reality

Perhaps it was during a sunny late afternoon just like today’s when I was a child hoping the beautiful fall weather meant reality could be more than it was at that moment. Hearing the creaky swing set move back and forth reminded me that life mainly manages to move between different re-occurring stages. First the novelty of youth, either of myself or just the situation, presents a need to achieve the next step so the wholly realized situation can present itself. Usually this is followed by the sleepy complacency of my small presence in the world. Then, just as I felt 20 years ago, comes the tingling need to find out either what I did wrong to deserve a wonderfully function life or how the universe was able to pinpoint me among billions of people to serve me such a bitter pie. There must be a missing piece of string or picture to tie together reality as it appears to me and what it could be tomorrow if I made some small choice to change its fluidity in an effort to see each shiny new day.

summer meeting

Yesterday in the midst of an important meeting, I imagined myself exiting the meeting feeling proud of my calculated confidence. I swung open the construction trailer door to find him standing outside waiting for me. He smiled at me the same he had before, but today his smile reassured me that he was here to stay. He first gave me a hug and then stopped to look at me with his kind eyes. The warmth of our embrace filled my stinging belly. In his eyes I saw an image of myself I had longed for; he was here to tell me he had known that “me” all along. In my picture-perfect moment, he left me high and dry, left me unique and alone in a way I never felt before.

paper girl

I had tried to forget about the paper box I hid, which almost blew open in the summer wind. I tried to gently shut the lid; maybe a few hot drops of tears would moisten its seal. I intended to find a pool where I would squeeze just a few drops, but the city would not spare any. I thought I had buried the box at home, beneath blankets that I held dear and dared not wash. Over the past few months I tried to smooth out the blankets without actually entering the room filled with sunlight that looked like dust. I told myself I would not go too far as long as my precious cloud was buried deep in the forest. Yet here I was - finding myself atop little mountains, when all I ever wanted in life was a still sea. In a recurring dream every little wave I discovered hit me just to whisper what I couldn’t have. And by the time I dove under each wave to find this still sea, I realized it was just a frozen mirror where I could see myself so clearly. And when I woke up this time around, I looked into the far off distance and saw the tall tan buildings on the polygon-shaped islands. Swimming there under the introspective sun, I felt the clear lines that held together crystal waves over my body. I had cut out the dots and lines that connect actions to realizations so well that I didn’t know how to accept anything as my own. I only knew how to release but not keep any feathers I caught and nurtured in my palm. I would reach the islands alone. Goodbye to the soft dove, whose feathers stain a sanguine promise of forever.

home again

I wore the new dress I got in Stockholm to work today. I looked up the designer and he is based in LA.

Arriving in Philadelphia last night to the same life, same house seemed more than I can remember. Coming back from floating around places I don’t belong, I sensed the new sensation that I also may not belong in my own home. 

But this morning waking up to the warm summer sun to start a new day, I felt that my body within my home was accepting me back in again. Grateful to feel like I have a set place in the world. Privileged that I can choose to challenge that feeling at any time. Strange to be able to understand everything around me. Scared to open my mouth freely. Appreciative there are people who know my name and my story and choose to tell me theirs. Shocked that my life, untouched, was sitting patiently waiting for me to slip into my very own body again.

berlin part 2

Moving through the bright and unsettling gravity of the city, I wanted to appear uncrumbled. I wanted to justify the way I felt by saying I was from a different place, all the while knowing this city was just a physical representation of how the world always feels. Mentally adrift and physically present, I still needed to sustain myself by breathing in the heavy air. In the terrible lightness of the never-ending afternoon, I felt like I was walking down a street that would lead me on forever with a smile. I could probably walk down that street of uncertainty and its continuous “today” like tomorrow would never happen. And even though I would eventually become an unwanted party in the interaction, it would politely continue to guide me toward nowhere. Perhaps if I knew that each step I took was already too late, I would later look back to feel the peace of acceptance.

berlin

Like the air of Berlin itself, I felt a detached sense of being. Being not in, but rather on top, of the city at all times. Like an insignificant drop of water sliding on the surface of a well-oiled sheet. At times I may have tried to engage with the built environment, but ended up lost in the starting point of my own mind. Like trying to swallow a cotton ball with a throat lined with a thick sheet of wool.

I didn’t even manage to gain a grip on the mind-blowing experience of the modernist architecture. Several times I intentionally sat on the gentle slopes of lawn areas, created to be ripe funnels for human consumption of the surrounding man-made post-war marvels. But I dared not consume the glazed visual spectacles not meant for me. However stagnate my physical body, something gently pushed me to keep the mental image of myself in motion. My eyes riding the curvilinear waves that crowned the shining yellow facades, perhaps between various planes hoping to catch a ray of sunlight. Reaching to shuffle apart the smooth black posts that only served to elongate the enclosed nature of the church next door. I imagined that when the rain hits these roofs it would sound like tiny metal studs hitting a plastic surface. Waking up from my daydream, I shook away the vague dialogue I had with the city, that the city had with me.

I stayed with a small woman with a small child. I remember flicking on and off the light switch in the bathroom as I got ready to jog off metaphorical cliffs. The child followed me around like a terrible hot water balloon. The woman’s energy was draining to the point that when I stepped foot in her flat, I felt like I was walking on a pool of dizzying mirrors that could crack and pinch me at any time.

berlin - stormwater infrastructure