Deadlines and Anniversaries

So much has occurred and passed without proper acknowledgement this year... A year since I physically parted ways with my mate of five years, almost to the date of our 5th anniversary... Things just seems to have reached a standstill. Sometimes I still wistfully imagine that whatever foolishness brought us to the break will dissipate, and we will find ourselves back again like co-conspirators in life. But our paths definitely diverged, and as much as I can see an example with my mother and stepdad, it is still the exception and not the rule. In fact, the rule very well is something that I will be fighting against, if we are to take all these women's magazines and talk show hosts seriously to the letter....

The deadline of my ship going out to sea is fast approaching, and I didn't take my motion sickness pills far enough in advance.

Here goes nothing...

On How to Not Get Boxed In

The true tenets of life dictate the clues by which one must meander, decipher and endure in order to keep on living in this plane of consciousness.  Here I am, again, sitting on the A train like a perennial bag lady schlepping more pieces of my life back to Brooklyn.

I went a step further today to excise myself from the island borough by completing the online DMV change of address/ID order. It actually hurts to separate from the 212, but I do appreciate many aspects of BK.  MA helped a lot on Friday night when we sweated to the oldies from the last decade, reminiscing  our highschool and undergrad frivolities. If I could have split myself, one of me would have been videotaping the whole debauchery.... videotape.... I don't think I will ever completely sever myself from the old language and culture of the 20th Century...

MA is my true dancing partner! Saturday night proved that yet again for me. Shouting out the love, my dear.

On the real, though, she really did help me to point out the enormous burden of stuff I needed pare down in this moving out/moving on process. I could almost really fantasize about stepping out with a suitcase and an assignment, not caring a whit about piles of forgotten yet deceptively "important" papers, books, knick-knacks. She talks about chopping off much of her gorgeous curly locks, and a part of me quakes in fear sweetened with jealousy. Will I ever have such a beautiful annoyance?

It's not flippant- when one considers my own thick bramble of natural hair that takes on a character not unlike the rainforests of our home country transmogrified in the sweltering NYC summertime- but the real benefit of going through the mental dissertation is the value of perspective. That right there binds friends tighter and straightens my spine to keep looking forward to my very immediate future.

I met with LushTongue on Wednesday and Sunday to make up for the past few weeks of my awol spirit and body. Singing really is therapeautic for me, and I do enjoy this new opportunity I've fallen into where I get to practice with like-minded women in song and artistic freedom (improv, original, cover, it's all good!). I am so much more interested and determined to shake off some of myself that keeps getting in my own way.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

This was just said to me, partly in joke and partly serious, from a co-worker/friend in response to my mentioning the mining officer that hit on me relentlessly while I was trying to enjoy a Banks beer in the Kurupung mining village. It was a singularly Caribbean experience, to say the least.

The interesting thing is what the intended effect that comment was supposed to have upon me.... Seeing as how I am in the deep jungle interior of Guyana at the time of this encounter, attempting to zone out from all that I left behind in New York.... one could say it was an ill-informed response.
Or, maybe the angels are making themselves known in both obvious and surreptitious ways.

Can you tell that I bristled just a little bit?

I wouldn't call myself one to ignore and chafe at sound advice, and I have been known at times to even entertain foolish commentary in order to open my mind to the grand exercise of tolerance and understanding.

And I cannot help but store this away like a chipmunk, in my cheek, for further ponderance...

To be revisited...