A Brief Meltdown

Parkside
6:51pm

I woke up in a panic face-down on the massage table.  I was sweating profusely and I couldn't breathe very well.  She had already worked her way to my head, behind my ears and onto my skull and I couldn't recall anything before the lower back and ribcage pursuits.

Where my forehead rest on the face cradle, sharp deep pains penetrated my head.  My stomach lurched and I thought Oh god I am going to pass out.

How can you pass out if you were just asleep?

Something was wrong.  I felt intensely ill, hot and uncomfortable, like I'd just puke right there on her feet.  She is such a great person, though, that she'd make it seem like it wasn't at all unusual.  Though I would never ever show my face in there again.  And I'd have to buy her new shoes.

I stayed this way for many minutes, quietly panicking, having a silent freak-out in the still, dim room.  I tried to control my breathing to see if I could make it subside.

I couldn't.  It only grew more intense.

I didn't know how much time had passed.  Was it almost over anyway?  Had it just begun?

Thinking back now, it's actually a little ridiculous how long I waited before I said something.  I am much too polite.

"Um, Missy?  I feel a little faint."

Turns out it was almost over anyway.  And, as I expected, she was awesome and understanding and didn't contribute in any way to my feeling embarrassed.  Because I did feel embarrassed.  I know it's not really a situation to feel embarrassed - afterall, I couldn't help it - but I did anyway.  Must be that very shy part of me.

I rolled over under the sheet onto my back and tried to regain my breath, sweat dripping from my upper lip.  I calmed and steadied my head, my stomach, and stayed there for a few minutes. 

Had I just overheated?  Was I having a hot flash?  It was a warm day, and I did have some heat on my muscles, but I didn't think it was that extreme.

Even after I no longer felt I'd faint, a strangeness remained.  I felt like I'd gone to sleep and awoke in a different time and place.  Like I slept for a hundred years, the whole world changed around me while I slept, and I awoke not knowing where I was or why I was.  Like my life is a dream and I woke up into real life.  On my walk home, the air stirred in the big new leaves on the trees, and something stirred inside me, too.  Something mystical was happening.  It felt like I was floating.

Was it because right then, at that moment, not one muscle in my entire body was aching?  Is that why I felt so strange?  Like my body wasn't mine, and I was feeling the earth and sky through some other means?  Because at any given moment on any given day, I experience some amount of pain or discomfort, and to not feel that was completely foreign?

The strangeness continued the rest of the evening.  I made a salad but I was scattered and disorganized.  I told the Boy a story and got some of the words wrong.  Like, way wrong.  Clouded and mystified and odd.

I woke up alive today, so I'll take that as a good sign.  I can check seizure, stroke, and aneurism off the list.

Day: Saturday. Mood: Quiet

Stumptown
7:40am
I want to run again.  A lady is talking to a man about a 10k and my guts wrenched for a second.  I want that feeling of freedom, of weightlessness, of not caring and feeling my breath move in and out of stretching lungs.
My gym workouts are okay.  The stairs are good and challenging enough.  But it's not the same.  I can't walk out into my neighborhood, breathe deep the chilly air and step out onto a stairmaster. 


8:30am
Children are mesmerized by me.  I don't appear to be doing anything differently, but the last two days I have suddenly become very compelling to these new little minds.  I don't think I'm doing anything differently.  They must sense something about me.  They must sense that I'm almost 27 and without children.
I am quite okay with this, but biologically the universe is like Tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Thanks for the reminder, Universe.


8:45am
Dear Laura Walker,
I'm afraid you are severely undercharging for your artwork.  It pains me a little.
Love,
Newly Devoted Fan


8:55am
I think too hard too much.  Sometimes answers come not by thinking so hard to find them, but by relaxing the mind and letting go to let the answers arrive naturally.  Like that sand metaphor: If you squeeze too tightly a handful of sand, it spills away.  But if you hold it gently in a cupped hand, you can carry and bolster it.
I'm thinking sitting in a public space and drawing and writing is good for this kind of thing.
Relaxing my thoughts and absorbing the soothing sounds of low chatter and coffee clamor.

Why don't I do this anymore?
 ...
It feels like it's been a long time since I've sat and reflected and written down my thoughts.  It feels a little unfamiliar.
I think there's some fear.  Not wanting to confront some things, maybe.  Not wanting to address frustrations in my life and delve into thought paths that are all too familiar and, sometimes, dark.
Lately I feel like things aren't going the way I want them to.  I don't know if it's me or if it's everybody else.

It's easy to think it's everybody else.
...
I

Momma Says: Who IS this man?! I, Too, Have No Idea

Within six months, my brother went from

living alone in a shoebox struggling for work, wondering what to do with himself between sporadic stints at an ailing business, going so far as to solicit himself to complete strangers, including knocking on doors to sell himself to prostitution (okay that last part is a lie), to

getting spontaneously engaged, married 37 days later, interviewing for and scoring a new job in six days, working 115-hour weeks, barely having enough time to sleep let alone eat, wondering how his life has changed simultaneously so awesomely and so rapidly, and then, the piece de resistance: getting a HOUSE so he can FINALLY move his family here after MONTHS of working his patootie off.  (NONE of this part is a lie.)

But, you must know this is not just any house.  This house has a (really big) yard.  And a garage.  And an island in the kitchen, the size of a real island.  And a chicken coop.  And chickens!  Well, not yet, but there will be.  This house is a grown up house.  This can only mean my brother is a grown up.

Or, he is an alien inhabiting my brother's body and masquerading as a very convincing grown up.

Either way, there is still a house involved where I get to go on Saturday mornings and drink coffee, eat breakfast, and shoot the proverbial shizite.

So the house is basically the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, aside from a few other things: Fort Youngstown (of course), my freshly-birthed nephew, and Jesus coming down from the clouds on a particularly mystical summer day last year.  Well, it felt like Jesus, but it could've been someone else I suppose.

Brother and I went out to la Casa de Byrom on Saturday where he signed papers and picked up the keys.  Then the two of us, unable to peel our jaws from the floor or wipe the look of pure childlike elation from our faces, spent the afternoon running between all the rooms, figuring out precisely how many jokes we could make about his "big deck," drinking coffee, planning a wedding party, and taking photos of every conceivable crook and nanny.

Thus, what follows: a [virtual] tour of the [gigantic] abode.

Front door

WOMP.  Living room/entry way

Kitchen

(Brother really liked the kitchen.)

Dining room, to the deck

"So, how big is your deck?"

"Big decks are the only kind of decks."

"A friend of mine has a small deck, but it just doesn't get the job done."

(He really liked the deck, too.)

Come to think of it, he really liked

the master bedroom

the huge living area with fancy heater fireplace

the dining room with french doors

and the hallway.

Brother also especially adored

the Grey Room

the Yellow Room

the two-car garage

and the backyard.

Needless to say, the jacuzzi tub

Dish washer

Stackable laundry

 

and chicken coop are all just icing on the cake.  

The enormous, enormous cake.

HOORAH!

You Want Love?

THIS is love.

Time lapse video, a father's daughter from birth to twelve years.

Breath is Music Enough: Saturday Morning at Fat Straw

Breath is music enough 

One day my dear friend KT texted me a list of things "I believe" -- If you type your name and then the word "believes" into the Google Machine in quotes, you find snippets from the interwebs of things that you, or She With Same Name, "believe."  It is quite fun and I was delighted to get blasted with a bunch of messages that was a compiled list of these believes. They are rather surprising and, often, uncannily accurate.

Paige believes:

• godless heathens should stop ripping Tim Tebow

• in a higher standard of service

• that being beautiful can turn a bad day into a good one 

• we are all born with the ability to tell stories

All of these are ridiculously true.  Especially the 3rd and 4th ones.  

So, I couldn't NOT reciprocate.

KT believes:

• in what the members call “karmic-synergy”

• that packaging and presentation is everything

• that movement is one of the great joys of life, however we choose to experience it

• that breath is music enough 

• prenatal yoga will encourage women to be more present with their pregnancy

And that one -- breath is music enough -- struck me so poignantly I haven't been able to shake it since.  And I don't think I should.  I don't know where it came from or who wrote it, and I am by no means saying it belongs to me, but simply a wonderful phrase I feel compelled to spread around.

The ambient grooves at Fat Straw have me lost in a buzzy trance.

The cup of Stumptown helps, too. 

Going through my sketchbook and finding fun tidbits I'd long forgotten.

...

     Does art happen spontaneously?
     Or is it calculated?
     Or both?


I miss Matthew.
As a friend, as an artist, as a bearer of ideas and brainstorming.
Something tells me he’d appreciate my left-handed adventures.
…
And then he called me a few days later, when we haven’t spoken in months.
I told him of my left-handed adventures and he liked them.
He also wants pictures.
Eek . . .



     Does your own reflection ever startle you?
     Even if you know it’s there?

 

The only thing that is reliably permanent is impermanency.

     You can’t help when you feel creative.  Just like you can’t help gravity.

No fat
No preservatives
No cholesterol
No fun


A:  You like Rob Thomas?
B:  So?
A:  Nothin’.  I just didn’t know anyone liked him anymore.
B:  I have a Rob Thomas shaped hole in my music heart.


The Ultimate Death Match:

     Sagittarius Male vs. Cancer Female GO.

Things to Attain Awesomeness:
leather handbag …..................... pending
skin tight jeans …......................... check 

brown boots ….......................... pending
leather bomber jacket …............ pending
rockin’ ass ….............................. check 

bespoke; verb
a simple past tense and past participle of bespeak  

bespeak; verb
1. to ask for in advance; to bespeak the reader’s patience
2. to reserve beforehand, engage in advance, make arrangement for; to bespeak a seat in a theatre
3. to show, indicate; this bespeaks a kindly heart

Solo Saturday: Part I

As my mother would say, it was a bloodless coup.  It didn't stand a chance, not one bit of chance against my ferocious kitchening skills.  What, you ask?  What didn't stand a chance?

DINNER.

I'm not one to toot my own horn, but tonight I'm feeling generous so I will make an exception.  I am a total badass in the kitchen.  .....sometimes.  Tonight happens to be one of those Sometimes.  I took that dinner and I wrangled it to the ground.  I took it by the neck and whirled it around until there was no pulp left to beat out of it.

It happened like this.  (Yes, for me to make a nice dinner, something does in fact have to happen.)

I went into the Wal in search of the face lotion I like.  Upon entering the store, I was very dismayed that a Demolition Durby was taking place and I did not have fair warning.  If you didn't already know, the new thing now is putting full grocery departments into Wal Marts and Targets, but to do so they have to demolish the part of the store that they're not replacing, keep it like that for just long enough so you get used to it, and then they change everything back when they put it back together again.  This means everything gets moved around, which really annoys me.

So the Cosmetics and Toothpaste sections are now at the far end where the Random Holiday Crap used to be, the Eyeballs and Pills sections are smashed up against a very strange wall that did not used to exist, and the Bicycle section is completely missing.  When I got all the way to the far end, it was dark and creepy.  Not the kind of place I want to shop for makeup or face lotion.  But I was willing to take the hit.  This lotion is THAT good.

When I couldn't find it I became unbelievably annoyed.  I know what the box looks like.  I know the brand.  Where is it?  WHERE. IS. IT?!?!?  I kept standing in the Face Stuff aisle, frantically searching for the lotion because sometimes I don't see things that are right in front of me, so I had to check every single bottle on the shelf just to make sure.  The lady stocking and straightening the bottles looked at me funny.  I looked at her funny back, and she put her head down and kept straightening the bottles.  My rage became exponentially worse as the minutes ticked on.  How can they not have this lotion??  Freddy's has it.  Target has it.  Why the hell doesn't Wal Mart have it?!  How am I supposed to get a good deal if it's not at Wal Mart?!?!?  RAAAAAAAAGE.

I know my story was originally about dinner.  Don't worry, I'm getting there.

I decided to walk off my anger attack in the soup aisle and got even more mad that the soups I like are a buck eighty-eight a can.  A buck eighty-eight!  Unacceptable!  What happened to soup being a buck a can?  Back in the day soup was less than a dollar a can.  When did that stop being the case?  Why are the prices of everything skyrocketing?  No, I will not pay four dollars a pound for chicken, either.  It only costs that much because now we're giving chickens beds and privacy and social lives and well-balanced, wholesome lives that don't have anything to do with the fact that that chicken will eventually end up in my belly no matter what.  That, my friends, is a little thing we call "extortion."

And when the hell did I turn into an old codger, anyway?  There is a blog I follow by this young funny lady and one of her recent posts is about being an 80-year-old woman in a 22-year-old's body.  I think we might be twin sisters.

Moving on.  After I got mad about the soups I wandered around huffing and puffing for a while looking for any other overpriced items I might need for home and/or my stomach.  It occurred to me in the pasta aisle (I will note the pasta aisle in Wally World seemed particularly dismal today -- don't go there for pasta.  They only had four different kinds and none of them were whole wheat, so it's a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME) that I should make a delicious dinner tonight.  And it also occurred to me that this dinner should be none other than: fettucini tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, with a summer vegetable sautee and garlic lemon shrimp.  Why this particular meal?  I have no idea.  It popped in my head like a light, so I wasn't about to question it.  And, I discovered I was much less mad about the lotion after I decided to eat something delicious.  I'm not sure how that works because they are about as unrelated as stuff can get, but whatever.

I would not find such yummy ingredients at this awful place with bombs going off and piles of rubble everywhere, so I went to Freddy's for supplies.  I found everything quickly and efficiently and came home straight away to cook.  YAY!  Mission salvaged!

So the REASON I am such a badass is NOT ONLY because of this beautiful meal I just devoured maniacally

but because I cooked it expertly: everything was done all at the right times and all the parts were hot and delicious all at the same time.  If you don't cook, this is perhaps the most difficult part.  Well, for me anyway.  Most of the time the main dish is hot and awesome (that's what he said?) but the vegetables and whatever else sit around for a while and end up cold and impatient.  

But not today!  I was fantastic!  I was a savage!  I took that dinner and said BOOM, DINNER!  You're DONE!

Some things I learned:

• Shrimp is no longer mysterious to me.  If you buy frozen, buy it raw.  Defrost in cold water and sautee in butter and minced garlic with lemon juice.  And that's IT.  Easy peasy.  Way better than Red Lobster.
• I really did miss summer vegetables during the winter, no matter how much I tried to deny it.
• Having four arms really would be much better than two.

And this is what it amounted to:

• Yellow squash, zucchini, asparagus sauteed in olive oil, shallot, ground mustard and cider vinegar, topped with fresh cracked black pepper
• Whole wheat fettucini with olive oil, salt and pepper
• Jumbo shrimp, sauteed in butter, fresh minced garlic, lemon juice

If you make this, eat everything happily and with passion.  And be glad your kitchen skillz are almost as good as mine.  BOO-YAH.

Time and Space: A Brief Journey

A few nights ago the Boy and I were discussing astrology, time, the metaphysical, culture, and other heady topics.  We lounged about on a very pretty well-made bed (courtesy of moi) and got lost in an elaborate web of exchange that stirred something up in my brain.  For the next few days, all I could think about was this mysterious concept of time: events, past and future, and how they are connected.

Specifically, the strange event that occurs when we have a thought about something or someone (more often someone), and then a day, a few days, a week, or months later that thought manifests in reality.  Say, you have a sudden thought of an old coworker or friend, one with whom you haven't spoken in months or years, seemingly "out of nowhere."  Then soon after, you bump into that person in the grocery store, at your job, on the street, and this occurrence feels uncanny.  It feels like you predicted the future.  

Why do our brains do this?

Why does this happen more often than many folks would like to admit?

Because it DOES happen quite often, doesn't it?

Are we predicting the future?  Or, are we making the future happen just by having the very thought itself?

I have a theory.

*ahem*

We tend to think of time -- the measure of "finite duration" by which we measure "sequential relations" -- in terms of specific events or places, either in the past or future, on a timeline, distinct and disconnected from other moments at different times and places.

Two years ago, I was living in ____ and doing ____.

Yesterday, I did ____.

Tomorrow at 2:00 I will be ______.

Right now, later, two days ago, in a week, etc. I will be _____, was going to _____, wanted to be _____, etc.

Yesterday at 2:00 is somehow different, separate, and apart from five years ago at 6:00, as if these two moments exist independently of one another.  However, these two moments in time are actually connected by an infinite number of other moments, hooked in a big long chain, directly linking one moment to the other.  A simple concept in geometry illustrates this very well: two points on a plane are connected by one line, while the line is actually an infinite number of points.  The points are distant and distinct, but directly connected on the same plane.

Also, like water molecules in a pond. A molecule at one side of the pond is a different molecule than one at the other side, each separate and distinct.  But, these two events are not separated by nothingness and void.  Rather, they are linked continuously by many chains of other molecules creating a stream, a blanket of continuity. Distinct and different, but not disconnected.

Time behaves in the same way.  All moments at different times and places are but an infinite number of interconnected moments with no gaps or holes, simultaneously existing independently and dependent upon one another.  Thus, "past" and "future" are indistinguishable. 

Future events are seamlessly connected to the present, to the past, to the distant past.  Future events are not made of something different than current or past events, but are merely further out on the “chain” of time’s continuum -- opposite, or "further from," past events.  Whether or not the time is now, yesterday, or tomorrow is irrelevant. 

If this is the case, that the very construction of tomorrow's moments and yesterday's moments are the same, then it doesn't matter much that tomorrow's events have not happened yet.  They will, certainly, just as yesterday's moments have, but we merely have not experienced them yet.

Returning to the original idea of uncanny occurrences, I am inclined to think we are not experiencing a premonitory event, that the thought of a person or event does not cause that person or event to materialize later.  Nor are we predicting the future, saying with certainty that an event is going to occur.

Instead, the future event -- bumping into the person we were just thinking about, experiencing a moment that we had a very distinct dream about a few days prior, receiving an email or text message from someone we thought about months ago and then forgot -- has already occurred in time and space before we experience it.  Because the event has already occurred even at the moment of its inception, having the sudden thought "pop into our heads out of nowhere," we are experiencing a memory of this event from the future.  Our future selves know of this encounter, moment, thought, manifestation in reality, and we reference the memory of the occurrence before we experience it in present time.  The event hearkens "back" to us a reference that travels through the continuous stream of interconnected moments between then and now, like traveling on a road between two faraway cities. It seems uncanny because the referenced event hasn’t occurred yet, but in reality it has already occurred and we feel its ripple.

Like I said, a theory.  But it delights me.