Dropping Into Moments

I was talking with Karla and Jason on Sunday at Laurelhurst Park. We lay on my blanket, which Mom gave me; it folds up and snaps together into this back-packy thing. Karla gets a kick out of the fact that I named my car Chloe, so she asked me the blanket's name. On the spot, I named her Beatrice and said that "she" was previously a "he." She's a transgendered blanket. Karla also asked me my starfish's name; he sits on Chloe's dashboard; I named him Clyde -- the first name that popped into mind. I've always had an affinity with that name, for whatever reason. Starfish on your dashboards bring you good luck in traveling.

What a beautiful day. Perfect weather. The shadows of the park. Karla laying there in the grass with her red glitter and looking so exquisite. Jason describing Karla as "the most honest person he knows in regards to herself." He said she's totally willing to dive into herself and bring that to the surface. Tangent, and I don't know why: Last night I dreamt about Angie Caputo, my first girlfriend. You know, in seventh grade. We dated for, like, two weeks. But she was in my dream, sitting with me on the couch in the Portland Home here, and she said to me something to the effect of: "You're not the prettiest or the most attractive in the typical sense. But you're comfortable and relaxed. You know who you are. People are drawn to that in both friendship and sexual ways." I remember asking her to go into detail because it was such a refreshing and direct case of honesty -- hence, the reason I probably bring this up in relation to Karla. And I must say this dream is much different {and better} than some of the others I've been having lately, although they've given me insights as well....All my relatives standing on this bleacher, like in a choir, my dad at the total opposite end as me....Jason Vorhees of Friday the 13th fame stalking me and chasing me through woods and cities and homes and I keep running down this path, taking breaks when I should just keep running....

But this all brings me to my next--and main?--point of why I wanted to write today. Karla, Jason, and I talked about "dropping into moments." I had a similar conversation with someone last week (can't remember who, though). How sometimes we not only remember something but it feels like time and events collapse and--Wait! It was in my email to Charlie and in his response!--it's like we're in A Wrinkle in Time, experiencing one of those tesseract thingy-ma-jingers. We ARE in that moment; it's reoccuring; maybe it's never stopped. We smell that coffee or remember the exact angle of the sun hitting someone's face or we hear our mother's words like she's whispering them, still, into our ears. These moments always make me sad, even when they're not pleasant memories. My heart aches, just gets yanked and pulled, when I snap back into "today's" moment. Have any of you seen What the Fuck Do We Know? Yeah. It's like that. All these moments are happening at the same time; we choose, in our consciousness, to think of things in a linear line. But, really, they're little dots just existing in some sphere-halo-thing and for certain sections of time we bubble back-forth-sideways into what we previously thought was a "linear moment." Lately I've been thinking about this trip my family took to visit some friends when I was quite young, and we got lost in the dark, and we slept on the floor of the van even though it turned out the friends' house was only a few minutes away. And I remember the white walls of their home the next day. Waking up in that crickety bed. My mom tells me I peeked at the woman while she changed in the bathroom, but I don't remember that part! They had a son, and we all went to this festival on the waterfront, and I saw this huge black fish in the water, and it swam next to the pier, and I followed it, and dropped a huge rock in the water but by the time the water hit the sand and sent up a cloud the fish had disappeared into darkness.

Yes.

I ache for these, and I'm not sure why, especially considering I really love where I'm at in my life. Speaking of, isn't it strange and wonderful how you can never be totally happy or totally sad? How they exist side by side like slightly deranged but necessary lovers? Here's a part of an email I recently sent to a friend and mentor:

"I don't even need to mention, of course, that life is so full of ups and downs. Even though I am in an 'up' phase (Mom here, new job....) I am still touched by many boughts of sadness. What I'm trying to learn to do is to weave those into my Everyday Tapestries, use them to sew the patches together even more, you know? When I ride them instead of fight them, I am so much Happier in the long run. Depression is a long-distance relative that likes to keep in touch and send me annoying Christmas cards when I don't ask Him to....Still, He's a part of my blood and I've learned to open those holiday cards and really listen to what He has to say. When I acknowledge Him, He takes healthy naps."

In the end, I don't know if this blog post has any real point except this: Happiness and Sadness coexist to teach us to be human, and they meet in the middle if we let them, creating a perfect balance where Happiness can be the end result but only by having a fancy affair with Sadness. We are all mixtures of our pasts and presents and futures. And, even though it's terrifying to think there's an infinite multitude of possibilities for us all, we should be in lovely awe of the fact that we're each sultry Drops in the Ocean.