i dream to learn myself anew.

i know i’ve said before that i rarely remember my dreams, and yet there are two situations in which the probability of me recalling my subconscious escapades increases exponentially: 1. when i’m napping, and 2. when i’m sick.

right now, i’m sick, currently running down day 6 of the sore throat/ sound like i traded voices with a smoking frog/tired of sleeping propped up and still coughing all night thing that descends like an annoying cloud over an otherwise smashingly healthy NY winter. and it happened: i fell victim to a crazy dream last night, perhaps one of the strangest i’ve ever had.

and today, i woke up and couldn’t get it out of my mind. i’m not one to analyze dreams but i definitely am more than slightly enamored with the very idea of them, and i sifted this one over and over again this morning, trying to remember every little detail and see the correlation to my “real life.” as if dreams were a world of their own, another life i can only enter sporadically and never at will…

and this one traced through the stages of my adolescent-thru-current life, interweaving people and places and snapshots in the haphazard way dreams will and leaving me wondering why i think the way i do when i’m not consciously thinking at all…or why i keep people around in the caverns of my cluttered mind only to pull them out unbeknownst to myself and allow them to traipse through my shadowy hours. from an analytical point of view, i can see how it all plays out perfectly, the progression of my most impressionable years and the people i learned and loved and left along the way making cameos and dancing around one another’s ghosts…yet interestingly enough, some of the most important people in my life never showed up to a subconscious fete in which they should have been my most honored guests.

and such are the things of dreams…symbolic or not, they always open themselves up to such sentimental analysis.

i was on some sort of girls’ vacation with a cluster of my high school friends, girls i spent 4 years with who i rarely see anymore — some of whom i saw for the first time in ten years this summer. we were carefree and youthful in the way girls are when they believe the world is in utterly theirs, arms linked and laughing without restraint, dancing away the hours and hoping everyone goes home together. i was happy, but i couldn’t stay…

then i was running, purposefully jogging down a sunny street in an inner city, right through the toughest sections of town, dodging people on the sidewalk. i was running in salsa shoes, white strappy heels that were surprisingly amazingly comfortable for a jog — i even remember thinking how it was strange that they felt so good on my feet as i pounded the pavement. i ran by a park where some youth ministry leaders were volunteering and playing games with inner city high school kids — i recognized one from my youth ministry days and we said hi as i ran right through their game, thinking of stopping but feeling i needed to push on.

i was suddenly hit with the urge to run the streets barefoot, feeling the concrete against my skin and pushing forward off my toes, and even as i knew it wasn’t my brightest option, i removed my salsa heels and tucked them beneath my arm as i looped toward “home.” “home” was a large house where a bunch of my friends and acquaintances were staying, vacation-style, i suppose, and i entered feeling like a visitor. people swarmed the rooms, laughing unreservedly, alive with the kind of vitality that tells you they had nowhere else to be than with each other in that definitive moment. it was summer time, my favorite time, brightly patterned swim suits and neon drinks defined the atmosphere, and yet i ducked into a side room for a moment’s relief and found a friend (non-high school; this one is a newer friend, as friends go) sprawled on a couch, talking with another guy i didn’t recognize, half-asleep in the best kind of lazy-day way when you’ve nothing else to be.

and that was where i settled, finally relaxed on the couch in a quiet room of an otherwise raucous house, for once not the one running around with an entourage of fabulous friends and finding a trillion things to get overly excited about. i sank into the opposite end of the couch and sprawled head-to-foot with my friend and sipped his drink instead of bothering to go find one of my own. and i remember feeling content, and at ease. and i’ll be the first to admit that i’m usually not the one seeking a quiet corner to relax in during a lively sha-bang.

i don’t remember what we talked about, or who else i saw, or even where i put my coveted salsa-jogging shoes. but i remember thinking, now, i can rest.

and when i got up to use the bathroom and was almost bull-dozed by a gaggle of giggling girls tumbling out of the little room in a tangled heap, i wasn’t even jealous of their togetherness or gleeful excitement about heading toward the pool.

sometimes, i need to learn to just be – and be okay with that.

 

healthy me, please.

i realize that my health is something i take for granted, and it’s actually the last thing i EVER want to take for granted. i’ve been overly fortunate the past 28.5 (sob) years, of this i’m entirely aware. i’ve never broken a bone, had any major surgeries or physical ailments (save orthodontics & mouth surgeries, rendering me brace-faced for 3+ years of my teenage experiences), been involved in any accidents or even had to have stitches. i rarely get hurt, except for the pulled muscles i’ve danced with the past year or two, and sickness usually visits minimally. but when it comes to visit, i tend to remember how blessed i am to be one of the healthiest. being sick reduces me to a cliché, and i don’t know a good thing til it’s gone. sure, i pray every day for physical health and safety for my family and i, and i honestly believe this is something God has honored, b/c we truly are a healthy bunch.

so as i sit here after a fitful night of sleeping propped up and wondering if the alleviation of cough syrup really counter-balances its awful taste (seriously, WHY do they have to make it so unbearably revolting? i should look into inventing a medicine that tastes like chocolate pudding), i’m reflecting on what we can do to keep ourselves in tip-top shape. and really, i think all of these have greatly contributed to my healthy-ness.

• exercise. seriously, the benefits are life-altering, in so many ways. i’ll admit i’m more than a lil obsessed and probably the whole running while coughing thing isn’t helping my current situation, but exercise is the best thing that has happened to me since…well yeah, there are no comparisons. it’s the best thing ever.
• eat lots of fruits & veggies. color up your diet. they’re superfoods.
• vitamins. i know i sound like a mom, but i wasn’t an avid vitamin popper until this year, and i’ve made it til feb. without getting sick at all – not even a cold. that’s pretty much a record. vitamin c has done me wonders this year.
• cut back on sugar. every sugar high has a harder sugar crash, mentally, physically and emotionally. it’s not as appealing as it first seems.
• be happy. find things to get excited about; pursue your passions. i’ve been fortunate enough to be able to pursue different ventures this past year that enticed me, and i honestly believe that going after your passions and sporting new accomplishments and discovering unchartered little corners of the world that you didn’t own before adds some pep in your step and life in your body. it’s nice to have things to be excited about, and a happy girl (or boy) is a healthier boy (or girl). you believe in yourself more.
• sleep. when you start depriving yourself of it (so i’ve discovered), you start realizing just how vital it is to your overall quality of life. even if it interferes with your hours of fun.
• laugh. i guess this goes along with being happy. laughter does wonders for anyone.
• love. find people you love and who love you, and keep them close. there’s nothing like knowing that someone knows you inside and out and wants you in his/her life all the same. the safety of real relationships is one of the healthiest things you can give yourself.

so even if i’m coughing, i’m going to laugh, and dance, and try to sleep. because soon i won’t be sick anymore, and i might begin to take my health for granted again…but i’m hoping i won’t be like Alice, and give very good advice that i seldom take. i think a little perspective and discipline is really all we need to keep ourselves in fantastic life-shape.

 

a full life

someone told me years ago when i packed my new york life into a sunny suv and stretched my heart across the country to test out Colorado that the desire to move and start a new life didn’t necessarily mean your true desire was to change locations, but that you wanted to change something about yourself. i think about that sometimes, uncertain as to whether or not it applied to me, or if i even put enough thought into my decision to understand exactly what i wanted to change. was i hoping to find a different version of myself somewhere amidst the mountains and cleaner air, thinking that possibly a new girl would emerge, leaving behind the flaws i’d carried with me from the east coast? was i trying to re-write myself a new existence, a new start, in an attempt to show the world that i could meet her head-on and not cower down to the reality that i had too many fears to face without the comfort of traversed streets and a home-life familiarity to tuck me in at night?

i heard some of this in ryan’s voice tonight as he called me from Colorado; some of the un-planned for nostalgia for what he had so recently rejected as trite and sought desperately to leave behind in an attempt to chase the wind and build a new castle of gales and gusts. i remembered my own immediate post-move realization that life is life no matter where you are, and once you strip yourself of all you worked so hard to build and cherish, you suddenly are overwhelmed with painful gratitude for things you realize you so easily took for granted…and it’s really all you know you ever will want again.

maybe ryan’s move will affect me, too; maybe it already has. perhaps i am re-evaluating the life i currently lead and calling it good, very good – better than good, verging on spectacular. perhaps i have everything i need right here and always have, and it took my brother’s painful good-bye to make me realize that all i need to do is make the most of every chance i have while God still keeps me in new york. and really…it’s not such a bad place to be, after all.

this weekend, i had so much to be thankful for, from dance lessons that have become my latest obsession to a wonderful salsa social to benefit Haiti that was beautifully done and marked another night spent with genuine people who really care about each other, to the comfort of real conversations with true friends and quiet hours spent lying around my parents’ house and baking cookies with my mom. i am guilty of living for grandiose dreams of “one days” and “should bes” where i traipse through bubbly nights with glitter in my heels and stars shooting down around me, but the unreality of these fantasies rob me of the ability to remain present and thankful in the every day glories of my little life.

when i was three, the highlight of my day was curling up in my dad’s lap and having him read me “The Cat in the Hat” five times in a row. this is what i want to recapture, the childlike awe of discovering Magic in the touch of someone’s hand on a quiet night in or the warmth of my family’s effervescent laughter as we play cards around the dining room table.

these little details are the pulse to my life, and i want to build myself a kingdom from the throb of a thousand tiny loves.

 

some simple thoughts.

i will not write a catalog of all i did in oh-nine that left me a little more jaded or a little wider-eyed; a little more in love with the world or a little more subdued by the inevitability of growing up. i will not, because those memories are mine, and some i’ll never be less ready to share. i will not, because you don’t need to read my life in reverse, a counter-chronological relation of one girl’s shot at 27-into-28 and all the spectacular-or-maybe-not-so-amazing-at-all details of a life that may not look so exciting from another’s pair of eyes.
and sometimes, perhaps i’m not so exciting.
other times, i feel i could light the sky on fire.

but there are things 2009 brought me that i didn’t have before this year and i want to remember them, deem them worthy of marking another season before i’ve stumbled into 30 and forgotten how to will my way through locked doors. in your 20s, it’s easy to believe in Magic, the way it encircles your wrist like another’s measuring fingertips and settles into the rubber of your shoes when you’re sleeping soundly and never saw its stealthy shadows settle into your closet. i might subconsciously invite a little pizazz into my dreams, but i beg and plead for it to encircle me when i’m awake. i want the sort of Magic that burns like love in the glare of day, threatening to blacken out the blues of my eyes with the tiniest taste.

• i remembered poetry, words i never knew i’d been harboring suddenly spewing out and refusing the captivity of my mind any longer. i learned i’ve more to give, if only i believe in myself the way words wish i would. i saw the inside of my veins spelled out in fresh ink on a glossy page and realized there was a whole new way of breathing that i’d never known how to try.
• i stumbled into a fantasy world born of a cherished childhood book and found parts of my latent soul resting quietly in the poignant beauty of raw emotion, swept out of myself and into the world of pulsing humanity much more complex than a love of words and glances. a little boy donned an inscrutable outfit and climbed inside my head, drawing shapes and colors on the decoupaged walls of my mind and reminding me that life is more than what i’ve left to say. i want to do with words what the movie did with art — touch the heart of all that’s true in shades of gray and swirl my pen between the lines until my tears display both joy and pain, sorrow and beauty, with every falling splash.
• i found a friendship with my brother that surpasses anything we’ve toyed with before, truly understanding what it means to have your closest kin become your forever friend. i learned him anew, as a person separate from myself with a world of his own, and i said good-bye to him so suddenly i felt the ground fall violently beneath my feet. i’m growing accustomed to bruises these days, and some i fear will never fade. thankfully, these purple hues suit me surprisingly well.
• i realized things about love: how i’ve only known it in certain forms, without the fullness of a spectrum; how i’ve laced my version of it with barbed wire edges and conditioned myself into the safety of an arm’s length waltz. how i long to write it into existence, but fear to have to believe in the silences between my words. how i sometimes miss people for the wrong reasons, and leave others for no reasons at all. how i just might never get it right, or spend enough time thinking about what i could do differently. how some things are just so hard to learn.
• i said one of my life goals was to learn to dance salsa, and i have, and am still, putting this goal into action. this is a huge milestone for me, proving to myself that i am capable of setting my mind upon a coveted task and tackling it with all the energy and enthusiasm a girl can possess. and for those of you who have stood by and watched me fall victim to this tunnel vision, i’m sorry if this obsession has overcome me to the point of neglecting other people/things in my life. i love you all…and i love my life as a dancer.
• i found that God is God no matter who or where i am, and often He answers prayers when we aren’t conscious that He’s doing so. if i don’t pray for things specifically, how will i know if He’s answering them? yet i’m realizing lately that He’s answered even some of my vague prayers quietly, gradually, and i have been too busy sailing through the whirlwind of my late-20s to properly appreciate all that i’ve been given. blessed <3

 

fall/grow/ing up(allwrong).

“people don’t wear tiaras on an
everyday basis”
you said,
and silly me, i lowered watery lashes and
bowed down,
metallic and crystalline clattering at your feet.

once upon a time i was
daddy’s little girl and
in the shawl of homelife tenderness,
nobody thought to bruise my wide-eyed belief.

you are nothing like them.
their forever-and-always pulled me close,
spread wings above my wanderfeet and said
“we love you so, whoever you become”
and from this lifeline love i learned to fly.

i never thought i’d be the girl
who let a colder pair of eyes
lower mine.

 

an upward gaze.

i ran outside the other day for the first time since Christmas day, relishing the fresh air and the slap-slap-slap of my sneakers upon real pavement (rather than the rubbery track or unwelcome treadmills i’ve reduced myself to in this recent winter freeze). although i’m usually the first to complain about cold weather and loudly tell anyone in shouting distance that i cannot wait to live in So-Cal and be able to happily run outside every day of the year, i’ll admit there’s a certain joyful freedom in conquering the cold air by pounding it into the ground and braving January head-on. i am not one to start shying from challenges.

coming home from the run, i felt really content with the world and my own little place in it at that moment, the way fresh air after weeks of the great indoors works to revitalize any onset of the winter blues, and i was happy enough just to have gotten outside. and then, as i was turning my key in my lock, i looked up.

and it happened.

against a falling dusk of a seashell sky streaked with pinks and peaches and the fade of cold light (atypical for a season of gray), the air above my apartment suddenly burst open with hundreds of delicate black birds exploding with the deftness of a moment’s grace. i was rendered speechless, motionless for that moment in time, eyes riveted to the unexpected beauty of a world bigger than myself; a promise of kinetic magic afire with forward motion, where an ending i would never be a part of stretched somewhere in the distance and i was allowed, for that brief time, to experience a tiny portion of a journey i was never meant to understand.

this had nothing to do with me, and yet it taught me more about myself than anything else that has happened to me this week has done.

i spend far too much time grounded in the selfishness of my own footprints, and not enough time learning how to map the sky…and all i ever had to do was look up.

 

a lot to learn.

there really is. i mean, a WHOLE lot to learn. think about it…it’s the one thing we’re all really born to do. from the moment we’re born, we never stop learning (or we shouldn’t, really). it’s an indelible aspect of my personality, i know, to always crave a learning experience. the issue for me has always been choosing one thing to learn — commitment eliminates options, so they say, and i sure like my options open. i was fortunate to have amazing parents who encouraged ryan and i to try anything and everything that appealed to us as children, and so i became the girl who took painting lessons, gymnastics, piano & voice lessons, played softball and soccer, took and taught swimming lessons, and was allowed to pursue any other endeavors that tickled my youthful fancy. i was going to be a writer, an artist, an ice skater, a rock star, a professional hula dancer and a world renown actress, all by the time i graduated from college.

or so one thinks, at ten.

over the years, the things i’ve wanted to learn have changed, but the fact that i always crave new experiences has not. therefore, i’ve decided to dedicate a great deal of my blog posts from now on to my learning curves, keeping a record of what i’m discovering about myself and the world outside myself so i can say “this is where i was, and this is who i’ve now become.” i don’t want to consider anything too small, and i actually think it’ll be good for me to include my “little lessons”: moments of unexpected discovery about myself or someone else or the world i call home, right alongside my cataloging of new dance moves and recipes and things you learn about a friend just by the way they look at you and catch you by surprise.

the point is, i want to see my life as a continuum of newness, and recapture the breathlessness i had as a child when i saw my first shooting star or tasted the first chocolate chip cookie batch i ever made without my mom’s help. i want to rejoice in the everyday, the little lessons, and see how big they really are when i take my life a day at a time. i want to believe i’ve something to discover with every new dawn.

today, i learned i really have a whole lot of life ahead of me, and i need to stop saying “if only i’d…”

it’s never too late.

 

softer snippets

(one)

oh we could sit and talk all night
inventing our own constellations
and if someone asks me where i’ve been
i will open wide my wonder eyes and
tell the simple truth:
learning the art of conjuring up the sun.

(two)

you can fall in love, he said. there’s really nothing to it. just throw all caution to the wind and try to forget how to breathe.

(three)

this may seem silly, he said, but when you turn your head ever-so-slightly toward the morning sky, i catch a glimpse of tomorrow in your translucent eyes.

 

not what i wanted, but…

sometimes, unexpected events fall like thudding marbles around my head, just hard enough to jolt me out of my own self-absorption and awaken me to the reality of a world exploding all around me that i’d managed to somehow ignore, pitifully relishing my position as the silent eye of my own perfect storm. it just takes one unexpected event — another person’s words, or tears, or very life — to shake me back out of my head. we’re never promised we’ll get exactly what we want, but faith is trusting that God knows just what we need. and i never saw it coming, because i couldn’t see past myself.

reality check 101: it takes something bigger than me and my own little version of the world to open my eyes to who ego-centric i really can be.
i’ve had a rough week. i won’t say “bad” because some parts were actually pretty fantastic (first time wearing new salsa shoes; laughter-sparkling evenings with great people; a wonderful co-worker who i absolutely am growing to love more and more every day i see her adorable face surprising me with a sparkly and feathery purple bird that she said reminded her of me; celebrating my dad’s 60th birthday and seeing how he’s softened over the years, tears spilling over as he read my card; anticipation of visiting friends in NYC this weekend and discovering the wonder of how Christmas makes everything alive with light and romance), but it has been a very challenging one for me and forced me to do a lot of much-needed and rarely done introspection.

and this is how we learn. the “tough stuff” that i’d just as soon eschew for the rest of my life (i tend to default to avoidance when life doesn’t come up all gumdrops and sherbert, this i am realizing) may cause some tear-jerker weeks and a lot of psychosomatic back pain (prayers appreciated), but it also produces growth. i could breeze through my days and continue to stuff them to spilling with activities and coffee dates and dancing nights and hour-long runs and restaurant-hopping, but eventually, something is going to give. and it did this week, and so here’s my gut-check spillage session where i admit i have a lot of growing up to do.

if something bothers me, i tend to blow it off without realizing it by filling the issue with a temporary fix of fluff. i lace up and run away, pounding hours into the streets of latham and loudonville, or i find someone to go do something fun with me — something mindless and entertaining, engaging me for an evening that i’d rather not spend journaling or thinking about the big L.I.F.E. i think one of my new year’s resolutions shall be setting aside some Shawna time and growing to like it. yes, i can make myself like it, of this i’m assured.
(prior case study leading me to this hypothesis: i hated tomatoes my whole youthful life, disgusted by the very thought of having one explode in my mouth, wondering how others around me could relish such a nasty food. but slowly, they began to wear me down, and in college i decided i was going to become a tomato eater, like most of the free world. yes, perhaps i couldn’t take the peer pressure…but either way, i began inviting them into my diet, adding thin slices to sandwiches at first and then forcing down the biggest chunks in tomato sauce until one day, i reached the point where i could pop entire cherry tomatoes into my mouth and molar them down with gusto. now, i buy them on the regular. i made myself enjoy tomatoes.)

so yesterday, in the middle of my pity-party, tearfully lowering my head onto my arms before my MacBook and wondering how long i could crawl down and hide beneath my desk for before someone might notice my absence, a friend called and urgently needed to talk. and suddenly, i was whisked out of myself and into the realm of “someone else,” this fragile land of compassion and “other” that did not have my worries at its center.

this was all i’d needed all along, this gravitational pull out of my own skin, where i could exist in service to a friend and help them muddle through the struggles in her life. it isn’t even about comparison, where i say that my hardships are nothing compared with someone else’s; it’s about dying to self and giving back, in the way i’d want someone to be there selflessly in my darkest hours, holding my hand and praying for me. it’s about a world desperately in need of a hope; a gray slide where nobody is all good or all bad but simply ARE, and we’re able to relate to one another because we know that life is hard and no one ever gets it all. you will fall, and i will, and sometimes getting up is harder than simply letting everything go. but that isn’t how we learn to become our best selves. i left my conversation with her feeling a huge breakthrough in my own awning of gloom, recognizing that God knew this was what i needed to lift me higher than the selfish stressors of a mediocre-to-unpleasant week and pop the shallowness of my bubble. it was pretty close to a quick fix, and although my heart grieves for my friend’s pain, it awakened something inside me that i’d been missing this entire week of self-indulgent sorrow. i am called to serve others, and to love. and through these, i’ll get back rewards i never could have seen when my eyes were fixed solely upon myself.

Jesus gave the best words of encouragement when he promised us, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
and even through the darkest night, joy breaks somewhere with the dawn.

 

there’ll always be a “remember when”

if i’m not always open to the idea of becoming more than i currently am, am i truly living? or is that what we deem “coasting along” and sadly settle into in our routine moments of daily gray, when life becomes simply a second-hand twitch and we wonder when we lost the childlike belief in adventures that would pulse like heat from our worn-down running shoes?

i want to get that back. i want to remember what it feels like to learn to fly again; to tie towels and curtains around my neck and enter the weightless realm of “imagine ifs.” to tear across an open field without a cloud in my mind, absolutely certain that nobody could catch me if they tried. to be unafraid of falling.

what do we lose, as we give in and grow up? what selves do we shed year by year, melting and freezing with the seasons, becoming a little less sure of our handholds in the sky and a little more weighted by snow collecting on our shoulders? i have fears now i didn’t know then, lost in the labyrinth of hypotheticals and pondering loss in my quiet moments. perhaps this is why i tend to shy away from those moments of solitude as of late…i’m afraid of what i might discover lurking in Her pockets, waiting to prick my tender fingertips with truths i’m unprepared to own.

my dad will be 60 tomorrow and i’ll be half that age in 2 years, and “older” now has taken on an entirely different connotation and visual representation. i’m afraid of not needing my parents; this is about as honest as i get, for walls of sober moonlight are impenetrable by day. to live is to grow is to learn is to become is to let go is to find yourself and recognize your life as your own, stripped and stark in the darkness of self-discovery, when light can shine the brightest and the Path just might take an unexpected turn, for better or for worse.

i am afraid i’m speaking in circles, but then again, perhaps this is my destiny…i chose this years ago, when “growing up” meant something other people did and wrote about for me to experience through picture books and fairytales…

(breathe, and now…i remember afternoons spent outside in the backyard, swingset-strewn and summer-strung, eyes closed as i twirled and twirled, fasterandfasterandfaster, knowing my brother was somewhere on the same lawn in the same motion, a blur i couldn’t think to focus upon…not while i gave myself up entirely to the dizzydrunk pull of the clouds and the assurance that we’d all fall into the sky some day…

and when i hit the ground, i knew i’d found a little magic for a topspun moment, and made time stand still until i couldn’t hold out any longer. but it never mattered, then — at that time, falling was always such a sweet release.)