electric wriggling ball of stuff

I found a thick and intimidating spider scrambling across the carpet to the wall next to my red readingwritingandthinking chair today. I believe in the souls of things, that they are sacred and important, and we should do our very best to not tread all over them. ...But spiders flip my shiz. Snakes are cool. Spiders, not so much. (Actually, I do think spiders are kind of cool, but in the same way poltergeists, are. I don't want either one of them in my living room.) (I don't really want snakes in my living room, either, but.. I don't know where I'm going with this.)

At any rate, I saw the spider, spontaneously revisited my vow to go gently on the earth and do my very best to not tread all over souls, then grabbed a shoe, said, "Thankyouforyourserviceandpleasegoodjourneytoyoursoul," and I killed it dead. Squished it and its soul.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Spider. One day I will cancel my fear of spiders and live with you harmoniously. But not today. Today I will kill you.

Next, I will write 3 paragraphs about my skill for camouflage:

In this first paragraph, I will review something that happened to me very very (very) frequently when I taught at the community college, which is the same thing that happened to me very very (very) frequently when I worked at the gym. I had taught at the college for 3 years, and in that 3rd year, teachers I had been seeing in lounges and hallways, some I'd already been introduced to, often approached and re-introduced themselves and welcomed me to the staff. I'd been at the gym almost a full year when members often commented, "Oh, you're new." And I would smile and say, "Nope, [first name], I've been here a while."

Now, in the second paragraph, I will tell you a story about what happened last week in the cafeteria of my current job, where I have worked for 1 year and 3 months. The man who makes the deli sandwiches, L, to whom I have said hello at least 137 times, and who has made me at least a dozen tuna salad sandwiches, said, "Oh, hi. What's your name? You're new here."

Finally, in this paragraph, I will note as I have many times in the past, that I would make an excellent spy, because I apparently blend very well with my surroundings. I mean, sure, if it happens once, maybe even twice, you could argue that people are thick-meloned and don't pay attention. But if it happens 10 times, by 10 different people, you really ought to take a long gander in a mirror just to make sure you are actually present in your body, and that it wasn't snatched and replaced with a stranger's.

Now that I've talked about that, I guess I'll just ramble on about how creative I've been the past few weeks, and like I've really squeaked open a hidden pantry. Songs are coming out. A new tale-telling venture is hatching (which I will keep secret until I am sure I won't self-sabotage, as that is kind of my way of things -- to self-sabotage, a very special trick I've been perfecting since I was about 22.). A cool work project is lighting my noggin on fire. In passes such as these I get a vision of myself, and I like it. I'm buoyed by it. There is even some spirit of creation in the marathon training, which I can't quite put my finger on.

At the exact same time, there's a little undercurrent of Holy Shittedness. And I think I have a better understanding of why I keep the reins so tight. Every time I nudge the door open, all this stuff, this exciting, electric, wriggling ball of stuff, starts barreling toward the light. Although I know it's good, and it's liberating, and it's as it ought, it's alarming. So I gasp and kick shut. Typhoons just aren't sustainable.

Mr. Ebu-Pants is laying across my legs. I feel his motor running, and I love this cat. His is my favorite feline soul.

today is cool, and so are you.

Things about today that were cool:

I wore a print with a plaid and shiny sneaks. I don't know what it is about dressing oddly that makes me so joyful, but it does. (Sometimes I accidentally dress badly, and that doesn't make me joyful. There's a difference between odd that works and odd that doesn't and is just uncomfortable.)

I had a really nice run in crisp, morning air, and my knees didn't hurt very much, and I didn't hack loogies all over Des Moines, and I was a little faster than usual. It was kind of zen-y, and I love the poop out of that.

I ran the last mile doing laps around a high school track while a marching band was practicing on the football field in the middle. It kind of made me feel like I was 16 again, which actually was not cool. Frankly, I really sucked at being 16. I sucked at being all ages that ended with "-teen," and really did not like it at all. So while running my laps and listening to bells and drums and tubas, I thought about the business of age. I thought about how I would like to take some cosmic white-out and just cover up my life from about age 13-26. Twenty-six, I think, is when I started to pull it together and stopped doing so many asinine, self-destructive things. I wouldn't want to erase it; I know enough to understand those years contributed to who I've become (and I kind of like her and her imperfections, even though they can be aggravating from time to time-- This realization is the cool part.).

I wore the racer back tank that shows off my tattoo. Here, this is vanity. Or is it? I don't know. But on days when people can see the carolina chickadee on my back, I feel a little bit cooler (even though it was only to the gym).

I walked to the river and sat on the Simon Estes Amphitheater stage staring at the water and the bridges and the people and the cars and the sky and the trees over lunch. I haven't done that in a while -- just sat with myself without music or the company of a person or task. I really love what my brain does when I unlock the box and let it fly around and touch stuff. I love the observations I make, and the questions that form, and the superfly peace I feel when I'm swimmy.

I discovered VIA from Starbucks, which has eliminated my need to drink the ass-coffee brewed up in the office during my afternoon lull. I do not think this needs further narrative.

I spent the entire day working on a project that excites me. It's a presentation I'm giving at our HIV conference about how to reconcile right and left brain thinking to make data analysis more than just a bunch of math. And I'm using Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's book, My Stroke of Insight, as a foundation. And I have to tell you that I love this human, what she gives, the sense she makes, and the thousand different colors that explode in my melon when I read her words or listen to her talk:

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obedient to benevolent forces

Revisiting old journal entries here, I have settled into March of 2008 sitting alone on a hotel balcony in Litchfield Beach, South Carolina. I was on walkabout, something I do (did) when everything in me sets to jitter (Oh, and it does. For the life of me, I cannot keep this roar at a hum for any lengthy extension. I don't know what part of me malfunctions; I only know it does.) I rented a car and drove south and west for 10 days.

I had a moment with a dead jellyfish that I thought was kind of important, and I think about it off and on. It was washed up in the sand like a gelatinous blob, really not so attractive when dead and motionless, tentacles not so much like cool dreadlocks when they're still. And I thought about many years before when I read an article about jellyfish in a Natural Geographic. I gave a presentation to my students at the juvenile detention center where I worked at the time. I used it as an example for how you can make your own curiosity, how everything is interesting and nothing is boring if you inventory its details. The jellyfish has no central nervous system, and yet it is one of the longest surviving species and most efficient predators in the ocean. How can something without a brain be so good at what it does?

I thought of this looking at the dead jellyfish. It was dead. It didn't give a crap that it was dead, because it never over-thought its life. It didn't sit around drinking coffee with its friends and bemoaning its watery existence. It didn't fret over what to do next. Didn't make plans. Didn't stare into mirrors all day long. Didn't get anxious. Didn't act out of selfishness or guile or wayward psychology. Didn't feel insecure or threatened or superior. It didn't evaluate anything or anyone. It just existed. It gave itself to the tide and to instinct, totally obedient to a bigger plan.

And I thought, "Good on you, Dead Jelly." That must be very peaceful.

Not that I want to be mindless. I just want to release and float and be obedient to benevolent forces and then sting crap with my tentacles, I guess.

we may or may not be tulips.

I've been noticing the tulips along Locust. Red and yellow. Tall and short and full and skinny. Some are taller than the others, and I don't understand why. They are competing for light, and some are winning. All things uniform: soil, exposure to sun. protection from environmental toxins -- why are they not of equal height?

Originally, I thought this was an argument for genetics and predestination. All this stuff about free will made garbage by the unpredictable appearance of perennials. "Of course we are tulips," I told myself. We are of disproportionate bulbs packed in unequal soil -- tulips.

Because I think that. Not tulips, necessarily -- sometimes trees, birds, creeping charlie, and river weeds. I think we are nature--sprouting bits competing for light--and we flail when we forget what we are. (I don't ever want to believe I am better or more evolved than an oak tree.) In the moments I pass tulips on Locust, I think our success and failure must be predestined, and all plans are for naught. All that time I spent practicing the piano was silly. I was already as good as I would get.

Then, I notice that I am thinking, and I doubt that the tulips are. They aren't making choices about their health, aren't choosing to increase their intake of chlorophyll and deliberating over root calisthenics. They do as they do what they do. I don't.

And so I wonder why we've brains at all, as much as they muck up the joint -- needle with the natural, convince us we are separate, unique, the evolutionary supreme. I think my life purpose must be to quiet the brain, and just grow to the light.