maybe it was the high altitude. Maybe it was the cold; snow does have a way of insulating silence. I wondered what it would be like to be deaf. Would it always be so quiet tied up with the heavy pressure of life’s force?

Bryce Canyon, Utah

As I made my way along the snow-crunched trail, I looked up at the hoodoos that walled me in. I heard a quick whir, like a hummingbird passing by my ear or a plane quickly spanning the sky above me. Before I could connect the thought to the sound, I saw the stone hit beside me with such force that it dug two inches deep into the compressed snow. Another foot to the left and that surely would have stopped the loud rushing in my head. And to think I was worried about mountain lions.

I guess it just wouldn’t be a roadtrip without the stinging crack of rocks. I’m beginning to collect them as chips in my windshield. I now have three: one that came with the car when I bought it, one from my drive through Texas last year, and now one from Idaho, sent soaring towards my face, making me jump as if the glass weren’t there: like walking into a sliding door and leaving a small crack in the glass instead of the smudge of skin.

Somewhere along I-84 in Eastern Oregon

The trip was necessary. It was great to visit my family: all of my Arizona-folk now leading new lives. I wondered how I will fit in now—my little cousin knowing my sister but looking at me like a stranger; my sister living a new, married life that I cannot yet understand; my friend turning away from years of comradery. Furthermore, how I will shape my new life, this new year. For starters, I am twenty-one years old, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I slept through New Year’s.

I remember December 31, 2010. Dawnna, Derek, and I went out for dinner in Monroeville. We went to the Moose afterwards for socializing and drinks. They had decorations and sparkling red top hats. I put one on Derek. As I put him to bed that night, the beginning of our last year, I laughed at the ring of glitter lining his forehead. I washed that red glitter out of his hair for weeks.

December 31, 2011: Yuma, California. I spent the evening playing cornhole with family and friends and lighting paper lanterns and watching the instant burst of Christmas trees in a bonfire. I was lonely, and everything was so different.

This year, I didn’t have a chance to feel lonely or empty. After a large, traditional meal of sauerkraut, veggie dogs, and homemade mashed potatoes (sometimes I think we just might make it as adults; look, Mom, we cooked our own meal together; we used to fight over who would do what, but on our own, we fell naturally into roles—I peeled the potatoes while K chopped, and we boiled up our servings, hers with butter, mine without), Katlin and I napped on adjacent couches, lightly dozing through the clock’s welcome into a new calendar. At midnight, Jake yelled, “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I briefly sat up and mumbled, “hpy neu yr” as my heavy body sunk into the deep, happy sleep of a full belly.

Painted Sky, Arizona

For once, though, this journey turned out not to be so much about the destination: there really wasn’t even one--it's kind of like New Year's: you don't go into it thinking of when the year will be over but rather what you will do along the way. This trip, I needed the drive. I needed the time alone. I needed the time to hear nothing, to think nothing, to be nothing. I needed to find pleasure in a good song and a cigarette and laugh at my own stupidity as I talked to myself for hours. I needed to go away from Seattle because it made me realize that, on my way back, I was returning home. I needed to feel sexy, to love what I do not know.

Snoqualmie Pass, Washington

Tonight I stood in a dressing room in H&M. I found a great yellow blazer for $10. I tried it on. I couldn’t even button it. It was the largest size they had. Sometimes I wonder if I am cut out for this life: the city, a professional lifestyle, worrying about what I look like. I do look great in yellow, but sometimes, I feel sexier in a familiar grey, quarter-zip sweater driving in a circle around the state of Nevada.

PaperMe

In elementary school, I did a project on buttes and plateaus--what the differences are between them, what they look like. My dad and I worked in our basement on a model, old coffee cans used to base the paper-mache models. We added layer after layer. My dad has an eye for detail. As the model dried, it was time to paint. We started with a brown base, then added varying shades of tan and grey.

"You need a river going down between the canyons," Dad pointed. So I painted a blue line trailing along the apparant canyon.

I thought of this while on the road this week. As we drove across Arizona from Phoenix to at least the California border, I watched the mountains, the canyons, the buttes, the plateaus. I was reminded of why I loved this land in the first place, how even in second or third grade I was drawn to study the place that I called my second-home, even if I was only there two weeks out of the year. The landscape colored me, coupled by the comfort of family, Arizona called me.

I thought I needed to be there. I often still do.

A few years after the paper-mache landscape, in art class, we created life-sized figure drawings of ourselves. We were then told to mail them to other people and have those people take a picture with "paper me" and mail back the drawing and the photo to  be displayed at the upcoming art show. I remember sending PaperMe to my Aunt Necie, who took a picture making snow angels with paper me in her yard.

Then, I sent PaperMe West to Aunt Sharon and Uncle Tom, who took a picture of the three of us--paper me stuck to a large saguaro in front of their house, aunt and uncle on either side. But the mailing to Arizona took nearly a week then, and PaperMe didn't make it back.

My art teacher had me quickly draw up another one to display with my photos. I scurried crayons and colored pencils into crooked lines that couldn't nearly match the hard work of the original--the real one, in which I had put so much of myself, as artists do. The re-make was simply a shell, a fill-in-the-blank replica. This wasn't PaperMe at all.

She was still in Ariziona, and maybe she still is.

When I first arrived in Mesa on Saturday, the hot air hit me all at once, and I smelt the instant warm of desert, of childhood summers, of a sunlit, familiar sense of home. I hadn't flown into Mesa before, and as we left the plane, we walked right onto the tarmac. I found my way to the door, and soon enough, my cousin Sunny purred around the bend on his motorcycle. I hopped on (yes, Mom, I wore a helmet), and we smoothly navigated highway through desert.

The sun seaped into my desperate skin, and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. The hairs on my arms danced in waves. My breath was slow, concentrated. I smiled uncontrollably, taking in every second of the limited days of my visit, and I thought, maybe this is enough.

"You are all a lost generation."

     ‎"'Oh Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.'

     Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

     'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'" 

-The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Since I first stumbled on this book in high school, I have made it a point to read it once a year. I put everything else aside and just read this book. There are many many poignant moments throughout, but those last few sentences always grip me the most--isn't it pretty to think of the life we could have had?

I'm starting to get used to transition in my life. I have now decided to withdraw from my graduate program and seek employment here in the Seattle area, all the while searching for a new place to live. Don't get me wrong, it was difficult coming to this decision, and every once in a while, I think oh gosh, this isn't right either! Then I remind myself: who am I kidding? I'll never move forward with anything if I continually wonder on what I've missed out--the whole resolution in leaving the program is knowing that I came here, and I tried it; it didn't work out, so at least now I won't have to wonder my whole life if I missed this grand opportunity. 

But it begins again--the tugging my limbs in every which direction: head East and move with Katlin; stay West and make it work; go South to Arizona. Knowing that my...well, I guess I don't have an original plan and/or a back-up plan, so let's call them Plan North and Plan South...knowing that Plan North didn't quite work as anticipated leaves so much opportunity for Plan South. Now I have that same wonder...am I missing out?

There's this odd balance in my mind. Seattle feels right in terms of community; this is the place where I can be independent and become my own person. Arizona feels comfortable, safe; I know the places; I know people--family is a strong tie, and there is such comfort in that. And yet, I do have family in Seattle, and there is comfort there too. 

Maybe I'm afraid of the clouds, and I want to run away before they invade. Maybe I'm afraid of this unfamiliar urban setting. Maybe I'm afraid of...Scratch all of that. I'm afraid of being alone, and by choosing to stay in Seattle I am making a definitive decision because if I go to Arizona, I could be just as alone. I'm afraid of taking big risks. 

Moving across the country once was enough. During the process, I learned how these things ruin friendships--how distance can wipe out any connection between too people. I'm afraid of closing that gap because I'm afraid of losing it again. There are so many ties and implications connecting these thoughts that I'm not even sure if they make sense any more. Take it as you will, but here it is:

I'm afraid, that one day, I will find myself in Spain with a close friend where there was so much opportunity that never happened, and during that brief pause where the car's tug touches our shirtsleeves, we will look at each other and know, that damn, we missed out. 

Note: Title quote comes from beginning of The Sun Also Rises. It is a quote by Gertrude Stein.

Familiarity Syndrome

I think the world has a way of shaping itself around us so that at any point in time, we can find a way to realize that we are not as alone as we feel.

I've been a bit discouraged by "the Seattle experience" so far. I haven't really met anyone new, and people are continuing to tell me that I won't because people here are closed off and set in their ways. How encouraging. I'm also told repeatedly to soak in the sun now because, try as I might, I will get depressed at least by March because it is unavoidable. Yet again, looking forward to it.

So now that I've been thoroughly drenched in warnings of negative adjustments that are in my future, I'm starting to understand the reality of this city, the jokes that people always told. The question now: is it worth it?

Is it worth going through the hassle of changing residency? Is it worth pushing through a program that I'm really starting to doubt? Is it worth dealing with seven undergraduate women for at least a year? Is it worth the cold and the rain and the depression? Is it worth it?

I'm sure praying that the answer is yes.

As much as I love lists, I'm not even sure that a pros/cons list would help me now--anything that I could comment on would be so surface-level anyways, as I can't yet grasp all of Seattle's scenarios right now: it's all still so new to me. 

On my run today, I witnessed something that has happened to me before, but I can never understand it. Every time that I go to a new place for an extended period of time, I see people from wherever I lived before. When I moved to Waynesburg, I saw people from Mamont; even in Italy, I thought I saw people from Waynesburg, only tanner and taller and with deep, brown eyes. It always takes me aback. I have to remind myself of where I am and where those people really are--be it Pennsylvania, Arizona, or even Italy. But there's some sort of comfort in just thinking that I saw someone familiar, even someone that I only know in-passing. 

Sometimes, I'm tempted to just blurt, "You look familiar!" Then I realize how terribly inappropriate that would be, especially since I can hardly get a smile out of passers-by when I'm running or even just walking to the store. Yet, I can't help but wonder: do I look familiar to them too?

I've been having these very strong, but brief, bouts of questioning if I made the right choice in coming here. Some days, it feels so confirmed: yes! why would I be anywhere else? Other days, I feel like "the road less traveled" is that way for a reason: I'm how far into debt for business school?! Sometimes it's just comforting to know that, at least for the next month or so, I am in the same time-zone as Arizona, and that kind of feels like home; I can hide behind these mountains and no one can see me fall apart or get stronger because they are my cocoon, drenched in Puget Sound's cloud-cover, as I morph and grow into God-knows-what. Hopefully an independent young woman and not some freakish cave monster or something. As long as I still have hope in the world, I'll be just fine.

So today, I've been saved by the passing of familiar but unknown faces on the sidewalk, comforting me with the reminder that this can be home too. And even if they won't smile back, it's okay, because I'm still smiling. 

Signs

I was nervous--driving into a city that I had never been to, where I would live full-time for the next year at least. When we first arrived, it was chaotic. I was anxious to arrive but was a bit disappointed with what I found. For some reason, I expected Seattle to be as familiar to me as Arizona--enough that I could get where I wanted to go, yet still with much left to explore. Since "settling in," I've realized that I don't know a damn thing about this place.

When we entered the city and saw the freeways and streets, I had the feeling of home that I get when I first arrive in Phoenix. It took me all day to remember that I was four states north and would remain so.

After getting the "tour" of the house that I was to share with seven? eight? (I'll never get it right...) other girls this year, I panicked. Let's be real here--the place looked like it hadn't been lived in for years: mold, flies, scum. I can't even begin to describe it. Taking lots of deep breaths, my mom, aunt, and I went for a drive. For fresh air? Maybe, but for some reason, I thought that I could just find a new place and be done. Be okay.

Attempting to be stoic, we reached the end of my street. We saw it---across the road was a sign, huge, reading "222". My grandma's number. My mom always said that whenever that number shows up, Grandma is with us because that was her lottery number that she always played: it identified her and kept her with us in that way.

"Something good is going to happen," my aunt said.

Even though I have fervently felt a connection with that number my whole life, this time, all that I could think was, "Grandma's not going to show up and make everything better this time. She's not in the material." I was right, and I was very wrong.

We returned to the house and unpacked my things. It's just a house was my mantra for the next 24 hours. The next day, we deep-cleaned the major areas of the house--the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and my room. It's just a house. It's just a house, I repeated as I scrubbed lines of black mold from the bathroom tiles. Light echoed past the pink orchid that previously sat in the kitchen sink housing flies; it now smiled into the sun from the windowsill. I looked at the room and took a more final deep breath. Home.

Chores done, we went exploring the next day. My aunt's number one site to see in Seattle was the Space Needle, so we went there first. From over 600 feet in the air, we viewed the cloudy city. Nothing looked familiar, but I thought about how well I would come to know these streets in the next year, just as it took some time to get to know Pittsburgh when I first started going into town. I also thought about Italy and how I climbed the Duomo; I pointed out my apartment and the many streets that I had ventured in that short month. Maybe at the end of my Seattle adventures I can do the same. But now, I couldn't even point out the direction where my house was or even where the bus had dropped us off in-town.

Next to the Space Needle, there was a new exhibit--Chihuly glass & gardens. I knew that my mom and aunt would love it because they always commented on the Chihuly pieces installed at Phipps Conservatory. We bought a dual ticket for the Needle and the gardens and smoothly transitioned from one to the next.

Bright pieces of ornately twisted and connected glass reflected off the floor, each other, and the spectators' eyes and glasses in colorful array. Outside, orchids and maples blended with glass shine and organic form.

I could breathe easy, and I was growing to like the city--a place that intimidates me at every thought. I knew that my house was going to work out, even though we hadn't found a different one. I knew that I would be okay here.

As we walked from room to room in the exhibit, I happened to glance behind me at the door: Room occupancy, max capacity: 222.

I believe in signs.

There is much to learn from birds.

As usual, I fall out of writing in no time at all. I've been saying for days (has it really been weeks?) now that I would blog. I had one running through my mind for a while, just brainstorming through the chaos that I consider everyday and the wild decisions that I fall into because I can never make up my mind.

Regardless, here I am: a recent college graduate with no sense of direction for the rest of my life. Do we all start out this way? I often feel like I am the only one. Okay, so I'm not totally a graduate; I still have this science course to finish up, then a camping literature course for a week before it can be official. I mean, I've graduated, but I am yet diploma-less. Luckily, I have the opportunity to stay with a really amazing family while I am here. Today, we did some garden work, and it turned out to be just the inspiration that I needed for a blog.
After the morning in the garden, we spent most of the afternoon indoors. Martin, however, kept working away in the shed while Kim and I wrote in the sunroom.
"A bird's nest!" We heard through the open window, as the breeze washed sunlight into the room. The sharp contrast against the shed, as Kim was quick to point out, made the bright colors of the shed even warmer, a strange sight against the ominous storm clouds behind it.
The bird's nest was not the typical bowler cap shape. Martin described it as a shoe: it had a long "foot" extended from the tall, thin cove that served as the birds' home. I found it funny how birds can be so content with twigs and mud as their walls. It reminded me of my recent difficulties in trying to pack all of my belongings for my upcoming move.

As I close yet another box, I wonder how on earth I am actually going to transport all of this stuff aross the country. My big move to Arizona is coming up in... 75 days(!) according to my countdown. I really struggle with the number of boxes that my life requires. Why do I hold such value in these items, many of which lie on shelves or in drawers where I can't even see them most of the time? Sometimes it feels as though holding onto these little pieces of my childhood will make me remain a child, though I know that's probably the farthest from the truth. I always imagine coming home to see my room just as I left it--brilliantly chartreuse walls and my old grafting desk under the window.

Sitting on a short, brick wall, I watch a bird swoop and sway across my view. I think, graceful, like walking. But the bird dives at a tree, scraping at the branch with its claws and poompf! it lands, not so gracefully, but sturdy holding onto the height with careful balance. I jump from the wall; the ground only a few feet below my dangling ankles, and I think of myself as landing from flight, but when I touch the ground, I fall forward, scraping my palms on the sidewalk. Gravity's still working. Birds don't even have hands. What is their secret?

For a while now, I've had this great yearning for independence. I am always wishing that I could just go be on my own. I'm almost there, but I'm stuck at that in-between stage where i need to fluff my feathers a bit before I can take flight. As the boxes pile up, I wonder if this is how the bird nests are made: twigs and clods of dirt carefully chosen to build a sense of home, just as my books and paintings will embellish my walls. I imagine the birds moving south, picking their favorite sticks and carrying them via beak to a new home.

Why do we over-complicate things? Surely I too could select a few favorites to take and leave the rest of my past in PA. I just can't grasp this connection to these objects that seem to define my memory. Without them, I often think, I would lose all that I have lived.

When I first saw the bird land on the branch, I commended it's perfect balance. I thought, that must be the secret! and decided to follow suit, but then I realized that in my inherent clumsiness, I will never be balanced beyond tree pose, and only then when firmly planted on a mat. When trying balance postures in yoga, one of the greatest challenges is not the act of balance itself but the trusting of your own body to not let you break. Trust.

I wish that I could say for certain that when the time comes, I will fly South with just a few sticks, but my commitment to a life of simplicity is a work-in-progress. So many memories are tied down through possession, and it's a lesson that cannot be un-learned without discipline. What I do know, though, is that when I go, I will kick off, spread my wings, and settle into a new home. I will carry with me each moment of my life, even if I can't remember them all. Most importantly, I will trust. I will trust that I can land on my feet (not my hands!), and I will trust that God will still keep me in-check with gravity.

Who will zip my dress?

Things I wish I could do:

• blog more regularly
• commit to doing homework
• be more flexible
• sleep

Last night was our band and choir concert. After the choir sung, we sat in the balcony as we watched the band. Feeling slim in my tight black dress, my mind drifted from wishing that I were on-stage playing the bassoon to wondering what my future held: would I ever be in a band again? would I be any good? will I wear this dress for concert-black? who will zip my dress?

It's tight--it's gotta be tight for it be look so hot. Seriously. I never feel this way, but this dress is so simple, and black is always flattering. When I think about my future in some job where I get to look nice often and can wear my sexy black dress, I imagine myself walking into the confident Arizona sun--a good feeling, where warmth eminates deeper into the dark fabric. This great scene in my mind really has setbacks, though. I love the thought of it, but so often I find myself thinking of the event and not the path that it takes to get there. I've got to get into the dress somehow.

I've thought a lot about where I want to live when I go West in a few months. I've narrowed it down to the Phoenix area, a simple choice, and actually, not narrow at all. My cousin offered I stay with him and his wife until I get a bit more settled. While I'm grateful for the offer, it doesn't feel right; I need to be on my own. However, the more that I think about how great it would be to go out there and just be on my own, the more I realize that there are things that I just won't be able to do. Solitude is something that I have not known for a long time.

Naturally, I want nothing more than to go out there and be surrounded by my friends and family. WAKE UP, Natalie. They have their own lives. I just don't know how to wrap my head around the reality of this: I have dreamt of moving there for so long that the prospect of it actually happening seems consistently out-of-reach. How do I figure out what I want to do with my life if I am just tagging into another circle that I already have semi-established out there? I've never actually fully put myself out there on my own (excluding my Italy trip, but sadly, those connections have not been very consistent since), and that scares me more than anything.

I've decided that I need to be flexible. If I like whatever I land into in Arizona, then great! If not, that's fine too. Maybe some time away from academia will give me a chance to figure out my next line of education. I really don't know. But I am afraid of being alone. I am afraid of settling into a new city only to leave again. I am afraid of having many homes.

I like to think of myself as an independent young woman. I am very wrong. I accept any time that my parents offer to buy groceries, and I still take my laundry home because I hate spending all of my quarters at the laundromat. I am no where near "grown-up," but I tell myself that I am so that I think that I will actually survive in some civilized fashion when living alone.

I realized recently that society wants women to be independent. My sexy black dress is a hand-me-down from many years ago that I only recently grew into (which is both fortunate and unfortunate in several ways). The zipper is on the back of the dress. When I was younger, say my early teens, I would twist my flexible shoulders down to zip the bottom, then meet the zipper half-way up the path by thrusting my elbows above my head and grasping the tip of the metal clasp with all that my fingers could reach. I would then pull the zipper the final stretch and smile at my independence--my own sort of rebellion; I didn't need my mother to help me anymore.

Today, I wore a new dress, a more professional yet (hopefully) fashionable dress. The zipper is on the side. After pulling the dress over my head and sticking my lanky arms through the sleeve-holes, I reached across my left side and zipped straight up from my hip. I felt accomplished to have gotten dressed in such a smooth, sleek motion.

I don't understand yet what it truly means to live alone. Being in college does anything but prepare you for independent living--is there such thing as silence? can I really have both a kitchen and a bathroom? can I really eat whatever food is in the fridge? CAN I REALLY NOT HAVE TO CLIMB A LADDER TO GET INTO MY BED? (After two years, I never want to see a bunkbed again in my life. Never.)

"Katlin, will you zip me please?" As much as we argue, I still rely on Katlin for many little things. She steps into the bathroom and looks at the dress.
"Uhh, can you hold this?" She pulls the dress together at the top, expecting me to keep it like that.
"I can't reach that." I'm definitely not as flexible as I was when I was twelve. She scoffs.
"This would be much easier if you..." She grunts the zipper to a stop--that tight spot at the peak of my curves that weren't there those years ago when I could zip straight up my spine that stood parallel to my body's silhouette.
She sighs and lifts her knee to the small of my back, pushing to hold the dress down while using her left hand to hold the two sides together and her right to pull the zipper up. If only she had three hands.
I would have helped, but I was too focused on sucking in every part of my midsection before the fat comments started.
"Phew!" The dress is successfully zipped. It's tight in the middle, just enough to accentuate all the right places. The shoulders are loose, almost enough for the straps to slide to the edge of my shoulders.

So as I sat in that balcony, thinking about how great the dress felt, I sunk a little. Would I ever wear it in that desert sun? I imagined myself getting in my car, half-dressed, and driving to my cousin's house, just to ask to be zipped up. Then I scratched that out and imagined living with some anonymous man who would sensually zip along my curves, appreciating the zz of each tooth as the fabric pulled tighter. Then I scratched that out (clearly, romance can not be my to-do list anytime soon, though the thoughts are nice!) and realized what it would actually be--me standing frutrated in front of a mirror, trying to see enough to reach and then getting frustrated, probably crying, and changing into something with buttons.