It is 97 degrees Fahrenheit outside and dry as the desert we forget this place actually is. I am drinking Pomegranate and Lychee infused Green Tea, slightly frozen so that it is both slush and liquid. It seems that I am finally coming to a place of acceptance of who I am and wanting to embody my actual self, not the self that everyone I love wants me to be. It is easy to deceive oneself and also incredibly unsatisfying. Today, I bought two plants — a bromeliad and a crysanthemum. Bright and alive, I hope that they will reconnect me to the world beyond the paved planes that have blocked me in for the past several years.

migratory

I’m preparing to move from this to another domain.

This is a deceptive statement. Literally, I will change internet addresses. Additionally, I am between mind-spaces, cognitive realms. Academically, I’m at the threshold of a new status, grad student melting into ABD student.

The process of preparing for qualifying exams is maddening. I’m not sure it should be. I’m sure it should be. I know it wouldn’t be so frustrating if I had chosen a less ambitious argument. The one I have chosen is the only one I could feel satisfied with choosing. And so perhaps I need my degree to feel earned. I think this is rather masochistic.

I think the only way to feel prepared is to finish the dissertation (in a rough form) beforehand, so that’s my current objective. But I’m taking this weekend off before diving into the work.

I hate having the flu.

Between this coughing and this ghost of a voice, I sound like a choking frog. I’m exhausted. I so don’t want to go to work tomorrow because that will involve way too much talking for way too many hours. I’m so looking forward to Friday, to spending the day finishing my paper at my own desk and being the master of my own time and my own mind.

…of status updates and inventories…

My thirtieth birthday anniversary has just passed.

I am now officially in my 30s. I am in love, inspired, in mourning, in training, in scholastic retreat, in the middle of an obstacle course. I am coming to terms with transience, forgiveness, and regret. I am expanding my definitions of sisterhood. I am approaching a more authentic independence.

Sorting out my life is not simply a matter of making an appointment in my planner that can be check-marked off, but a process. Like grieving. Like goodbyes. Like good results or golden opportunities. It revolves around a constant awareness of possibility, only available by way of risk and adventurous spirit.

Perhaps no one is ever truly confident of outcomes before undertaking a task. But to truly live, you must not be afraid to seek the thing that thrills you.

I’m glad of this revelation at this point in my life and of the many avenues it has lit up before me.

March is many days away.

Sometimes, miles slip away as if they had never existed, yield their coldness into a warm glow. Sometimes, there are weeks outside of time, built through a wordless bliss. And, then. How we miss them when they have passed out of our present and into our memory. How we wish to inhabit them by way of an indulgent dreaming, recalling, retelling, invoking. How we linger. How we long for the next pockets outside of time. How we wait, as if anticipation could rush the seconds nearer, again.

bridges

When traveling throughout the New York metropolitan area, one can take any combination of the eight hundred bridges it contains. Constructed mostly of steel and concrete, they are wide enough to allow lanes of cars filled with people and cargo across. They seem sturdy, safe enough to take for granted, like the every day.

When going to the Himalayas through Rishikesh, one must travel a narrow suspension bridge that sways over an incredibly wide abyss. Made of wooden planks and rope, it is only wide enough to allow a single-filed line across it, between one high peak and another. It seems tenuous, dangerous, as do all quests.

I dream often of bridges. I hope often for bridges that connect one set of thoughts to another between poems, stories, chapters, expressions. The bridge that connects me to those I love isn’t even there. It is a series land-roads, impossible to walk across in a reasonable amount of time, of whale-roads, impossible to swim across with a reasonable chance of survival. When I think of these distances, I am grateful for the connections allowed by technology, for the possibility of seeing a moving, speaking face before you from miles away, or a dynamic, realistic voice talking to you from those miles away.

Tonight, I wish for a bridge to connect the matter in my mind to the pixels on my screen, for the discipline it will take to create and cross it, for the endurance to finish the task in good form.

Hello world!

So, this is a test post. I use Blogger mainly, but have heard so much about WordPress that I decided to give it a try. Let’s see how it goes.