Nature in Literature aka Camping Class

For my summer lit. course, we had to keep a journal where we wrote about being in nature and responded to some of our readings. Here are a few of my notes:

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society,” from Emerson's "Nature"

            Solitude is something that I think about a lot. Rilke talks about it extensively, and one of the main things that stands out to me is that he not only endorses and lives it, but he also recommends against it. He notes how solitude is not for everyone—only those who can truly handle being “alone” should even attempt it. I think that solitude is one of those things that always sounds great in theory, and probably everyone at least thinks about it, but it’s definitely not something to be taken lightly.

            Sometimes, I think that I would love to be that person who just goes out into the wild and lives. That’s it: just lives. It seems ideal; why not? Before all of this modern technology and cars and indoor plumbing—before all of that—people were really connected with nature. “The wild” was something to be explored; something to learn about; something to seek solace and adventure in; something to be feared and adored. I wish that we could get that back, but modern lifestyles are difficult to recover from. Even if I go for a walk, I will often listen to my iPod or check my phone for a text message. If it weren’t for my sanity (in listening to music) and my career-path (in requiring communication), I would gladly toss those items out the window and be alone.

            Yet even as I type this, I know that it is a lie. Lately, the people that I talk to most have been silent. I mean silent. I haven’t heard from them in weeks, and I when I send them a message, I get no response. However, thanks to the lovely Facebook, I see that they are still posting and therefore, still alive. It’s really annoying though; why do we invest so much into relationships that often fail or aren’t worth as much to the other party as they are to us? The biggest question from all of this is: how do we break from these societal ties that make us think that we need to be constantly in communication with other people?

            I think that’s one of the main problems that Emerson had: he couldn’t go into the wild himself because he was still tied to those European ideals and sense of community. Is it possible that we are just not cut-out to live in solitude because of the modern ways in which we are raised? Of course writers like Rilke and Emerson are few and far between, though there are many writers today. So it is with solitary beings as well. I want solitude like I want to stop eating candy bars, but I’m as attached to my iPhone as I am to the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup that I’ll devour when I get home. 

“We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this stormday, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much," from Muir's "A Wind-Storm in the Forests"

            This reminded me of a popular quote about trees that goes something along the lines of, “If you don’t like where you are, then change it. You are not a tree.” Assuming that I am at least close to quoting it correctly, I just have to say that I never understood that. Trees are not stagnant to me. They have spirits and motion and life.

            As a result, I was really drawn to the selected passage from Muir. First of all, I love the connection of cosmos with Earth. I think too often, they are taken as separate entities, but, Muir is right—we are all in the milky way together. That aside, I definitely agree that trees make journeys. I think that it is silly to take on a perspective of only human, where we think of ourselves as the only entities who can move and live and breathe.

            One of the best parts about this quote is actually thinking about the trees’ travels. Grown trees are often so much bigger than us; we will never grow to such heights—yet, they sway. That motion seems disconnected from our notions of time. As I feel the breeze hit my face, it feels more tense, quicker , than what I see passing through the trees. There is almost a delay, as if each sway of the branches, twenty seconds in people-time, were three years in tree-time. Our long journeys that we take throughout our lives may seem like a lot to us, but, in fact, we all just take a multitude of little journeys, maybe just few-year ventures, just like the sighing trees.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                             6/23/12

            As I sat at the picnic table attempting to read, something caught my peripheral. Some white speck was moving in contrast to the dark, still table. I tried to ignore it as I did with the voices from a boating lesson or the creaking oars drifting by on the lake. Curiosity got the better of me, or maybe I was just looking for any distraction, any excuse to take a break from reading. I looked toward the white speck.

            I have never seen a caterpillar so wild. It was a symmetrical punk—dark, brown tufts of hair, standing up like they’d been straight-ironed, on its front and behind; three white balls like Q-tip ends stuck to its middle. Were they egg sacs? Just part of the design? It meandered along. Really, it’s feet looked like suction cups with their forced movements, yet as a whole, the small being looked graceful, deliberate. It walked across the first plank, started the ninety-degree-drop, then reached across to the next plank an inch away.

            I was shocked to see the caterpillar make the stretch and wondered how its squishy body managed such stability. Once across, it turned left and kept going, crawling across the table to the far end. When the end of the table approached, the caterpillar reached out, as if for another plank, but upon feeling none, it crawled straight down.

            I never touch caterpillars because:

                        1) They freak me out. Anything with that many legs cannot be trusted.

2) They tickle when all of those legs crawl across my pores and flirt with the thin hairs on my knuckles that I never knew were there until the caterpillar brisked them.

3) With all of those crazy colors and funky hair, they’ve got to poisonous.

            I looked at the yellow spots and the contrast of colors on the furry critter. Are they poisonous in bite? Is there something in their fur? Is it even fur? I wanted to put the caterpillar under investigation and ask for answers to everything that I don’t know.

            I wondered what it would be like to have nothing going on in my mind. My first thought when I saw the caterpillar seemingly aimlessly venturing in, what I think is, a big world (and must seem endless to the caterpillar) was that it must be great to just be. Is that even possible for humans? We’re so caught up in infinite thought processes, and we’re so tied down by language.

            The language of a caterpillar:

                        .:...:...:...:...:.........::....:::....:...:...:...:...:::.......::::...:.......:......

            Even though my first thought was that the caterpillar had no thoughts, I can’t help but imagine some map in his mind, some internal compass directing him where to go across that table. And, naturally, if he thought anything at all, he spoke Portuguese.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                             6/23/12

            When I lie on the ground, the sounds in the woods seem illuminated. The chipmunks dancing through last fall’s leaves are deer blindly building a trail; the birds lightly flitting and calling are children running and screaming across a field. I wonder how I haven’t heard them before. No, I have heard them, but they just sounded like background noise then. Now, they are the only noise—aside from the bulldozer in the distance and the hum of cars on a distant highway. It seems like there is no escaping modern living, but so often, nature escapes me; how is that?

            I think about morning. At home, I go outside and something about the cool air seems to make the birds louder—their harmonies and responses echo between the trees. As I drive down the hill, twelve bunnies run in front of my car and twenty-four chipmunks sit nibbling on stones along the side of the road. The world is alive.

            I think about afternoon. I go outside, and I can hear the heat waves bouncing off the air—stuffed with molecules so thick that it becomes difficult to breathe. I hear cars. I hear people. I wonder where the chipmunks are hiding.

            As I sit on a bench, I hear a rustle beneath me. I look, ready to lift my legs to safety if anything freaky is down there. I slightly jolt as two chipmunks race into view. They come from opposite directions and pause about a foot away from each other and only inches from my toes. They both look at me. I look at them. They look at each other. I’m still looking at them. And in that moment where their eyes meet, their glance is so awkward, like secret lovers who have just been found out, but they try to pretend it didn’t happen as they turn and run in the directions from which they came.

            I watch both of the chipmunks reach the woods. One jolts up a tree; the other runs in small circles on the ground before deciding on a different tree to mount. Leaves crackle. Small toes pitter up pieces of bark. A moment passes.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                 6/26/2012

            I ventured into the woods without direction, just to see where they would lead. I decided to follow Throeau’s advice of just going wherever my own two feet would guide me. Of course, I ended up lost—is there such a thing as lost? (We are never really far from home.) It wasn’t long though before I found a small trail. I thought at first it may have been from deer, but then the consistency of its wear seemed too planned for un-patterned four-footed beings. A bike trail, maybe? It soon led to a much wider path—for hiking or maybe horses. The hoof-prints of horseshoe and deer gave away the instant connection that humanity would impact any inch of soil we could touch.

            There weren’t any climbable trees. I was losing hope of finding my heightened escape when I saw it—a giant ‘L’ leaning obtusely at 125 before immediately shifting straight skyward. I removed myself from the path and walked toward it, planning my approach. A small knot provided an immediate foothold as I pulled myself onto the tree.

            The poor traction of my sneakers left my feet slipping as I grasped further up with my hands, slowly maneuvering my way. When I got to the corner of the ‘L’, I let my bum flop onto the slanted bark. Propping my feet, I took off my shoes and socks and let my toes grasp the tree’s skin to keep me from sliding back down. I leaned back onto the trunk and closed my eyes, imagining that I was an extension of the tree.

            Silence cannot persist here. The breeze, the birds, the bugs—it all echoed through me. So, also, did humanity. Beyond my being, I could hear the distant humming highway. Even here, well into the woods, the sounds of man could not evade the calling air. I wished that I could turn it off—mute the commercials so that I could better enjoy the nature channel. Gosh, even my metaphors turn into technological references of modern making.

            Kayaking in Florida this past spring, I fell in love with the open water. I yearned to venture towards that infinite horizon that left so much unanswered. As I’d point my boat south, reaching for the un-seeable shore, my vision dizzied with the thought of actually being caught with nothing around me—no way of escaping the floating craft that determined my survival. I resolved to always keep one eye on the mangrove islands that pervaded the glades—one step removed from humanity, yet always safely within distance of return to the comforts of knowing where my next paddle would lead. The Gulf called, but, like Thoreau, I could not fully indulge in answering the echoing waves.

            In the tree, I focused, like Abram,  my attention to the details of nature, tuning out all other distraction,—be it the highway or the rushing waters as in his Balian cave—and I let an uncertain silence pervade the continuous thrumming, echoing on the edges of my eardrum. Now I could read.

            At 1:28, the pages of my book began to glow; my pupils contracted to small ants, skimming from left to right, but the words couldn’t hold my attention. I looked for the source of light, a rarity in such covered woods with sunlight blocked from the branching leaves that reached for each other, like Michelangelo’s God and Adam. The breeze sparked that touch, allowing light to briefly reach my page.

            The mesmerizing sensation of light dappling the forest echoed the waters when sunbeams, at the peak of mid-afternoon, would dance along rolling crests, creating a glittering array. Dulled by the reflection of color versus water’s shine, the light hopped from leaf to leaf, making its way to the ground in hopeful spurts—just enough to quench the photosynthetic thirst of the plants below.

Response to Time in Nature                                                                 6/27/2012

            I was looking forward to kayaking because I like being out on the water. Floating, itself, is an interesting spectacle. When I first started paddling, my mind was focused on time: was two hours too long to rent the boat for such a small lake? I started out across the water, aiming to reach the other side of the lake, past the swimming area. When I realized that I would be there in less than ten minutes, I realized that this wasn’t just about rowing.

            I paused, letting the weak current drag my kayak in small beats. I lifted my feet from the cockpit and rested them on top of my boat, feeling the sun dry the water droplets that had splashed on my legs. Leaning back onto my elbows, I closed my eyes. Nothing came to mind. Such meditation seemed foreign to me—always busy and thinking and re-thinking every scenario.

            I decided to warm my face in the sun too, so I raised my neck, lifting my face skyward like a turtle basking in late afternoon. I could hardly feel the small bumps of current beneath me, and the world seemed to be still, save for the shrinking shoreline in front of me. The water has a way with warping distances to seem farther.

            When I opened my eyes, another kayaking was zooming past. He nodded at me, and I gave a small tilt of my head and slight smile in return. Had he been closer, he probably would have said something about what a nice day it was and how great the water felt. I definitely was not about to interrupt my contemplation with speech, though my internal voice started up again.

            She told me that it was weird how it looked like the kayaker was going so fast. I wondered if I went that fast too. When you’re actually in the boat, it doesn’t seem like much—you move; the water moves; the trees are standing still, but you could swear that they were walking too, like when you are the passenger in a car or on a train, and you focus your eyes on the closest trees, and they look you are passing them really fast. Then you focus on farther trees or an approaching billboard, and they are stationary; your speed hasn’t changed, but it feels different; the item in focus seems to reach you slower.

            I put my feet back into the cockpit—my kayak cocooned around me, and I snuggled in, imagining I was floating above ground as in the hammocks tied between trees at the shoreline campsites. As I reached the edge of the lake, I passed a group in a canoe. Two men were on either end of the boating, rowing in sync, while a woman sat in the middle, perched and poised, sunglasses resting on her face; a daschaund yapped under her left arm. Her face jerked towards the dog, and just as quickly, she smacked it on the head with her free hand. “Shut up!” I heard her snip; she sounded even more annoying than the dog.

            As I watched them float away, I kept paddling. When I reached the edge of the lake, I paused, feeling slightly disappointed. I looked around—the park seemed pretty void; there weren’t even many people at the beach, which was still well within my sightlines. With a burst of giddiness, I rowed the right side of my paddle backwards, the left forwards, and continued this pattern until I completed a full-circle pivot. Then I laughed at my own idiocy and began paddling back to the other end of the lake.

            I looked at my watch. 3:45. I still had an hour and a half to play with the boat. I decided that it would be fun to take a closer look at the edges of the lake. The vegetation varied, and I thought I might see some interesting critters there too. I began my scaling of the circumference of the lake.

            I got off to a rough start. As I paddled, I paid more attention to the shore than where I was going. Not only did I end up caught in shallow water, but I nearly floated right over a fishing line. I looked up just soon enough to paddle away from the transparent line. I sheepishly apologized to the fishermen, who sat complacently in foldable camp chairs, and continued my adventures. I felt like an early explorer, navigating by water to investigate the land. 

in time of dandelions

The sun glaring into my closed eyes reminds me that it is summer. When I open them again, the world looks faded like an old photograph, and I feel like I have been here before. Sure, I was here yesterday and the day before that, but my childhood was miles away in a wide, mostly flat field adorned with dandelions and a long, steep hill patched with clovers and chopped grass that stuck, like a scarecrow's, out the ends of my sleeves after I rolled down the hill.
I wonder what happened to the years since those days of hill-rolling and doing cartwheels in the field past dusk, when Mom would call me in at dark and beg me to take a bath or at least wash my feet, but I wouldn't because I liked the way they felt when the bottoms were grassy-green. I almost felt that yesterday. I pushed Bea on the swing under the fatherly maple, and I felt like I could be ten years old, pushing my sister skyward as afternoons were measured in laughter.

Days seemed dull as the seasons stack into piles of old calendars, but now, the flowers, the trees: it all seems vibrant. I wonder where I've been the past eleven years because I don't remember any days like this lately. I think of the past ten months; the journey has been long.

This colorful house was my safe-haven in the fall. I didn't realize then how much morning tea and a patchwork quilt could hold me together. They warmed my body to a semi-cohesive being, stitched from these simple tokens of Christian love after being picked from a sidewalk of grief where I was a fluff of dandelion popping through the cracks--pieces floating away with each tug of breeze.

Bea loves to pick flowers. She walks along finding the brightest hues and textured arrangements. She picks them short, just tall enough to fit in Kim's tiny vases that scatter the kitchen table and counters. She pulls a dandelion from the side of the road and adds it to her bouqet as we walk towards home.

Summer used to mean this for me: playing outside all day, running around pretending like we were adults because it was summer, so we answered to no one. We--Katlin, Derek, and me. Those days are long past, though, and my recent recollections of summer are working at the daycare, counting heads for ten hours a day and being too exhausted to venture beyond the kitchen after returning home. At least, that's what I'm sure it would be like if I were staying at my parents' house. My mind blocks the last four summers from resurfacing. If I were at home, I would be going to Derek's every night after work.

I keep having these moments where it hits me that he won't be there when I go back. These moments are painful in a way that I cannot grasp because the concept still baffles my mind. Last weekend, I sat over his grave in awe. Had he really been placed into this rectangle of ground? The grass is a solid green across the plot where a short, yellowed patch had sprouted in the fall. It all blends in now, smeared together by the season's first cutting, and I cannot be sure if he is really there because my memory of those months has blended too.

The town of Waynesburg is the only place here in Southwestern PA where I have no connective thoughts of, "I should be doing this with Derek right now." He's never been here, and phone calls were never enough anyways. When I opened my eyes to the sunlight, a rush of urgency flooded me; if I were home, I would be with him. No, I will not allow myself to go there. I am here; I am safe; I am living a life painted in purples and reds and three daughters, like sisters, when added together equal the age of my own, as if I am living with her at all stages of childhood again. Where is my brother?

This house greets me like an old home aftering my brief stay months ago. I feel part of this family, and I wonder what happened to this sensation in my own home where I spent my childhood. The kind faces that I'm spending my days with encourage me towards hope--in faith, in future, in family. The dandelions that Bea picked open petals of orange and yellow; home is sitting around a small table in mismatched chairs to sip the morning's prayer to the day.

I don't know what brought Derek to mind as I let the rays seap through me, but now as I listen, I hear him all around me. The birds chime to each other in a symphony of summers spent listening to Uncle Eltie talk crazy to them as he sat by the mailbox when Derek and I brisked by. The breeze trickles down the hanging pipes that sing to the touch of metal-on-metal--the only voice that answered during the days after he died. The dogs bark down the street the way Casey would when she saw me bounding down the hill as she peered through the open window. I even see him in the sequins of birch leaves, flicking like pages through a book. He is the breeze carrying the birds' tune, the dogs' bark, the leaves, the curtains by the window. His new voice speaks without words, only tiny clangs of soft-loud-echo.

"This feels like summer when I was a kid," I told Kim as we walked inside for supper. Bea and I prepared spaghetti, and I saw the green-stained balls of her feet as she tiptoed on a chair to stir the noodles. I peered under my own toes to find that they matched. She turned to me and smiled, probably proud of her noodle cooking, while I smiled back, wanting to hold on to green feet and children's laughter and bouqets of dandelions on the kitchen table.

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.

Never Apologize

So this seems as good a time as any to start actually blogging--or at least attempting to. In Creative Nonfiction class, we read excerpts from Julie Powell's Julie/Julia and watched a snippet of an episode of The French Chef. The excerpts gave me comfort in the fact that a young woman could use some side project to hold her life together, even if that means making it fall apart more first. Further, Julia Child's hilarious, yet seemingly stoic, personality inspired me to step into the kitchen. (No, no, this isn't another food blog! Maybe...)

Every time I think I have things under control, I realize how much I don't. I crack under pressure, but I can't let myself fall apart. I am the yolk dropping into a bowl with a plop! with just enough buoyancy to keep from breaking. According to Julia, though, I needn't worry about my breaking yolks--"never apologize." They're omelettes anyways; I mean, that's the solution, right? Break and blend and whisk the yolks until they are no more discernible from each other or their whites. God, I am so alone.

I am twenty years old. Twenty. Two decades old. I can't even drink legally yet, but I keep getting these moments of panic where I start to think my life is over. I've lived it all, though I've barely lived at all, and I can do nothing but push forward through some set of routine to keep my body going.

I woke up one morning and wondered what I should eat for breakfast. I need to use up my eggs before they expire. Oh God, I am twenty years old, and my eggs are on the verge of expiring! I thought that I wanted to do my own thing for a while, but too often I felt this urging to fall in love and finish my life. (Why does love seem like such an ending?) During the past year, I spent a lot of time pretending that we were immortal. My cousin Derek was hospitalized most of 2011 due to complications that began with pneumonia, complicated by his DMD. He had always been the other half of my every "we." I could feel this ticking--like the elephant in the room, only this elephant was snoring while wearing a neon yellow tutu. I'm really good at pushing out whatever I don't want in my life. I turned the snoring elephant into a meditating Buddha in my mind, and I felt like I could hold onto that peace all the way to nirvana. 

Then Derek died. He died, and the prospect of death became real--I could, and would, die too. It was that moment when the ticking became my own. And here I am--trying to pick up the eggshells from the floor (never apologize), while I pretend like my yolks aren't longing to be mixed and blended and, oh God, worse than expiring, cooked. Cooked: entirely brewed into one being with ______. No one. With no one. 

"What are your first thoughts after watching Julia Child?"

"There is no way that those eggs are cooked!" I sassed at my prof's question. I have a tendency of saying ridiculous things to avoid some of the serious class discussions. 

Well, for what it's worth (if anything), I was right. Well, maybe. I've determined that there is a list of factors that I could have messed up:

• The pan wasn't hot enough. On my first try, the eggs weren't sizzly bubbling as Julia showed. Maybe my skillet was too cheap? Though, Julia sure stressed that there was no need to have anything more than a cheap skillet!
• Julia did pour a trickle of water into her eggs, but I didn't; she said it was an option!
• I can't have been shaking the skillet correctly. It splashed and jiggled, and each crest left me flinching back, as if I had a sparkler shooting sporadically in my hand. Nevertheless, the top of the egg remained gooey. 
• Julia said two-three eggs. I used two. Were they too many for the size of my pan?
• Maybe it's just the fact that I can't get the terminology right: pan? skillet? I don't know. Something. Surely Julie Powell didn't pronounce Julia's recipes correctly on day one. 

Maybe I don't need to worry so much about my eggs cooking up. I mean, we get multiple tries, right? We're all broken and risk everything to mix with a potential pair, but sometimes, we flop. Sometimes at the end of the date or the years of dating, all that we can do is lay flat on the plate and give up. If relationships worked out every time, life would be boring because we'd all be paired up with whichever little eggy we happened to be seated next to in our squeaky styrofoam beds. (No, how about cardboard? Let's be eco-friendly here; I try.) Hmm... "Life, friends, is boring!" ...so Berryman seems to think.

I'm glad for second-chances. I'm glad for falling apart and feeling like I'm nearly expired and hoping that someday I'll be cooked up tight in that French burrito of an omelette. Sorry, Julia, but it's no 30-second venture, and it takes more than two trys. Even if I'm not that hungry and I end up only cooking one egg, all swirled up within myself, as long as I've made it, knowing when to break and when to bounce lightly in the bubbling heat of butter, I can admit that Julia wasn't too far off, even if breakfast isn't quite what I thought it would be. 

Never apologize.