We’re Strictly Ballroom

I’m caught up in finals and the end of the semester crunch and not having the internet at home, that I’ve been kind of scatter brained, but alas! I’m almost done!

Recently I’ve been hit with carity. And finally feel like I’ve found that direction Ive been trying to mold for quite some time now.

When I came home from the warped tour for good, I felt like it was all over, I was just left with feelings of loss that I didnt face before I left and a new semester at a new school in a new(ish) city. I now feel like Ive reached the next phase of my life. The phase I hear ‘adults’ talk about so much, when you blink and a year has passed. Because I dont know where the hell these past 12 months went. And if my exsistance were a short paragraph, I feel like those months have all been in parenthesis. Ive been cutting to the point, pulling everything togther, buiding a foundation and setting new goals. I’ve done and expierenced so much and yet i feel as though i have very little to show for it. Sometimes it takes awhile, i suppose.

Its sort of a drag, I guess, seeing as how much Im enjoying this stage my life is in. Ive seen that everyone eventually ends up in the same place, but none of us know when we will end up there. So maybe it isnt about getting there, but about where you are now, and how you feel about being there. A year ago I felt like a fuckup and lost, and totally unprepared for the impending heartbreak, and then the triumphs of being on tour. I now realize that with every defeat there are a million little victories, and with every victory, there may be a bunch of little defeats.

Nothing is ever one thing.

And I dont know why it took me so long. But Ive realized that everyone is so influenced by everything around them that they may not have any real clue of why they do what they do. We spend so much time trying to be different but we are so concerend that something we are feeling or doing is abnormal. We hardly know ourselves.

All of this makes me feel pretty good about being anywhere and doing anything as long as it feels right for me. I needed to hang out in the parenthesis alittle bit, and maybe Im almost out of the woods, but you never know.

Im moving out of the 420 house tomorrow. and I can’t help but feel as though this is the end of an era.

Its nights like this one that remind me of a night when I was 12. The last night my family was staying in the house I practically grew up in in Oakland. I was sleeping on my grandmas bedroom floor and scared of the changes that would take place living in Petaluma. I didnt know what kind of people I would meet there and how my life would be different in a positive or negative way. I was terrified of Junior High in suburbia(with good reason) and then eventually High School, in a place I had never heard of before.

Flash forward to me being 21. After Jr, High and High school and with an AA in Auto Mechanics and Costume Design and still roughly based in Petaluma. I had spent a year and a half couch surfing in West Oakland and living in Apartments without the landlords knowledge. I had a stable job at a movie theater in Petaluma and pretty much living with my parents a lot at the point I moved to San Francisco. I had done a lot of growing up in Petaluma too, my teenage years were intense, at best, and my twenties were shaping up to be as well. I was still nervous though, to step out of what became my comfort zone and move on to be on my own, officially. Finally.

Now here I am again. Not a year later, the last night at this apartment, where I feel like Ive done a solid amount of changes. After Owen and the Warped Tour and dealing with just the everyday things that your first official year on your own can bring. I feel like the changes have been sort of monsterous and yet I’ve never really felt them occur. (except for Owen, that hurt, and still does, and may always). Whats next year going to be like for me? A year from now will I be shitting my pants over moving to the East Coast? Will I love my roommates in the Castro so much that I won’t want to leave them? Will there be a boy? Anyone? Who will I be on May 1st 2009? Any less me then I am now and yet so much different? or not at all?

I may never get all the answers to the questions of life, but I will never stop asking them. I feel though, that Ive also got a wonderful group of people who will help me and watch me through these changes, and theirs as well. Will they still be here at this time next year?

I feel like there is so much more that I want to say, adn yet I don’t know how to put them into words.

As I promised though, here is a poem I wrote about the year I hitched to burning man. I wrote it on a recipt from work so it hasnt been through workshop or editing or anything.

I knew a Desert Once

I knew a desert once.

Some people compare themselves

To an ever changing body

of water.

But me,

I met up with me in a desert

Between a goat guy

And an elf king

And I as a fairy

In the spiritual glow

Of the statue of a man

on fire.

I knew a desert once

With sunburned

Windblown faces.

Barreling towards civilization,

In the depths of a gypsy caravan

And a thumb

a little worse for wear.

I knew a desert once

I’m not the fairy I was before this.

I didn’t know her any better then,

Then I do now

But I know I knew a desert once.

Wild eyed and tongue tied

You helped make me whole.

In the dreary summer glow

You showed me that dreamers

And dreams

Can find each other in this windstorm.

I knew a desert once.

more poems to come, these next few weeks for school Im going to be writing a lot.

My next post is going to be full of Cailie Poems, I swear. But for now, you get whats on my mind.

Sometimes I wish that my thoughts would just leave me alone for awhile. I wish that I could just get my shit done without doubting myself, wondering if what Im doing is right, if there could be a better way. Zoneing out,  I wish that all this drama about moving and landlords and credit checks and stubborn roommates and teachers and the end of the semester and work and everything could just fix themselves without me having to worry about it. I wish.

I wish that I could love my job again. I wish that the deafining silence given to me was broken, that this falseified scarlet letter would be removed from my name. I didnt even sleep with anyone and it feels like Im getting the bad reputation, without actually having to do anything to achive it.

This summer is going to be epic though. Im going on a short tour selling merch for a friends band, Im going squatting in Sacramento and plan on seeing some good friends and great bands while Im there. Just me and my bike and a backpack full of everything I need for the week and a half I am gone. That same trip I will be couch surfing in Davis seeing all the friends I havent seen in far to long and catching up. I will also be spending a week in the east coast with friends who are more like family. There is a lot to look forward to, I just have to get through all this busniessy/bullshitty(hey! New word!) stuff before the fun can happen.

In other news I have gotten really into moldmaking lately and spendin an unhealthy amount of time at Douglass and Sturgess. I also have a big quiz on thursday (the day that I move…I hope) and If I dont rock ass on my zoology final, well, Im fucked.

ah stress, you complete me.

There is drama with the lease and credit checks (as in, my name is on the lease and I have to do a suprise credit check, without credit.) My parents offered to co-sign, to that they can do the credit check, and I don’t have to worry about it, but it seems like there was this huge misunderstanding, and Im assumeing the worst. Which is I might loose the room. I have to call the main tennant tonight after eight to clear things up, and Im terrified. I hate confrentation, espically shit like this.

Fuck. Why must I suck so bad at life?

The joys of finding out you’re being jerked around by someone you actually thought was pretty cool.

That nothing that was said and done was actually true, or had anything behind it.

The joys of being drunk at a dive bar on a sunday evening. Then being driven home by the last person you want to look at.

“Street Spirit” came on over his radio and I lost all feeling. Im always going to associate that song with Owen and in that moment, in this guys car, I can’t even describe it. Floating, Shocked, suprised, numb. They’re not the words Im looking for, but they’re the first that come to mind. 

Some of the people I work with are pretty cool, but I am looking for other jobs, because Im tired of everything about the theater except for the people that I like and get to hang out with on the job. But it has gotten to the point where Im just going to have to see them some other time.

Ive been so exausted lately, and yet I cannot sleep.

And Im moving to The Castro. so yay.

Life is going amazing right now. I just had an awesome, warm weekend with friends and adventures and 40s in Dolores and GGP espically at night with the moon and our faces reflecting up at us in the bottles of beer or water or whatever. I slept on my friends couch on his porch and worked and got errands done and played with friends.

I landed an amazing apartment with some seemingly very cool people. We clicked, and it is in an amazing neighborhood (the Castro). I’m moving out in the early days of may, so that Im settled for finals, and can concentrate at one thing at a time from here on out.

Things can only go wrong for so long, and then all thats left are good things to happen. I think what makes me appriciate the good times more, and be optomistic through the bad is that most of the situatiosn are only temporary.  Things are going to go wrong for only so long, and so with the idea that eventually, things are going to go right. In the same vein, bad things are always going to happen, it is a part of life, so the good times should never go uncherished.

Its like finding a parking spot. Sometimes its good, sometimes it is bad, sometimes, when you rush back to the spot to put change in the meter or whatever, the ticket is already waitng.

Im not sure Im making sence, but you know, things are finally going good, and I appriciate it more then a lot of things right now.

This week has been amazing. Sometimes, I feel as though I know some of the best people ever. My birthday was immensely fun, and late night drives around the city, with a different party every time has inspired a lot.

I’m getting swept up in the moving proccess/the end of the semester process/ the finding a new job process all at once. I take comfort that in June (hopefully) this will all have settled.

Two close friends broke up, and I have had Emergency by Paramore on repeat. God knows why.

It has been a georgous day, and is shaping up to be an even better evening.

Happy Day.

I promsied Owen, last April, that he was for sure invited to my next birthday party. Yesterday, while inviting people on my phone list, I got this wave of really really wanting to invite him. His contact is still in my phone, and the wanting to call along with the feeling of not being able to almost pushed me to tears.

Im tired still, but far less weak feeling then I was when I went to bed last night. I think Im starting to catch up on the sleep i need.  I also decided that Im quiting smoking cigarettes, and am riding my bike around the city more.

Yesterday I aquired the feeling as though I was disposable. Mainly in most of my relationships with friends and boyfriend, but also at work. It was terriable. I also was freaking the fuck out, because I have a few large assignments due tomorrow that I needed the internet for, which I also didn’t have. It caused a nevous breakdown…or two.

Today, just for the day, I went up to petaluma, to get the homework done. At least now, most of the important stuff is out of the way and Im feeling a lot better. However still alittle disposable. My friends though, I’m seeing them wednesday and thursday (April 3rd is my 22nd birthday). It will be amzingly good to see them.

I can’t wait to get this week over.

Ah Petaluma, what odd nostalgia. What a strange place to be a teenager. I suppose all places are odd to be a teenager though. It felt good and strange to be back but made me feel better knowing I was just visiting. I didn’t get to see all the people I wanted, but I did a lot with helping my mom get the house ready for her to move (whenever she decides that time is).

The friends I saw, I’m glad theyre all fine. Im glad they’re all doing well and that they are happy (or seemingly so) but they’re all doing the same things they were doing when I left. Made me realize that I, too, would probably still be playing pool at Gales or the Hideaway and drinking a lot, getting stoned a lot, feeling like Im going nowhere at the JC, dating a guy who wanted to be married and have kids before I was ready and working at the Theater. A strange feeling, and a breath of fresh air when I returned back to the city. But if they are happy, then I am happy for them.

Next round in Petaluma (which may be as far away as summer) I’m going to do more.