Too much salt

Typically, I am very stingy with the salt in my cooking. I don't enjoy food that is overly salty (unless we're talking about Lay's Original potato chips - that is a sacred thing), so I normally prepare food to a more neutral palette and let everyone salt their dish to their preference.

I made a dish a few days ago of rice, beans, corn, peppers, grilled tilapia, and roasted chorizo. Because I was bringing this to a potluck, I got nervous that it would be bland and threw in a bunch of salt at the last moment. And now, finishing off the leftovers of this dish, I'm struggling to enjoy it because it's too salty for me. I love each component's flavor and texture on its own, but combined with the salt, it's just too much.

While eating it for lunch just now, it struck me how fitting this is when taking me on the whole. On my own, I like the marriage of my various ingredients, the aspects of my personality and character that make me who I am. But when it's time for me to put on a public face, to share some part of myself with others, I tend to overcompensate for what I perceive as my own shortcomings, lay it on too thick, and just become too much. Then I am embarrassed, privately critiquing my own composition, fearful that everyone is silently judging me for being too much, or worse, not enough.

Dusting this thing off

Well, the time has arrived to dust this thing off.

October has been a busy month in every arena of my life, and I'm teeming with excitement at what has been accomplished and put away, what is still in progress, and whatever comes next.

Next month I'll be participating in National Novel Writing Month for the first time, and attempting to write a novel! It's shaping up to be a murder mystery/drama, and it's really hard to shut my mind off and do other things as my imagination runs wild with story ideas! I strongly recommend that you check out NaNoWriMo for yourself, whether as a writer, a supporter, or just a fan of writing, books, and words.

I've been clearing away a lot of loose ends in preparation for NaNo, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. That's about 1,667 words per day. Recent experimentation has shown me that I can write about 500 words per hour, with research time, a little Facebooking, and dawdling thrown in there. So I'm thinking ahead to 2-3 hours of solid writing per day, on average. Considering that I have commitments every Wednesday and Friday night, plus a full-time job and a stellar boyfriend that I really love spending time with, this is going to be an interesting exercise in commitment and time management.

So I have finished other personal writing projects, balanced my checkbook, done all the laundry, cleaned my car, bought some groceries, and stocked up on my daily medications. Stellar boyfriend and I are taking a long-weekend road trip in a few days, which will be a nice break from routine to relax and have some fun after a couple of high-intensity weeks at work, and before the fingertip-grinding typing of 50,000 words starts on November 1st.

Local friends, there will be a gathering of NaNo participants from the area on November 1st at the Barnes & Noble in Newington at 7pm. Bring a laptop, tablet, Moleskine, granite & chisel, tattoo gun, whatever you need to write with. It's going to be amazing.

Holy shit - I'm behaving like a writer.

It's going to be amazing.

Bicycle Eve

One more sleep.

Tomorrow is the day I pay for and take home my new bicycle. To say that I'm excited is a hideous understatement -- I am beside myself.

My birthday is in a few days, my roommate came home from her convalescence, tomorrow night is a bonfire birthday party, and my sister is joining us for the weekend.

And I'm sitting here in my pajamas wearing my bike helmet. Breaking it in, like you do.

It feels like Christmas AND my birthday all at once.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I ride.

Hot Wheels

 Soon.













SO SOON.













With massive thanks to +Giles Cooper at Alternative Bike Shop for the photos.

Confessions of a Devastated Pragmatic Romantic

I like to imagine myself a very pragmatic gal. I deal best with order, rules, systems, and analysis. Math, logic, details, patterns; all very stoic left-brained shit, right? I actually test as middle-brained, so I'm generally quite good at integrating the order, rules, systems, and analysis of the left brain with the softer side of life, or the right-brain functions, like philosophy, an understanding of symbols, focus on the future, compassion, listening, imagination, and ideas.

I usually try to hide the fact that I'm a devastated romantic because romance and romanticism are just so wildly impractical, but I'm just so wildly enthusiastic and expressive that everyone who knows me knows better. My iTunes library betrays me to myself and I'm perpetually caught up in the emotion carried over a system of rhythmic patterns, melodies, harmonies, and major and minor tonality. Music is the greatest joy of the middle-brained mind.

Even this blog is a betrayal of my forced self-perception as über-composed, resolute, and unflinching. The combination of emotional/personal expression with the rules and order of language and grammar excites and titillates my middle-brained-ness. Most of what I've posted so far is rooted in deep emotional experience. It's the academic and intellectual pieces that are sitting in draft form, unfinished, being researched and pecked at, outnumbering the published posts. [Poetry from a self-proclaimed pragmatist? Who does this gal think she's fooling?]

So what typically happens in my brain is this:

Right Brain: "We have an idea!" or "We have a feeling!"

Left Brain: "What does it do?" or "What is the feeling?" or "That's great, RB, but what do you want me to do about it?"

Right Brain: "Let's make an art thing!" or "It's this electrifying combination of passion, excitement, and fear! We're incredibly enthusiastic about it; in fact, we are really into this feeling!" or "How are we supposed to know what to do with it? We're too busy painting stars on rainbows and crying into this cup of tea!"

Left Brain: [annoyed] "Well, we need to DO something about it. For the love of God, stop carrying on, it's keeping us from creating a strategy and plan of action."

Right Brain: [ignores LB, imagines what everything in room would look like if it was made of glitter] "Sorry! Too busy entertaining 47 possible outcomes! La la la!"

Left Brain: "Okay, seriously. Pull our shit together."

Right Brain: [exasperated] "FINE." [scowls in the corner, knowing it will be back]

Left Brain: [sighs] "Finally. Some quiet around here. Now let's plan and organize ALL THE THINGS."

Right Brain: [jumps out like the bogey man] "A-HA! Here, have some FEAR, LB! Let's see how you do with THAT! HA!" [laughs and claps maniacally at its cleverness]

So, as you can see, neither one is getting much accomplished in this rivalry.

The sometimes painful truth is that I am an utterly devastated romantic. I want to believe in everything: love at first sight, overcoming the odds, philosophy and spirituality as tools to greater understanding, love conquering all, happy endings, art, beauty, simple gestures resulting in profound emotional response.

This passion for the potential beauty in all things leaves me frequently disappointed. The bitter reality of the ugliness in humanity breaks my heart. I am human, too, and fall short. I hurt others, or they inadvertently hurt me. Fear runs everything, and moments compound to years wasted in worry. Sympathy and empathy gut me. I spend eons in private, tormented lament.

And then, just like that, I exclaim with joy over some adorable antic of the cat or dog, swoon over the backlit fog settling over the centuries-old stone buildings I admire from my porch or bedroom window, brighten with happiness at seeing a beloved friend, melt with the enjoyment of beautiful food, explode into dance when the greatest song of the moment is playing, come alive and acutely alert in my skin at the simplest human contact, and laugh like my life depends on it.

I don't know where the balance lies. But I know that the many facets that comprise my spirit are all valid and good. I just wish I wasn't afraid of my own heart.

Want.

Put your hands in my hair
Inhale
Lean into me
Put your lips against my cheek
Whisper

My head tilted up
My breath caught
My hands flat against your chest
My fingertips fussing the point of your collar
My stomach churning
My heart racing

Dizzy
Disappearing
Deafened by whisper
Death by breath
There is nothing but your words on my cheek


(2013)

Frustrated Cartography

I have always loved maps.

The consistency of the demarcation on the page occupies me, comforts me, distracts me, just a little, from the variable, topographical revolution within.

The shortest distance between two points eludes me. I scour the creased expanse, the geography of the folds overlaid on various highways, lakes, townships, and points of interest. Somewhere on this page, SOMEWHERE, is the road that will lead me where I want to be, the path to my destiny, the proverbial road to happiness. I gag.

So I unfold this map

Lines lines lines

Creases that never fold back

I want to tear it apart

Crush it into a ball

Smooth it out

Figure out my route

What the fuck is my destination?

I set it down, I stand up, I look upon it, head cocked in consideration of the infinity of intersections. I just want to fold the edges together until the Atlantic and the Pacific touch.

I curse the expanse, shaking my fist in the general direction of the Midwest: “DAMN ALL THIS CORN!!”

I play cartographer in quiet moments alone. I pick up the map and shake it until the Rockies break apart and the Mississippi runs east to west and I fold up my map into a little paper boat and set a course for the thing I fear most.

They don't love you like I love you