And then, you realize you still don't know what you are going to do with all your empty pages. You fill the squares on your calendar with different colored inks, and pretend you are not just trying to catch up with other people who also don't know what they are doing with their lives.
So you just freak out and buy a new duvet cover at Ikea, instead of showing up in yourself for others, in more respectable places.
I'm trying not to be your flakiest friend, Sharon.
I'm trying not to be the one that says she can't go to your ballet recital because of the headache that comes back with bright sunlight, and Sharon, I'm trying to pretend for you that I would like to sit at your pool party where you will not be serving martinis.
But I can't turn it off, like a brother.
I can't compartmentalize, and pretend that every time the door swings on its hinges, that I do not hope
this hope,
or think that....
I am trying to want to come to your pool party, is what is getting lost in this email to you, Sharon.
There are no excuses.
I will show up to your pool party with a macaroni salad and a bottle of Sprite, and whatever is left of me after not sleeping and not taking iron pills, and not lacquering up my skin with suntan lotion.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
a love note
The deep truth of it is, I love Starbucks right now.
Like, really love it.
I love my coworkers, I love 25% of our customers, and I love that my job is handing people a cup of something that I believe in. Everyday.
People keep asking me what I'm going to do now that I'm done with college, but truthfully I just want to keep paying my bills with espresso until I don't love it anymore, and then I'll look for something else.
I love that everyday brings surprising people into my life, and that I only have to invest 90 seconds into them.
I am extremely blessed.
Like, really love it.
I love my coworkers, I love 25% of our customers, and I love that my job is handing people a cup of something that I believe in. Everyday.
People keep asking me what I'm going to do now that I'm done with college, but truthfully I just want to keep paying my bills with espresso until I don't love it anymore, and then I'll look for something else.
I love that everyday brings surprising people into my life, and that I only have to invest 90 seconds into them.
I am extremely blessed.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
"Stand inside an empty tuxedo with grapes in my mouth, waiting for Ada."
The National
There were some parts of the story that ended with me being everywhere. It ended with me being in your car. It ended with me in the foothills, leaning against a tree with my rib cage crushing me for the hell of it. Or it ended with the end, which is the part of the song after the song has fizzled out.
My legs do get restless, so much so that I take a sleeping pill to keep the legs in my bed under some covers.
So much do the legs get restless, that after the song fizzles out, I wack them, and pinch them, and say, "Legs, my eyes are tired and they are beggin' you to give it up now." The sleeping pill says funnier things than that, but we can't retell the stories in front of children.
And the color creeps into your skin, unwillingly.
The lines creep up next to your eyes and make you older, even though you are still stubbing your toe against the foot of your bed like you've been doing for twenty years.
Have you learned nothing, in all the weeks you have survived so far?
Your muscles should remember
better
by
now.
The National
There were some parts of the story that ended with me being everywhere. It ended with me being in your car. It ended with me in the foothills, leaning against a tree with my rib cage crushing me for the hell of it. Or it ended with the end, which is the part of the song after the song has fizzled out.
My legs do get restless, so much so that I take a sleeping pill to keep the legs in my bed under some covers.
So much do the legs get restless, that after the song fizzles out, I wack them, and pinch them, and say, "Legs, my eyes are tired and they are beggin' you to give it up now." The sleeping pill says funnier things than that, but we can't retell the stories in front of children.
And the color creeps into your skin, unwillingly.
The lines creep up next to your eyes and make you older, even though you are still stubbing your toe against the foot of your bed like you've been doing for twenty years.
Have you learned nothing, in all the weeks you have survived so far?
Your muscles should remember
better
by
now.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
pastimes
It is seriously not my fault, this thing. I only have one CD left, and when I put it in, I only listen to 2 of the songs.
I drive to work before it is light, and play the song on repeat. I pop the CD out, and the song is on the radio, and it makes my stomach hurt more each time.
I don't eat, I don't sleep.
I don't sleep.
I could next become a skinny skeleton, and you could pack me up in your cupboard and say, "Well, she never got gutsy, or free," but I hope I get free.
I hope for years to write love letters, in between temper tantrums, and night runs, and painful radio hits, and black and white photos that I didn't plan to come across.
I hope to build bridges, but it seriously not my fault.
This thing.
I drive to work before it is light, and play the song on repeat. I pop the CD out, and the song is on the radio, and it makes my stomach hurt more each time.
I don't eat, I don't sleep.
I don't sleep.
I could next become a skinny skeleton, and you could pack me up in your cupboard and say, "Well, she never got gutsy, or free," but I hope I get free.
I hope for years to write love letters, in between temper tantrums, and night runs, and painful radio hits, and black and white photos that I didn't plan to come across.
I hope to build bridges, but it seriously not my fault.
This thing.
Friday, June 08, 2012
Starbucks Days
Eat Raisin Bran, groggy.
Hope car starts.
Say hello to the same customer as yesterday, and wonder if you already saw them this morning.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Fake a smile to a mean guy.
Fake happy attitude to rude rich woman who smells wonderful, and has glorious hair volume, and when she goes anywhere, men line up to buy her a salad. Buy her a sugar-free anything. Buy her a piece of celery coated with self-loathing, and watch these business people flood the lobby with business meetings and hear them suck up all the internet until it moves like a whale from the router to the patio.
Open pastry case, smell the Maple scones, and know that autumn will come back for you, in approximately 86 days.
Grande iced hazlenut americano. Receive wink, feel heart flood with patriotism and another rogue emotion that you should probably guillotine with the bagel cutter next to the oven.
Get your heart back to business.
Eat a bucket of Spaghettios.
Worry that your boss knows all your sins. Worry about that thing of getting fired.
Recall 2am nightmare and decide to stay awake forever. Realize your liability for the television medicine you've been living on.
"I'm going to marry your brother," Emily says, the way she said yesterday, and the day before, but with different hairstyles, and varying quietude in her voice.
And you compose a letter to your brother.
Dear Philip,
I realize with gravity, the way we are never supposed to express familial fondness, and although this has been charged of us in austerity, I secede.
I miss you knowing my jokes. I miss the way you would work the 7am to 3:30pm shift, and the way this enabled me to sleep in and work the evening shifts, and never feel the desperate eyes of the automobile salesmen.
I miss your computer being around, and my music that you took with you on your computer.
Our coworkers miss you because they'd like to get rid of me back to night shift, as I am quite louder than you are and sing more songs than you do.
Mostly I miss the thing about the jokes.
Love, or just even just like,
Rachel
Hope car starts.
Say hello to the same customer as yesterday, and wonder if you already saw them this morning.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Grind, brew, repeat.
Fake a smile to a mean guy.
Fake happy attitude to rude rich woman who smells wonderful, and has glorious hair volume, and when she goes anywhere, men line up to buy her a salad. Buy her a sugar-free anything. Buy her a piece of celery coated with self-loathing, and watch these business people flood the lobby with business meetings and hear them suck up all the internet until it moves like a whale from the router to the patio.
Open pastry case, smell the Maple scones, and know that autumn will come back for you, in approximately 86 days.
Grande iced hazlenut americano. Receive wink, feel heart flood with patriotism and another rogue emotion that you should probably guillotine with the bagel cutter next to the oven.
Get your heart back to business.
Eat a bucket of Spaghettios.
Worry that your boss knows all your sins. Worry about that thing of getting fired.
Recall 2am nightmare and decide to stay awake forever. Realize your liability for the television medicine you've been living on.
"I'm going to marry your brother," Emily says, the way she said yesterday, and the day before, but with different hairstyles, and varying quietude in her voice.
And you compose a letter to your brother.
Dear Philip,
I realize with gravity, the way we are never supposed to express familial fondness, and although this has been charged of us in austerity, I secede.
I miss you knowing my jokes. I miss the way you would work the 7am to 3:30pm shift, and the way this enabled me to sleep in and work the evening shifts, and never feel the desperate eyes of the automobile salesmen.
I miss your computer being around, and my music that you took with you on your computer.
Our coworkers miss you because they'd like to get rid of me back to night shift, as I am quite louder than you are and sing more songs than you do.
Mostly I miss the thing about the jokes.
Love, or just even just like,
Rachel
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
sleepy
E.E. Cummings
The hardest days are the ones that you are doing dishes, and you realize you have to work for the rest of your life. And you haven't been sleeping well, is why it hurts.
But then you realize you are surrounded by wonderful people, who can still surprise you and make you laugh...
life still has some surprises?
yes.
And always I feel blessed by the safety I experience, living in the U.S., and I am blessed by my gracious God, to never go hungry or cold, or without medicine for the rocks and hard places.
So in the now.open.forever that I'm walking through with no handrails or paths, at least I have my God to keep talking to, and friends to shoot espresso shots with, when we would all rather still be in bed.
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