goodbye, deep and drolly me.

I've started and stopped and started and stopped and started and stopped so many posts on this site that I haven't ever published. I still write. I've been asking myself lately just why it isn't I haven't written anything to share.

I met a woman at a community table while eating salad at a salad cafe in Washington DC. Conversation came easy and we were quickly talking serious life things. She told me about the job she worked to support her passion, the years spent living in Eugene, OR, her daughter, and also, she asked my age. "Twenty-seven," I responded. "Oh, you're coming up on your saturn return," she said to me. "My saturn what," I thought to myself. It's a time, she told me, of extreme transition, and it also happens to be the time when saturn is at the same position in the sky as it was at the moment of my birth. For most people, she said, this happens during their twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth year, which meant I was well on my way to mine.

Saturn return believer or not, a person's twenty-ninth year also happens to be the precursor to the end of an era, a decade long era, in fact. I'm no longer on my way there. My age is twenty-nine and one half year, and my twenties are almost over. I am sincerely reevaluating things, and also solidifying thoughts and beliefs I've managed to ramble through these last ten years. This blog has been present through a good portion of that time, and as the decade is coming to a close, so is deep and drolly me. I've been thinking this for some time, and also thinking myself out of writing anything. As thirty will say hello to a new numerical decade, and consequently a new start, so will the blog where I will, henceforth, publish posts.

Please join me at: www.orangecoloredshades.tumblr.com

I've written more about the transition there. Thank you for sticking with me here, but guys, change is my language. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I plan to...

teeeechnology.

I abhor those pop ups that remind me to update something for the latest version now! Adobe reader is the worst. I rarely use adobe reader. I can't remember the last time I opened it. I only downloaded it for some obscure reason years ago. But those tech guys at adobe are relentless. I imagine them behind their computer screens looking at a series of ones and zeros and x's while rubbing their palms together intently, in between the frequent looks of aha! that grace their faces. "If I type this here and add that there, all of the world will be able to open documents at lightening speed!" they say to themselves. And then I get the pop. And it bounced back and forth and back and forth from left to right begging me to click on it. The only way to stop the bouncing is to click. And it wants me to update NOW but gives me the option, oh so subtly, to do it later. And I almost always choose to do it later.

I was thinking about my annoyance during the latest pop up reminder. It's definitely partly, even mostly, due to the fact that they interrupt me when I am in the middle of completing something that feels really important at the time. But I can help but think that part of my annoyance comes from the fact that it's a visual trigger of the reality that there are also things to be dealt with and updated in my real every day life that instead just get an every so often click to remind me later.

in secret.

One of my customers looks like the heartthrob from sweet sixteen. Jake, right? Jake drives the red sports car and has the most unlikely crush on Molly Ringwald's character. And my customer looks like Jake would look if he aged in the most wonderful way. Olive skin, sheepish grin, dark hair and eyes, and slightly unaware of just quite how attractive he is. He's a little shy, but seems to enjoy my conversation. We've had a few, the last about marathon training. He was tapering down, and about to run his first. He's also married. He's got the ring, and he's slipped "my wife" into one of our coffee talks. He'll never know these things I think.

I had this friend once. I was scared of him at first. I could tell his was dangerous territory, so I kept the conversation as surface as I am capable, and would flee his company as quickly as it would come. He persisted though...luring me in with games - literally. There were all kinds of movie like moments that happened during the time we spent together. Dancing in the grass in the early morning hours. Two step lessons. Sledding in the snow. Spinning cars in icy parking lots. Spring time car rides. The friendship has been over for quite some time now. The end was pretty awful. I never told him.

I had this conversation with a friend Sunday evening over wine and gin & ginger. The gin and ginger was a mistake. While sipping her mistake, she asked, "why is it that we've all had these feelings or thoughts about people. Friends we've felt more for, or friends we've been hurt by, and for some reason, we never let them know. Why don't we ever let them know? What are we afraid of?"

I obviously don't let the Jake look-alike know because he's married. And obviously we're all afraid of rejection, and it's not my style to let people know they've affected me. Better for them to think I'm immune to all of that feeling stuff. And sometimes there are things people should know that they're never told, like how nice they look in red, or how much the room brightens with their smile. But the more I thought about her inquiry, the more I wonder about the unspoken, the secret, and the idea that this tension of secret truths is so much of what makes everything, well, everything.

As I sit here and type this, I'm looking around at a shop full of people, couples, business acquaintances, friends, and they're all in conversation with someone else. And in the in between, in the spaces we cannot see with our eyes, are all of these hidden words, thoughts that have been thought, feelings felt, likely many times, that will never be spoken. They're in the space between, like the silent breaths we take that keep our lungs full of air.

740 w 13th st.

My address is on thirteenth street. It's the section between Jackson and Indian, two unique streets that stretch but a few blocks long. My roommate and I love the river, inexpensive living, being close to down town, and windows that open. After looking with no luck for a few months, and feeling a little deflated at the possibility of the perfect spot, she called to let me know the opposite. "I think I found where we're going to live." She doesn't commit to words like these half-heartedly, so I drove strait to meet her. Thirteenth between the unique streets is also within eye shot of Riverside, so it was automatically promising. She fetched the key hidden under the lid of the trash can full of leaves and brush, and proceeded to walk me through the empty two bedroom hard wood floored space. She had in fact found it.

And what follows is a life principle that can both be beautiful, and extremely shitty. We always approach new seasons with knowns. I knew my bedroom would be the one to the right of the bathroom, and that I would string the quilt my uncle surprised me with a Christmas a few years earlier across my bed that I would rarely make. I knew my roommate would hang the map shower curtain she's been so eager to get out of storage, and that I would appreciate so much, post living in a second story patio-less apartment, the ability to walk out of my front door and sit on my front steps with my toes in the grass. The potentially beautiful potentially shitty part is the list of unknowns, the variables we have no control over.

I had experienced some of that difficulty a few summers before in Washington DC. I hadn't known how physically exhausted my body would be after running a marathon, and that it would take me some time to recover. I hadn't been prepared for the post-run blues that sink in after such a long stretched goal is accomplished and over with. I didn't know it would be one of the hottest and most caustic summers in DC's past, and that the heat would make it close to impossible for me to get myself out the door for a walk, much less a run. I didn't know that my one consistent outlet that helps me deal with most things in life would be practically stripped from my summer days. That was shitty.

My current address has produced quite the opposite, I'm ecstatic to say. I had no idea that my path would cross so timely with Laura's, my neighbor on Jackson Avenue. I didn't know that I would fall in love with her dog Viola, or how much joy would come from walking over after a run and retrieving the hidden key simply get some quality Vi time in. I didn't know that quality Vi time would often change the mental course of my days. I didn't know Julie that lives on Jackson, at all, or that she was a runner. I didn't even know that I could enjoy running with another person. It turns out I do. I didn't know that Indian Avenue was so close, and that in turn, Holt too. I didn't know that our friendship would continue to blossom, or that we would have frequent neighbor dinners, cooking for each other, drinking, sharing life. I didn't ever expect to find myself in his and James' kitchen on a Sunday, baking biscuits and stirring gravy after walking over with a paper bag of groceries. I didn't know how much I would eventually adore Anne, Holt's girlfriend. I didn't know how hilarious she is, or that a genuine friendship would form between us. I didn't know that true neighbors and neighborhoods still existed, or that my neighbors would become my community. I didn't know any of this until I moved to thirteenth street. And it's beautiful.

memries.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel inferior to blondes, or the petite of the world. I remember the big blue tank of a car my parents used to drive us around in. I remember that tank breaking down regularly, and being stranded on the side of the highway deciding which way to walk, long before the introduction of the car phone. I remember watching my mom apply her lipstick, rarely before we left the house. It was usually done in the rear view mirror of whichever tank we drove at the time. I remember thinking it was a mistake when she was wearing red whilst applying pink. I remember our scruffy dog Buffy and how she always used to get in the way and scramble under the feet of whoever was near. I remember the day that she scrambled under the cut-off telephone pole my dad was tooling around on a dolly just as he was letting it down onto the ground. It was going to be the base of the deck he was building around our above ground swimming pool. I remember how excited I was that this deck was finally going to exist, knowing it would make cannonballs and not-so grassy feet so much easier, and also how devastated we all were that the foundation of that summer bliss is what caused Buffy to take her last breaths. I remember sitting around her tired body watching her struggle for air, seeing my dad display deep sadness for possibly the first time in my life. Buffy was his dog. If we’re talking about pet license then she belonged to my mother, but in real life, no one could be convinced of this. I remember the sparkles and hearts on the shirt I wore while I sobbed until my face was a pink as the lipstick my mother would apply to her lips. I remember Buffy’s last breath, and my first tangible reckoning with finality. I remember my brother and my father leaving moments after Buffy’s last to make it to the WWF match they had tickets for, and my first reckoning with the reality that even in sadness and loss, life must go on.

life paint.

I've spent nearly four hours inside of a tattoo parlor over the course of the past twenty-four hours, though I've left inkless. Shortly after walking through the doors of Elm St. Tattoo, I recognized genius. There are trinkets covering every amount of space, save the area left for walking. The ceiling is turquoise and the large fuzzy turquoise dice dangling from above are like foreshadowing to the back corner where Oliver inks his magic. The friend I am accompanying has been going to Oliver for years, long before his tumultuous relationship with a reality TV star that led him to reality TV stardom himself. And judging from his shelves, he's been collecting dice since before he met my friend. He is surrounded by whatever-the-hell he wants. If it makes him happy he hangs it. And in this dream space he makes his living.


The place I currently work operates on the same concept. The owner loves robots, and they're everywhere.


A dear friend makes her money from the coffee shop she opened at the age of twenty five. Each interior room of the business looks like it could be plucked up and placed inside her house.

This is the genius I am speaking of. This is the intentional misdirection I am working towards. These are the people I am seeking out. This is the teeny tiny beginning of something big.

dance class.

Post college I found myself in the Sunshine State feeling less than sunshiney. Friends were hard to come by, my running was sporadic, I watched an excessive amount of films, and ate an excessive amount of ice cream. Sometimes I watched films while eating ice cream and popcorn at the same exact time. Something inside of me was aching to break free.

I remember sitting outside on the hood of my car sharing all of this with my oldest friend over the telephone, and also telling her how much I wanted to know how to hip hop dance. My love for NSYNC (yes, you read that right) had morphed into an adoration for Justin Timberlake's beats. A taste of movement to this music left the tiniest flavor of freedom on my palette, and I wanted more.


Around the same time my brother and I had found a church we both seemed to enjoy. The air was clear, and I seemed to concur with a lot of what came from the pastor's mouth, which was becoming a rarity. I've always been a note taker, a journaler, a documenter. When something is said that I question, agree with, or am inspired by, I write it down. One Sunday during this time of inspiration, Gee was speaking about dancing, which was most timely. I'd grown up in an environment that was traditionally opposed to this activity, and Gee began to break down that myth. He praised dancing as an expression of love and said, most eloquently, "people who are free dance."


When I left Florida that year, I basically took with me my belongings, and those five words. I freed myself from that place, and decidedly claimed those words as truth long before I actually lived them out.


I'd heard all those sayings about one's early twenties, the one's that lament the fact that it's this time when you may think you're comfortable with yourself but really, you're not. You're actually working tirelessly through the muck of insecurity and doubt and attempting to unlearn all the false stuff you've held to be true, and also find out what it is you really think to be truth, and that all of this stuff is scary, even though you may not consciously feel afraid, because you're plowing through uncharted territory. I plowed, and sought out people with this characteristic I craved. I looked for people that moved, be it to music or travel or life; I surrounded myself with dancers, and then I began to dance.


I found the intellectual dancers that helped me move gracefully through doubt, making life weight lighter. I befriended the travelers that danced over continents and state lines, and I followed them. The lonely and beautiful travel dance broke me down and built me up, inviting in the elusive comfortability with oneself that's necessary to let go. I listened to the musicians and followed them to musical shows that inspired and loosened the strings of tension. I started to sway, side to side, surrounded by people that somehow managed to completely let go. I saw the statement, "people who are free dance," being lived out by real people.

A week ago today I found myself in a carpenter's warehouse surrounded by friends and strangers looking above to musicians rested up high above the crowd in what's otherwise used as a storage space, strumming wash boards and banjos and guitars and their own beautiful voices. I stood still for mere moments, until I couldn't be still any longer, and then that freedom I'd so long sought after came without warning. It does that quite often nowadays. 

social un-norm.

A well read friend recommended "Walden" to me a few months back. She said Thoreau and I were kindred spirits. I measured the weight of that statement through the many glasses of wine we had all consumed by the time she uttered it, but also made a mental note to seek out this piece of literature. My roommate found it for me at Goodwill. I tore into it, and devoured the contents as if my life's worth was measured by the number of pages turned each day.

Shorty before opening the book, I'd stumbled upon some important life truths dealing with creativity and purpose. Mostly, that we should spend our time doing the things we love, even if they are things that don't fit nicely into societies packaging. I have been dancing with that philosophy for a while now, shedding layers of expectation here and there without ever really letting its music fully move me.


I've held hands with simplicity for quite a while, in the physical sense. Have less stuff, mostly. Dear Thorough and life epiphanies have pushed me from mere hand holding to a full on embrace. This simplicity stretches much further than the contents of my modest closet. It's meant to reach into the crevices of life, and the wells of what we spend our time on, too. This simplicity doesn't always translate easily into cultural success, but the tenets of its truth propel me into tasks that truly fill my soul. Working with my hands is a must. Writing is a necessary creative outlet that I should always be attempting, refining, pursuing. My relationships and the people in my life are paramount to fulfillment, and I must invest in them with intention.


I've been fully diving into those things as of late, which left me pretty exhausted last Saturday evening. One of the few things that could drag me from rest was ethnic food. I crashed married couple date night to have My Thai Kitchen for dinner, which happened to be exactly what all of my insides needed. The food was everything I was hoping for, the inside of the space was painted vibrant colors of red and yellow and orange like a baby's nursery, and the owner was the embodiment of hospitality and graciousness; His presence the equivalent of ease, which balanced nicely with married couple banter. Though I devoured my meal as I'd devoured "Walden", there were left overs to be had, and so I didn't leave the restaurant solo.


I met the following Monday morning early, and drove to my work, a place where I make coffee and work my hands raw with espresso and bleach. I was hungry for breakfast, Thai left-overs in hand. And that's what I wanted to eat. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and I was craving rice, vegetables, and the curry both of those things were resting in. Something inside deterred me. "That's not breakfast food," this expectant voice whispered in my ear. "Eat your granola", it said, "and save your left-overs for lunch, where they belong."


I recognized the tone. It's the same voice that's been pushing me for years to figure out what I want to be, as if what I am isn't enough already. "You can do this for a while, but eventually you're going to have to start acting like a grown-up, Meredith."


And this is the response I am attempting to cultivate: Have granola for lunch! Do the things you LOVE to spend your time doing. Breathe, and damn-it, eat left-over Thai food for breakfast. 

look at the water.

Sitting on a bench that beckoned, I heard clatter from clusters of sail boats that created the faintest hint of wind chimes, and a subtlety that can only happen accidentally, white beach birds whose scientific name I do not know sang their evening songs as the echoing train whistle teased in the space behind me.

I walked down the street to the section of Lake Michigan that borders Milwaukee, with down town to my left and endless seemingly sea before me and to my right. The daytime was inching closer to it's end, and the sun that usually warms the bay had taken a bow. As my boots clanked the sidewalk and rolled up jeans clanked the sides of my boots, Walden and journal in hand, I had a moment of regret. I left my I-Pod in my bag inside the cafe with the others. That inner jerk, the feeling like I could create the best moment for myself if I'd had all the ingredients, and I NEEDED to turn around to get that contraption to make it complete, it tugged...I grasped it, and I let it go.

There are so many of these moments that pull at us in life, and all kinds of things outside of ourselves we're convinced we need, that we should turn around, interrupt our walk and the peace of the evening breeze around us, to retrieve. But GOD, there is so damn much beauty around us all of the time that we're missing because we're so afraid to be still.

I left the tug alone, then I let it go, and I kept walking. I let sail boats sing to the tune of the breeze, the birds and the train. My moment was more complete than any I could have conjured on my own, and I felt an abundance inside stillness that can't ever be reached by distraction.

farewell trip.

I am away from normal life right now, living and breathing Northern air.

Before leaving the part of the united states that can't be effectively characterized (south? midwest? west? southwest?), I wondered how to characterize my temporary exit.

Because of various life epiphanies that I will elaborate on further in the future, I am abnormally crazy about my current place on earth. I'm usually pretty content, so this isn't too far from the pre-epiphany norm. But so many mundane aspects of life are incredibly beautiful, and the muck of discontentment lifted, as of late, just enough for me to see the beauty more clearly. All that momentum to say, I didn't need a vacation, and this is part of the epiphany.

I want to cultivate for myself an existence that doesn't beg for an escape.

So this Northern air that I am breathing isn't a vacation. It's just kind of a trip, and no matter how in love with the present I become throughout my life, I will always welcome new landscapes.

Another part of the epiphany is the value of the people in our lives, and it's two people in particular that motivated this trip for me. Over the course of the past three years, we have spent time investing in each others' lives, and they have taken care of me in the moments I was unaware I even needed care. They are a couple, so technically I am the odd one out, though it's never been that way. They've let me crash their Valentine's Day dinners, we cooked vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner together this past year, and the layered moments of every day life that I constantly tried to remind myself to not take for granted are too many to tell.

I came on this trip to move them away from me. That's what's motivating this new landscape, and the string of days here in a Northern place, and why I will leave with more interesting stories and memories, and also with a real and tangible ache.

relax.

Once I started a food blog. I thought that since I like food and I like to write, I would write about the food I ate and cooked and stuff like that. But I rarely did. I mean, I already had a blog. And when I would log in and it brought up that page, I think they call it the "dashboard", it indicated how many blogs I was managing, and the indication was two, and for a moment that made me feel a little more important. I wasn't just handling the demands of one, but TWO.

And I think about this and about how tempting it is in life to put more descriptive terms under one's name, things that show the world how much of a load we can handle, and how impressive we are. And then I think about how if you ask a person what they actually value, I mean really value, it doesn't usually have much to do with what they spend most of their time doing.

A friend was telling me a tale of her friend's educational experience while we walked home from a gelato date last week. We were passing by a community college, and I was probably lamenting how much my student loans hold me back from doing cool things in life. I do this a lot. Her friend, she informed me, pays SEVEN-HUNDRED dollars a month for his student loans, and he works at a burger place. She also said he's considering graduate school, as he can get his loans deferred. And this is exactly why I didn't ever want to get a masters degree. Because while I am NOT paying on my loans I am ACCUMULATING MORE DEBT that would eventually get me even further from doing more fun things in life and also not guarantee that I would get to spend time doing what I love. I have friends that took their graduate degree OFF their resume so that they could get a job, all the while paying money for the training they were having to hide.

And I think about both these things, what we value versus what we actually spend our time doing, and and also about what we pursue and invest ourselves in against all logical reasoning, and about how BACKWARDS the world can be, and it all makes me want to just go lay in a hammock under the trees with an optional read alongside an optional nap.

Lucky for me, I have a friend with a hammock; I've also got a book and a free afternoon.

high-lighter.

Lately I've been thinking about all the things we need to unlearn, the falseness we build upon, and how to get to the core, the real.

And It starts at Wal-Mart.

This was before I was aware what that place would become. We went there to get shock for our swimming pool and rings to throw in the bottom, to search for like dolphins or mermaids or whatever identities our childhood imaginations could conjure. There were no groceries or super-sections of super centers.

This particular trip culminated alongside the impulse purchases that have since expanded to include sanitizing wipes, though the disposable cameras have come and gone. Before all of that, there were candy and magazines, and a distinct memory of the beginning of not measuring up. I was in between my mother's silver shopping cart and a few girls my age. I was fair and brown headed and freckled and they were distinctly different, their skin kissed by the summer sun, their hair streaked blonde from the same rays, and that's the first moment I remember an inner tendency to compare. And from that tendency followed feelings of inadequacy. I was somewhere around the age of seven.

And somewhere around that same age, I began to have an affinity for women in long skirts and long hair and in my head, that's what I viewed as adulthood, the version I would like to live in. I had always been interested in fashion. I picked out the right bags and shoes for my beloved Aunt Mae that took care of me as a child at the age of four, and I'd shudder when my mom would leave the house in something red while wearing bright pink lip stick. Style was a part of my inner make-up, but that didn't have anything to do with the previous mentioned affinity. It had everything to do with the lightness the long flowing skirts represented.

This lightness could be seen from the tip-toes these mystical women walked on, the sun that was always out when they were around, the weightlessness in their laughter, the ease with which they traveled from room to room. They were the listeners, attentive, present. But they were hard to find.

So many of the women I was immediately surrounded by were anything but light. They were inspiring in other ways, but their steps were heavy, their demeanor distracted, their mannerisms stiff, their clothing not ever fitting quite right. The feelings that met me in line at Wal-Mart encouraged this phenomenon, in the form of unnecessary pressure and unachievable expectations.

Life is so much about unlearning the crap we stuffed into our formative brains in line at Wal-Mart, the sneaky sentences that hold us back, lessons we clung to that were not ours, thoughts that discourage and tell us to hide ourselves from others.

Don't shake the ground each time you take a step because of unnecessary baggage. You'll run out of places to walk and buildings that can hold you. Walk your thoughts to images of the wind blowing the curtains, the hang gliders of the world, the birds, and the people you know that walk with ease upon their toes. Take from them what's good, true, real, and walk lightly.

And get the helloutta Wal-Mart.

drout relief.

An Oklahoma summer is inevitably hot. There was that one, once, that was kind of rainy and mild. But most every other summer of my life can be characterized by heat. As my roommate would say, it makes us tougher, heartier people. This summer has really outdone itself.

Walking outside feels much like a slap in the face, and no one can shut up about it. I don't blame them, really, the weather talkers. It's a cliche topic, yes, but this summer's version is also extremely unbelievable. I've been saying "one-hundred and fourteen" out loud because of how outlandish that number as a temperature sounds. It goes without saying that the sky alongside these temperatures has been a sunny one. A cloud here and there, giving the ants roaming about a minute or two sort-of reprieve from the blast of heat blasting their shells. Otherwise, sun.

This is why the gray sky I looked up and witnessed Saturday evening, while tamping espresso, seemed so unbelievable. One-hundred and fourteen has become so commonplace that a storm, cloud covered sky accentuating shaky trees, is fantastical and other worldly. And then the impossible: rain. It started coming down, pouring, beating itself against the concrete like a broken heart, like a lover that keeps it all in bottled up inside itself for so long putting up with so much shit and lies and anguish and hurt, composed on the outside sipping tea and folding napkins until her frame, her insides can no longer physically handle the layers of pain and she lashes out, tearing holes, smashing glass and breaking down everything along her path. That was the rain. The storm breathed a weight of relief like the lover; The temperatures began to fall and we all took in the breeze like it was the first breeze of all our days on Earth.

And then the storm kept pounding and tearing across the landscape with scorn, and it blew gas lines and power lines and uprooted trees.

And it's funny that the things we need, I mean really desperately need are so often the things we aren't prepared for all the while and they slam down relief and confusion and unsettle us. And we scramble to figure out how to deal with no power, no air conditioning, broken stuff, canceled plans, ants in the living room and yet, we remain thankful for the rain.

summer ammo.

I started the season feeling a need to beat the summer, as if it had taken war with me (it had). This meant a necessary reach into my bag of weaponry.

I am not a particularly violent person. I'd much rather concede knowing I am right on the inside than put up a fight with a fighter. I don't compete with others well. I usually step aside and let them pass. I fail at Monopoly. This shifts as the temperature gauge goes higher. Summer brings out my inner warrior, and the only weapon I've had to use with consistency against the inconsistency of the world is running. It's been my antidote for a long time, and this summer, I've planned for it to be my grenade.

And then, after many runs in near one-hundred degree heat, no injury or exhaustion, I pulled something in my calf while sleeping. I suffered after effects of a charlie horse gone bad the night before a thirteen mile run; The summer had called in back-up. I toyed with concession.

Though I am not giving up, I am altering my course. Isn't that what they do in the war movies? Reassess their strategy, take inventory of their enemy, adjust accordingly? And part of my adjustment is to remind myself of my other summer time goal: enjoy, as a child enjoys.

I accomplished this with zeal yesterday, as my body zoomed down the pink Silver Bullet at Big Splash, right after exiting the Lazy River that had followed a run in with the Master Blaster.

A message to Summer: I've got back up, too.

run on a rainy river day.

The feeling of a bag packed on my way to a new kind of adventure is akin to no other. It's an anticipation of the unknown, and the excitement of exploring new terrain, but the joy is also linked to the familiar. I know that what awaits me will open my eyes a little wider, and provide an even broader perspective to view the familiar from. When I return to the life I am escaping, it will not be the exact same, and that part of the process is invigorating.

Another lovely aspect of travel is taking the familiar and immersing it in the foreign. For me, this is most accessibly done through running. Queries happen all the time about why I actually love to run, and the answers could fill a book. But one that takes the cake is its simplicity, which is my life's preference. All you need is a pair of shoes, and now-a-days there are camps, swarms even, of people that argue you don't actually need those. Not only is it simple either way, but it's also such a perfect way to expose oneself to extended miles of a city in a short amount of time. I can cover six miles of culture while my feet and my thoughts and the landscape do a sort of discovery dance in less than an hour.

I spent four days of last week in a place they call NOLA. I say "they" because I don't call it that. I also didn't know anyone did. I saw those four letters capitalized and typed next to each other and wondered whereinthehell that was. And then I learned that's where I was going, where I booked a flight to, and home from, and I still don't call it that because abbreviations make me uncomfortable. Upon my return, I was asked all those questions, you know, like, "Did you have craw fish?" "gumbo?" "go to Bourban Street?" And then I got grief because my answer to all of those questions was a no, and my most memorable experience (aside from all of the lovely time I get to spend in the presence of the friend I was visiting) was a six mile run I did on Sunday along "The Fly". I love that they call it the fly because when I first hear that word I think of the bug, and then I think about the action, and then I think about fishing, and there's good in some of those connotations and a dirtiness, and weirdness and a fantastical element and I think those descriptions are applicable to the city I was in.

There was also the issue of temperature ahead of me. I should have done this run the previous day, but our hours were filled with things like the beach, coffee, antique shops, and rural Mississippi, so I delayed until Sunday. I should have done it early in the morning, but we spent our time packing things up to return in time for church, and instead of doing it just after, ice cream had to be consumed. It would have been great to fit in in then, post ice cream, but of course a nap was necessary, so there I was at five, about to interact with the hottest part of the day. Lindsay expressed her sympathy, and I was grateful but also, I was very much looking forward to what was ahead of me. My strategy against the heat is based in revenge. Last summer was caustic, painful, and I barely ran at all. I was having a hard time transitioning which served to zap my motivation as well, and the pair - heart pain and heat - pretty much flushed the potential of an enjoyable summer strait into DC's sewage system. And so now, I am taking revenge. My existence will someday be lived out in the tree house of my dreams in a dry climate, but I must conquer the humidity before I let that happen. I must. And this is what I told Lindsay. Do not be sorry my friend. I asked for it. The Sunday New Orleans outing would usher me into a summer of hot humid sticky drenched in sweat barely breathing runs.

Fifteen steps in and I felt rain drops on my skin. This was a most welcome feeling in the midst of the mug, and added an extra sense of confidence to my steps. I left on the familiar route I had formed a few days earlier, but eased into the unknown, unsure if my diverted course was correct, and if I was directionally headed for "The Fly", or somewhere else all together. About a mile in the landscape became familiar again, and a memorable "do not enter sign" confirmed that river I was seeking was just ahead. Across the railroad tracks, up an incline and then to my right, the river. Water draws people out of their every day, their caves, themselves, and it reminds them to enjoy, and this universal truth is what beckoned my run to the river that day.

I was immediately greeted with blanket loungers and bathing suits, and repetitively dodged pop up grills taking up space on the sidewalks. There was music of every tradition, and at one point I broke my stride to dance to a little hip hop blaring from the speakers of an open doored car; The player of the tune cheered me on, as random rain drops continued to fall from the sunny sky. Up ahead, where the water was at its highest and splashing up the embankment at my ankles, the little boys to my left were making their way through a craw fish feast. One of the craw fish had made its way to the sidewalk and I jumped to avoid smashing the hard shell beneath my feet. There was a soccer game going on to my right, a basketball being bounced in the middle of the street, and then, once I had returned to the railroad tracks, the slowest paced train crossing the very spot that I needed to cross myself. I took a picture for a group of handsome men waiting alongside me, and then gave up on the wait and followed a bicyclist past the gate to my right which led to a trail that didn't promise anything but the chance for me to keep moving. I ran along until I saw the caboose, and then chose Broadway, the most familiar street I could find. I stopped a lovely couple making a u-turn in their fancy red convertible and asked if I was headed the correct way to reach St. Charles. They assured me I was, and so I made my way home while taking in all of the glorious old trees and glorious old epic homes that lined the rest of my run.

I didn't eat craw fish while I was in the place they call NOLA, but I did dodge it, as well as about twenty bar-b-qs from the city's locals. Of all my experiences, my run along "The Fly" felt the most natural, and all-New-Orleans-encompassing. Those six miles were nearly as epic and grandiose to me as the homes lining the streets. That distance, as well as the colorful nature of New Orleans itself, etched the beauty and personality of that place into my mind in the most memorable way.

portable.

February 28th, 2010: move from cozy garage apartment to cozy mango basement room in big house.

May 31st, 2010: move from cozy basement room into small carry-on suitcase headed from seattle>boston>DC, final destination.

June 10th, 2010: move from tiny suitcase into bedroom in very large house next door to Lebanese Ambassador.

November 25th, 2010: move from bedroom with tiny suitcase into tiny bedroom in house of parents.

January 14th, 2011: move from tiny bedroom in house of parents into bedroom in apartment of Kyla.

I'm visual. I think I see the source of desire I have to just stay where I am for a minute or two.

market ease.

The better part of my weeks in DC happened on Saturday mornings. I headed east, from the red line to the orange and blue line to the Market, where color in the district was displayed in abundance. I looked forward to it all week long; The americano I would sip with a scone alongside a slow ease through people and dogs and strollers and goods being peddled to the masses. There were laid back smiles on the faces that were changing the world, seriously, the other days of the week. It's as if the entire District of Columbia, wound tight with deadlines, pressures, extra hours and the like, let out one big Saturday morning sigh of relief, and that relaxed sigh filled the air we all breathed in.

There's a market here in the place I am living now. Tents pop up every Saturday and have for quite some time. I lament the fact that I resided blocks away for a year without ever visiting. Markets didn't have a place in my life as eating was done out. My refrigerator saw the light of my kitchen a few times a week, and its only inhabitants were ketchup, sometimes some form of milk, and a to-go container of left-overs.

As this year's spring began to tease us with its presence, this market began to be a topic of conversation among many that I know. I started to anticipate its arrival, mostly because I cook again and the purchasing of perishables has become part of my norm. I was also told grandiose tales of legendary goat cheese, along with the admonition that to get it one has to get it early, as the faithful snatch it up fast.

True statement: I would get up before dawn for goat cheese. Early arrival would not be a barrier. I was there at open, seven-o'clock am, with the anticipation of attaining the cloud like unpasteurized substance that had gotten me out of bed so early. I wasn't anticipating the sense of calm and joy that came from simply being in the midst of all a market has to offer.

I went to where I had been told to go and I was met with rejection. They didn't bring extra to sell that week, but only had enough for their members. Also, in the future, I was to ask for fish bait. I walked away practically weightless with a big goofy smile plastered across my face. I couldn't have the very thing I had gone for and I was barely bothered. While perusing the other booths of breads, flowers, cheeses, leafy greens, green garlic, rosemary and every other spring vegetable and herb one could think of, as well as having contact with those that have nurtured these edibles on display, I was struck again with the ease that met me on those market streets in DC.

My weekly ritual was a ritual for a reason. I took the train trip all those mornings because of a need for familiarity, but also because the environment was comforting and beautiful in the ways I needed my familiarity to be. Walking through the little market here brought up those familiar feelings, the way a song can take you back to a place completely forgotten.

My train trip has shifted to a bicycle ride, but I happily and intentionally find myself on a blocked off concrete street every Saturday morning breathing in sighs of relief, the aroma of fresh vegetables, and meeting the smiles of the people that get it with a smile of my own.

True statement: The goat cheese was worth the wait.

truth love.

At coffee on Saturday, my roommate and I spent a good portion of the conversation delving into various online horoscopes. Believe them or not, horoscopes entertain. They speak to the vanity of human nature and a constant desire to understand the un-understandable. There's a writer that puts a weekly version on his site, and it's always off the wall interesting, especially for aquarians. His writing and thought processes are worth reading, even if you're entirely opposed to exposing yourself to such nonsense. Saturday's did not disappoint, and not only did it offer thought, but I was given an assignment as well. Toward the end, there were explanations of some of the various types of love defined in culture: agape, eros, etc. The aquarians assignment was to thoughtfully come up with three other types of love that play out in your life.

I love projects.

The only definition I've come up with thus far is rooted in raw honesty.

I've never been one of those people that does a good job gushing about feelings aloud. That involves way too much exposure. Voicing this stuff inevitably means that delusional hopes will be scoffed at by the people in my life that are rooted in reality. "Him? Riiiight, Meredith. There's not chance...He's way out of your realm of possibility". That's the fear, anyway. So the trend that began early was to keep it in. The tall funny friend I had a crush on my senior year believed that's all I wanted to be. This all blew up when a friend told him that I LIKED him. Oh my goodness. I hadn't ever told her that I liked him, but women know, I guess. And she liked him too, and this is beginning to sound a lot like a chapter from The Baby Sitter's Club. I considered this person that spilled my secret like a full glass of milk (we'll call her Stacy as she was the Baby Sitter's Club flirt) a friend. I actually considered her a good friend, and had it not been for my real friend, I wouldn't have ever known about the spilled milk. The real friend (we'll call her Dawn as she was principled) knew because the Logan of the whole scenario came to her and asked if I liked him; My real friend refuted this, and then she came to me, knowing all of this would be difficult for me to hear, and she told me anyway. This was my first lesson in this kind of love.

The above all sounded silly as I was typing it, but in high school it wasn't really silly at all. It was weighty and hurtful, and the lesson, though mostly in my subconscious, was to look for that character trait as it's something valuable and worth investing in.

I remember sitting outside in a plastic chair last year on a Monday, across from another Dawn I'm ever thankful for. Ten years later, and actual adulthood can still resemble the same childhood read. She sat across from me and told me information that was incredibly difficult to hear relating to a friend I couldn't help but have feelings for, and moments later, I felt like someone had thrown a jug of milk into my gut. The honesty of this friend is the thing, the very thing, I appreciate about her the most.

Last Friday over margaritas and mexican food, I gushed over our handsome server, someone I had engaged with flirtatiously a week or so prior. I had been told he may work there, and I didn't fully believe, so there we went, marching like girly troops scouting out the territory. It turns out the information I had been given was correct, our assignment was not followed out in vain, and I my innate sense of direction plopped us unknowingly at one of his tables. My dinner date observed, and because this honesty makes up her character, said somewhere toward the end of the meal, "can I make an observation?" Oh, how that sentence makes me nervous. "Yes," I cowered and said. "Well, you know how you told me the thing you didn't really like about the last one, how he flirted with everyone? Well, I just feel inclined to bring light to this one's innate flirtatiousness." Though I was aware of this, I preferred the idyllic bubble I'd been able to place around most of my logic throughout the course of our dinner, which was just fine, a harmlessly fun place to reside for an hour or so. Her shared raw and honest observation brought me back down to the ground, to the gutters, where I prefer to spend the rest of my time. She wasn't saying not to flirt, but to be careful when investing myself in his behavior, as it's likely bestowed upon the masses. Flirt, yes. Just be aware of what it is you're flirting with.

This love that continues to play itself out in my life is what I will call sincere. It can line itself up along the agapes and eros and the others too. It's raw honesty is rooted in a sincere desire for the best to come from truth shared, not withstanding difficulty, for the recipient. It has nothing to do with immediacy, or ease, and this is part of what makes it beautiful, and ever welcome.

backwards.

Last June on its third day, my mom was driving me to the airport to fly to Seattle. I was planning to run a marathon, which would be followed up by some life lived out in the other Washington. Before the both of us was an abundance of unknown. I didn't know if I would finish twenty-six miles, or even what my cousin that was picking me up from the airport looked like. My mom wasn't sure the next time she would see me, and with her crazy worrying tendencies, if I would even live through the marathon; I had been cautioned on multiple occasions of the possibility of death from such distances. If there's even a minute possibility of disaster, I have been warned by my mother. Driving over a bridge, for example, means I could end up in the water with no way to roll my electric windows down. Naturally, she purchased for me a pressurized window breaker so I don't really have to worry about this disaster scenario any longer.

About ten minutes into the drive, she gets kind of serious and begins the sentence, "No matter where you are next year, there's just one thing I am going to ask you to do."

Based on the kinds of things she worries about, I really had no idea where the rest of the request would lead.

Then she started to cry. I was at a loss.

"Please just promise me that you will come back to go to your high school reunion."

Whaaa?

I had to hold back the childlike giggles.

Like so many mothers and daughters, we're almost always not on the same page. It has taken us a loooong time to learn how to actually communicate without getting angry at each other. Most of my early twenties, no matter what she said to me or how she said it, I heard, "hey there not good enough daughter. I wish you were completely different and more like me." My reaction to what I was hearing from her was enveloped in all things harsh and hateful, and though we've broken the cycle and do a much better job of not misinterpreting what the other is trying to say nowadays, I don't foresee us ever getting to the same page. This is one of the reasons there was so much weight and emotion within her request. In moments like that, when my definitively selfless mother who carried me in her womb and birthed me without any drugs and paid too much for my barely used college education and still calls to see if I need anything from the store...It's best of me to respond with compassion, and try try try to see her request through her eyes instead of mine.

Almost a year has passed since that conversation, which means it is the year of the reunion. I had managed to put the possibility out of my mind until the patriot act-esque wonders of Facebook brought reunion inquiries to the forefront of my computer screen. And so the thread began...

"Does anyone know if there's a plan for our reunion?"

"I think it's the job of the class officers."

"It's a little late to begin planning an event of that caliber. You better get in contact with your class officers soon."

"I think our class officers were Meredith, Shaya and Julie."

I waited it out as long as I could. I read what was being said, and in true procrastinator fashion, I didn't engage until I was called by name. I was the class president but I truly had no knowledge that reunion planning responsibility was part of the deal. I just wanted a little more recognition and accolades by my name. I officially relinquished responsibility to an eager classmate, and am left to not plan, which I excel at, and also, to sit with my mother's request.

If it were up to me and my soap box, I wouldn't go. I would tout Facebook's way of keeping us all up to date, and the fact that I already know more about former classmates than I would prefer. I would stand tall and exclaim that I have done a decent job of keeping in touch with those I wanted to, and that the rest aren't of much concern. I would refer to Romy and Michelle's high school reunion and think of disaster scenarios and depressing possibilities that would bring me down. These are all the things I would do if I didn't have a selfless mother, requesting a very simple thing from me.

This, I think, is why we have mothers and why were aren't just grown in laboratories and thrown into the mess to fend for ourselves. I was the class president, and whether or not that meant much to me, I represented something. My class was small, my school was small, and my town was in proportion to both of those things. Many of my classmates were the same through all thirteen years. My absence wouldn't be easily overlooked, and I would be viewed in the very light my mother wants me to avoid. This small world I speak of is a very big deal to her; She has invested much of herself in it over the years. Her request is saturated with a pride for the community she doesn't want me to be ashamed of.

She has cried mom wolf on so many occasions that I hesitate to listen. Most recently it was at the possibility of a stranger jumping in my car through its open window. Twenty-eight, and I am humbled by the fact that sometimes she still does know best, and in this case, she's round-about reminding me that it's best to avoid brat behavior.

tulip bloom.

There's this character that lives in my apartment building. He's a strange combination of Martha Stewart and Mell Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory. His tulips are treated as if each bud coming out of the ground possesses a personality and a soul, while every human personality he comes in contact with is suspect. I have been cautioned to not visit any Al Qaeda sights on the internet, and also, to choose sidewalk over grass so as to not squash an overlooked bud.

I marvel at human personalities that follow anticipated life patterns, those that purchase shampoo before the bottle is actually empty, and homeowners in general. I met an engineer this week and congratulated him. "Thanks, I think," was his response. His life's asset, from this wanderers perspective, is stability in all kinds of forms. This wanderers is freedom.

Sometimes I wonder if I will wake up someday so completely aware of the level to which I have been ruining my life all these commitment free years that I will only be able to breath at the level of a heavy smoker. Engineers make me wonder this, and attorneys too.

Heavy smoking neighbors like Mr. Tulip reassure me, unbeknownst to them, that in fact I won't ever wake up barely breathing; There's value in my asset, he subconsciously says to me while telling me audibly and exhaustively about the bamboo fence he's putting up to keep the neighbor dogs from barking.

As I breathe in and out in my lease-free apartment, homemade granola cooling on the stove, I think about those bulbs that have been under the muck and frost with the worms and grub, making bloom progress in ways we haven't been able to see. And though most have seen the first tulips of spring, when they finally break through again after winter's end, it's as if we're seeing them for the first time all over. This kind of bloom is forever worth waiting for.