the tiniest nail
In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself that I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be...
As the summer air gently pulled me awake- I have taken to sleeping with the window wide open- I stared up into the blue sky at my dear palm tree friend, with whom I have shared many a morning. As the golden light filtered in, I realized, slowly, in the dreamy half-awake, half-asleep state of consciousness, tucked inside my faded yellow covers, that summer had come, again. That the things that mesmerized me about summer in California when I moved had returned (oh, joy!), things like asparagus and strawberries and the giant cartons of blueberries from Costco, the dinners-on-the-patio, falling asleep with that sweet air brushing my face, and having the option of running in the morning or at night, thanks to (perhaps best of all) the hours of sunlight steadily growing longer and longer.
This steady change in season and circumstance pulls me back inside my memory, back inside myself. I think back to not-so-long ago, a swift year, when I journaled in a room not so different from my California one: lots of books, lamplight, a double bed all to myself. That one just happens to be quite far away, in what feels like a completely different country. But, as I looked out of that window into the forest-haven, I worried what this year would bring: quite sad, out-of-love and in love all at once, and ready.
And two years before that, on the brink of my first (and only) international adventure, running on my famously titled “Professor Loop” through the neighborhoods of Wheaton, anxious and listening to what would become one of my favorite songs (Dreamer by Isbells) over and over and over, the traveler in me thrilled and completely in love and so ready.
And two years before that, AP tests over one-by-one, and flying towards my first graduation. I was soaking up what I imagined would be my last summer in Boise, seizing every moment, completely in love, and ready- ever ready- for my first really grand adventure.
I was thinking of all these Mays-all the hopes that they bring that seem to run together in my brain- as I woke this morning, as I jogged down the tree-lined street by the golf course that I imagined was the Professor Loop, as I folded laundry in a quiet house that is not my own but a tremendous gift. I miss the young adventurer version of myself, a whole lot.
As I think back to all those just-barely-summers and as I look around me in this one, I think of people, companions who walked day to day with me, who saw me in the middle, and how all our lives have changed and are changing, so much. Married, engaged, on the brink of a new teaching job, about to fly to New York to audition for a Broadway tour, moving to Ireland, to New York, to Wisconsin, to Chicago, to California, to Houston, to San Francisco, to San Diego, moving home, freelancing, writing, painting, auditing, producing, working to understand what adulthood looks like as we make our way through it. And me, finishing this adventure and stepping into a new one, a yet unknown one, yet again.
Oh, what a beautiful and painful and exquisite road is life! Oh, how I long to write as Mary Oliver does! The gift of putting words to exactly how you feel, exactly what you mean. God can do it, too, only God has all of creation to use: birds, and flowers, and clouds, and other people, and the whisper in our own hearts. And yet. I sat in a coffee shop yesterday for an hour, drinking a $6 chai (goodness, I am ready for affordability in daily life), staring out the window at the street lined with shoppers and trees, and wrote six pages in my brand new journal, trying to figure out what it is I wanted to write, exactly. I was wishing, waiting, for the release that comes after I journal, after I reach the thing living inside my chest, touch it, and coax it out by naming it.But the fuzzy feeling of puzzlement, of something still yet to be said, to be written, to be named, is still there. I still haven't had that release, but I have begun the journey of processing everything this year was for me, which will take awhile! It is hard because it is full of paradoxes: wanting and not wanting, relief and deep heart break, desperately needing rest and a feeling of disappointment in myself for my not knowing what to do next. My insides look like my room did a few days ago, and will again as soon as I begin to pack: papers and photographs and life-things everywhere, strewn about, misplaced and disorganized. Definitely there, but quite in a state of disarray. But, as I have to do with packing in order to keep my sanity, we just go one bit at a time. This bit, this week, I just want to remember, to savor. Maybe that is part of the process.
I want to remember the red tree with the fuzzy branches outside the library, the way the sunlight fell on the sidewalk as we walked out of work every day, and watching the tree in the quad slowly bloom. I want to remember saying goodbye to my favorite student, how he looked back at me and returned my wave with the peace sign, tears wet on his face. I want to remember seeing my other favorite student through the window, taking her biology final while eating a banana, noticing me watching her, and smiling. I want to remember sitting on top of the picnic table with obscenities scribbled all over it, eating lunch with the people who made this year livable. Feeling the warmth of the California sun (which feels different than the sun everywhere else), the smell of the ocean and the garlic, the taste of strawberries, the feeling of freedom and independence and the assurance of place in this- what has been- perhaps the scariest/most wonderful adventure of my life so far. I want to remember all of it, and I have to trust that even the memories I can't name will do that magic thing memory does: crop up unexpectedly, all of a sudden, a glimmer, a shadow of something you didn't realize you remembered. I want to memorialize it all in my brain, but that seems like an overwhelming and unmanageable task (especially given the current state of my heart), so I think all I can do is keep living in it, keep remembering, keep writing down memories as I think of them.
Perhaps most of all though, I really need to remember how to be brave again. How to combat those stupid 'what if's' that the Liar surrounds us with in times of transition. (Side note: one of my best friends, writer and artist Jill Kuhlman- has started referring to the Devil as the Liar, and I think that's an amazing practice that I have stolen and started using myself) Anyways. The Liar has planted those terrifying questions in my brain: what if I make no friends, get no job, never find love? What if moving home is the wrong choice? What if I waste my life, waiting for a dream that I can't name?
Oh! I need to do the work of protesting despair and remember. Remember how every other time God has pulled me out of the 'what if's' in the periphery and into what is actually there, right in front of me. A next step, ready for my foot. A still, soft whisper, undermining the Liar's shouts, assuring me that I am not alone, that a task will present itself. A whisper reminding me to listen to the ache within me- the ache, the deep, the stillness, the dream. That just because I can't name it doesn't mean it isn't there. One leap at a time.
Don't let yourself lose me. No feeling is final. Give me your hand.
And so, in two weeks time, we kiss California goodbye, sing "Buona Sera" by Louis Prima at the top of our lungs, and go back to the beginning.
...Sometimes, the desire to be lost again comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now, in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the wind flower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect. (Mary Oliver, Upstream)
until next time, (from Idaho!)
-alyssa
p.s. yes, just because I'm moving does not mean I will stop writing. stay tuned for more Mary Oliver and stream-of-alyssa-consciousness
p.p.s. You should know that the night after I wrote this, I was sleeping with my window open and a literal skunk sprayed outside my window somewhere and the smell woke me up at 4 a.m. You get a little, you lose a little, I guess.
p.p.p.s. if you want to listen to the aforementioned songs, and the other things I'm listening to this June, click this link! (sorry it's huge, I know nothing about technology and embedding links) https://open.spotify.com/user/226vz2dl7k3llro3uk326plti/playlist/1Rz2oXeZI421qPmlOdLX3U?si=06PofWcvRFejiKVpzUP9mQ