This too shall pass

So, you've been working with this architect. Nice, professional, competent, works for a huge firm. You hired him yourself, although you don't really remember the interview, you were so busy at that point. You must have been pretty vehement about what you wanted, or at least what you didn't want. You didn't pay much attention to the demolition crew, they moved in one by one and quietly.

Now you're in that uncomfortable phase, there is dust everywhere. Nothing looks like it did before. In fact, it doesn't look like much at all. You try to clean around it, which you hope will make it bearable but it doesn't.You try to imagine something beyond the mess that you're living in and you can't.

An artist's vision is required for situations like this. You are not an artist. You are just someone who was whimsical enough to hire an architect and give him free license to make something beautiful out of something that wasn't.

Whiplash

You stand, still for once, watching the ground that has been covered. Distance and ash evidence of your trail. You see an elaborate labyrinth. Cleverly made, brilliantly even, you can see neither beginning nor end, just its heartbreaking beauty and integrity.

Convinced this was your lesson, you've navigated this adventure like the student you've always been, good overall performance with your tendency to procrastinate still intact.

The possibility that the lesson might be someone else's to learn never occurred to you. Not because you're egocentric but because you're chronically hard on yourself, you just assumed this was your river to cross. In fact, you may just be a supporting character.

Another incidence, although some say occurrence, at a different Owl Creek Bridge, how many miles will be covered in the inch you've been asked to give? Years in the seconds you've been asked to yield?

Timing

It began with once upon a time. Hmm, you say. In good time. Ok, you say. You think you can live with that. Time heals all wounds. Yes, you say. Time will take care of the things that you cannot. Fine, you say.

You breathe differently. Just in time. How does your body know that times are changing?

Everything there is outside that door is good.

On the nature of twelve

Twelve months in a year, twelve hours on a clock. Twelve has something to say about the passage of time. A long time ago, it was a number that signified completion and the signal of the end of one phase and the beginnings of another, guided by a greater understanding and wisdom - knowledge learned from life. It promises a sense of calm amidst whatever chaos and turbulence we might be faced with.

I moved here, to stay, in September of 1997. A lot has happened since then.

I arrived single, no children, lots of plans. Here I stand, nearly twelve years later, single again, a mother, a lot fewer plans. I can only believe that to be a good thing.

But I am planning on holding twelve to its promises.

Tried and true

Tests, by nature, are designed to reveal.   Level, rank, resources.  Character, motivation, determination.    

I took a class in graduate school  - testing theory.  Not that it has helped me in real life.  My tests are never fair and the grading scale is harsh and no one ever seems to have the proper test taking skills.  

So I've revised my methodology.   The tests are over.  It's now trial by fire.

Question for the day:  when was the last time you were tested?

Rub this and perspective that

I flew over mountains on friday.

There was snow, just some, on the tops and in patterns that looked like leaf rubbings or fossils of ancient and universe-sized birch and elm leaves. It was quite beautiful and surprising - I never really expect to see anything I like in an airplane, even if it's out the window.

I was going to Barcelona to see a friend, a very good friend, who I met in Wilmington, North Carolina, forever ago, when I was an undergraduate. Wilmington is one of those places, like Seattle, that left its mark on me like the snow on that mountain. Not covering me - just a rubbing, a trace, an imprint that changed me in ways that I may not have noticed until years later, decades even, after a change in perspective. I met people there who are still with me today, like this friend in Barcelona. People whose part to play in my life, whose importance, I felt instictively and instantly. I arrived when I was sixteen, still a girl, but convinced I was a woman. And I left at 21, still not a woman, but closer, and convinced, certain as I could only be in that pre-new-me way, that if I didn't leave then, I never would.

And Seattle was calling. I had so much to do. A dark side to acknowledge, years of graduate work to complete, shadow sisters to meet - Tanya and Meg who still come to me occasionally in my dreams to tell me things I must hear but won't if it's in my own voice - truths I cannot hear from myself. And the other sisters I met there, Lorraine and Julie, women who are still part of my daily life, despite the distance.

Well, since you asked

Roxanne wanted to know if, perhaps, my one-way ticket to Paris escapade could have been about me running away from someone or something.

Hmm.

Well.

I had completed my first year of college and experienced many of the firsts that one tends to experience at that time. My first apartment (very small and messy - the small was an architectural issue and the messy was a Nicole issue), my first college boyfriend (whom I met at orientation and who ditched me shortly after we got together - I'm sure he's full of regret now), my first C (in geology - I went to class twice during the entire semester - for the midterm and the final), my first jobs (waitress, marketing assistant, and aerobics instructor [no laughing or comments please]), my first car (a 75 VW Beetle - canary yellow), and my first student loan. Times were good. Sort of.

Anyway. I suppose there MAY have been certain ASPECTS of my life or myself that I didn't like. And change seemed like a good way to deal with them.

But we all know how futile it is (and impossible unless many drugs are involved and we've already established that I'm a drug virgin) to try to run away from yourself. So we'll say I wasn't running away from anything, just running away.

If I had known that my first student loan would just be the first of many to come, I would have run away before.

More lessons learned

This first time I came to France was 20 years ago. I was 17 and had just finished my first year of college. I sold my car and bought a one-way ticket to Paris.

I only stayed for 3 months. But that was long enough. Long enough to decide I loved it here. Long enough to know how spot a groper from a mile away. Long enough to never be afraid to be alone somewhere unknown.

My kids are so totally NEVER doing ANYTHING like that.

Oh the places I've been

I had lunch with a friend last week. She's a foreigner too. But not from the US. Anyway, she spent most of the lunch complaining about France and the French. Which brought bad memories flooding back.

When you choose to live in a foreign country, you go through several phases. Don't ask me how many phases there are - I have no idea. I've only been living here 10 years. Ask me in another 10. Maybe.

The first year can go either way, depending on why you came. My first year in France was as an English TA at the University of Nantes. I was 25 and very happy to be here. The differences were enchanting. I came back for in when I was 27. I spent the year teaching English at two different places and planning my wedding. It was a rough year. An American friend and I spent most of the year complaining. Oh the strikes, oh the anti-Americanism, oh the anti-social women, oh the bad television, oh the confusing sexual politics. Husband and my friend's Husband (who were both fiancés at the time) staged an intervention. Told us to stop bitchin' or stop spending time together because we were making everyone miserable. They were right.

When I got back from lunch, I was so happy. So happy to not be in that place anymore, where everything rubs the wrong way, where every incomprehension is a slight and every difference is a cultual misunderstanding.

Ah, the pretentiousness of youth

At some point during my early 20's, or maybe not even that old, I wrote a poem. Actually, I may have written more than one but they were not good enough to remember or even discuss. But all day long I've had the line and silence is my only sound in my head and I couldn't figure out where in the heck it came from.

And then I remembered. It was the last line of some poem I gave to some person. Honestly, I have no idea who I gave it to or why.

What on earth was I talking about?

A guy I dated went through a major poetry phase during our break-up. I did break up with him while I was in France and he was cheating on me waiting for me in Seattle so I guess he thought that was valid poem material. Throw the Frenchman into the mix (Husband) and he had material for months. He wrote them on postcards and sent them to me. And to friends. And to my mother.

Silence should have been his only sound.