Tuesday, September 20, 2011

road rage

...How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes, I struggle to find any truth in your lies, And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know, This weakness I feel I must finally show...


It started with a movie set in Rio de Janeiro, a reminder of the impending wedding of a boy from the past, the misplacement of hours worth of solutions imperative to the successful outcome of an experiment and finally an angry man in a large grey truck yelling at me demanding i go faster. Literally yelling at me,while driving 65  miles per hour going down the highway. His large head sticking out of his large grey window, with his stringy hair blowing back into his eyes as he screamed, asking why in the world I was slowing down when passing a police car parked on the shoulder. While going 65 miles per hour.

That was the tipping point.

I was done.

I am done being stuck. I am done playing the game according to everyone else's rules. I am done letting others make the decisions that determine my happiness.

The reminder of where my soul longs to be, the heartbreak that was long long ago that still mysteriously and frustratingly weighs heavy on my heart, the feelings of inadequacy because I haven't worked long enough for a certain science company, and the bald man yelling woke my sleeping gypsy soul I had lulled into complacency.

Kansas City is where I live. It is where friends are and is close by to family, but I don't think I will ever be able to settle down here. I feel often like I am trying to squeeze myself into a shell that is too small for me. I don't ever see the signs of life in this big city. Life doesn't happen on the streets, but in little houses and personal cars. This isn't how I want to live. I want to interrupt my commute with a stop at the bagel stand down the street. I want to feel comfortable taking a coffee break with others to work on relationships rather than another experiment.

I don't want science to be a business. I don't want to fit in. I want to be challenged. I want to be able to tell people that I have done something exciting the night before, rather than say I stayed at home. I want to work with my hands. I want to work with real people. The ones who have struggles and desires like mine. The ones who aren't all about making another dollar.

I don't think I have to be overseas to achieve these desires, but I do need a little help, and maybe a little direction, and definitely another run-in with the yelling bald man. I have a few things I need to tell him.

...Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all, But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall, Lend me your eyes I can change what you see, But your soul you must keep, totally free...
...Awake my soul...
...awake my soul...
...Awake my soul...

Monday, September 12, 2011

dreams...

I have't been sleeping. Not at all actually. It started about two weeks ago. The weather turned, work was tumultuous, I couldn't keep anything in, and life just seemed unsteady. I would lay down at night, dead to the world and would only let sleep keep me oblivious for an hour or so. Then I would be awake enough to know I wasn't sleeping but not enough to get out of bed. I would get up with my alarm clock and feel as if I had never closed my eyes.

I would make it through the day and try again the next night, but before I knew it I would hear the alarm and the trudging would start again... and again and again...that was until the night of the beeping.

It was 10:30 pm and a fleet of tow trucks came to the apartment complex to tow cars that were parked in covered parking and not supposed to be there. There were maybe three tow trucks, but when they are all backing up at the same time, the warning beeping sounds more like fifty trucks. It caused the whole place to walk outside and see what was going on. Then there was the usual yelling, the attempts to drive cars away before it was too late... and then it was over. And peaceful. Even the cicadas were quiet.

So I rolled back over, closed my eyes and worked on sleeping. Before I knew it, my blanket, Big Blue had wrapped itself around me and peacefully lulled me into the land of dreams.

... I opened my eyes and knew immediately i was in Portugal. I was on a barge floating down the river, making my long awaited return. I passed slowly by the neighborhoods full of flowers cascading from balconies. Restaurants full of people sitting outside under brightly colored umbrellas. People meandering down the cobblestone streets, children playing in parks, and castles bathed in sunlight. My Lisbon. The salt water cleared my lungs and caused my hair to curl. The sunshine warmed me to my soul. I could feel the vitamin D being released into my blood, and the fist that had been around my stomach relaxed and let go altogether.

We rode in peace as we approached a bridge that had stood strong for years. It wasn't particularly big. I could reach up and touch it as we passed under. It was made of golden rocks held together by ages old mortar. It was glowing yellow in the sunshine and it let me trace each grove between the rocks as we passed.

Past the bridge was a woman standing in the middle of the dock. She was waiting for us, her long brown hair was swept back into a loose ponytail. She stood tall and strong, yet like the bridge glowed, from the inside and out. She waited patiently for us to come. We drifted towards the dock slowly, watching the women wait, the gentle breeze played with her hair and caressed her cheek.

Before I knew it we were pulling up to the dock, the woman had turned her back on us and as we bumped to a stop on the dock she turned around and in an instant transformed. Her hair turned wispy, her clothes tattered and her skin puckered and sour, as if her whole body had been burned. She screamed and screamed and screamed.

The crewman turned the boat around and fled as fast as they could, but the screams kept growing louder, and then I realized that they were coming out of my own mouth and that my own hands were that of the woman's on the dock. And my face was not smooth but rough and pitted. The sun burned my tender skin and the salt water added insult to injury. And I screamed in terror. I screamed because they were leaving me behind, I screamed because this wasn't my Lisbon....

I startled awake. The sweat was pouring down my skin. Big Blue was wrapped so tight I couldn't get loose, and I'm sure the neighbors were wondering why someone was screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night.

I rolled over unwilling to risk the chance of sleep for fear of returning to the dream, got untangled from Blue and wondered how i'd make it through the next four hours until my alarm clock rescued me.