I Want To Ride My Bicycle, I Want To Ride My Bike

They say you're supposed to move when you are restless... So I did.

I went to a baby shower on Sunday for my friend Leena. She's due in August and it was nice to see her and laugh with her again. I looked at her big belly, as I do with all women in her condition. It's the only time I really feel a twinge of jealousy. I'm not even sure if it's what I would want right this minute but when I see pregnant bellies, I swoon. Maybe it's a girl thing.

After the shower, it was warm but after being part of big pink decorations for hours I came home and decided to go on a bike ride. I took Max's iPod with no destination and found myself heading down the same road I always take now.

I start along the edge of the water in our neighborhood. It's a long road, with marsh like shores with private docks that have signs that read "keep out". It was only five and I had air and water and... restlessness. So I rode my bike up the hills into the neighborhood. I zig-zaged up and down every road through out that area until I had seen every beautiful house at least twice or maybe three times. They were all cute and sweet. So many of them had bright flowers out front and cookouts in the back. Front porches with old people and wicker. Some people smiled when I drove by because I was smiling.

When I had seen all I could and coasted down all the hills without holding the handle bars, the rushes here were getting old and the music was still playing so I thought I would go back the way I came, past my house and continue on downtown.

I pushed hard up the hills telling myself it's what I should do. I shouldn't give up. I should just go and go and go, even if I was tired... Even if I was ready to fall over. So I kept going.

Ani DiFranco sang in my ears and I weaved through people on the sidewalks even though some didn't move when I was coming. I scooted behind restaurants and crossed streets on green lights and sang with no restriction. I rode past people and smiled at them. They ate at Dad's Restaurant and the Fish Market. Men pulled at ropes and sprayed down boats at the marina and I kept going. Over the bridge I could see the people dining below at Sunset Ribs.

I don't know why it's always so amazing when I ride my bike but it IS. It's like I see the world through rose colored glasses and my bicycle transports me to this place where I'm never tired, never hungry. I watch people living. It's my favorite.

I remember passing a man and his daughter once on one of my rides. They were partially hidden by bushes in the front yard but they sat on their front steps. I heard him say, "sometimes that's what friends are supposed to do..."
I loved that moment because I was passing life lessons happening.

My bicycle is the most powerful object I own besides myself. It's my vehicle and makes me feel free in ways nothing else can. I was gone 3 hours that night and I felt incredible. I felt incredible for days afterwards. I smiled brighter and my mood was stronger, my heart was happier and I felt like I was part of society again.

When I was in Willimantic there were days where I would stay up all night and when the sun would come up I would ride through the streets and watch people start their day. Men opening up shops and unloading trucks, children racing each other to the bus stop and I was a kid sitting on the steps of a church with her bike in her lap... Watching.

As pessimistic as I can be, I will always be the person who sits still and just watches, who listens to her car rattle and her brain run in the morning. Who loves good smells like perfumes and rain on asphalt. I am the person who sweats and is smiling because she appreciates the heat. I am the person who pays attention and chews her food so slow, she's always the last one at the table.

They say that movement is a one of the first key ingredients in calming yourself and I think I understand part of that. I've tried going on long walks and while they are good for talking with friends, they aren't good for opening up yourself. It's my bicycle that moves me... In more ways than one. I have to have my music though too. It's my potion of devotion and I loveee it.

I was proud of myself. What can I say? I just smiled for days.

M O V E YO U R B O D Y T O D A Y .

They Won't Let Us Die, They Won't Let Us Eat

Today's article was
"The Dilemma of Genetic Engineering and Landmines".
A completely random yet ethically challenging question about GMO's (genetically modified organisms) and how they can help us. Normally it would be a question of GMO's having pesticides built into their genes or changing them to be riper, bigger and more fruitful. Today another spin has been put on, proving that once again GMO's can come to the rescue... if only we'd let them...

America... She wouldn't know a good thing if it kicked her in the teeth. Oh America... Such a young nation still picking up the pieces of a fucked up past only to be in the process of making new wounds.

In environmental studies (one of my most beneficial classes at my no name university) I learned about the Asian over-population. We learned about how wildly out of control it was and the system that was created to bring it back down. The ways the communities were set up to have older women check on the younger ones to make sure they weren't thinking about having more than one child. The health care system that was set up for free, for LIFE, for the single child family. Could America do that? Not in a million years. Why? Cause they don't wanna. That's why.
I have to laugh at all you fools with Hummer's today as you cry at every gas pump you pull up to. A very perfect representation of America. They just want what they don't need and then when it bites them in the ass, they don't understand why.

We JUST started the "Go Green" movement. Where has the rest of the world been all this time? While I was getting picked on by my roommates at school for taking home our papers and recycling every week, no body thought that maybe it would be a good idea to follow my lead. But that's America... Lazy.

So can you tell I'm a little bitter at how badly our country treats itself? Of course it's a beautiful nation, chalk full of opportunities for almost anyone but like any young lady, America has a lot of growing up to do.

So what of this article? GMO's... a touchy subject. Why? It reminds me of when I sat in my class room and the professor showed us a picture of clean energy windmills.
She said they wanted to put these out in an ocean, where the mills could spin constantly and supply us with clean energy. I thought it was amazing and fascinating at some of the things we've made to harvest the elements to use for power. But then she said that a petition was signed in an area they wanted to build. The people who lived on the water said they bought their houses for the view they had and they didn't want some man-made feature out in the water. Even though the structures would only appear an inch in height from the shore. The amount of clean energy we through away the day they said no, makes my head spin. Because of the view.

Sticking with the theme, let's hop back to the genetically modified good stuff. Both sides of this GMO argument come with heavy opinions. Personally I love things that are natural. It would be lovely to say they could stay that way but science is moving too fast to stop it now. The thought that we may be able to specially order what kind of baby comes out is just plain scary. But we don't live in the natural world anymore.

We are excessive people. We want everyone to live longer, bigger, stronger lives. Medicine's keep us alive, computers run our schedules and cars bring us to work. There's nothing natural about that, but it's the life we chose. And if our nation chose to bury weapons, well, it's only their responsibility to make it right. If GMO's can save lives, whether by keeping you from blowing up or by feeding you... How is that different from cutting down miles of natural rainforest to make paper, houses, or the deck you fry your burgers on?

If we don't want people to ever die, which is how medicine and the ethics connected with the sick tends to lead us to believe... Then we need to have a back up plan. Statistics show that more people are living longer. Quality of life is questionable but the point is, there are more mouths to feed and more going hungry everyday. Some people don't have the luxury to say, let nature do it's thing. Man has already gone against the natural flow by cheating death and harnessing "natural" things to make them unnatural. I don't believe it's fair to say we can pick and choose. We'd all be hypocrites, wouldn't we? Unless we live in teepee's in the woods and live off the land.

When you look at us as animals who are surviving - nature is our resource, so let it be that, in whatever form it can be.

Practicing Enlightenment

I want to close my eyes and see (or not see) a teddy bear but instead I see all the thoughts hanging over my head. This article makes me question my insecurites in that department for the first time. When this concept was first presented to me, it was more than satisfying to know that I wasn't crazy, I was just misinformed from my brain.

I accepted that it was a good answer to a bad problem. I always thought people were mad at me for one reason or another, even when I couldn't figure out what the reason was! But this week has been rough and we've been so distant. The article says that emotional distance is normal and that I should relax and let things happen as they do. I find this an incredibly trying practice. But I'm the one that wants to practice. So I need to keep on.

I read a blog on PsychologyToday.com and I believe it was about forming habits. I could be completely off on where I got this but since I'm on that site all day, it must've come from there.... This one man talked about his love/hate relationship with the road as he became a runner. It pulled him out of bed early and he was tired and it made his bones ache. But everyday he got up and he ran. It was warm, it was cold, it was raining or it was just plain early. But he ran.

Eventually it got to the point where he and the road had an intimate relationship. He found rhythm and stride. Suddenly he didn't notice his bones aching or the watch on his wrist. It was about watching the world wake up and experiencing personal growth and stability through practice. That is what I must do.

In these low points of confusion and wonder, I have no choice but to lay down my vulnerability to this exercise and pray that it is the right one and I will not loose people on the way. I love each of them differently and uniquely as they are all different and unique to me.

They call it the "path to enlightenment". Have I put a name to the airy feeling I'm becoming aware of? I wondered if this new 'thinking' was the way of Buddha. I looked it up here. I found that the simple principles of taking care of yourself and each other had already been such a big part of my life, it wasn't entirely foreign to me. I often thought I was the last person on earth who believed we should have faith that people can change and that we should take care of each other. So why weren't we? But, it was the way in which I let it sit backwards. I worked for others before I worked for myself and when you put all your eggs in one basket, well, there's nothing left for you and you're starved.

I've let other people's reactions control me for so long and now that I've finally seen that there's a way out of it... It's terrifying and depressing in one of the best ways possible. I think of all the anger I've carried and how I wasted so many people and events and emotions on things that only existed in my mind because I was scared to alone. When in actuality, I've been alone all along. The good part? There's an actual method to my madness and it's actually not madness at all!

This is the point where I turn to accept my solitude and work whole-heartedly towards a study that could easily change my entire life; just by having new eyes. Like that quote from the movie, Loving Anabelle.

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in
having new eyes.
~Marcel Proust

That's really all it is and all it can ever be. My lanscape, (people), will never change. It is only in having new eyes to view them will I be able to truely appreciate and adore them, the way I long to do, from the safest point available. People as a whole are a messy, crazy, happy, sad mix. I love them so I need to learn to love all parts them... Even the messy, crazy, sad part.

Namaste

The Piano Man

((**This entry was written on scrap paper at Mohegan Sun**))

Jamie loved Billy Joel.
I remember burning the cd at his Applewood house when he moved his room upstairs into Kathryn's old one. That was six years ago when we had just finished high school and I was wondering if I still loved him, or if I could love the new person that he had become.

Today... Right now, the Billy Joel is 20 feet away from me singing "we didn't start the fire". I can see Jamie's fat head in my mind, bobbing along to the tune, singing every word. He loved Billy Joel.

Now I work as an accountant during the day and by night I am an usher for an arena that has housed dozens of celebrities a year. Some celebrities and their music do nothing to me, some of them move me for their musical talent and every once in a while i will get an artist who kicks up emotional dust. Each one that brings me to tears is over a person that is no longer part of my life.
Part of them is resurrected in the notes and words that fill the air. I'm suddenly transported to another time and place and it's like I'm there all over again and i can smell the leather seats in Jamie's car or the perfume in the hall from Jolene.

Today, May 31st, the "Italian restaurant" plays and Jamie's face haunts me. These people who I loved with parts of me I didn't think I could, will never be gone from me. I'll store them away when I can but the Billy Joel's, Rod Stewart's (yes, I know.. I'm old) and the Josh Groban's will bring them all back out up to the surface and I'll end up face to face with them again.

So much of me wants them in my life but more of me knows that they only come with chaos and are gone for legit reasons.
I'm not asking for easy love and easy relationships. Just a certain amount of forgiveness and more acceptance than people want to pass out.

We lost each other for a reason. For too much pain back then and the amount that still remains. My heart aches when the piano plays and I want to laugh, dance and fall down crying all at once.

Maybe I appreciate music; maybe I appreciate people, words and the like more than the average person. Or maybe I'm just like everybody else.

Maybe it's just an intricate case of missing people and an ultimate test of will to stay away from them. I don't know, even for myself. Now I have new faces and new loves, fresther scares and cleaner breaks.

But the piano man sings now, his own song, "Piano Man". The crowd screams and everyone is sill when the harmonica sounds.

"He says, bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well Im sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"
-Billy Joel

The stage lights are blue and the drunken crowd (on both excitement and booze) is swaying in all opposite directions, making an arena of 9300 appear to be a human ocean and I'm happily drowning in, out of tune, voices. You get lost in their emotion sometimes. As though I could swim through their sound and movement. The arena brings out the strangest feelings in me sometimes.

The song ends. It was the final encore, so Billy stands and says:

Don't take any shit from anybody,

and he left the stage.

The Warmth

Don't let the world bring you down
Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold
Remember why you came
and while you're alive
experience the warmth
before you grow old

The Warmth ~ Incubus

The sunlight stretches across my computer screen and Incubus is in my ears. It's Sunday evening and my body is warm from walking in the sun all day. I'm not sure what's happening in the air but there's a change there I can't put my finger on. As though it's something I've never even fathomed but suddenly my mind is forced to look it in the face. Like stumbling across an alien spaceship in the woods. Wrap your mind around that. Right now, it's the only way I can describe it. Like my eyes are only half open and I'm starting to notice things that no one else ever will.

I watch the way people interact with each other as though I were standing at the zoo on the other side of the glass, studying a new species. People look so much like animals to me sometimes; especially when I see small children walking hand in hand with their parents.

I'm calmer for longer periods of time. I get upset but I don't get out of control. I get annoyed and keep it to myself until it's safe to talk about. I am forgiving of her again and again. She's a true test of patience and I don't need to put my pencil down yet.

I'm on my day off and it's been blissful. I read what I can to open my mind, watch some mindless internet videos and lay down on my brother's king size bed to watch Jeopardy. Isn't it funny how far away I feel from these people and I spend all my free time around them and they don't always know me and they don't always like me and here I am... relaxing in his room on his bed.

He'd kill me if he knew.

I think it feels like an apartment and it's different scenery to me, so I feel right at home. And by home I mean, some place I haven't even been before existing somewhere waiting for me to rent.

Rewriting Summer

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
-Oscar Wilde

Okay so the sun has been shining, the earth is warm, the air is humid and we should all be smiling. So... are you?

Last summer I had a blast with new friends I had made at Mohegan Sun. While things got a little hairy with my one friend (let's call her Eve), we still managed to go dancing all the time, party and have a great time.

However, when August rolled around, getting closer to September, there was trouble in paradise. The friends I had made started to hit a rough patch and through that time, it had devistated me. We were all fighting and clawing at each other's throats. How did things get so out of hand? Some of them went back to school and some of them came home on the weekends to work. Things mellowed out for a while, but it didn't really last.

Naturally, there was a falling out. To make a long story short, girls fight dirty. Why? Jealous, competition and greed get in the way really fast and I'm not that kind of a person who gets into it, I just get stuck in it. So the winter was rough without being friends with Eve because I missed her. That slowly shifted and we apologized to each other and moved on. Then it was my other friend I had to get rid of because she was getting so full of herself I thought her head may explode and we'd all die from the nuclear explosion. She had to go.

Now it's the cusp of summer where warm days are a lot closer together and hopefully the sun is warming up the ocean so we can go swimming. People are getting sunburned and didn't know they could and the drama... Yes, the drama has started back up again.

Eve graduated school and celebrated her 22nd birthday with a sour puss on her face. I had offered to help her by even telling her I'd take time off of work to spend the day with her. I was willing to help her with her problems. But she was distant and I before I knew it, the whistle had blown and the games had begun.

Here's where the lesson comes in. I didn't stay on the field. I realized where I was standing, said a few words to her to let her know I didn't want to play and I left.

Last year this would have been impossible! I cried about Eve and the mess that was around us all. Everything was foggy and I couldn't see who was throwing the ball around. But I can clearly see today that it is her. I tried to reason with her but her outrageous claims only hightened so I told her that I tried and that now I had to go.

Naturally she is furious and believes that I'm a terrible, fair-weather friend, who never cared but of course we all know different. If anyone cared, it was me. But I smiled to myself, not because she was miserable but, because I knew I found the hole in the boat and patched it before we all sunk. I can't help it if she jumped out. She refuses to be rescued, therefore, she's not my problem anymore and I feel pretty good about it.

I'm proud that I can remove myself from people when I have to but still be emotionally available to them if they need it. I think that's where this article taught me to put that all to rest.

The reason I stand by these articles is because without awareness of what's around you, how can you make educated decisions? I would've fallen back into that cycle of "don't be mad at me" and cried about it. Why should I let someone else make me cry and ruin my summer if they don't even care about me? I shouldn't.

So the moral of this story is, if someone is playing games with you, drop the ball and forfiet. There is no shame in dropping your weapon because an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Are your eyes open?

Why We Shouldn't Care, In Order to Care

"To change the world
Start with one step
However small
The first step is hardest of all

If you close your eyes'Cause the house is on fireAnd think you couldn't move,Until the fire diesThe things you never didOh, cause you might die tryingYou'd be as good as dead.
If you give, you begin to liveYou begin, you get the world."~dave matthews band

In reference to my last post, I was quite upset with the actions, reactions and lack of actions (for that matter) by my mother and brother. This family unit proves to be my greatest obstacle. When I presented this idea to The Teacher, Michael, he asked me why I cared.

Why did I care that my brother wants nothing to do with me and my mother thinks I'm a bad person? Hmm. I argued that they were my family and the rules are different. But are they? While those two do bring out an inner nastiness and a primitive anger in me, was I really this terrible person they seemed to believe I was?

I didn't think so. So really the rules are not different for them. Every person on this planet has an opinion of another so just because we were born together doesn't mean their opinions are right. Look at my grandmother, her views are terribly skewed.

When I use my time to sort out my social life, I never think to sort out my mother and brother. My reason for this is because I don't believe they will ever change. But that's just it, for the most part, people don't change! My mother and brother behaved exactly as I thought they would, so why was I shocked? Consistancy. People are creatures of habit.

But what does this have to do with my family thinking I royally suck at life? Well, everything. No matter what I do today, they will remember all the yesterday's and live in the cycle that I'm trying to break away from.

The difference is, when you start to become aware of your surroundings and the people in it, you fall out that consistancy. As a human being, I will fall back into some kind of consistant pattern but for right now, I feel like I'm in a state of transition. I'm in a limbo of sorts, teetering on the line of concious and unconcious awareness. Most of the actions of my friends are 90% dismissable today whereas all the yesterday's turned into a big deal. It was very hard to let things slide and I felt like everything had to be brought to their attention because they 'hurt my feelings carelessly'. This doesn't mean that I won't still bring matters to the surface but I will be able to present them in a less harmful way for both parties.

So as I'm learning this forgiveness, acceptence and pattern of human nature, I hadn't applied it to the people I actually LIVE with. Why not? These two people are just as faulted, (if not more), than the people I choose to have in my life (my friends). Their opinion on me should not matter because if it does not match the opinion I have of myself, then what good is it to me?

Do I think I am a good person? Do I know that I'm trying to change my views? My way of living? My approach to people? Yes, I know what goes through my head every day. I know how people outside my house react to me. Of course we have our differences but more often than not, these people are warm and kind to me. I have heard many things from people only proving the theory I have about myself.

I rock.

Unfortunately the goal is to not to ignore negative feedback about ourselves but instead, look it over and decide if it has standing or not. If you're being called a careless slob, don't just say "I am not!" Review the information (sometimes in the form of an insult). Are you a slob because you are careless? Or do you work two jobs, sometimes running double shifts with no dinner and come home exhausted? I think being a little messy is justified. If you're home all day and simply can't be bothered well then, think about that.

The bottom line is that even the good comments from people can be misleading. What you always need to look at is how you view yourself. If you have a bad view of yourself, why is that? Is it because someone else has a bad view of you? Do you think they have any argument to accuse you of whatever travesty?

Self improvement seems to just learning to ask before reacting. When something happens you are asking yourself why it happened and then why you feel you do, THEN you're supposed to react accordingly. Life is a series of questions to yourself. Are you asking enough questions? Are you asking the right ones?

I was in a bad situation the other day. Was I at fault? Partly, yes. I didn't ask myself to stop anticipating the destruction that hadn't even happened yet. Did I deserve the reaction I got from all the rest of the parties involved? Not really but it probably could have been avoided.

So no matter who is judging you today, they always say, "consider the source". Such easy words, such trying practice. So practice.

Because in dismissing the negative things people have to say about us (if we don't care what they say), in turn, we learn to care about the most important thing... ourselves.

And when we care about ourselves, we can care for the whole world.