Bijoy

My voice rose in the silent, cavernous space filled with sleeping people.  He smiled, amused but not condescending.  His eyes told me that he was thinking hard, thinking of how to say what he wanted to say in a way that was simultaneously gentle and convincing.  He saw intelligence mixed with naivety and optimism, that potent, confusing mixture that often comes with youth.  Even I was surprised by how passionate I’d become.  Maybe it was the fourth glass of complimentary wine I was slowly sipping down to the bottom.

I REFUSE to live my life believing that my success depends on the failure of another, I told him.  I will not live in a way where my needs are met in a way that denies another of theirs. (And on and on.)

He sat silently for a moment, hand resting on his mouth in a loose fist.  “No, you’re right.  You shouldn’t.”

He was a good man.  I think we both walked away from our five-hour-long, meandering conversation with something to think about.

post by Amanda

Trail Mix

We raced in the same direction as the earth, but we were faster, spinning wildly around it away from the sun. I slept around music-filled dreams, waking periodically to surprisingly delicious food. We landed in blackness, the sun still light years away, and I stepped, sleepy and disoriented, into an eerily empty airport, the sterile-ness of its tile and lights magnified in the quiet. A hard stare and a satisfyingly loud stamp later, I was officially in Frankfort. Another several hours, and I was in Nice, France.

Nice: alley after alley of mystery, muted natural colors towering with hanging plants, reaching up to sky. Each intersection a choice, made not a moment earlier. In this way, a city is learned. Wearing down my soles, nourishing my soul. Markets of beauty, eating tomatoes whole. An abundance of free wine and free food at the conference that brought me there. Feet blessed by salty cold over and over again, wind waking my skin. Waves washing back and forth, kissing stones, kissing me. The sparkling blue makes my knees weak; my heart is on fire.

France, you’ve stolen my heart. But to Liverpool I go.

Days spent without a clock,
Art on pink walls
People smiling, chatting, engaging clear-eyed
This strange city making more sense at Mellow Mellow.
Transient connections made
Between severed variety of bloodied limbs and feathered nakedness
full of life, so unlike the bird we tried to save.
Morgan’s eyes sharing, crying, laughing
touching
Mind planting seeds that will one day grown in me.
I’ve planted too.

For a weekend, Morgan and I grew with each other quietly, calmly. Open, shared notebooks and feet padding pavement, voices filling rooms, alive.

My eyes wide for the world at my feet, but thinking back to home. At every place, I thought of you. Still, I was happy to be no longer reaching for my disconnected phone, preferring my notebook instead.

And then to Barcelona, meeting a mohawked Michelle who at once overwhelms me with her presence. Life expands, lungs expand with laughter. Coffee, beer, record stores in Barcelona before moving on, barely getting a taste. For five days we traveled, from Barcelona back to Nice, never stopping, always moving, finding ways through choppy Spanish and even choppier French. Adrift, open eyes but empty brains, never doing more than discovering. Old walls, new people, trains, buses, feet (mostly feet). Consistent uncertainty, but far more joy, astounding beauty at every step (snap, snap). A calm openness spread between us like a sheet, enveloping and connecting us. Dancing eyes tell stories of past, ideas for now. And in Marseille, a sudden friend to lead us. We rooted to her for a moment, following her planted footsteps, coming down from the sky for a moment. But sure feet got old, and we were ready to move again. Back to Nice, a place that suddenly felt like home. Jameson and piano chords, swapping stories with excited new friends. The next day, collecting rocks to give, crepes and a short old city walk– willfully ignoring time. For so long, measured time had become almost meaningless, and I rebelled against its sudden imposition on my desires. Time ticked louder and louder. And finally, it clicked. With a crashing, all-out sprint to the airport that lasted at least an hour, I was suddenly heading away from one home and towards another, my heart overwhelmed by the change.

-post by Amanda

Waves

To all of those who introduced me to ideas way before I was ready for them: thank you.  Slowly, slowly, they seep their way into me, until one day I find myself realizing that you were right all along.  I wouldn’t be me without all of you.

———–

I saw my ego this morning.  Easy does it, child, easy does it.  And I saw someone who cares for me with kind, brown eyes lying close to my own.  I closed mine and let myself feel the struggle, and then I let it go.

post by Amanda

Lester Bernham and Michelle

“i had a party last night for our dog and 2 of my best friends birthdays. i wished you were there. you would have been in that blissy freakout state you get into about how amazing everyone was.” -Michelle, once again hitting the nail on the head with her assessment of me.

Sometimes at the most usual, even boring moments, I suddenly become so amazed by the beauty and splendor and vastness of life and the world that my joy bubbles up into a complete feeling of over-saturation.  It becomes so overwhelming that it overtakes me, and it actually becomes something close to anxiety because the emotions it brings up are more powerful than I know what to do with and they seem like much too much for the situation.  If I’m listening to good music when this happens, it’s even more intense.  It literally incapacitates me if I can’t express it, and I end up sitting with my head in my hands trying to calm myself down.  Cliché or not, what ends up helping me in these situations is to remind myself of that incredible quote at the end of American Beauty.  And I close my eyes and breathe, and let the emotions flow through me like rain so that I don’t burst from it all.

“…it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.” -Lester Bernham, the moment before his death

It really is so strange.  I wonder if things like this make me genuinely, clinically insane, if this is some sort of chemical imbalance in my brain that makes me hyper-sensitive to beauty in the mundane, that makes me prone to almost manic-like states for no reason at all.  I really don’t know, but I do really like it.

-post by Amanda

bare

what do you do when you realize that your heart is so full of love for someone, that they’re smell starts leaking out of your armpits? It’s taken me almost 3 years to realize, but I picked up a jacket out of my laundry today and it smelled just like him and now I can’t stop crying. I never smelled like anything until I broke both our hearts and he started seeping out of mine.There’s going to be tears in this birthday cake. I notice everything and I remember all the important things and it hurts today. Sometimes I stand right in front of a mirror when I’m crying, just to remember how beautiful I am when emotions run pure. I don’t know what it means but I know that I deserve you.

post by Michelle Beavers

Exactly.

Last night I sat on my porch with one of my oldest friends. I have known him since I was in elementary school and he has always been more pure and honest and golden with me than anyone in his life. He’s put his body through a lot, drinks excessively on a daily basis, has eaten his way to 300 pounds and is just thoroughly unhappy with the direction of his life and is essentially standing on the same edge that I’m watching quite a few people in my life stand upon (myself included). The past 2 weeks of my life have been governed by a quiet mind and an honest heart. I thought that after dealing with my brother almost dying there was going to be a lot of time spent tending to myself and putting a lot of other relationships in my life on the back burner. What has come instead is this calm, helpful honesty that feels so deeply rooted within me I cannot help but be filled with faith in my self. Without cultivating a single thought, I responded to his concerns and worries in a way that effected every inch of his being. I could see pain and honesty radiating out of his face and just how badly he didn’t want to give up on himself even though he just can’t think of anything else to do but just bury himself in doing what he believes society wants him to. When I explained everything that happened with my brother, the process of saving his life essentially, he looked at me and he said, “Of course you did everything right. You’re Miche.” 

I’ve spent a lot of my life not really understanding the unbelievable love that I receive from the people closest to me. Not knowing why my friends think I am such a ‘badass’, not knowing why so many of my friends treat me like I am their own blood and just generally not understanding how such a fumble-y, uncomfortable-in-her-own-skin girl became such an integral, honest part of so many people’s lives. I don’t know what it was about his saying what he did, but something clicked. I have been feeling fierce and calm and strong beyond my own understanding the past few weeks and I think for the first time in my life I am understanding just exactly what I am made of. I am going to meditate on consistency and expect nothing but honesty from myself and just hope that staying here is a possibility. I feel effective.

post by Michelle Beavers

Somebody left the gate open

Since I was a very small child, I enjoyed doing crafty things, and I always liked to paint.  But  for the longest time, it was a very peripheral activity, even less than a hobby, and I was mediocre at best.

I was shown painting in a new light by our very own Michelle in the summer of 2007, and again in the summer of 2008.  It was with Michelle, on the grass and on porches, with campers and with each other, on paper and skin that I fell in love with the colors and the feelings and the joys of painting.  Painting was free and effortless and about sharing beautiful moments with beautiful people… and maybe, perhaps, making something beautiful from it all.

Fast forward a few years, and Nate convinced me that painting was important and should be given the dignity of canvas and galleries, that painting on the floor in my notebooks was selling myself short.  And suddenly painting was serious.  It was about the results and not the process, something that was so opposite of what it once was for me.  His belief in me made me a better painter, one who had higher standards for herself.

And just recently, spending time with an accomplished musician made me feel once again that my art was outrageously mediocre.  It wasn’t a woe-is-me feeling, but rather a feeling of “Step it up, you can do better than that!”  It was inspiring, and I decided to paint more, work harder, and do better.

And just last night, I decided that I didn’t want to paint alone in my room on my easel.  I decided that it was roommate painting night, and I brought down my canvas pad and brushes and paints and set up shop on the middle of the living room floor, and insisted that my roommates sit down with me to paint.  We painted without object or goal, and despite their occasional questions, I gave them no direction.  We painted without egos, without notions of good and bad, often painting over what someone had just painted to add layers of depth and pattern.  From beginning to end, it was beautiful… the most beautiful artistic endeavor I’d been a part of in years.  I was overjoyed.  Painting had always been about shared experience, and it finally became that again.

I often say that I have a lot to learn, but even more to remember.  It’s so invigorating when you remember something you forgot you’d forgotten.

post by Amanda

Adjectives

Funny how life changes when you want it to.  Crazy how everything I’ve been wanting, I’ve been getting.  The universe is kind when you’re open to it.

“The truth is a pathless land.”  I’ve been thinking about that lately.  The people all around me are all on their own journeys… thinking about that, truly thinking about that, is mind-blowing.  The world is so wildly endless!

On a somewhat related note, I’ve realized that some of the most common words I use in my writing are: yes!, beautiful, wild, thank you, and growth.  I think those are pretty awesome words, but I might need to work on diversifying my adjectives a bit.

post by Amanda

Poetry shpoetry

An old poem from the summer of 2009 chronicalling some of the beautiful things that I’d recently experienced.  Life <3

The likes of which, I do not know
For the sake of you, I will not slow
The winking world gives me a glow
but NO! I will not stop.

I think of logs we dance across
avoiding a river’s run
The trees steal the sun to leave us none
but the mottled green I love

Specks of light that meet the earth
in transient little leaps
It seeps out life, I seek to find
a way to get inside

I stand aloft, barely rooted to
my small, new floating home
The swells, they look so swell! but small
from so high on my swaying perch

From underneath I look above
to see the surface, glimmering quake.
The world around me, exotic and new
but from the top, my eyes won’t shake

The bubbles in their slow ascent,
my mind is left so bent!
The beauty of this mirrored world–
I curl around this view I’m lent

We dig in dirt with fingers black
to give a second chance
Our stance is stooped with bended back
We let our friend take root

Stars that fall
burn the sky,
sizzle hearts.
We bask with lit-up eyes,
naked skin
in water around us.

SO much love to everyone I’ve ever shared a beautiful moment with.  You all rock!

-post by Amanda

For what it’s worth….

We talked and laughed, learning small bits and pieces of each other.  When I looked out the window, all I could see were the top halves of a few trees– a leafless deciduous of some sort and some evergreens– and the sky behind it.  It was a sky of such blue that it hardly seemed possible, and the thin, wispy clouds shifted shapes as they trekked quickly across the sky.  “What a beautiful view you have,” I remarked again and again.  What a beautiful view indeed.

post by Amanda Chirlin