Within and Without
i went down memory lane today when a friend sent me an old picture of me and i recalled that strange time in my life when i quietened and curled up and really began to get to know myself within my body. It started in Mexico, when I had enough time alone to think about it and was exposed to so many new things all at once. i'd walk to the store with my feet hitting the stones on the uneven pavement of the old roads of Xalapa and i'd see things out of my eye sockets and know that i was sensing and perceiving the world and that there was something in my head and heart and belly which only i knew. and the more time i spent with these things inside and started exploring them, the more i found both things i liked and things i despised. and, seeing my body as this vessel, i began to explore it as something separate: the bones, the blood, the muscles, the organs, and how they felt when i moved a certain way, or when i couldn't sleep because of the heat, or when i was wretching ill, or when my heart was light with music and dancing and good people, or when i did a handstand, or when i ate cold pepinos con chile que pica or warm elotes, or when i ate nothing at all, or when i sat in the shade reading a good book, or when i strummed a certain chord, or felt my voice vibrating inside my ribcage. i perceived everything firstly through my senses, and secondly through my own consciousness. i felt more a part of myself than i ever had before but more apart from everything else than ever before. i came home to the states and broke up with a long term boyfriend, and then began exploring books and libraries and abandoned farmlands and continued my self-exploration for years.
i was mad at the ex-boyfriend. he hadn't been nice at the end. there was a heated heady grumbling churning anger inside me. my roommate autumn played ultimate frisbee, so i decided to join her team. i needed something to do. my body exploration had left me sinewy with muscle, and my body got ansy with my bookishness and my anger. i balled up all the conflicting emotions into my fists and flung it far, letting the frisbee sail away across the field. it was satisfying. it was beauty. it was therapy. but i never was part of the team. i loved to run and i loved to sail my frisbee, but i did not do it for competition or winning or the drinking parties after the games or any of it. i just wanted to send my anger out on the wind and run the breath through my body until my muscles burned and ached. it was only then that i could sleep, cool as a cucumber in the summer sun. the rest of the time i spent in the library. everyone was worried about me, circles under my eyes, and hours in the library even on weekends. but, i wasn't completely unhappy, just dissatisfied about something, something i couldn't find in anyone else but my own thoughts. and i was learning so much all the time. my fingers tapped out words, my brain looked out my eye sockets and saw pages of meaning, my arms flung the frisbee, my legs pumped across the green, and i was somehow whole and apart and alive.
i left for the summer and went to the mountains, my haven during every summer since i turned eighteen. i worked for a man who studied snails. we'd go out for eight days on end and camp and the mornings would come, and every morning i'd coax my reluctant body into the ice cold streamwater to bend over measuring snails and stones and water currents. i saw many unusual things that summer. rare synchronous fireflies; the snake seller who was both a medieval fencing and a harley enthusiast; the best graveyard for mushroom hunting; the mossy headwater falls that you'd never know were there and were so beautiful unless you just happened by like we did; the biggest fish i ever caught; the flash flooding of the nantahala as our equipment began to float away. but i did not feel at home this time in the mountains. i was unsettled and homeless. there was never room for my guitar to come with us. and i began to realize all the things i'd left unspoken for the past couple of years that would never be spoken now. and all the chances that came and went because i was too inexperienced or surprised or caught offguard or shy or unsure or thoughtless to ever grasp. i turned 21 on the tallulah river, and the boys brought me blueberries for breakfast with my cereal. and then, like all the sixty-some days before, i coaxed my body into the cold water and bent over, watching for snails. and the days were so the same that i thought maybe i wasn't going anywhere at all. i was homeless, adrift on these cold streams with two men who couldn't relate with my identity crisis. and my consciousness did not want to be a part of my body at all. it wanted freedom, it did not want to be homeless, and it did not want to be where it was. but, it was stuck in my body. what was i to do?
i stayed in the mountains that fall, hoping the dissatisfaction would end with the influx of new people and with a stationary pillow to lay my head each night. there were twelve of us in the old house on horse cove road. sometimes, megan and luke and i would hike in the dark up to the rocks above the town and lay down with our knees sticking up in the air and watch the stars and the lights in the town and the moon. and we'd talk. josh would drive recklessly down the mountain to our internships and we'd get adventurous sometimes and go down the unknown ways, trying to find something new, like the waterfall we discovered. shelley taught me to meditate, and we learned how to smoke up with nathan. there were pranks and there were tiffs and there were secrets revealed. but, i was not whole and i lashed out in frustration at times because i was so disconnected from everything around me and from my body. i did like my work. i worked for barry, who had a white beard and was a little shy so he wouldn't sustain eye contact for long. but his tongue freed up when you rode with him in the truck up the watershed. the trees were turning yellow, and their leaves were beginning to fall in the buckets we'd put out. we put the senescent leaves in bags which we marked and put in our backpacks and then took back to dry and weigh and count, all very methodical, crisp and crumbly. i sang songs to myself while my hands did the work. barry talked about trees and family and politics and waterfalls. we found ginseng -- took the berries and sprinkled them and cut the stalk so no one would find it and it could come back next year. two windstorms came, then winter, and it snowed once, and then i left.
i moved into a house with trees in the yard and a woodstove. i walked uphill to class each day, reluctantly to some and happily to others. i rode my bike to carrboro sometimes, singing while the wheels hummed. some boys thought i was nice, but i wanted to be alone and free of the weight of my body. i played music in friends' houses. i got tired of school. i was going to grad school, i knew by then (i'd decided in the summer, haphazardly but certainly calculatedly). i was tired of silly school things, because i was smart enough to know how to learn things on my own. i only tried in the classes i liked, which was about half of them. i started working on a farm when spring came. my body worked hard, and i started feeling a part of it again. i'd lift the hay bales and trellis the tomatoes and scuffle hoe the beds and plant in the wet sandy mud, cool up to my arms, sun hot on my back, and my body felt a part of it all. i saw new bugs and birds and plants and thought new thoughts while i worked, and my fingers and arms became skillful, adept, and strong. buster the dog and i would go walking on tractor trails come evenings, before the fireflies were out, and we'd pass by a few abandoned farmhouses and tobacco barns and maybe see a crow or a turkey or a frog. the bobwhite called all summer and sometimes i'd call back, for i knew what it felt to be the loneliest, too. we called back and forth, checking to make sure the other was still there, still alone too. i took in a litter of kittens and they scratched and pooped and brought in dead things, but they bounced all furry through the tall grasses trying to catch grasshoppers. they made me laugh and would let me kiss their wet noses and sometimes they'd ball up with me on the couch. i bought rice and eggs and milk each week and ate off the farm. it was a good year for cucumbers, lord, to put it mildly. i ate at least one a day, on average probably four, when i couldn't quite wait for lunch. it all felt perfect, so expected and regular and alright. i don't think i was mad anymore, at myself or anyone else, and really wasn't exactly sure why i had been in the first place. but, i wasn't sure where i was going and felt like i might stay there, timeless, forever and ever. and maybe no one would ever know or care or think of me again, and no one would notice that i did not go on to grad school. the farm was my hide-out, my fort, my solace.
then, i moved to virginia and went into a whirlwind of classes and newness that was overwhelming. heck, i'd only just gotten a hold on who and what i was and then i was going to have to find my place in the workings of a city and a university and a society. i wasn't sure how i felt about that, but i holed up with my books and papers and words and found great things to occupy my mind. when i wasn't in school, i danced to take my mind off of it and to give my body free reign. by the end of the year, i danced with a group in a performance called 'slightly off', which was rather appropriate. i missed playing music, like i had on my cabin steps and on the porch steps of the co-op house and in my sister's living room. i needed music and understood that i craved it when it wasn't with me. i was dissatisfied and disconnected and more dissatisfied with the fact that i'd been dissatisfied and disconnected for years. maybe it was time to connect, and i decided to do it. i wanted to build bridges, and to find people craving intimacy like me, people who don't fit any real stereotype and could find beauty in the common and ordinariness of it all.
maybe i have; i don't know. it's been a few years and i think maybe i'm connected to something beyond the tactile. it's too recent to talk about any of the rest of the past two years. i can't process it yet because it's momentous and immediate, still affecting what I'm doing. i took up fiddling and playing more mountain music, became a yogi, fell in love and back out maybe, learned to hunt and use a chainsaw, and began learning everything i could about the dirt that passed underneath my feet. There is lots i could talk about but mostly the point is life is moving on. i constantly feel stuck on the point between two infinite realms, within and without, that ebb and flow in the chaos of an ordinary life. i've learned so much over the past few years it amazes me. but, i think the main thing I've learned, when it boils down to it, is that i'm a real person, with particular desires and troubles and woes and quirks and pastimes, and so is everyone else, that's all.
i was mad at the ex-boyfriend. he hadn't been nice at the end. there was a heated heady grumbling churning anger inside me. my roommate autumn played ultimate frisbee, so i decided to join her team. i needed something to do. my body exploration had left me sinewy with muscle, and my body got ansy with my bookishness and my anger. i balled up all the conflicting emotions into my fists and flung it far, letting the frisbee sail away across the field. it was satisfying. it was beauty. it was therapy. but i never was part of the team. i loved to run and i loved to sail my frisbee, but i did not do it for competition or winning or the drinking parties after the games or any of it. i just wanted to send my anger out on the wind and run the breath through my body until my muscles burned and ached. it was only then that i could sleep, cool as a cucumber in the summer sun. the rest of the time i spent in the library. everyone was worried about me, circles under my eyes, and hours in the library even on weekends. but, i wasn't completely unhappy, just dissatisfied about something, something i couldn't find in anyone else but my own thoughts. and i was learning so much all the time. my fingers tapped out words, my brain looked out my eye sockets and saw pages of meaning, my arms flung the frisbee, my legs pumped across the green, and i was somehow whole and apart and alive.
i left for the summer and went to the mountains, my haven during every summer since i turned eighteen. i worked for a man who studied snails. we'd go out for eight days on end and camp and the mornings would come, and every morning i'd coax my reluctant body into the ice cold streamwater to bend over measuring snails and stones and water currents. i saw many unusual things that summer. rare synchronous fireflies; the snake seller who was both a medieval fencing and a harley enthusiast; the best graveyard for mushroom hunting; the mossy headwater falls that you'd never know were there and were so beautiful unless you just happened by like we did; the biggest fish i ever caught; the flash flooding of the nantahala as our equipment began to float away. but i did not feel at home this time in the mountains. i was unsettled and homeless. there was never room for my guitar to come with us. and i began to realize all the things i'd left unspoken for the past couple of years that would never be spoken now. and all the chances that came and went because i was too inexperienced or surprised or caught offguard or shy or unsure or thoughtless to ever grasp. i turned 21 on the tallulah river, and the boys brought me blueberries for breakfast with my cereal. and then, like all the sixty-some days before, i coaxed my body into the cold water and bent over, watching for snails. and the days were so the same that i thought maybe i wasn't going anywhere at all. i was homeless, adrift on these cold streams with two men who couldn't relate with my identity crisis. and my consciousness did not want to be a part of my body at all. it wanted freedom, it did not want to be homeless, and it did not want to be where it was. but, it was stuck in my body. what was i to do?
i stayed in the mountains that fall, hoping the dissatisfaction would end with the influx of new people and with a stationary pillow to lay my head each night. there were twelve of us in the old house on horse cove road. sometimes, megan and luke and i would hike in the dark up to the rocks above the town and lay down with our knees sticking up in the air and watch the stars and the lights in the town and the moon. and we'd talk. josh would drive recklessly down the mountain to our internships and we'd get adventurous sometimes and go down the unknown ways, trying to find something new, like the waterfall we discovered. shelley taught me to meditate, and we learned how to smoke up with nathan. there were pranks and there were tiffs and there were secrets revealed. but, i was not whole and i lashed out in frustration at times because i was so disconnected from everything around me and from my body. i did like my work. i worked for barry, who had a white beard and was a little shy so he wouldn't sustain eye contact for long. but his tongue freed up when you rode with him in the truck up the watershed. the trees were turning yellow, and their leaves were beginning to fall in the buckets we'd put out. we put the senescent leaves in bags which we marked and put in our backpacks and then took back to dry and weigh and count, all very methodical, crisp and crumbly. i sang songs to myself while my hands did the work. barry talked about trees and family and politics and waterfalls. we found ginseng -- took the berries and sprinkled them and cut the stalk so no one would find it and it could come back next year. two windstorms came, then winter, and it snowed once, and then i left.
i moved into a house with trees in the yard and a woodstove. i walked uphill to class each day, reluctantly to some and happily to others. i rode my bike to carrboro sometimes, singing while the wheels hummed. some boys thought i was nice, but i wanted to be alone and free of the weight of my body. i played music in friends' houses. i got tired of school. i was going to grad school, i knew by then (i'd decided in the summer, haphazardly but certainly calculatedly). i was tired of silly school things, because i was smart enough to know how to learn things on my own. i only tried in the classes i liked, which was about half of them. i started working on a farm when spring came. my body worked hard, and i started feeling a part of it again. i'd lift the hay bales and trellis the tomatoes and scuffle hoe the beds and plant in the wet sandy mud, cool up to my arms, sun hot on my back, and my body felt a part of it all. i saw new bugs and birds and plants and thought new thoughts while i worked, and my fingers and arms became skillful, adept, and strong. buster the dog and i would go walking on tractor trails come evenings, before the fireflies were out, and we'd pass by a few abandoned farmhouses and tobacco barns and maybe see a crow or a turkey or a frog. the bobwhite called all summer and sometimes i'd call back, for i knew what it felt to be the loneliest, too. we called back and forth, checking to make sure the other was still there, still alone too. i took in a litter of kittens and they scratched and pooped and brought in dead things, but they bounced all furry through the tall grasses trying to catch grasshoppers. they made me laugh and would let me kiss their wet noses and sometimes they'd ball up with me on the couch. i bought rice and eggs and milk each week and ate off the farm. it was a good year for cucumbers, lord, to put it mildly. i ate at least one a day, on average probably four, when i couldn't quite wait for lunch. it all felt perfect, so expected and regular and alright. i don't think i was mad anymore, at myself or anyone else, and really wasn't exactly sure why i had been in the first place. but, i wasn't sure where i was going and felt like i might stay there, timeless, forever and ever. and maybe no one would ever know or care or think of me again, and no one would notice that i did not go on to grad school. the farm was my hide-out, my fort, my solace.
then, i moved to virginia and went into a whirlwind of classes and newness that was overwhelming. heck, i'd only just gotten a hold on who and what i was and then i was going to have to find my place in the workings of a city and a university and a society. i wasn't sure how i felt about that, but i holed up with my books and papers and words and found great things to occupy my mind. when i wasn't in school, i danced to take my mind off of it and to give my body free reign. by the end of the year, i danced with a group in a performance called 'slightly off', which was rather appropriate. i missed playing music, like i had on my cabin steps and on the porch steps of the co-op house and in my sister's living room. i needed music and understood that i craved it when it wasn't with me. i was dissatisfied and disconnected and more dissatisfied with the fact that i'd been dissatisfied and disconnected for years. maybe it was time to connect, and i decided to do it. i wanted to build bridges, and to find people craving intimacy like me, people who don't fit any real stereotype and could find beauty in the common and ordinariness of it all.
maybe i have; i don't know. it's been a few years and i think maybe i'm connected to something beyond the tactile. it's too recent to talk about any of the rest of the past two years. i can't process it yet because it's momentous and immediate, still affecting what I'm doing. i took up fiddling and playing more mountain music, became a yogi, fell in love and back out maybe, learned to hunt and use a chainsaw, and began learning everything i could about the dirt that passed underneath my feet. There is lots i could talk about but mostly the point is life is moving on. i constantly feel stuck on the point between two infinite realms, within and without, that ebb and flow in the chaos of an ordinary life. i've learned so much over the past few years it amazes me. but, i think the main thing I've learned, when it boils down to it, is that i'm a real person, with particular desires and troubles and woes and quirks and pastimes, and so is everyone else, that's all.
Labels: journaling and thoughts
posted by Katie at
3:15 PM
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