I wish I could eat fruit, right off the core. That's the problem with braces, really. It severely limits your menu. Apples? Don't think about biting into one. Nectarines? Yeah, if you want to rearrange what took four months to move. Caramels--a thing of the past. Carrots--ouch, just thinking about it hurts. Peppermints, gum? No, you shall live without freshened breath!

I'm tired of talking about my "accomplishments" in the past tense. You know--"this one summer, I lost 30 pounds"; "when I went to London"; "In high school, I..."; "In college..." I'm sick of living on the memory of things I used to do. And it's not like any of them were that big. I'm 23, and what do I really have to show for it?

A degree. Ok, so that's legitimate. But there's a plethora of people out there with an education, and they actually know things. Most of the time, I wonder if I've learned anything in my life from formal education. Probably not. But then, I start talking to people (girls, mostly) and I discover---I was wrong. I am educated. I know things.

I went to London, alone. Also legit. However--that time has passed. It was 10 days across the pond--five months ago. It was amazing, and the time there was so worthwhile, and taught me so much--but what have I done with what I've learned?

I'm deciding that things are going to happen again, because I will make them, if I have to. I just have to find the sticking factor--find that thing that helps me hold on; my perseverance, so to speak.

Invitation to Voyeurism

September is my favorite month. It's the farewell of Summer, the sad sighing au revoir of a few outdoor months well played. It's the last caress through my hair of a warm breeze headed south. It's the welcome of a few months of glorious disrobing, Nature's invitation to voyeurism. I always scramble to fit in the last few moments of sunshine, to inhale every last scent of a fading summer. September 30th is a sad day for me (aside from it being my sister's birthday, of course).

But then I step outside, and one look at the sky changes my mind: October is here. Autumn has arrived, and she is lovely. There isn't a blue much deeper than an October sky; I always feel I could look and look and still not see the end of it. The leaves crunch some, then there are those who stubbornly cling to the end. These are probably women. There is a feeling in the air, a sense of possibilities. The whole world is changing--might not my life change as well?

The spicy sweet aroma of an autumn apple. When I was a child, my uncle had gardens everywhere, complete with an apple orchard and a few raspberry and black berry bushes. When October came, the apple trees were heavy-laden with palm-sized red ripeness. The smell in the air is impossible to describe--how do you translate the essence of an apple? How can I tell you, how can I show you, what delight it was to bite into that new, warm, sun-ripened apple? My mouth opened wide in eager anticipation, teeth reveling in the satisfying crunch! of the ripe fruit, my lips suctioned to the slightly fuzzy skin of an unwashed apple, tongue waiting to lick every drop of juice from the fruit or off my hand. The most incredible part is that you can actually taste the sun. That apple's grown in the sunshine it's whole life and now the sun is made flesh--the white flesh of an orchard apple.

The blackberries--like little pieces of shadow that melted. Really--the sun filters through the blackberry bushes, and it's like the shadow pieces got too hot, so they bunched up and became berries. I'm not particularly fond of blackberries; on the list they're right above blueberries but that's all. So I can't really talk about what they tasted like--only what they looked like.

However, I love raspberries. Not store-bought, mind you. Only ones I've picked myself, half smashed and vine-ripe. I love how there's still a bit of dirt on them, how dust clings in the little curves of the berry. When you put them on your tongue, you don't get the tart part, not right away. First you smash the berry against the roof of your mouth, let the juice fill your mouth. I like to feel how full the berry was, feel like it was a mouth of someone, maybe, the way my own puckers around it, how my lips feel deliciously swollen and wicked. A lover's mouth? Full, ripe, tart, tasting like the earth, tasting like the sun? Would the mouth of my lover bring me as much delight as this, this hard-won tartness that lists a fraction of a minute?And it is hard-won: I usually walked away from the raspberries covered with scratches from the thorns. But worth it.

So too is the Autumn--it is a hard thing, to say goodbye to the summer. To bid farewell to all of those lazy afternoons drifting in the river. Sometimes it is too steep a price, to welcome in the thunderclouds, for then I lose those startlingly clear starlit nights, where deep calls to deep and the design of the stars matches the design of my soul. But then again, it too, is worth it. What would October be without sweatshirts and chilly fingers (and a cup of hot tea to warm them?), without pumpkins and soups and extra quilts laid on my bed? No, I love the change, hard as it is to part with the familiar.

There is this spot on my balcony, outside my front door, that always smells like jasmine. It's the most incredible smell, most of the time. It greets me as I go to work, encouraging me to have a nice day. It welcomes me home after a long day of worrying about material, unimportant things. It was the deciding factor when I looked at the apartment, a sort of omen on how these next 10 months would go.

Tonight is different.

It's been raining for two days, a glorious pounding that proudly announces, "I am here! I am RAIN!" while at other times, it is a gentle mist, a caress that woos. I am wooed.

I stepped out of my front door, and did not smell the enticing jasmine, was not won over by the refreshment of rain. No. Someone has been smoking out here. Disgusting. Usually, I can't stand the smell.

Tonight is different, I tell you.

I closed my eyes, and smelled London. It was the exact smell on the doorstep of my hostel.

I don't know if it's because London is so rainy and wet and so much the same city as Austin. I don't know if it was because I was standing on a doorstep. I don't know if it's because all day I've been comparing the two, finding as much satisfaction here as I did in London.

Whatever it is, it brought back in a rush all the feelings and sensations of my time in London. It made me miss it, but it also brought a same sense of comfort.

In London, I felt brave, I felt as if I were actually taking steps in my own life, as if I were actually living it the way I wanted it to go, instead of passively accepting circumstances. I was creating my own circumstances.

And tonight, all of that was brought back, and I realized I can and am doing the same thing here. Nobody said I had to move to Austin; there was no real 'reason' behind it. I did it because I wanted it. I did it because I didn't want to do the easy thing. Because being brave is NOT easy, and I have been a coward my entire life. So enough of cowardice.

Life in a De-Constructed Reality

Tonight my mother was talking about her boss/co-worker, about how she says the most awful thing about her husband. How this woman, let's call her Sharon, talks TO her husband, how she talks ABOUT her husband. Let's call him Adam. He asks her if she wants to go out for dinner, and she turns it into a marital brawl. How could Adam possibly think she would WANT to waste 100 bucks, how could he think she would want to eat when she's already full? How dare he. What an awful husband.

Is anyone else enraged? Probably not--it's an all-too common scenario in America: an unhappy couple. We expect to be happy, probably because of what we see in the movies. And whenever life moves past our Happily Ever After and turns into the dullness of routine and easy familiarity breeds contempt, we assume things must not have been fated to work (wherever we got THAT idea from--Fate, not personal responsibility, controlling our life).

The most frustrating part of this, aside from our inability to live in our reality and not a constructed one, is that Sharon isn't really grateful for her status. Does she even KNOW how many women sit at home, ALONE? Doesn't she understand that SHE'S one of the lucky ones, to have found love at some point in her life? She won't sit at home every night, wondering why she wasn't enough, what was so wrong with her. No, instead, she yells. She vents every frustration from work, lets her menopausal hormones wreak havoc on something so fragile as Life and Love and their intertwining. Does she even remember how they met, how it felt to kiss him for the first time? Does she care about why she married him in the first place?

I hate to sound like an embittered, single woman. But in fact, I'm just getting pretty damn tired of everyone acting like Love isn't worth the time it took to spell. I want to believe that Love can conquer all things, that at the end of my life, I will be grateful for the time that my world wasn't broadcast in black and white, but in color, in sound. And not the Hollywood version of it all, but the real kind, where our sacrifices aren't the noisy bits, aren't the big productions but are instead the daily routines we endure for one another.

Existentialism Before Life

A few existential thoughts. A crisis I've never dealt with, questions that have never risen before now, questions that have been deep below the surface, that have never needed to be asked before this point in my life. The simplest, most profound, the most unanswerable. Asked by many, answered in a variety of ways.

What is the meaning of life?

It seems laughable, that I must ask this. I 'know' the answer--Love. The glory of God. Two things which I believe in above all things and all principles.

But what is the meaning of MY life? What is MEANINGFUL in my life? What am I working for, what is my goal?

I should answer this with the aforementioned answers. A few months ago, I would have. But now, having fallen off the cusp of adulthood, having plunged into this abyss, it isn't as easy to answer. What were the points of every experience, every moment that shaped the growth of my soul? Was I brought to the recognition of beauty in this world, to be so strange and different, just to end up like all others? To be doomed to a zombie job, a life where I drive to work and by the time I drive home, want only to fall into bed? What am I working FOR? Towards what end? What drives me?

Nothing. My life stretches before me, like a vast, empty road. One blank, unending road. You may say I should consider it a blank canvas--create upon it and enjoy it's richness, it's fullness. I cannot. I cannot find the colors tonight, or in the morning when I prepare for a 1.5 hr drive, or when my head hurts from staring at the road and the constant stop/start of traffic. I cannot find the joy of life this week, or last week. There doesn't seem to be much hope for next week either.

Mayhap--I cannot deal with responsibility. Maybe it's all this growing up I was expected to do, and foolishly, I thought it would be better to retain my childlikeness. After all, aren't we supposed to stay young at heart? At heart, children do not go to bed at night, making themselves sick over where they're headed. So in that respect alone, I am adult, I suppose. It's the rest of the time, when I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills or where I'm going to live or how to pay rent...those are the moments I recognize my pitiful shortcomings.

Is this the morality part where my upbringing should suggest here's where I turn to God? That in my weakness and imperfection, He is made perfect and strong? That He is willing to take upon Him my cares? I know that I could, I know that I should. However...it seems like a petty thing to throw upon the shoulders of God--"Here, if you please. Could you please worry about something as trivial as how I don't want to live in a tiny apartment but rather a charming cottage? I promise, it's more important than the souls of man or your own glory. If you don't mind."