The responsibility to appropriately represent (a) character(s)

What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right.

- Monson, Neck Deep, Appendix

I used to think that what I wanted was to be like you (or the many of you who are military wives). But really, I was an artist first and "they" say, "be true to yourself." I am a left-winged liberal. I don't believe in war. I would lend my crossed legs to a cause in need of silent protest. I try only to buy organic produce. There isn't much of me that fits the bill anyway. And there is the almost palpable barrier--a man in crisis. I don't think he reads this garbage anymore, so I am feeling a little less censored. That isn't even half of it. Maybe he thinks that The Lonely Sound was abandoned or he doesn't care anymore. In his own way, he loves me.

In my own way, I love you.

Lately I imagine the trajectory of a bullet. I imagine the spatter patterns it might cause on a wall or some other wayward surface. Brain matter, other parts. It doesn't matter. I play out the motions only in my head, and I'm only telling this because I'm tired of pussyfooting around the idea of self. I don't care if you like me. I should never have cared. And the truth, if there is such a thing, is that it may not be in the cards for me to "be" one of "you" army wives. Because life is a force to be reckoned with. It will happen according to or not at all resembling the outcome I reach for. We are born alone. We die alone. I write alone. I am beginning to believe that he wants to be alone, a man as Island.

(I am trying to disassociate myself.)

I am beginning to dream of the Anywhere I could move, the Anything I could do, all the dreams and ideals that dreamers and idealists conjure. I was, after all, an artist first, and then somehow his and somehow this.

I thought for the first time tonight that I could be okay married to creativity, the lonesome but not lonely eccentric. I thought that I could move in a couple of months for him, indulging the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too element of whatever the fuck is going on here, but I won't. I need more satisfaction than that. I don't think I was ever meant to be the understudy, the shadow lurker. Some hours do belong solely to me.

And maybe I am the "married" type, and he is the one who isn't. Well, there isn't anything I can do to change him.

There isn't anything I can do to change him...but I was always honest. I always aimed for the LONG TERM.

Perhaps though, it's me? I always run. I'm kind of preparing to run now, peeling back the layers of happy-family-visions and the imagined faces of our unborn children, a fusion of more than individuals.

I feel like I am losing and because I don't care about winning per se (and he does), I think I am more privy to, or likely to examine the behavior of dissolution. We are fuzzy at the edges.

I am trying to read Brenda Miller's Season of the Body but it is proving difficult. Her focus is on the end of a relationship with Keith, who also makes an appearance in Blessing of the Animals in a beautiful essay called "A Different Person." It is so painful to imagine us parting ways. So unbelievably painful. I have harnessed so much in this Man, this ourness of life, a river fed by us as tributaries. And now what?

I am my own captain. (though not quoted, per request.)

I am not challenging the "who" manning the wheel. I am sure as shit my own captain.

Hold yourself together.

(punish someone else.)

universal truth

Sometimes I feel the great weight of this whole thing--being apart, knowing it isn't the last time, and knowing I still have to perform, [all] at once.

Mine is an act of blind compulsion. At 7am the squealing pulse of my cell phone goes off. I have nowhere to be, most likely, but anything later than that hour feels wasteful and lazy. I sit up in bed bed, fumbling for my glasses and make my way to the bathroom. Everything following this routine is the result of the necessity to hurl myself toward darkness, another day's end. If I don't think about the "great weight" or if I simply move forward faster than I think it can keep up, or if I tell myself that the inconvenience is almost over, not a pattern in the cycle that will soon form our life together, then the hours feel normal, like my friends', like the lives of conventional people.

No one spells out the phases of separation. No one has so kindly written What to Expect When You're Expecting Him to Return. Maybe I wouldn't have liked knowing that the last weeks would split my personality into multiples, none of which perform independently. Instead they vie for the spotlight hungrily, without reservation. I am angry and broken hearted and giddy with excitement, and overflowing-happy, while tears pool in dark spots on my clothes and vainly shouted curses ricochet from wall to wall, unheard. I have embraced the control that lies in day-long check lists and home projects and rendezvous with friends that have become my family. There are time-spots left open for washing dishes and ceremonies put into play for scrubbing sinks and the tub. This autonomy makes sense, this is what had to happen.

Now I am asked to hang in waiting for a coded word, then the next one and the next until he finally steps from the magic vessel that will bring him home. I'm no good for these terms, and what about after, when my lists are disrupted and my support group is pushed into second place, and the Army has control again of more than just an arrival date. How does the switch flip smoothly? How is it possibly fair to be expected to bounce from one existence to the other without suffering an inevitable and utter breakdown?

I wish that my bank account or possibilities at world peace or something else equally worthwhile would swell in accordance with my stress and anxiety levels on this trip. Calling it a vacation would be overstating the experience thus far. Day two was...better? --was less explosive than day one. I have been accused of an endless number of shortcomings and told how to correct them. I have been warned of the immanent failure these character flaws will bring to all hopes of a successful future with The Staff Sergeant, who is inconveniently otherwise unacknowledged.

Two summers ago when Dad and I set off for 3000 miles in his suburban, I worried that it would be like pitting two angry dogs against each other, in a tiny ring, to fight to the death. I was pleasantly surprised that we only had one small tiff in Canada over driving tunes. Outside of that secluded incident (due to having almost no taste at all in music and the insistence in his never failing rightness) the trip was great. So when he asked about Savannah and Charleston this summer, I agreed.

It has been trying, to say the least. I found that today flowed much more smoothly after my mint julep at lunch...and then again after my early evening glass of pinot grigio. At some point, on this great disaster of a southern journey, I hope that he finds something other than my grades to be proud of or to agree with or to simply just accept.

Tomorrow we see Charleston.

"spring" break

I want to cry.

11 of 31: giving (and giving, and giving...)

I am a real live girl, though I would love to pick the brain of every woman who stands by her soldier needless, wanting for nothing.  I read this the other day as I worked hard to hold down the cushions of my sofa:

There is absolutely nothing your servicemember can do to make you feel better about deployment and handling life on your own.  He cannot leave his station, and he cannot come to your rescue.

And I thought to myself, "If I could meet this condescending portrait of person, I don't believe I could restrain myself from verbally attacking her, at the very least."  I am so completely, utterly tired of this mantra that is ceremoniously passed down like a spirit stick of vacancy.  I cannot be that woman; there is a reason that he is a soldier and that I am not.  I don't believe that I have to be that hollow person while he is gone.  I don't believe that I can be or that such expectations should be set for any one of us who count the days until our hearts return from war.

This is damn hard, and I am willing to suffer the consequences of saying so.  I need and expect just a little because this is, after all, a relationship, a matter of give-and-take.  I fully understand that he is limited, that he is tired and stressed out, and maybe even homesick, but who the hell decided that those who are left behind should be empty human beings that feel nothing, that need nothing at all in return?  

There are some days that I can't stand this culture.  

10 of 31: giving (because I'm obligated)

I don't want to blog anything, furthermore I have nothing positive to say.  I didn't get out of bed until noon today, didn't take a shower until 3pm and never got out of lazy day clothes nor did I bother with make-up.  I didn't leave the house.  I didn't really ever leave the sofa except to whip up my favorite comfort food - a weird mac n' cheese mixture my mom used to make on Sunday afternoons.  It wasn't a great Tuesday.

2 of 31: giving (in)

What I really meant to say had nothing to do with weather, storms of any genre, except maybe this one back home that has yet to pass [figuratively]. But because I have some dignity, although unapparent to the naked eye, I asked about it there to keep from crying. The bare essence of pride, that that's left, kept me from demanding a verbal shrine, a garrulous flow of all the reasons and ways that you love me, something completely selfish and over-indulgent, concentrated like last season's apple butter or the jar of marshmallow cream for s'mores that arrived a few days ago.

It's more desperate than the boxes can conceive or deliver, right now but not always.

Despite claims of pride, or fraying threads of pride and strength and normalcy, I really meant to free the contents of myself this morning, not that unraveling on the phone would make any one of the circumstances change shape or even appear to. I would still like the luxury of not caring, the freedom of a child to wail full-force, head thrown back, the rest of me limp in surrender just because it is sometimes too much to house this sadness within my body.

What was I thinking?

Tomorrow morning I have to teach two English 1020 classes before noon.  Tomorrow morning may be a two-cup coffee day.  Come to think of it, tomorrow morning may be ripe for a number of out of character activities, such as: vomiting in my new purse, actually forgetting my name, crying in front of two classes of college freshman/sophomores, getting drunk before 9am, actually forgetting coherent language, totally forgetting the way that "Young Goodman Brown," "Boys and Girls," "The Lost World," "Araby," and Erdrich's character, Lipsha all share the commonality of innocence lost to experience.  

I'm just a teensy bit nervous about this endeavor.  I keep imagining myself walking into the classroom and through some supernatural occurrence, they all know that I am horrifically under-qualified even to be supervising them for a period of 55 minutes.  It's a little like the dream where you're naked in pubic.  While I will surely remember to dress myself, what if they know I have no business being their temporary authority on American Literature?  This is only my second semester and I wasn't an English major.  I am the epitome of "fish out of water."  My second dreaded scenario is that they all have I.Q.'s infinitely higher than mine so that when they ask me questions, I have no. idea. how. to. answer.

Back to the lesson plan.

you know all the rules by now

I'll preface the following with this character flaw: I can be a little neurotic.  

I missed Thursday's call and then Friday's.  I blogged that already.  

I was crossing the street when I noticed the second one and I thought, though just for a fleeting second, about stopping mid-stride.  To say that I was angry with myself would be an understatement.  Both prompted minor episodes of...[cough]...graceful disappointment but life went on.  I kept the phone close all day Saturday and Sunday but by Sunday night I could no longer stave off the throes of absolute hysterics.  

I struggle with the lack of control that this deployment seems to yield.  Two missed calls back-to-back is one thing.  Worrying that he might think it was intentional is another.  After four days of furious festering, all I could think about was the probability that he had concluded I no longer loved him.  In retrospect I can acknowledge the level of ridicule that this deserves, however in the moment it was reasonable fuel for a kind of discord that unhinged me.  I couldn't tell him that I was punishing myself for the simple error of a silenced phone.  I couldn't tell him that he had done nothing but make this easier for me, that I love him to pieces, that I was sorry.  I couldn't do anything more than watch for a tiny screen to light up, "unknown."

This morning I finally got to talk to him.  My mouth opened and apologies gushed like dammed water released -  

IloveyouandI'msosorryandpleasedon'tthinkIwouldignoreyouonpurpose

[breath]

I don't think I could be too angry to want to hear your voice.  Please don't think I don't love you.

I think he phrased it as, "jumping to extreme conclusions," and I'm pretty sure he said so laughing.  After all he knows me and how I let the cynical committee of judges in my head take over sometimes.  He assured that he never once entertained any one of the crazy things that I had assumed and that he had never questioned how much he is loved.  

After our conversation, I was too relieved to feel as embarrassed as I should have.  He is the Reason and Strength in this couple.  I grip tightly and sink in my heels, all the while hoping for just enough prowess to portray a state of sanity.  

my REAL Valentine's gift(s):

I've been meaning to write about Valentine's Day.  The last post featured a little self indulgence, but the real surprise was these gorgeous roses that came on Friday.  He wanted me to get them a day early so I'd have them all day on Saturday and to maintain the element of surprise.  Saturday I got to talk to him for ALMOST AN HOUR!  It was the best 47 minutes in the last two months because it felt like we got to be ourselves.  An even bigger surprise was his nonchalance regarding the ring info I sent. I was absolutely certain that he would 1) panic and 2) never, never bring it up.  He did.  A reenactment is as follows - 

The SS: "I got the latest package - with a sack of potatoes and the jewelry quote."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS: "I got the jewelry quote.  I thought that kind of thing was supposed to be a surprise."

Me:  "...I'm sorry, what?"

The SS:  "That stuff doesn't freak me out anymore."

Me:  "Oh...yeah...nobigdeal..."

It was one of those moments when the tables suddenly turned, I panicked having been caught completely off guard and I really didn't think that this was an appropriate time for shrieking-with-overwhelming-joy into the phone.  That we'll save for something more official with sparkly deal-sealers and whatnot.  It was a GOOD day!

Then I went shopping.  My way-too-expensive jeans will be ready at the tailor tomorrow.

After an unusual glance at Facebook and my friends' lives, I feel suddenly very boring.  Last night I had a glass of wine by myself and watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on Lifetime.  It was the Saturday before classes start again, although it would bode poorly for my social life any day of the week.  That little sliver of truth says...more than I'd like it to.  And before I surveyed last night and the general situation of things, I had considered catching a matinee movie today, again by myself.  

I guess the good news is that I'm not afraid to get out and do things solo, since it's gonna be a long solo ride.  The bad news is that I still feel incredibly dull.

In other good news, and it's also quite exciting for me, I got to talk to The Staff Sergeant yesterday.  Bliss.

I live in the house of Murphy's Law, the bloody-cold house of Murphy's Law - with frozen kitchen pipes and my feet are numb.  And that's just the latest thing that could go wrong and did.  I hate this house...

But in the house of Murphy's Law cookies are love.  I made a special batch this afternoon with all of my heart and longing thoughts to find him in far off places:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

2 c. all-purpose flour

3/4 c. cocoa

baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 c. dark brown sugar

1 c. granulated sugar

1 c. unsalted butter at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

6-8 oz. peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl

In a large bowl beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until fluffy.  Add vanilla and eggs and beat well.  Stir in the flour-cocoa mix, then fold in peanut butter chips

Drop the cookie dough by the tablespoonful onto the prepared baking sheets.  Bake 8-10 minutes, then let cool on racks.

on to something new [ready or not]

I have so much to say and so little energy and liberty to etch it all across this screen.  Christmas left something to be desired, new year's eve, however was perfect -- more perfect than perfect.  This life has a way of letting one glaze every moment with high-gloss hyper-perfection, given the right timing and circumstance.  Each breath and smile is caught and archived, pinned like fragile specimens behind glassy walls, slow motion memories with over-pronounced dialogue and historical inaccuracy.  

I err most often on optimism -- foolish, really.  I imagine the still frames more richly colored, sugary and scripted.  For example, I omit certain attempts at death-by-Dorito-consumption and possible engagement rings (on my mother's finger), large life-engulfing trunks, drunken welcome-homes, all consuming guilt, the kind of "good bye" that truly has the power to grind one's heart to dust.  I have added brightly adorned Christmas trees, comfort and relaxation, smiles, security.  Next year will be just long enough for my mind to fully buy into all of those forged memories and I will probably be surprised when it plays out just the same.  

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

I'm home for Christmas and just like last year it isn't what I had hoped for.  I've had to cut my trip short and neither parent is pleased with the abbreviated visits.  There is no tree at my Dad's, no empathy at Mom's.  It seems more probable that this is the going rate now, the status quo, expected.  I had wanted so much more from the holidays this year -- a roaring fire and the twinkle of tiny lights descending from a tree's peak in woven spirals and that intangible, indescribable feeling of comfort and rightness.  I hate that my muscles now clench as the oddities of others become irritants that mark the Christmas season, for example, the 62 inch projection of an exclusive musak channel.  

My father reminded me on the way home from the big family dinner that I do have much for which to be thankful.  And I do, though it really is difficult to clear away the fog of Murphy's Law long enough to give appropriate praise for physical health and economic security.  I have the pleasure of loving an amazing man who treats me like a princess.  I take a lot of things for granted, nevertheless I'm tired of fighting battles.  Maybe I ask for too much or expect too much.  Maybe I outgrew Christmas with age.  Maybe I actually am lost in a sea of raging idiots.  I'm leaning toward the latter and it chips away daily at my usual disposition and temperament.  I want one day to pass without a major trial, and to forget for one day the notions of deployment and war and divorce and wrong-doers.  I want a simple task to be effortlessly executed.

Perhaps tomorrow will be the day, a Christmas miracle, if you will.

lost and insecure [you found me]

I don't know what I'm hoping to get out of life, much less this blog.  Like others, I'm torn between living and recording the motions.  There's a time and place for sharing and sometimes life's momentum just gets to whirring and buzzing and humming all at once and you're swept along in the swiftness of it.  This has mostly been attributed to the end of the semester.  In a few words, grad school is a hell of a lot more than I ever expected.  It not only engulfed me in its currents, but it held me under turbulent waves for much of the latter half of 16 weeks.  There are a dozen other trials that have kept my stress levels at maximum capacity, but it's probably better not to air it all right now for reasons of op-sec and patience.  

Though the blog halted, life goes on.  I'm waiting on my grades and anticipating A's.  I surprised myself and a handful of professors.  I made a new family of fellow english grad students and made a homey little nest out of our one, lone conference room.  I know Louise Erdrich better than she may know herself.  I know the Cult of True Womanhood to degrees of nauseam.  I fell in love with the ideals of the Expressivist movement led by Elbow and Murray.  I wrote my first short story and again surprised myself.  I did a number of seemingly unconquerable tasks and crushed them beneath my tiny feet.  

I keep thinking about that Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  I believe that idea alone sums up the year.  I finally graduated college.  I survived months and months of army induced separation and survived.  I somehow defied all notions of feasibility by getting into this masters program on such short notice, and beyond that, I have excelled.  Those are the hills that I've climbed, leaving the horizon speckled with far-off flags bearing my crest -- pink and flowery, for sure.  The mountains, however, await, standing rugged, impossibly tall and taunting. 

 Next year is coming all too strong and quickly, like a train whose force makes the earth tremble long before arriving.  This is my life now.  There is no turning back.  It's ironic how badly I want it and also how fiercely I dread it.  I have to keep looking back on the achievements, on the things I never thought I could actually pull off until I landed on the other side of Trying and the ride was over and I was still intact.  Love and wanting are tangled in some powerful magic, and perhaps I am a little stronger than I thought.  But I won't admit it often, for it isn't often that I feel it might be true.

Casual Friday

I'm clearly paying for something, although I cannot imagine what offense has warranted an entire four days of bad Karma.  So today, with it rainy and gray and cold-looking, and as it is my last day off this week, and because I have a big presentation on Monday, I am going to keep well off the radar.  I may even stay in my sweats all day or at least until I have Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories and Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall thoroughly devoured and digested.  And I may keep the Food Network on for inspiration and company.  And a pot of coffee hot.

if only a sigh were loud enough

My muscles pinch and crawl like intolerable little spiders up and down my back, up the length of my neck, around my middle.  I balance in between grabbing for the swimmy-head, stomach tickling anxiety pills and screaming and swinging and unbinding any sense of composure I have ever held myself together with.  

I don't understand why there are times when each single task erupts into odyssey after odyssey.  It's god-damn over-the-phone bill paying.  It is MADE to provide a convenient service!  Charge me ONCE, not twice OR not at all!  It's tracking down the apparently out-of-print book for 19th century lit. that LITERALLY is only housed at the smallest, out-of-the-way-est library known to mankind, and it only took 10 phone calls and an absurd conversation with the 85-year old uninformed campus librarian who could NOT explain to me why the online catalog listed the fucking book as both "available" and "checked-out" before I could lay my twitching, exhausted hands on its cover.  And it's the bionic fleas that refuse to surrender the sweet, tender flesh of my poor, suffering dog, and the vet money I don't have and every cure I've tried [as best as I could].

I meant to tackle backed-up homework, though the universe clearly had other plans.  I spent the day unpuzzling an unexpected Rubiks Tuesday.  A couple of times I considered erasing my notion of maps and to-do's and driving aimlessly forever, but I settled on cooking my woes into oblivion.  I checked-out the book, had treated the dog with prescriptions and unearthed an intricate grocery list from the bowels of my purse.  I wandered until I found myself parked in a grand Kroger lot.  With eco-friendly shopping bags and wallet in hand, I entered the automatic gates of Salvation.  Ripe palettes of produce, chirping lasers kissing barcodes, panes of frozen aisles, warm yeasty shelves of bread; I love this pocket of life better than the hilarity of the world at large.  With my blue bag brimming full of dairies and veggies and tubes of dough, I caught myself before making my way to the finish-line cash register.  Hard cider and less of a white-knuckled grip on each angry minute beyond the thick walls of food would feel nice.  Finished, I went to pay.

This is where I picked up [yesterday].  And rising today, full on sleep and drawn by sunshine I started collecting myself, directing myself, finding my Wednesday purpose.  All was well and free of anxious, crawling muscles until I dumped out my purse for re-organizing.  No wallet.  Of fucking course: no wallet.  Because how could a day be whole without the blinding frustration of something amiss!?  And again I want to drive away, uncoil my mind with a pill, fire up the oven or uncork a thick, glass bottle of freedom.  

It's still at Kroger, holding my place in the land of salvation, only I'm miles and miles away, stuck in the here and now.

Change. Progress. Hope.

I imagine that the rain held off until our moods were oil coated and resistant.  The earth needed quenching but our spirits were swollen and untouchable.  They say that water and electricity don't mix; I assure you that yesterday proved old precedence wrong.  The dark skies threw torrents to the thirsty ground while supporters charged with storms of conviction held their melting posters, held determined faces, held beliefs and hope like sturdy soldiers.  Like the smell of doused streets, the murmur of Americans permeated the damp air.  Even a person with no knowledge would have known that something big was occurring.

I went ahead of my friends to secure seats at the coffee house across the street from campus, the same place I've gone a hundred times to study and hang out on perfectly average days.  The street vendors and organizations held most everyone's attention until about 5:30 pm, but by then I had already draped cardigans and umbrellas and placed Nalgenes and any other marker from my bag of tricks on vacant seats so they would look taken and I wouldn't have to straddle an entire corner of Bongo Java with rabid eyes and a snarl to repel the crowds.  It wasn't long before my old roommate and her posse arrived.  We had our seats and time to kill and coffee and Cookies for Change right outside the outdoor patio.  Several times we remarked that it felt like New Years Eve, like a countdown should be in order for the event and the potential for change and our hope for change.  The people rolled in like waves and the rain fell in waves and goosebumps came in waves.  Everything felt too big to true.

My journalist friend had a break and excused himself from the circus in which only a press badge gets you entrance.  He didn't have much time, nonetheless he took a seat and we talked about his very entertaining and informative election blog and how he had received a REAL, LIVE ticket to the Great Hoorah.  Though my account is far less official than his and I didn't have a badge of any kind, just a hot tea and dry seat, I was there and I'll tell my babies about it, and no matter what accessories or adornments I was lacking, this is history.

There eventually was a countdown because we had exhausted ourselves and built a hype in our cores after two hours of waiting and watching the police guarded streets and the feather-shaped flags of red and blue whipping occasionally in spotlights and weather.  The street booths shut-down and their sponsors found seats of their own.  The floor space filled up first and then the front patio, the stairs leading up to the patio, the sidewalk leading to the stairs, and then left and right, as far as they could stand and still have a peek at the projection screens.

Browkow began.  Our biased group of Obama supporters cheered untamed when Barack made his way across the stage, so much so that McCain's first appearance was lost in the sea of opposition.  I was jealous not to be in the actual audience of the debate until the hoots and clapping wrapped me up in something more organic and bigger than myself, communal hope and fiery passion in a coffee spot that felt as much like home as campus every did. 

In fifty years I wonder where we'll be as a country.  I wonder how these days will affect the kids I haven't even considered conceiving and how my adulthood will be molded by the rebuild of all that is crumbling.  I wonder when and how the war will end, how I'll be able to afford the utility bills this winter, the gas for my car.  I wonder what this extra degree will amount to in a job market sinking like silt, and I think of how uneasy this state of our country leaves me, yet I know without a shadow of doubt that even my worst hardship brought on by the government is so weak compared to so many.

general complaints regarding the institution of chaos

I don't know whether I should laugh or cry or shatter things weaker than I feel right now, for the pleasure of a power trip and the satisfaction of destruction. Don't ever wonder how it might be more difficult than it is; it could always be worse.

He's always full of new news and it almost always makes a mockery of the things I thought I could rely on, even when they aren't desirable. I've been bracing for some events since the beginning of us. They are bristles-raised threatening, guns-and-bombs scary; they creep into the dreams of even a sound sleeper to chip away at rest long before they are urgently upon us. Nevertheless, a person can condition oneself for anything given enough time to build up walls of sandbags. Even a war-flood becomes a tolerable idea when you have had time to prepare for it.

And so I think that's the worst of it. Nothing is bigger or more difficult than all we've been through already and all that is written into future date boxes. Life on the coat-tails of a soldier isn't billed to be an easy one - constantly jerked and bounced around in the shadow of his duty to country. No matter how jostled, the peak was in sight just above the crags and ridges. It always appeared to be reachable until new news birthed low clouds to make me question our direction.

I knew that you in the calamity of war would be fucking awful! And yes, it is simply unbearable to let my mind entertain the possibility of that phone-call - so I don't, I can't. If I did, every tomorrow would be "insurmountable". There are times when it feels like we are held together only by fraying scraps, but you come home and we stitch the wounds and mend the tears. What do we do if there is no home, and all the patched up ragged shreds wear faster and thinner? It isn't this over that, it's both circumstances stacked high and heavy one upon the other.

This is a life for the mad, the numb, the inhuman. The truth is, I don't want to be stronger. I want to crush thin, perfect glass between a swift downward blow and a solid surface. I want to scream and kick my feet against the floor in an epic tantrum. I want to tear out my love-drunk heart to wring it sober.

um. so. yeah.

I rubber-stamped some manila folders [to keep my school papers organized and fashionable] but I couldn't stop there. I've had a strangely creative day in comparison to this summer's drought-for-ideas and this whole blog thing - it remains a festering sore. It seemed an appropriate time to give this place a bit of focus. I can't decide what I want with it, and frankly, I shouldn't even be thinking about a blog with all of the reading I should be maintaining. I'm a believer that balance must be found and also, it's Friday, so I let my mind creatively wander to bloggier places than Erdrich and Jacobs.

[but only for a spell]

I'm thinking that this could absolutely not be what I want out of "new" and "fresh." What the hell, though, right? If we all cumulatively despise a limp attempt at irony, The Sound is only an upload away. For now, I'm going to sleep on this and see how you respond. We'll convene next week for a final judgment.