supernova.

Walking down the sidewalk on a cement colored day, butterflies began to cluster in my stomach. I hadn't felt their flutter in quite some time, so their arrival caught me off guard. And then I welcomed them, and told the beautiful creatures to make themselves at home, because of what they were ushering in. A change.

I grabbed handle of the door I was about to open with a smile on my face, a twinge of nervousness, and then I jumped in. "This is where that goes and over here is where that is," they told me. "When you take this out sprinkle this on top, and when you're out of that go over there to get it"...

My station was a tiny square...a beverage square. Facing the ice and assorted sodas were the multi-colored bottles of alcohol; the coffee and it's silver king faced the door. Bodies were in and out, dancing around each other in efficiency and grace; no glasses were broken.

The previous night I had arrived at the venue for a show a few minutes early. The venue was a bar, people drinking, and talking, drinking more and talking louder. I was waiting for my friends to arrive on the hearth of the fireplace, out of sight from the rest of the crowd. I managed to blend in with the brick surface beneath me, and spend those few minutes of solitude observing the crowd dispersed outside of my personal space. I marveled at the fun time they all seemed to be having, and wondered how much of it was alcohol induced. I watched the tenders behind the bar do the same efficient graceful dance I mentioned above. I heard the fire cracking behind me, and I felt its warmth separating me from the cold that was separating me from the people...All to the words of Oasis,

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cJauX_q6wI

This memorable moment solidified me as an outsider in this place, furthering the already looming desire to move, forward, elsewhere. Not because where I am is bad; but here, the want for doing the things I am doing has left me. What remains is a joyful outsider, eager to see what's outside, away from the crowd and the fireplace.

Standing in the beverage station the following day, today, were the sounds of the steam wand heating and foaming milk, the crash of metal to ice, filling up glasses, and then the words to the song that had filled my head the night before...I started to humm and then sing...

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

As the cork was being removed from the bubbly, and poured into a flute, joining the orange juice for a mimosa.

Cheers to change, however small it is. The small changes remind me just how much I enjoy the butterflies. Someday soon, you will find me somewhere else.

gift box.

I was thinking this morning about how easy it is to resent a season of life when I've tired of it, ignoring the fact that it's likely the specifics of my season that have helped shape me into the version of me that's so quick to be resentful. I began to reminisce, thinking back to the days of playing with dolls, and the day in particular when I decided I was probably too old to play with dolls anymore. I started to ignore the fun part...The imagination they helped cultivate or the fun they added while playing house with my cousin. I started to look at them from a different light, telling my friends I didn't play with dolls anymore, contemplating how to cut the ties. Eventually, I went all the way, putting them in a box and shoving it into the back of my closet. I threw the barbies in there with them, and I am pretty sure I just threw the card-board homemade baby-doll bed I had crafted strait into the trash can. And then, when I would go to the closet to get one of my more adult-like shirts from the closet that doubled as a doll graveyard, I would feel a twinge of guilt for tossing them so callously aside.

Dramatic, maybe. But it's the same kind of guilt I started to feel this morning when I felt that resentment toward the familiar lovely life I am living start to surface. It's the same life that was joyous not too long ago. Why am hating in it so quickly, and early, in the morning? Why am I rushing myself out of it before it's time for it to end?

So I dressed myself, with spunk, and climbed onto the bike I love to ride to the place I always go. I decided to put the resentment in the box instead, and chose Ingrid Michaelson on my miniature musical device to play a day dream kind of tune in my ears. My hands got cold, which made me a little happy; it's the kind of cold that wakes me up and makes me feel a little more alive, and ends before it gets too painful.

I opened my computer to read about black Friday, while watching the patrons in the coffee shop mill around to the sound of Ingrid, and I smiled at what I was watching...The young woman walking as if the isle is a cat walk and the little girls, not yet aware of why a woman would be walking that way, spilling hot chocolate on the table next to me. I smiled, also, at how quickly I forget to be thankful for the seasons that NEEDED to end, and have. I abhor the frenzy of Black Friday, and I think that I am also morally opposed to it. I have worked this lifeless holiday the past two years, at retail establishments, where the shoppers arrive really early in the morning to score a good deal! I read a columnist asking an economist to explain some of the appeal, and he likened it to a sporting event. It's not. Even. Near. The. Same. Category.

I will be spending this Friday with my family, resentment free, THANKFUL to not be on my feet helping people buy things.

through the smoke, wave goodbye.

It should come as no surprise to you, dear readers, that I have been somewhat disillusioned lately in my line of work.

I've been making coffee for nearly three years. Though my practice has increased in integrity since the days of automation and the three minute wait, the integrity amongst those filing in to partake remains sparse.

There is an excessive amount of care that goes into each bag of beans we pour into the grinder, whether it be for drip brew or espresso. EXCESSIVE. Their is so much knowledge out there to be absorbed about everything in life; coffee is no exception. The hope is that the more people know, the more they will appreciate. The catch: there is not enough time for the kind of knowledge whose sole motivation is appreciation. Caffeine is the drug, sugar too. So what's the request? Hazelnut syrup in my coffee, please.

There are those that truly appreciate. Adam comes in the mornings for espresso, and he sips it, savors it, from its ceramic home. He wouldn't dare ask for it to-go. A regular used to drink sugar-free hazelnut lattes. I would make them, and each time, post first sip, he would ask me to add more syrup. One day he asked for less syrup, I nearly dropped the sugar-free-sugar laden cup, and he has since made the switch to just plain lattes. He even has an occasional macchiato - a double shot of espresso "marked" by a skosh of steamed half and half.

But these customers are the exception, I explained to a friend earlier this week, leading me to believe that coffee is a thankless profession.

I received a call today from a local restaurant where I have applied to be a part-time server. Perhaps there will be more appreciation in a different service atmosphere, I thought to myself, prompting me to search for serving positions.

Who am I kidding? I have since decided that it's not coffee that is thankless, but the service industry in general. Its the product of a decision to make your living by serving people; there is no control in your sample. Uneducated, unappreciative, spoiled, lazy, rude, friendly, selfish, depressed. This is what you open yourself up to when you invite the public into your work day.

I smoked a cigarette a few weeks ago. That's right. I tried it. Not because I have any desire to become a smoker, ever. I don't understand why anyone would want to pick up the habit. I am not a fan of things that would inhibit my love for running, or squeeze every extra penny out of my already tiny stash, or increase my chances of dying a painful, lung murdering death. But I know a lot of people that smoke, on occasion, free from addiction, so the circumstances surrounding my first cigarette experience were not those highlighting the above cons. I didn't like it. The practice remains a mystery to me. It will now only be a story that I will tell, or remember to friends..."remember that time I smoked a cigarette...?"

And that's what I would like my time in the service industry to mirror. I would like it to, someday soon, be a story I will tell, or remember to friends..."remember that time that I made my living by serving people food and drink...?"

well said.

I have quoted a line of wisdom quite a few times this week. It came from someone that said it to someone else, that then said it to me.

It relates to what I have been musing lately on here about dissatisfaction and confusion, etc bla bla bla. These thoughts make for a foggy, cloudy, rainy greeting to any new day, as there's nothing, really, that can remedy the situation immediately. So I wake, think about the bleakness of my immediate reality, and then I sigh one of those loud attention attaining sighs. Catch: There's no one around when I sigh; I am sighing into the unknown, which makes me sigh once more.

So back to the quote, words that give me strength. She had returned from a life altering trip abroad, where she came in contact with the worlds unknown...Unicorns, wizzards, and gypsies, and tales of the fountain of youth. Not really, literally. That's just what her stories felt like to me, the receiver. After her travels, she went back home, to the job she had already left, and the city that knows her more thoroughly than most other places on the globe. She sat across from a friend, musing about the very things I have been musing about on here. Her friend looked at her with love and said something to the effect of this: "dear friend. There is nothing wrong with you being here now, in this place, with the people you know and love. But if you are here at this time next year, doing the same thing, I will kill you".

And that's what I have been telling myself, after she told it to me. "There's nothing wrong with you being there, Meredith, living in your little apartment, making coffee or serving food, and just enjoying your people. But if you are there, doing the same thing at this time next year, I will kill you".

cleansing.

I wish I was a bath person. Right now, when I have had a bizarrely painful day, and I am sitting on my couch all alone, a bath is seemingly just what I need. But I am more of a shower person.

I woke this morning, in the eeeeeeaaaaaarly hours, with a foreign feeling in my body: back pain. Ew.

I went back to sleep, thinking I could sleep it off.

I woke again, this time in the early hours, and the pain was still there.

Back pain has always been an old wives tale to me. I remember when I was little and people would complain of head aches or heart burn, and I was left utterly confused and equally skeptical. This is how I have continued to be with this thing - this incredible pain - all these adults around me complain about. I thought maybe a good portion of the paid resided in their minds, until this morning.

I attempted to work, to no avail, and ended up, at around eight-thirty this morning, lying on the part of my body that was producing the pain. I was there for nearly eight hours, and during that time, replaced all of my skepticism with sympathy.

While on the couch - surrounded by the dark of the day and staring at the ceiling - I thought a lot about what I wrote about in the last post - this ambitious life I sometimes think I want to lead. Then I thought about pain, took it further to chronic pain, and got stuck on the part that we have no control over. I didn't intentionally do something to my body to keep it from working. But it wasn't working. And when our bodies fail us, it becomes even more difficult to keep up with even basic things, like doing dishes or tying our shoe laces.

This makes the issue of taking care of myself about more than just myself.

Off to shower.

wallflower.

I am not a student.

I have been thinking a lot about school lately; I marvel at my friends and acquaintances that have attained multiple degrees - regular people with normal hobbies and senses of humor, who found the gumption and focus to complete law school, medical school, or have their doctorate in this or that or something or the other.

It's not that I was a bad student. I take that back. It's not that I made bad grades. I didn't. But I was a bad student. I had bad study habits. I rarely read for class. I crammed for tests. And I never actually understood why I was doing it all anyway.

I am thinking of this because I am back at that place again. You know? The one where you question every decision you are making, the biggest question being why you can't actually make much of a decision as all.

I watched Bobby on Sunday, my lazy day. Well, most of my days have an element of laziness to them. Sunday is just privileged enough to carry a designation. Back to Bobby.

As described by IMBD:

"Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California presidential primary. As day breaks Robert Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel; he'll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategist's wife needs a pair of black shoes, two campaign staff trip on LSD, a lounge singer is on the downhill slide. Through it all, we see and hear RFK calling for a better society and a better nation."

I watch things like this, and I am reminded that the world consists of more than just myself; There is more to a good day than self fulfillment, and the hope that everything will go my way. I think of these things, and I know I should be doing more with the other six days of my week, the ones that carry no official designation.

I have talked about settling before. This is different than that. I think it's important for humanity to, in a sense, refrain from making life directing decisions based on social expectation. The answer to the question, "what do you do?" needs not an impressive, expensive or well-educated answer. Just an honest one.

And when I ask myself, "Meredith, what do you do?" I don't really like the honest answer that I give as a reply, not because of social expectation or a need to be impressive, but because I know I am capable to contributing more fully to the kind of world that the late senator hoped for.

When I get to these points of dissatisfaction that demand change, my mind lingers toward the school I talked about earlier...Furthering my education EVEN more. Though it makes sense on a few levels, the image I get in my head is me, in the form of a skinny and soaking wet cat, swimming forcefully upstream, going against my natural strengths - like jumping out of trees onto land - and instead, fighting a forceful current in a foreign environment.

Last night on the radio, while driving to pick up my pad thai that would likely make my day more ideal, I heard a seventeen year-old Texas girl talk about the two years she spent selling her body for money, between fifteen and the age she is now. I had to get out of the car to eat my food at the part of the story where she had to pull the razor from beneath her tongue to cut the man that had began to hit her. "I cut him and then ran out of the room," she said, as I turned off my car's engine, went into my well heated apartment, read articles online, and ate my dinner.

To quote the lyrics of the blue eyed Jacob Dylan:

I seen the sun comin' up at the funeral at dawn
The long broken arm of human law
Now it always seemed such a waste
She always had a pretty face
So I wondered how she hung around this place

Hey, come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There's got to be something better than
In the middle

Something is just a little off when I think of the whole of my life, and how I occupy my time. The poor girl I talked about above...There are so many people, so many systems, so many life promises, failing her.

I had a customer the other day tell me that I am probably not giving myself enough credit, because it's a blessing for her to come down every morning from her hotel room in the five-star Mayo and see a friendly smile on my face. Woopty doo. I am offering a friendly smile to a group of somewhat wealthy attorneys, who are currently defending Tyson foods and the lawsuit against their chicken's waste that runs into Oklahoma's fresh water. I don't want to fool myself into thinking that this gives my life meaning. I gain no comfort from my friendly attitude offered to the privileged, with the image of the desperate girl in the back of my head, smoking pot and popping ecstasy tablets to get herself through her first night on the job.

Must find a way out of the comfortable middle.

godspeed.

I can't imagine anyone caring whether or not I type something and then post it on here. My thoughts and my life seem so inconsequential and monotonous to me. This is why I can take SUCH a sabbatical from here, and not be phased.

Lately, I have felt mostly like a dish girl, a sandwich maker, a table cleaner, a mediocre friend, a lazy daughter, nap taker, and a not-enough-money maker. This kind of permeating attitude, that seems to have come along with the barrenness of autumn's almost end, is not this kind of mindset that produces the motivation to write, for me, much of anything.

It is the kind of attitude that necessitates change, if a person doesn't want to remain in a disgusting rut for too long.

I am supposed to be looking for new opportunities today. The thought of that is stomach churning and vomit inducing, so I am writing about doing it, instead of doing it. I am also doodling, in my notebook, that's sitting to the left of my black macbook. It's pages are currently adorned with some really beautiful and interesting unnecessary flowers, thanks to my inability to take care of the necessary.