oldfashionedboi

Well now... it's been a while since I posted on any of my blog sites.  Things have been, well, going.  You know how it is: one day you decide not to post because you are tired or hungry or late or otherwise occupied.  You are in love or out of love or out of patience and you just don't want to share. And then a week goes by and then another and before you know it, it's been months.  And then you think, how can I possibly begin to express the multiple thoughts/moments/words/images/emotions that go on in every minute of the 13944 hours since you last posted something.  So you just don't.  

Yeah, well... I thought I'd get over my bad self and try to jump back into it.  I'm a little rusty, but I'm going to give it a shot.

This is my last week at my current job that I've had since August of 2006.  Friday at 5pm I will be taking my backpack filled with all my desk odds and ends, turning off my computer for the last time, flipping off the light in my rabbit-hole-turned-office and leaving this part of my life behind.  I am excited at the idea that I have no job to go to after this.  I am naturally a little scared, a little anxious, a little sad to be leaving behind the constant companionship of the friends I have made and the identity of who I will then *have* been. Ultimately though, I am thrilling at the thought of unlimited opportunities.  In reality, I know that my opportunities are limited to my continuing need to pay the bills and to provide for my family.  I know I can't actually ditch everything and morph into someone who could just leave and never be heard of again. But...

Please tell me that everyone has had that feeling... that lighthearted notion that you could do just that.  Leave.  Gone.  Never to be heard of again. Take a new name, create a new face, cut every tie to anyone, anything, anyplace that could potentially define you or confine you to the way you used to be and the way that people have seen you.  It's an intoxicating idea that you could shed your life like a snake shedding skin.  It starts with a cracking that is followed by a flaking/itching that causes you to rub against rock and tree until you finally detach the facade of self that has defined you since birth.  And you are free.  Free to become anything you have ever wanted to be.  You could be anyone.  

In reality, I have no urge to do that.  I am overjoyed with the life I have, the love I have.  My relationship with Chelsea that leaves me breathless with every kiss and on the edge of my seat to see what comes next in our slowly ever-twining lives together.  The remarkable personality of my cat, Tav, that is a constant joy, the sort of joy that makes my heart expand in my chest.  Navigating the changing relationship of my aging parents to my aging self.  Watching my friends around me grow and shrink and flicker in and out of my life in the fluid nature of time passing.  My ever increasing capacity to see beyond myself and search for more than what is.   I have no desire to shed my skin, but the prospect is intoxicating none the less.

Now that I am done with graduate school, I am returning to my grand ideas of what I could do with the time I have on this earth.  It's amazing how quickly I lost those plans to my stress of reading/writing/listening/waiting that I felt compelled to engage in over the last two years.  The program I was in was amazing and enriching, but moved at a pace and frequency that was at some times soothing yet mostly distressing.  Always feeling like my identity as a student should take center stage in a life where my identity as a friend/partner/daughter-son was always first place.  It's the dual threat of student life: learning so much that you often grow into something else while trying to maintain slowly eroding relationships long enough to keep the hope alive for recovery once your tour of education has come to an often temporary end.  Overall, I feel like I survived well... in some cases even thrived.  I'm still glad it's over.  I am not cut for a life as a career academic in the formal sense of the meaning.

But with this section coming to a close, I am excited at the prospect of staying in touch more, reading more, creating more art and love and excitement.  I want to travel more and laugh more.  Spend more time with my family and friends.  Remember who I am when I'm not concerned about sounding smart or articulate.  But most of all, I am convinced that, with my new found time, I will become an expert at Guitar Hero and may actually graduate to a real guitar in the next few months.  One step at a time right?

So I've been tagged by man_in_a_bottleto write a story in 6 words.

My story:
It was dark and beautiful then. 

I will tag katieruand endromeda

I love the holidays.  I love snow.  I love school starting so that I can feel useful and intelligent. 

I do not love bronchitis.  I do not love sinus infections.  I do not love throat infections.

I do not love having all three at the same time. 

I do love codeine cough syrup, antibiotics, and my new inhaler.   
Want a laugh?  Call me and see if you can understand what I'm saying through the 17 layers of mucus, vicks, prescription medication an blankets. uggggg.... so glad it's Friday.

Ahhh... the holidays...  Most people are traumatized by their family on the holidays.  I am traumatized by the presence of newly acquired family.  You know what they say:  Friends are the family you make for your self.  It's true.  And every year there's a line up I see.  I proverbial hit list of true and treasured friends from whom I cannot hide.  They know me too well, they can see right through me.  Not like my new friends in Corvallis.  These are people who've seen it all... the 14+ years of it.  They know me like no one else.  I go out for dinner and/or drinks with them and they strip me down in the first three sentences.  They see through every lie I throw forth because I don't want to see where I am and where I'm going.  My parents are not a problem compared to the honesty that my friends bring forth within me.  This season has given me much to think about.

.... the following equation is amazing:  1 movie + 1 beer + 1 bowl of tasty popcorn - class tomorrow = 1 happy and relaxed Tristen.

Yeah... so we all know from a previous blog post that I was scheduled to have this little bump taken off the side of my head. I was nervous. I hate doctors, but I hate doctors more when they tell me I have brain cancer - which was my secret fear when I was told that the thing to do would be to cut open the side of my head and this bump taken out. Of course I don't have brain cancer, and the cutting and hacking was only minimally traumatizing. But you should have seen the size of that thing. I thought it was going to be tiny, tiny, tiny.... NO. It was like the size of a bean. It could have eaten my brain. And now I have stitches on the side of my head. I finally got to wash my hair today, but couldn't get rid of all my bloody clumps of hair... I don't know how I feel about that. 

I woke up this morning and realized that today would be the first day in over four years that I would be getting a piercing. So much time has passed since I got my second eyebrow piercing. I never used to take pictures, I would just mark my memories on my body - this is the scar I gave myself after my first girlfriend and I broke up, this is the set of rings I had put in when I was 16 in Germany, these are the piercings my ex did when I turned 18, this is the piercing I got in some shady shop in Pascoe, WA with my best friends when I was 19. My body is a tapestry of piercings, scars, burns, ridges... not one of which I do not know the history of. Everyday, I look at my hands, my forearms, my chest and legs and I see a lifetime in the marks on my body. It made me sad to realize that I've neglected adding memories of late. I only have a handful of new additions to mark the past year or so - though most of which are happy scars from scrabbling up banks and diving off sharp rocks during my summer swimming excursions. But now I have a new memory - a bunch of my friends all gathered together to mark the Fifth of November. I have a snapshot of each of us in my mind and marked on my body that will never go away. I can't think of any way I would have rather spent my Sunday.

"I am intelligent. I will get my work done. I will not curl up in a ball under my covers. I am intelligent. I will get my..." Yeah... that's my mantra tonight. I had forgotten how hard it can be to write a paper. *shakes fist in the air* damn you grad school!! I wonder if, "I'm a lazy bastard" is an excuse my professor will accept for me not getting this paper done. Doubtful.

Oh man... I went to the doctor yesterday and was told that they're going to cut my head open. I knew that this was coming and I know that it's nothing serious - just a stitch or two. But damn. I fucking hate hospitals and doctors. I keep thinking, "Tristen, it's going to be awesome... you're going to be awake the entire time, it will take 20 minutes, and you'll get to see them carve out that fucking growth that has been driving you nuts for the past year during which you were too chicken to actually go to the doctor." Then I think about what it's going to feel like and how much I'll bleed. Then I think about how much I don't want a doctor to do this. And I start thinking about horror movies about doctors who experiment on patients who are still alive. Then I have to think about happier things. Like....

the fact that my mother found an abandoned puppy yesterday and told me that I can have him. He's a little 20 pound miniture border collie/sheltie type dog. Maybe 2 years old? He's a lover and even though I know that I can't have him in my apartment and that my parents will probably keep him forever, I love that there's a little waggly tailed, fox faced friend who belongs to me. Good thing that my cat likes dogs o.k. I think the two of them would get along if I ever had the two of them at the same time. I'd forgotten, however, how much dogs smell like dog. Cats smell awesome most of the time... dogs... no. But this dog doesn't chew on my head. Come to think of it though... I think his desire to flay me is one of my cats most endearing qualities... he's such a little kittenface.

Today I realized that I'm a bad person sometimes. And I like it. Somedays I just revel in my wickedness - my evil thoughts, my schemes and plans, my drive towards troublemaking of the grand scale, malotov cocktail, panic, world-domination sort. Invariably I start to feel guilty at some point... my tame and respectful side jumps in and explains to me why scaring little children is wrong and that McDonalds won't actually appreciate the fanciful graffiti I have planned for them. That stealing isn't right and carjacking is potentially worse. That going to jail for life won't actually solve anything even if it means one less government airplane used for gunning down wolves in Alaska. That no one finds arson, political vandalism, or illicit trade funny anymore. That "hitman" is neither a realistic nor logical career choice.

Sometimes I hate my tame side.

More and more I find myself by the river. I am terrified of water, of the boiling dark water that contains all my mind's irrational fears. But even through that terror comes a deeper dread with the knowledge that I want that darkness. I want to walk to the edge of that river, to dive in. A straight edge shooting down into the depth of that dark water. I wish I could let it cover me and sweep me away, hold me down in that darkness until I stopped fighting and just let it have me. To not have to think, it might be easier to lose against the water than against the air. Sometimes I see water like trains -- if I get too close I'll just get sucked in and mangled by their passing force.

I haven't written on here in a long while. I've been adjusting to my new job at OSU and my place as a graduate student. I love what I do and the people I work and study with. I feel like I have found something that I can be content and happy with. I'm even thinking of one day getting my PhD in student affairs. I am busy and I am useful. I have no time to eat, to sleep, to worry about my life. I am an object constantly in motion.

But every night I find myself winding down. Slowing up until I'm idling. This is when I find myself wondering, thinking about how life is and was and could have been. Wondering anew if I am flawed, or how deep and fatal those flaws might run. Wondering how other people do it, if other people do it -- are happy that is. Don't get me wrong... I am happy in my own way. Deliriously free in my joy of the world. But, sometimes, I think my happiness has an edge of despair to it. While that despair gives my life a bittersweet and powerful edge to it, I am always fighting against a feeling akin to holding up boulders. Of keeping back this smothering certainty that none of this matters. But that is the sacrifice I think we must pay in order to feel it all. My misery wouldn't be so profound without my times of being in love and overwhelmingly consumed in my passions. Likewise, those passions wouldn't be worthy of notice without my petty fears and real depression.

Today I jumped off a ledge, clung to a rope, and just as I had swung out over the river, I let go. I let myself fall, diving into the water. I couldn't see, but I went so far down that the water got colder, the light faded from beyond my eyelids. There was a split second before my fear of water pounded into me and forced me back to the surface, where I was silent and dark, balled up and holding myself. It was beautiful and primal. It was liberating. I wish I knew how to embrace those moments more, to hold them closer. I wish I could keep my fear from stealing these moments away. I'm working on it. I need to go swimming more often.

I am a country kid. It's true. I like dirt and country air and the idea of fresh baked pie cooling on the windowsill (in reality, cooked fruit offends my sense of all that is tasty in this world). I am not shocked by hordes of cowboys and cowgirls. I know what "cowboy up" means. My lab partner my senior year in high school almost died when a horse bucked her and then fell on her... her dinner plate sized belt buckle saved her life and forever pressed the words "frolic and rodeo queen" onto the pommel of her saddle. Other country kids know what I mean when I express frustration at "city life" and I'm referring to Corvallis.

But let's be honest - I do not fit into country settings with my newfangled ideas of homosexuality and gender nonconformity. I do not think that a side of beef is a good way of bribing someone to buy new tires. I think rodeos are cruel. I've never been hunting. I can't make wranglers work for me.

Why then... tell me please... does my alarm wake me up. every. morning. to the country music station. This is a problem that I feel is subtly linked to the fact that my bedside clock runs 40 minutes fast. In the Tristen time zone, it is o.k. to listen to honkytonk and sing along to Kenny Chesney. At first I would just listen ever once in a while. Then it was every morning. Now it's spread to my car. I think... I know this is dangerous to voice... but I may be turning into a country music fan. I think I need an intervention.

Maybe I'm a space cadet and tend to zone out a lot, or maybe I have a latent streak of perfectionism, but lately I've been noticing that people around me seem to be covered in hair. No duh, you might be saying, but I'm serious here. Not hair that is attached to ones body, but loose hair. And I never see it on my friends (kudos friends, on not being covered in hair) or maybe it's there, but I'm actually listening to what you're saying and not looking at your shoulder. Everywhere I go I see perfect strangers covered in hair and it is SO. FUCKING. HARD. to not pick it off of them. I go out and my mantra is "Tristen, do not groom strangers, it is their perogative to be covered in hair." "What if they don't KNOW that they're covered in hair," says my more inquisitive side. "You still can not groom strangers," replies my more dominant and somewhat more responsible side. I know why I can't stand in line behind the woman at the Post Office, who apparently owns no less than 15 llamas, and pick the fur off of her. But it's so fucking tempting.

I think I've topped out on the amount of video games I can play. For days now I've been pacing this apartment, feeling like there is something I should be doing, but lacking the desire to leave my mini-prison for the larger world outside. It seems like my concentration is shot - everything is now done in short bursts. Clean for 20 minutes, play some video games, watch part of a movie, read three pages from a book, write half an e-mail... then it loops. At least I finally calmed down for a bit in order to go food shopping. Of course, nothing I bought makes sense. I bought a bag of pinto beans. I've never made beans in my life... why did I buy those? Two cans of the chicken noodle soup I ate when I was 12 for "when I get sick". 9 boxes of spaghetti, but no sauce. A Betty Crocker cake. Pancake mix. Vanilla extract. Will I ever be able to sit still for the 20 minutes it takes to cook any of that? We'll see I suppose.... I'm so glad tomorrow is Wednesday.

So I was minding my own business, staunchly opposed to adding any more addictions to my list, when someone created a livejournal account _for_ me. And myself being unable to resist, am now attempting to learn how to use it. I tried so hard too... circling around my computer for days... pointedly ignoring lj e-mails in my inbox. But alas... it seems that I, too, have fallen.