the lizards are breeding in my kitchen cabinets.

Stop yourself now, I'm too tired to write anything interesting. And too tired to keep quiet. Friday night and I'm intentionally at home, watching movies, curled like dead weight on the couch. Exhausted from hours of teaching old folks to play Tetris, testing their memories, and today: patting their backs while they puke after our driving simulator. Oh, research is so much cooler than you ever imagined. If I'd known they hand out PhDs for washing plastic buckets, I'd have left the caregiving racket years earlier and saved myself some time.

Moments ago, I discovered ANOTHER baby lizard darting across my couch. I've seen them on the wall, the stairs, under the sink... I'd be creeped out if I wasn't already resigned to existence in Florida, Wildlife Adventureland. Rather than spend the few useful seconds he was in sight catching him in a cup and maybe saving him, I chased him around with a camera:



He's still behind the couch somewhere. Welcome to my home, little critter. Don't let Shaniqua eat you like she does the cockroaches, and my food when I'm not looking (Bad combination).

Speaking of whom: yes, you read correctly. She's eating. Those of you who've heard my loud laments these past weeks, I correct myself. Shaniqua is not going to die. She's back to following me around the house every morning, sluttily pretending to love me for food, then wolfing it (ignoring me of course) as soon as she gets it. She's been through a lot lately, and my hating on her for the first month here probably didn't help. (I just don't feel like cuddling a cat when I want to jump off a cliff myself. Sorry Shnekers.) Anyway, looks like the panicked excess of love brought her back around. To make up for weeks of shoving her off my lap, here's a pictorial tribute to my visibly perked-up ittle trooper:

Looking out the back window, hunting lizards with mind bullets

She's not the stealthiest of stalkers.

All you need is love. :)

I wish I had time to lounge this much.

learn by going where to go.

In "The Waking", possibly my all-time favorite poem, Theodore Roethke writes:

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

I've held onto those words for years. Learn by going where to go. It's never been so hard to do as it has this year. In connecting with some of my classmates, I discovered we're all miserable and scared. Beyond the expected pains of moving, we share the same essential fear: that we're wasting our irretrievable twenties in a cultural vaccuum, slaves to academia. Our friends are back home, working the same entry-level jobs we started with, and they'll move up but they don't have to move away to get there. We miss hanging out, being done with work at 5pm, partying til late. We party together here but it's not the same yet; we don't like each other nearly as much as we like the friends we already had.

We know growing up happens now. The twenties don't last forever, and when we come out the other side of this the world we said goodbye to won't be there waiting. There is fun we'll miss. I hate missing fun. But I've learned to remind myself that it would never have lasted. Everyone grows up. People get married, have families, life changes focus and you stop staying out late. If I let this chance pass me by for fear of missing fun, I'd eventually find myself empty-handed, having never gone where I need to go.

I'm beginning to understand my time here as a sacrifice. I don't like Gainesville, but I realize it's not about me liking it. Fun, dear as it is to me, is not as important as living a life I'm satisfied with at its end. It could never erase the regret of not doing the best I could have done. I have this remarkable opportunity to offer people help it takes years to learn how to give. By learning here I'll be able to help well. If I can serve usefully where there's a need, with my own brand of warmth (for what it's worth), I'd be happy with the life I chose. I'd give up my comfort and fun for a few years to be that fulfilled.

(To those of you I love: you are not just fun to me. Although you're super fun and I miss that. Just don't hear me dismissing you as a passing good time. Good friends, you're always important to me. I love you and need you in my life wherever you are.)

I waited til one good friend got it in the mail before I posted this poem: I found it, of all places, in my new research lab.


stages / herman hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

time a husk.

Why lay yourself on the torturer's rack of the past and future?
the mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear - to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew
that did not help you dance.
We will come to see that all evolves us.

-Rumi

big up to the blue box.

I have a cold. How this happens in balmy - ahem, sweltering - Florida... ? Most evenings I'm up with a fury: an hour of running (no, I didn't see that coming either) followed by dinner and a full-on attack at whatever scholarly task I've put off longest. But I've overdone it - I get to bed and just keep thinking til the wee hours. Which has culminated in achy, sore-throated sleepiness.

So I'm on auto-pilot, heavy-lidded. Blissfully inert. And while I've been very ambitious about healthy, balanced eating, tonight saw the return of childhood's best staple food: Kraft macaroni & cheese. Yeeeeaaaahhhhh. I was raised on fried bologna sandwiches and frozen fish sticks. It could be worse. I'm sure whatever's in that weird cheese powder is working wonders - it's like a rock in my stomach, it's even harder to move, but oh how at peace I am, half asleep with a tummy full of mac & cheese.

It might just need some kombucha to wash it down though. I have grown up a little.

the new world.

Reclined in my old chaise lounge listening to crickets and Adagio of Dvorak's New World, neither of which I ever tire. After an exciting half hour of chasing around the house, a very content little cat's curled under my arm, her nose tucked against my wrist. Purring is an understatement. If cooing is possible, Shaniqua is cooing.

It's hard to imagine why this quiet, solitary life has been so hard to accept. It's good hearing what my own head has to say given some space and silence. It's nice to get in with hammer and drill and make a place my own, to fill it with Nag Champa and cooking smells. (Today I tried my hand at orange cornmeal biscuits with vanilla peaches-and-cream; not half bad.)

It is, still, lonely. I haven't hugged anyone since I arrived nearly three weeks ago. I'm still thirsty for familiar voices. But I know how it happens - how people grow slowly into your life, how you never know quite where they'll come from but they do. I know it takes patience, an open heart, and in the meantime you learn to be your own good company. You take care of yourself with what makes you feel alive and loved. Thankfully, I'm pretty damn good company. :)

I'm surrounded by good people too, people who are strangers now but won't stay that way. Tonight I had dinner with friends I've seen a few times; I'm starting to learn their habits and ways of speaking. I rode bikes home with a new friend and found we had lots in common. And at school I'm in a class of smart, cool women (and three equally-cool men), strong-minded, lively students who are even more fun when they're not working.

This new life stuff takes time, but there are many doors open to me. I know how to support myself until I have close supporters around me, and the foundations are already made. I miss my loved ones, but I will be all right here. Just, you know, don't forget to call me now and then.