The trials, travails, and travels of a breeze

As I walked back down campus today, writing on a path caught my eye, and I looked down. Scribbled in white chalk were the words

“Live like you’re gonna die tomorrow
Dream like you’re gonna live forever”

and I smiled unconsciously, an upward curl of the lips that I only noticed when it stopped.

—

There is nothing quite like getting lost in the half-underground lower levels of the largest library on campus, all sounds and even silence itself muffled by shelves and shelves and volumes and volumes and the very air infused with histories upon tomes upon — if knowledge had an oppressive weight to it, this is how its atmosphere would feel.

—

“It’s the small things,” he said, “that make life happy.” And I agreed, and knew that this probably wasn’t one of them.

Consolation, aside:

I chose to set aside my misgivings and take a risk, and so far, it has been nothing but fascinating.

—

As for exhilaration, what else? The music that I love so, which raises me above my mind, if only for six-minute spans. (I follow the winds that bring the cold / I light a fire in your soul / The lightest touch of feathers falling) The presences that I revel in, friends who I can throw my arms around and laugh full-throatedly, head tossed back to gaze at the sky as joy wells up out of my very being.

That is exhilaration. The fact that i can even attempt to quantify it is testament itself to how much the season has made me happy. This spring has been the awakening of a new stage in my mind, and with any luck, the growth that I’ve experienced will tide me through the next winter, because now I know what it truly means to love winter; not to be awestruck by snowflakes, but rather to embrace weaknesses and soar past them.

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Every time one takes a step into the unknown, one will find themselves making one of a few choices; choosing to go on ahead with optimism, curious as to what the future will bring; choosing to linger on the past, fretting about mistakes made and the potential for repetition thereof; choosing to ignore or set aside misgivings and take a risk, knowing that the outcome could vary wildly; choosing to let hope spring eternal.

So what will the choice be?

—

Ten of wands. Reaching the end of an arduous journey, completing a difficult task. Being close to setting a burden down, but being left with no energy at the end. Cards can be twisted and angled to apply to anything and anyone, but I find irony in that this little one fell out of the deck on the last day of classes.

I trudged up campus on an overcast morning, lost in a whirl of conflicted thoughts about recent developments; and without warning, a cloud moved, and the sky exploded into brilliance.

Suddenly, colors were thrown into sharp focus, and I couldn’t help but grin more and more on my way up campus– a nod to a friend walking through the magnolia grove, a sunny grin received and returned to a former classmate walking past the dogwoods, smiles to acquaintances in the crossing paths across a hill, a high-five– “only two more days!” to a dormmate as I left the building I sought to run an errand in…

I woke with my mind in a muddle confusion but now, as I wait for my thrice-damned and ever-beloved camera battery to charge, and for the sun to come out once again, with salmon and avocado sushi in hand, I can only grin and love life.

Updated with pictures.

and suddenly all I want to do is drop everything I’m doing in life and be a singer. dancer. actress. all. something that will let me feel as if I’m expressing something directly instead of attempting to stuff my thoughts into words and stuff my words into a tedious, tedious bureaucratic bullshittastic college-system-formulaic way to toss my life into some semblance of order.

Then my mind clears, and I post this, and go on with my paper-writing. Ideally.

Interlude

The day before yesterday, I played tag with a spring robin.

But that’s another story.

The day before yesterday, I experienced the picture-perfect seminar, six of us in a loose semicircle around an enthusiastic professor on a comfortable green lawn by a tree on a stunning spring day; we all began cross-legged, attentive and formal, but as the three hours progressed the students began shifting, leaning back, and after a while most of us were sprawled out in one way or another, lying on our sides, stomachs, chins propped up on palms and folded hands. It was amazing. It was beautiful. Thick spring grass is more comfortable than any couch and, thanks to today’s especially marvelous weather, I’d chance to say that this time, it was more comfortable than any extra-long twin-sized college bed, no matter how richly furnished, because the beds had the disadvantages of being inside.

And with just enough of a cool breeze to counteract the ever-warming sun, I was in a state of supreme bliss.

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For some reason I have no urge to fall into the depression of past days. Around Thursday or so, something in my mind simply switched on (or off?) and a seven-month cycle of evening breakdowns began drawing to a halt.

Even though there are matters pressing on my mind, academics, my future, I am less inclined toward the typical self-pity and more toward turning music up to ridiculous volumes and doing something. Now is the time to feel numb about my direction in life and confused about my summer plans, but it is also the time that I will take action. I suddenly recognize things I want to learn and do. I’ve sworn to get even more involved and hopefully join dance, get involved in more groups… that I simply don’t have time to fall into this rut again. I want to master the guitar and learn how to glowstring. And I’m unhappier when totally idle. Which is a great thing to be unhappy with, considering my to-do list.

Almost as if overcompensating for the tendency I’m beginning to let go of– that lingering in the past, wistfully remembering superficial attention– I realized that I have a slight revulsion toward those worlds I was once interested in. Anime fan? Not anymore. My skin crawls a bit. Losing interest in most Internet-based activities has made me turn to real life. Which is a great turn of events, considering my to-do list.

For some reason? Realizing all this? I feel really mentally free.

And content.

(Except for when I turn to my to-do list.)

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I felt like twirling.

“I am mentally twirling,” I wrote to a new friend, “and I am not sure why.”

I really am not. But it’s past 11 PM and some little bit of me is still elated over the handful of things that have gone well in the past few utterly hellish days.

I hope this sustains me, because the next week is going to be hellish as well.

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Despite it being, of all days, April 1, this post is still truthful. The thoughts began coalescing on March 31, regardless. It is my cousin’s birthday (love!) and it is, unfortunately, a normal class day, but there is no foolery.

…Time to avoid my roommate.

I digress; in the culmination of the mental return to being single (which is a welcome stability, this culmination, after two weeks of flailing to regain balance) comes the unclouded, comfortable cynicism I held so staunchly four days before the last train wreck began. I have been finding that while I will implicitly accept people for who they are, I will mercilessly scorn those in whom I perceive certain emotional weaknesses. Perhaps because I scorn seeing them in myself; perhaps because I hold people I am interested in to a high standard. Mostly, though, this applies to the revelation that I have not been able to completely respect someone who’s ever expressed an unrealistic non-platonic interest in me if I do not return said interest.

For all my empathy, I have a distinct lack of sympathy here, often to malicious and ghastly effect. The empath in me wishes I had some; aforementioned scorn often causes me to giggle inwardly, plot ways to toy around, and wish to spin around in sadistic amusement. It did earlier this evening when I observed, with cynical eye, a whimsical and utterly idealized account of something romantic, and suppressed the mental image of a gleeful deity pointing and cackling, “foolish mortals!”

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There lies a certain sort of reluctant finality in every vow made to grow. It’s a gradual, undefined process of blurred lines and vague steps, but the factor common to each little bit of headway made is a trade-off, relinquishing the ability to act a certain way, to voice certain thoughts; one must not say this, one must not reveal what is really going through one’s mind, one must smile outwardly and wince only inwardly and never let anyone know.

Of course, there is that suggestion to never grow up completely lest you lose a particular viewpoint on life.

I don’t think I will. But now is the time to learn to quash that almost completely on the outside save for around those I know I can implicitly trust.

Independence means, in part, self-dependence. And enough of the theatrical emotions; you know very well that you’re actually capable of standing well enough on your own!

—

One of my hallmates eyed me shrewdly, and asked, “Doesn’t it feel liberating?”

And with wide eyes and perhaps a slight shortness of breath, I laughed, and admitted that it did. In deciding my academic direction, I have encountered the kind of freedom that suddenly makes me enjoy being busy and productive because the tasks are not burdens.

—

On Saturday evenings, an on-campus cafe often hosts a very general do-it-yourself art event. This week was t-shirt painting; I grabbed the darkest color of the smallest size there, the greens and blues I could see, started with a vague mental image of a leaf, and let my imagination do the rest. “Oh, if I draw another curve this way…hmm. Shading? Aaack, that doesn’t work.”

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