Sail Away

This is my last night as a bank employee. The night before I started at the company, almost five years ago, I took a photo shoot of myself being crazy, displaying all the emotions of the moment. I had just graduated from college that summer, and I was starting a job I needed but didn’t want.

August 29, 2010

I like metaphorical bookends on my experiences. As I was going through some old clothes tonight and happened upon the t-shirt I was wearing in that photo shoot five summers ago, I decided, for nostalgia’s sake, to take another shoot and see what emotions the camera captured this time.

June 15, 2015

There’s more clarity. I have a direction in mind, and I’m proceeding in that direction. And all the things from these years are collected in me like boats in a harbor—they’re there, but they could also sail away.

but now I've hit the mark
staring at the dark
and I cannot help but ignore the people staring at my scars

Throwback

It's Blondie's birthday, and we won't see each other till late this afternoon. In private celebration I took down one of my old journals from the bookcase in my closet and read the entry from his birthday, the first one we celebrated together. Here's the quick recap I wrote then, with some additions from today (fake names and present-day comments in brackets): 

Run to school to wish Blondie a happy birthday in my Chinese outfit. Mrs. Gris and everyone just absolutely adores him in his band uniform. He’s in the computer lab during my English class, and I write a note that I bring to the lab. He pretends like he needs to leave class and visits me which is perfect because I wanted to see him again before he left for show choir. He gave me a note with quotes from Equilibrium. I’m afraid I’m using all my adrenaline today [oh my gosh, this is back when I believed I had only so much excited energy to spend for the day, see Weird Beliefs] without him getting to see, especially during band when Dev, Tory, and I play cards, water bottle game, and Truth with the group [so much of high school was just sitting around playing games]. Later, Dad cracks up over my high-strung announcement, “I’m trying NOT to get relaxed!” In the living room is my big black box with the armadillo! [taxidermied armadillo I was giving him on a crazy whim] His mom insists on bringing it to the restaurant tonight. I ask, “Do you really know what it is exactly?” I feel relieved when I talk to her and his sister. They say, “Our family loves playing practical jokes, giving weird presents.” She changes the reservation to 10 for the armadillo. We go to Sam’s Club with his mom, and I flip out over his Bri*ish accent–“kitty cat.” I note that he looks 20 years old. At dinner hour, Dad drives us to Carraba’s, dissenting our discussion. The restaurant is freezing. Great reception for Arnie/Annie—gender unknown. Blondie and I end the night at my house.

I had a section in my old daily journal for feelings of the day, and I wrote, “excited, rushed adrenaline, wasting fire, dependent on Blondie, warm, open, inspired, set on long-term, fire roaring and paralyzing.” Oh, high school. 

Now he's part of the fam. Christmas Eve, 2012. 

"Who says we have cold hearts
Acting out our old parts"

RV Heaven

February '96. Saturday afternoon. My parents told me we were going to check out 

the annual RV show. I was upset that I’d have to miss SNICK. There was no way an RV show could beat SNICK.

We went, and there were huge rooms with RVs galore, and by the time my parents were tired and ready to leave, I of course

had to be dragged out, and I spent the next few weeks

doodling designs of RVs with aquariums and intense stacks of bunk beds. 

From then on, it was a tradition to go every February, and

I went in junior year of high school wearing a light pink top with a faux diamond heart pendent for Valentine’s Day, my last time going before college in Illinois prevented me.

We finally got to take Blondie to his first show this past Saturday.

I knew he would get engaged, seriously considering which RVs would fit our needs.  

I don’t think we would ever get one. It would be like beating up the environment for our vacation. But those sights and smells made me feel so nostalgic. And man did I pour myself into the day and climb on those bunk beds like I was seven.  

February 9, 2013

"All these kind of places
Make it seem like it’s been ages."

One Answer

This past weekend, Gandalf, Joie, and Kit (uncle, aunt, and cousin) came to town and stayed with aunt Ziba. Saturday included a trip to a botanical garden. The highlight, for me, was the Conservatory. Joie and I tried, in the semi-tropical wing, to focus on specific points–an orchid petal with wavy red lines, a splash of yellow on the wall.

Kit stared up at the hanging planter with the label: Begonia Something. She asked, “What are begonias?” We couldn’t really see what was in the planter. “I don’t know,” I said, “Some flower.” She said she’s heard so many references to them.

Later, Kit, and I sat in the central Palm House on the concrete ring around the fountain. I laid down, and my dad and Kit were quick to follow. We stared at flowers piling high toward the glass dome ceiling. Kit said, “Those are Begonias!” There was a plate on a hanging planter, and this time the contents were visible. We acted as if this answer was the end and all, the answer to one of humankind’s great questions: “What are begonias?”

Gandalf took pictures of us laughing and asked if we knew hyacinth and hibiscus. I know them from Pac Sun. He told us Carl Sandberg described poetry as “a synthesis of hibiscus and biscuits.” In a moment of frivolous laughter, I yelled, “Flowers and food!” Gandalf offered, “And the joining together of things that don’t normally go together.”

“My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead, sleepyhead.”