(no subject)

I woke up this morning with a song on my mind I haven't heard in a long time-- Garden, by Pearl Jam, from their first CD Ten. The time I listened to that CD the most was when I was in the transition house with my family, when mom was leaving Dad, when I was fourteen. That one song I probably haven't listened to except incidentally since then. Now it's playing.

This is the first properly sunny day this year. I woke up and the sunshine was singing outside, the curtains are glowing, the sky is real blue. It's going to be hot-- yesterday was not hot. I am, of course, going to be working indoors for about six hours of it. Then I will pop outside and work some more, because-- well, because I want to be outside, and also because I want to get some of my Wednesday done today so I can go to the beach early on Wed.

Today I get paid a couple of days early-- my boss has done something about putting my vacation pay on a separate cheque to avoid extra taxes --and then I immediately pay it all to tuition and carefully spend no money this month. Next cheque goes to rent and the folk music festival. After that we're in August, and I start saving for tuition again.

This morning I am going to eat cold cereal and banana/strawberry soy milk. I feel like a kid again doing this; it's fun.

I remember what the transition house smelled like. There were cool things there-- behind the one-way glass windows and locked doors, where we lived, there was lots of clothing (I remember one blue sari (well, suit) especially-- our school had a multicultural day and I wore it because that was the one day I could get away with it, and people said, 'but you're not Indian!'. I thought they were missing the point. Now that I'm grown-up I should hunt down more of that stuff, because I love it) that hadn't been dredged from value village, there was nice-smelling soap, it was in town and walkable distance from school.

I wonder if that was this time of year? I was talking about it the other night with the Writer, pulling memories out and testing them. That must be why it comes out now. Well, that and-- the sliding door in my livingroom has the same orientation towards the sun as my sliding door in my bedroom, right before that time. The sun slanted just like this, not through these bushes but through my little garden and past the stump and the baby cedar tree. The birds would play there in the morning, when it was still in shade. They were my alarm clock.

I didn't have curtains for the longest time, and when I woke up I would look at that cedar tree-- she was young and pretty --and that stump, where my Watcher lived in my mind, and past that over the treetops to the Fraser River.

I remember. What phrase could be more powerful?

First Thing Tomorrow...

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety---

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light---
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

~Mary Oliver

Lonely Lately

Well, I'm lonely lately. I spend time with people and enjoy it, but -- you know, I spent a number of years feeling bereft even just when someone was in bed next to me but asleep and inaccessible. I've been in that spot a few times in the last couple of weeks. At the same time I've also felt overpeopled here and there-- especially today at work, but even occasionally around people I really like or love.

Just... I don't know. I'm not unhappy, but I am uncomfortable. This year I have dedicated myself to going into all my dark corners, looking at them, and instead of running and screaming and saying 'this has gotta change right now' just-- looking, and living with them for a bit, to see where they're at. If something obviously needs changing, sure, but that's not the point.

Shit disturbing should always start with oneself anyhow.

I think I'm lonelier in company than out of it, sometimes. I'm not sure why this should be so.

I'm very much looking forward to this weekend, which will be full of friends both well-known and less-known, people with lots of variety and warmth to them. I suppose I'm best, unsurprisingly, either with a lot of social stuff going on or with almost none-- I don't take well to middle ground, never have really. The closest I get is occupying both extremes at the same time.

Enough of that. I'm lonely, I'm recording this fact.