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| Iron Fist. That's my new nickname at work. I think it started a month ago when I reported that someone had brought in beer from home to drink at the lounge. My reaction had been like a hard fist from justice. I took her half-empty bottles and banned her. I just couldn't rationalize why someone would think it would be fine to bring in alcohol to drink at the bar, it's not like we are throwing a house party, and we just don't know where to get the booze for everyone. It was that it is illegal. Plain and simple. But strangely, what really got me to realize why Iron Fist is my new nickname was the recent construction on the street outside of my house.
My apartment sits right on a corner of a cozy neighborhood, in a wet town. The rain has caused for sluggish improvements of the road by the workers. What was supposed to be two weeks' work at worst has become over three weeks' work. And that really doesn't bother me. I don't mind at all walking the length of a short block to get to my car. It is the near-obsessive, I might even say possessive, watchful eye that the "Road Closed" signs have caused me to grow. I'm scrutinizing the workers every moment I get over their efficiency, taking note of their progress or lack thereof. I'm scolding every cyclist that rides down the road in every stage of its deconstruction and reconstruction. I am imagining punishments to be doled out to every driver that rolls down that new-but-not-done asphalt. The scary part is not that I am so ready to be the golden citizen, that I follow every rule I can get my hands on to the T, but that I am so quick to judge every person who disregards the yellow construction barricades, and that even scarier, I'm quick to judge the people who are my neighbors.
As I caught up with a long overdue phone call with my mom, I noticed that the road barricades had been moved to block off the other street my corner meets, the road that was not under construction, and I knew it was my college-student neighbors. They were up, carousing on their porch, waiting for their first victim. And I said to her, "Mom, I think some people on my street are about to cause some trouble with the road closed signs." She answered that I live in a college town so it's to be expected. But I don't. I'm not in the college neighborhood anymore. I'm proud of living here. And slowly but surely my law-abiding spirit came up, and despite the fact that I was on the phone, and despite that it was raining, I went outside. A car had just come up to the barriers, and its driver got out and angrily threw the road open. After the driver left, I went down my steps determined to move the blockades, and a guy runs down the steps of the college house to move it back. I chastised him, and we moved the things back.
I couldn't help myself. Once I got back in the house, I turned the lights off and watched their porch and any movement I could spy. I felt like the neighborhood tattletale. And sure as the rain wouldn't stop, someone ran from the college house and started to move the roadblocks. "Hey, you guys really got to stop doing that," I yelled out to them. It scared them pretty good that some creep had been spying enough to jump on them the moment they tried to cause mischief. They moved it all back as I watched. And then I got nervous. What if these people get irritated enough by my meddling that they come over to my place to cause trouble? So again I watched from behind the sheer curtains. Again I opened the window, cold breeze whistling, in case I could pick up any plans to mark the house break the windows.
But then it got me thinking, I was probably more hard on them than I needed to be, like with that girl that brought alcohol into the bar to drink. They both didn't mean any harm. But this is the year of the Tiger. The year I come into being for the second full zodiac cycle. The year I am given a name I couldn't have fathomed would be mine even five years ago. It's 2010, I am confident in a different way than I was in high school. I'm not that cocky girl in that know-it-all kind of way, I am coolheaded and assertive because it's the law. I need to impose that each person maintain their boundaries, respect what's acceptable, stay off my street when it is under construction, and that's coming from the Iron Fist. | | |
| A profession for Lindsay.
I know I may sound hesitant at times, but whenever you speak of the future in such detail that it forms before me, a future of which although made up it is always under the unspoken knowledge that nothing is certain but the two of us, I want to fold up into your arms and close my eyes until I know it has become true. Every moment of tenderness I witness or recall or hear about makes me think of you and how it could have been you that was the procurer of such goodness in the world. You see my profession is nothing new. I want only to say when I think of you I think of my future, and when I think of my future I think of you. That once my heart made the connection, the two became indelibly synonymous. Your absence has left gaps in my day in which once there were moments I could not deny your influence and smile at the fact that you are in my life because you are right there before me. Come back soon. I miss you dearly.
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| "The Kiss"
Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss,
On which my soul's beloved swore
That there should come a time of bliss,
When she would mock my hopes no more.
And fancy shall thy glow renew,
In sighs at morn, and dreams at night,
And none shall steal thy holy dew
Till thou'rt absolv'd by rapture's rite.
Sweet hours that are to make me blest,
Fly, swift as breezes, to the goal,
And let my love, my more than soul
Come blushing to this ardent [chest].
Then, while in every glance I drink
The rich o'erflowings of her mind,
Oh! let her all enamour'd sink
In sweet abandonment resign'd,
Blushing for all our struggles past,
And murmuring, "I am thine at last!"
Thomas Moore
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| There is a part of me that is riddled with insecurities. Whether these insecurities resulted from painful experiences or from a lack of positive responses, I am not sure. But I know that some of my insecurities unfailingly rise to the surface like oil when it rains. My insecurities fight against myself, resisting to converge with the more complete and confident side of me that wishes to accept them.
I remember hiding in the band room in seventh and eighth grade. As promised by middle school years, I felt rigidly stuck between my more carefree innocent days of bike riding and imaginative games and the years that were promised to be unforgettable. So I hid. Most people left school as soon as the bell rang out their freedom, but a handful of band geeks, myself included, would stick around for a couple hours. Some days we practiced, most often times we played bits of songs that were especially hard or naughty card games of truth or dare. On days when loneliness took hold, I would hide, sitting on the cold, over-polished tile floor of the brass equipment room after school hours. I meditated over things: why I was in there alone, how many friends I actually had, the sound of the a/c system feeding me recycled air, the number of scars I had both internally and externally. I wrote poems and stories, I cried; mostly, I waited. I was more of a thinker than doer back then, and I waited to see whether people would come to find me, hoping both that they would and that they would not.
See I was afraid of not being found because that meant no one thought I was important enough to seek out, but I was more afraid that if I was found the person would not react in the way I imagined. They would most likely just stumble upon me sitting in there alone, pathetically. And that would be that. I tried so hard to control the outcome by thinking about it over and over. In thinking about the possibilities so much I forgot to live.
And so here I am, sitting at home on a beautifully rainy day, finding myself admitting that I still have insecurities. That only every other day I believe that I can make a relationship work with someone I truly find amazing. And I worry over whose baggage is holding back whom, and why I don't have the ability to make someone care for me as deeply as I do for them, or whether I will ever mean that much, or how long I can hold onto the overwhelming feeling of knowing that I am in love. And so I hide. I hide in the shower or the nook of Lindsay's shoulder or in written words or even in tears because if I don't watch out, I feel like I will lose control of everything. But really I don't have control over anything, especially emotions. Emotions control me. And I don't want to waste any more time thinking out all the possible ways my life could enfold without me being in it. All I can do is offer support, ask for it in return, and let my insecurities go.
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| "The Way I Am" - Ingrid Michaelson
If you were falling, then I would catch you.
You need a light, I'd find a match.
Cause I love the way you say good morning.
And you take me the way I am.
If you are chilly, here take my sweater.
Your head is aching, I'll make it better.
Cause I love the way you call me baby.
And you take me the way I am.
I'd buy you Rogaine when you start losing all your hair.
Sew on patches to all you tear.
Cause I love you more than I could ever promise.
And you take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.
You take me the way I am.
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