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.