This is a delayed repost of my posts to twitter.com. Typically, my tweets are private, but since I'm documenting my Washington trip, I'm posting my tweets here. (I am domesticat on Twitter.)
]]>It's time to go home.
]]>It's time to go home.
I've been here for nearly a week, and I'm sitting here prattling on with a keyboard instead of writing the thank-you notes that must be done. I had a simple moment of clarity tonight that should show up in my thank-you notes. I've already mentioned it to Adam, but I'll find a way to put it down on paper between now and tomorrow morning.
It's easy for me to think that I have to somehow provide something to every friendship or relationship I'm in. Adam's profession and mine are different enough that we can't really share war stories. I don't have useful advice to give. He's far geekier in hardware and software than I'll ever manage, and lately it seems like the music recommendations always flow from him to me, and never vice versa.
I had a stretch of about two days in which I wondered why I was here, but the question hit me this afternoon: why did I think it was always about what I was able to provide? What if, in the end, it wasn't about work stories or what you did or what you listened to, but just the simple fact that the talking came easy, and that laughter usually followed?
What if it was really just that simple?
That's what this week has been. Simple. We didn't do nearly all of the things we'd considered doing. We did go to Vancouver, and we did do a Seattle shopping day, and I met a few of Adam's friends. The rest was unexpected. I came here expecting only to socialize with Adam, but discovered that his family shared the same warmth and humor that had encouraged our original friendship. (I hope I haven't misread that on my end.)
I sit here in the basement office thinking over the past week and I'm surprised to realize that I'll miss this entire family. I have no doubt that they fight and get on each other's nerves, but they love and genuinely enjoy being around each other. The morning and evening conversations were unforced and pleasant. I was welcomed and got to tag along for the week.
(Yes, that was me raiding the fridge this evening, asking where the milk was.)
I say this knowing full well that these are people I will never see often. It makes me sad, yet philosophical. For me, it brings home the realization that a life including traveling means two things: while you'll rarely lack for native guides in strange cities, it also means you will never have easy, simultaneous access to all the people whose company you enjoy.
So it's time to head home, to a real bed and my very-real cats, with a few new names in the facebook friends list and the realization that yes, indeed, I already want to come back. I threw no snowballs. We didn't do the brewery tour. I did almost no photography. I didn't get to play Set against Eric.** I didn't get to play a fully-cutthroat game of Munchkin against the gamers.
...but if that's as close as I'm getting to regrets here, I should just shut my mouth.
** Eric, if you're reading this, get in touch. I don't have contact info for you. I would have enjoyed talking to you a lot longer!
]]> This is a delayed repost of my posts to twitter.com. Typically, my tweets are private, but since I'm documenting my Washington trip, I'm posting my tweets here. (I am domesticat on Twitter.)
]]>This is a delayed repost of my posts to twitter.com. Typically, my tweets are private, but since I'm documenting my Washington trip, I'm posting my tweets here. (I am domesticat on Twitter.)
]]>How to put this. How to say it in words. How to damp down thought, impression, compulsion into mere vocabulary, and leave it out for the world to see.
I hugged Brad, and I made a squeaky noise. When I had awakened earlier that morning and realized that I would see him and Alice that day, I realized it had been too long since I had seen them. Years too long.
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How to put this. How to say it in words. How to damp down thought, impression, compulsion into mere vocabulary, and leave it out for the world to see.
I hugged Brad, and I made a squeaky noise. When I had awakened earlier that morning and realized that I would see him and Alice that day, I realized it had been too long since I had seen them. Years too long.
I look back this afternoon on the years that have suddenly slipped past me and it makes me catch my breath to realize the person I crossed a border to see was someone who, through a bit of luck and good timing, has been a quiet, long-standing witness to the teenage, twenty-something, and thirty-something versions of me.
I turned to Jordan, Adam's brother, who knew none of this back story, and tried to think of a way to put it all into words. How to convey that if I dig back far enough in my memories I can remember years of my life in which Brad was just a name, a screen name, a familiar rhythm of text messages on a screen that despite all odds formed a real friendship? This man flew cross-country for my wedding, for God's sake, and I never got around to putting my hands on him yesterday, giving him a good shake, and saying, "Did you know that of all the things I remember about my wedding, the memory of your showing up to see it happen is one of the best parts?"
The thing is: we don't say these things. I want to say that I don't know why, but I do. It's self-preservation. If we temper what we show the world, hide a bit of emotion and feeling, we don't expose the tenderest part of ourselves. The world has sharp corners everywhere, and if we didn't protect ourselves a bit we'd spend our lives bruised.
* * * * *
The changing of a calendar year provokes introspection. This morning over coffee and donuts in Tim Horton's I looked at my friend, savored the pleasure of face-to-face conversation, and I ached when I realized that he was the only person at the table who actually had memories of my family, my teenage years, my college life. I could tell every person at the table that every year that passes makes me think of the people I've loved who are not alive to see this calendar change, but Brad actually knew three of the people on that list.
I don't know how to take New Year's. It's a holiday that has intense personal significance to me, but it's a time of mingling melancholy and excitement. Ring in the new. Remember the old. Celebrate who you are with but remember who is gone.
I'll make some calls on the midnights tonight, but tonight, mine is Pacific time. Tonight, everyone, not just me, thinks about where they've been and where they are going, and if my eyes leak a little, I have a socially-acceptable reason to do so.
So here's to 2007. Births and deaths, love and loss, the unending bounty of ceaseless change that is life and the people we share it with. Not everyone I love lived to see this new 2008. Not everyone I love will remember this day when they grow up, even though they lived it.
If you take away anything from my New Year's Eve, take this: be proud to be the friend that makes everyone laugh because you squeak and tacklehug them after not seeing them for years. Tell them you love them, even if it's risky. (Scratch that: especially if it's risky.)
So here's to 2008. Stick around, and we'll see how it goes.
]]>I know that several of my friends find astrology fascinating or deeply meaningful. I greet it with a healthy dose of skepticism—was the ephemera of my personality cemented into an ever-fixéd mark from the moment the obstetrician set my mother's C-section date? I don't know. It's the eternal question of destiny and free will. What is 'me'? Are personalities fluid or rigid constructs? Can we, fundamentally, change? Or do we spend our entire lives becoming what we were meant to be all along?
]]>I know that several of my friends find astrology fascinating or deeply meaningful. I greet it with a healthy dose of skepticism—was the ephemera of my personality cemented into an ever-fixéd mark from the moment the obstetrician set my mother's C-section date? I don't know. It's the eternal question of destiny and free will. What is 'me'? Are personalities fluid or rigid constructs? Can we, fundamentally, change? Or do we spend our entire lives becoming what we were meant to be all along?
(And if that's the case, who chooses the meaning and can I have this entity over for dinner? Should it exist, I have questions for it.)
Nevertheless.
So this, according to the stars, is me: (click the photo below for a larger version)
I've gotten odd reactions to that chart in the past, but only recently asked some friends why. It was explained to me that such a chart is an exercise in diametric opposites: a sign that ostensibly indicates a person of balance, order, and logic (Libra) being whacked over the head by lots of things pointing toward passion, intensity, and impetuousness.
I am apparently astrally schizophrenic.
I should consider blaming it all on the stars.
(Has anyone seen my to-do list? I don't know whether I should cuddle it or scare it.)
]]>Nah, no pressure, really.
For the new year, no promises. I wouldn't even know where to start. I sit here, thinking over where 2006 has taken me, and what looks so obvious and so right in my life now, on December 31, was just one in a set of equally unpredictable possibilities twelve months ago on January 1.
I like to think that twelve months from now I'll be sitting here, writing, a glass of wine and a set of year-older cats at my side, with lists and plans in my head for PHE 2008. The constant panoply of people in my life will, hopefully, have continued. Meiya will have had her little boy. Misty and Ashley will, in succession, have had theirs; at this moment, we don't even know if they're boys or girls.
Years are not zero-sum equations, though. With beginnings come ends; not everyone who starts a year finishes one. It's why we wish those we love a happy new year. It's our way of saying, "I'm glad you're still here with me."
Happy new year, from the webmaster-librarian, the engineer, and the two very large cats. May it find you well, and find you happy.
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