Perception is a complicated and bizarre phenomena. Whether it be my vivid imagination or some deep complex thought process gone haywire, sometimes I will come across a situation that will throw off my perception of reality for a brief second or two, and cause my brain to go into panic mode until I can come up with a reasonable explanation. Maybe most people don't live in this half-fantasy world where everything could be something else, and suddenly it can feel like you've stepped into an alternate universe. It isn't something for which I strive, but it does make life interesting.
I'll start with something simple. One day I was in my parents basement talking to my mom from around the corner. She was sitting at the computer with my cat on the back of her shoulders, but as I walked around the corner, all I saw was a cat where my mom's head should be. So for maybe not even 2 seconds my brain froze trying to assess the situation as to how my mom's head suddenly turned into a cat. Was I talking to a person with a cat head this whole time? Where was I, and what on earth was going on? Now I'm not crazy. I know this sort of thing doesn't just happen. As I said, it didn't take longer than 2 seconds, but in that tiny amount of time, my brain tried to process something so unusual that it started to panic.
Another (less safe) example has occurred a couple of times on the way home from work in the middle of the night. There is a bend in the road on I35S just before it appears that you're going to run directly into an oncoming train. Of course you can't see that you're not even on the same level as the train, given that its dark and there are no street lights. You just see this train light barreling towards you, and just as you start to panic, the road bends and you continue on your way. Its terrifying, but thankfully has only happened maybe two times so far.
These are only two examples of situations that arise in daily life that make me stop and think, "WAIT. What just happened, and where am I?" Thankfully I have been able to meet several other people who's brains seem to function this way - mainly in the coffee shops and bookstores where I've been employed. These are the best people. They crave vast amounts of knowledge, always respond with sharp wit, and are game for any sort of bizarre idea. All of life is a movie, and apparently it is sometimes directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Grass is Greener
One of the girls I work with is in her early 30's, African American, born and raised in inner Kansas City, had her first child at the age of 14, divorced, etc. You know, apparently the typical scenario around here. Nothing I was very familiar with until I began working here 8 months ago. Now I discuss with my co-workers my life, as I would any other acquaintance, and I am suprised at how often this particular girl exclaims how fascinating my life has been. Fascinating? I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way. Well, I guess I've had my share of interesting adventures and carry a fair amount of spell-binding stories, but some of the things she finds so fascinating are so ordinary to me. Granted, some of these things she was forced to forfeit by having to raise two girls through her own youth - ie: being blackout drunk at retro night dancing with a bunch of gay men - but others have a lot to do with our different backgrounds. For instance, here is a conversation we had the other night. She was going to be taking off an entire week to watch her 2 teenage girls while her mother went out of town. They didn't have much planned except maybe to go to the movies a bunch of times. I thought that was ridiculous.
"You have an entire week off to do nothing, right? With 2 teenage girls?"
"well, yeah.." she began.
"You should go to Colorado! Its only 7 hours away, for godssakes!" I exclaimed.
"What's in Colorado? I mean, why would we go there?"
"um.. to see the mountains...because they're gorgeous.."
She laughed.
"Well, I guess I've never seen the mountains before. That might be nice. I want to see the Grand Canyon sometime too, and that place that shoots water from the ground.. what are those called?" You could tell she had actually dreamed about these places.
"Geysers. That's in Yellowstone."
"Is that near the Grand Canyon? I'm terrible at geography. You've probably been there too, haven't you?"
Well, yes. I have. (and no, its not close to the Grand Canyon, if you're terrible at geography, too.. though relative to the rest of the US, I suppose its in the same general area.) You see, while other kids were going to Disney Land or maybe just heading to the zoo and swimming pool all summer long, my parents took 2 weeks off every summer and hauled us out to every interesting place of natural or historical significance they could think of (Don't get me wrong, we did plenty of the zoo and swimming pool thing, too.. though usually it was free zoos, and the stock tank pool in our back yard.) Luckily, most of this road-tripping consisted of experiencing all the glories the great American wilderness had to offer, but it almost always included some kind of historical sidetrip. Lincoln's home, Fort so-and-so, the Oregon trail, the Amana colonies, etc. Now when you're an 8 year old kid, an old fort out west might be the worst kind of summer trip, but when you're all grown up, you'll be really appreciative of the experience. Everyone else thinks its fascinating, b/c no one else was driven 2 hours out into uni-bomber country to find one of most obscure ghost towns in this nation. And as I pointed out to my co-worker, you don't necessarily need a lot of money to pull off these vacations. My dad was a teacher, and my mom stayed at home to raise 3 little kids. Do you think we had a lot of money? We just pulled 10 hour days on the road, and no we didn't have dual dvd players. My older brother read Tolstoy, my younger brother listened to headphones, and I stared out the window and imagined what it would be like if I could live on a cloud.
I think my parents like to think of most life as a possible adventure. Which I suppose is fine, and maybe overall the best way to look at life. Everything is an experience, whether good or bad. When we lived in St. Louis, we acquired all our clothes as either hand-me-downs or from the local resell-it shop. A lot of our food came from the community pantry, and we actually got some of the pastries that Panera (St. Louis Bread Co) packages up at the end of the day for soup kitchens. When I asked my mom in bewilderment a few years ago how she could've let us live like that, in an apartment that was soon condemned after we moved out, she replied, "well, I guess I was just caught up in the adventure of being poor." Oh. WELL. It was only our childhood, so I'm glad you had such a fun experience. I guess the whole thing wasn't lacking on us, though. Whenever my older brother or I read The Glass Menagerie, we both think of our childhood in St. Louis. It was another life.
It was another life when we moved to Kansas and finished growing up in small town America, and another life when I went off to college. There have been so many other lifes through those years that I don't care to see most people who thought they knew me when I was an akward teenager - only those who have been around through it all.
Life has to be lived to the moment, broken up in separate pieces so you can remember each experience like a story. Each phase in time remembered almost as a different person, though always still a wisening creature. You only have one life, and it is going by with each tick of the clock.
I am feeling anxious again. Stifled, and needing to expand into something more.
"You have an entire week off to do nothing, right? With 2 teenage girls?"
"well, yeah.." she began.
"You should go to Colorado! Its only 7 hours away, for godssakes!" I exclaimed.
"What's in Colorado? I mean, why would we go there?"
"um.. to see the mountains...because they're gorgeous.."
She laughed.
"Well, I guess I've never seen the mountains before. That might be nice. I want to see the Grand Canyon sometime too, and that place that shoots water from the ground.. what are those called?" You could tell she had actually dreamed about these places.
"Geysers. That's in Yellowstone."
"Is that near the Grand Canyon? I'm terrible at geography. You've probably been there too, haven't you?"
Well, yes. I have. (and no, its not close to the Grand Canyon, if you're terrible at geography, too.. though relative to the rest of the US, I suppose its in the same general area.) You see, while other kids were going to Disney Land or maybe just heading to the zoo and swimming pool all summer long, my parents took 2 weeks off every summer and hauled us out to every interesting place of natural or historical significance they could think of (Don't get me wrong, we did plenty of the zoo and swimming pool thing, too.. though usually it was free zoos, and the stock tank pool in our back yard.) Luckily, most of this road-tripping consisted of experiencing all the glories the great American wilderness had to offer, but it almost always included some kind of historical sidetrip. Lincoln's home, Fort so-and-so, the Oregon trail, the Amana colonies, etc. Now when you're an 8 year old kid, an old fort out west might be the worst kind of summer trip, but when you're all grown up, you'll be really appreciative of the experience. Everyone else thinks its fascinating, b/c no one else was driven 2 hours out into uni-bomber country to find one of most obscure ghost towns in this nation. And as I pointed out to my co-worker, you don't necessarily need a lot of money to pull off these vacations. My dad was a teacher, and my mom stayed at home to raise 3 little kids. Do you think we had a lot of money? We just pulled 10 hour days on the road, and no we didn't have dual dvd players. My older brother read Tolstoy, my younger brother listened to headphones, and I stared out the window and imagined what it would be like if I could live on a cloud.
I think my parents like to think of most life as a possible adventure. Which I suppose is fine, and maybe overall the best way to look at life. Everything is an experience, whether good or bad. When we lived in St. Louis, we acquired all our clothes as either hand-me-downs or from the local resell-it shop. A lot of our food came from the community pantry, and we actually got some of the pastries that Panera (St. Louis Bread Co) packages up at the end of the day for soup kitchens. When I asked my mom in bewilderment a few years ago how she could've let us live like that, in an apartment that was soon condemned after we moved out, she replied, "well, I guess I was just caught up in the adventure of being poor." Oh. WELL. It was only our childhood, so I'm glad you had such a fun experience. I guess the whole thing wasn't lacking on us, though. Whenever my older brother or I read The Glass Menagerie, we both think of our childhood in St. Louis. It was another life.
It was another life when we moved to Kansas and finished growing up in small town America, and another life when I went off to college. There have been so many other lifes through those years that I don't care to see most people who thought they knew me when I was an akward teenager - only those who have been around through it all.
Life has to be lived to the moment, broken up in separate pieces so you can remember each experience like a story. Each phase in time remembered almost as a different person, though always still a wisening creature. You only have one life, and it is going by with each tick of the clock.
I am feeling anxious again. Stifled, and needing to expand into something more.
Monday, July 5, 2010
We are the Dreamers of Dreams
This past Thursday I drove across Northern Missouri towards Quincy, IL to participate in a close friend's wedding. It was a hot, Midwest summer's day, without a cloud in the sky, and the land passing by me was a blend of yellow and green. The entire expansion of Hwy 36 runs through rural farming country, and as I drove, the barefoot 6-year-old tomboy in me ached to run through the hot stubbly fields of dry grass and undergrowth.
As my paternal grandparents are no longer alive, I have very little reason to make the trip back up to my father's rural "home country" that I considered my home away from home for so long. It had been the one permanent place I'd had my whole life, and it is days like that one that make me homesick for the simpler things in life. As I drove, I envisioned exploring along the creeks with my brothers, riding my bike down the winding country roads, and tagging along as my dad helped out with whatever harvest was in season. Just as I had that last thought, I passed a combine pulling up to a stop sign with a young child standing next to the driver, and I smiled. I passed a small beaten down cemetary out in a lone plot with one of those wire gates around it, and thought about family. Not sadness, but togetherness. Days later I came across this quote and thought it pinpointed exactly what I was feeling:
"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling." ~Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
It seems to me that time is so much more evident when you are alone in an expanse of countryside.. and you are so much more insignificant in that moment to time and all greater purposes. Suddenly you are not an important being, but a mere creature on a crust thousands of millions of years old. The land is so old and powerful, it is a being of its own. I craved to sit on one of the hillsides to soak in this spirit again. I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem Renaissance: "God, I can pull the grass apart and lay my fingers on your heart." I wanted to be one with the earth again. To hear the incessant chirp of crickets across the prairie and the wind through the grasses. To let the sun soak deep into my bones. We are not meant to be fixed to one pavement. My restless heart craves the majesty of these wide open spaces.
As my paternal grandparents are no longer alive, I have very little reason to make the trip back up to my father's rural "home country" that I considered my home away from home for so long. It had been the one permanent place I'd had my whole life, and it is days like that one that make me homesick for the simpler things in life. As I drove, I envisioned exploring along the creeks with my brothers, riding my bike down the winding country roads, and tagging along as my dad helped out with whatever harvest was in season. Just as I had that last thought, I passed a combine pulling up to a stop sign with a young child standing next to the driver, and I smiled. I passed a small beaten down cemetary out in a lone plot with one of those wire gates around it, and thought about family. Not sadness, but togetherness. Days later I came across this quote and thought it pinpointed exactly what I was feeling:
"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling." ~Jack Kerouac Dharma Bums
It seems to me that time is so much more evident when you are alone in an expanse of countryside.. and you are so much more insignificant in that moment to time and all greater purposes. Suddenly you are not an important being, but a mere creature on a crust thousands of millions of years old. The land is so old and powerful, it is a being of its own. I craved to sit on one of the hillsides to soak in this spirit again. I thought of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem Renaissance: "God, I can pull the grass apart and lay my fingers on your heart." I wanted to be one with the earth again. To hear the incessant chirp of crickets across the prairie and the wind through the grasses. To let the sun soak deep into my bones. We are not meant to be fixed to one pavement. My restless heart craves the majesty of these wide open spaces.
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