brought to you by 40 ounces of coffee

Hey, blog. It's been almost a month since I've typed out my neuroses on you (in you? for you?). But now that I've had an incredibly unhealthy amount of coffee, I will tell you everything that is currently on my mind.

1. You hipster boys with your fantasies over Asian hipster girls. Come on now, okay?

2. I can't believe the amount of authors, poets, philosophers, and so forth that I failed to discover while I was an undergraduate (an undergraduate for EIGHT years, mind you). Rilke, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lorca, Munro, Chandler,... God. Deprived. At least I went through my Eastern philosophy phase (and still goin' strong!).

3. There's nothing like running into Professor Goshert while shoppin' for tubs of cottage cheese.

4. Pema Chödrön is amazing and should be read by all. You can tell she is a student of Chögyam Trungpa because of her, for a lack of a better word, "quirky" observations and ways of explaining certain concepts. Blah blah blah.

5. It's so refreshing to realize that the icky, bad, shameful, embarrassing, smelly, dark parts of me are okay. They are acceptable. They are teachers and they are the path. No more hiding from myself!

6. Go screw yourself, New Year's Eve. I mean that half jokingly. If thou art friends with me on the ever consuming Facebook, you will already know that I am stressed out about tomorrow (New Year's Eve). The parties, the socializing, the chance of awkward and uncomfortable run-ins... Maybe I should just pretend all day tomorrow that I am Pema Chödrön and see where that takes me. It sure would stop me from challenging everyone to just one more shot of Sailor Jerry's. Possessive? Apostrophe S? I feel sick. Thanks, coffee.

7. So people want me to write a novel? Gosh(ert). That is quite the undertaking. Not ready! Not ready! I won't ever be ready! But I will start tonight anyway.

8. I love you and I always will.

and sometimes lonely hearts they just get lonelier

And in my dream there was a plane crash. A small plane, a large crash. The pilot was still breathing, it was going to be okay. And I can't help but think of Rilo Kiley's song "Wires and Waves." And San Francisco was separated from California. It was in Chicago's place - so where did Chicago go? Perhaps it is now a northwestern state; or perhaps it is buried underneath Fog City, wind struggling to escape from beneath feet.

molasses and ashes

The Symbolic Dream of 2010:

It has almost all faded now, which is what usually happens to all of my dreams, no matter how intense they may be. But let me record the lingering fog (or rather, smoke...) anyway.

Our mutual friend (completely unnecessary side note, but there is a Charles Dickens book titled Mutual Friends - uh, nice try, Charlie, but it sounds pretty lame) threw a cigarette off his balcony. It created a fire - a fire that we knew, immediately, would eventually destroy everything, perhaps even us. My lover and I evacuated like molasses. We knew the danger, we knew the outcome, we knew the inevitable pain of staying, yet we were frozen in our comfort, preparing (or not) to be consumed.

And the destruction was total. And the windows were gone. And I woke without knowing if we became ashes to ashes or not.

baa

Dear Readers,

Most of us are black sheep, right?

Yeah.

My Love,

Meghan

not pessimistic

"Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply." -from Lorrie Moore's book A Gate at the Stairs

a journal entry from 13 1/2 years ago

I found one of the many, many journals (note: I would never call them diaries; they were strictly journals!) I obsessively wrote in when I was younger. Here is a pretty, well, lame entry. Enjoy or don't enjoy. I can not make your enjoyment decisions.

I have had weird (but meaningful) dreams. One, John Stockton came over to my house and we played basketball. Then he got ready for a date with my camp leader Joanne Mikelson. I said, "Oh! I know her! How did you meet her?" "She cleans houses and she was cleaning Gov. Leavitt's house," Stockton said. Weird, huh?

My other dream: I was at this contest thingy where you make nail polish. My color was a dark purple and called "Stayin' Alive." Dennis Rodman was there (I don't really like him at all) and he was behind me. I made a gagging sign and someone took a picture of me. I asked if Dennis Rodman saw me make fun of him and they said yes. I was scared of him now. He was walking up to the door and I hid. Someone was a Jazz fan, but they were sucking up to Rodman and (or was scared of him) said, "Oh... I just love the Bulls!" I stepped out of the shadow and said, "No! I love the Utah Jazz! They're the best - even if they came in 2nd - they're still the best!" End of dream. -Meghan

thoughts: i've got 'em

Grief - keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.

Joy is the antonym. Quite fitting, seeing as it's this particular joyous season and all.

But this grief is a quiet grief. A rupture of words and a landslide of confessions (and, uh, a tsunami of sorries? perhaps a tsunami of words beginning with silent Ts?) that strangely and perhaps contradictorily resulted in extreme gentleness and exposed hearts the next morning. There is a time for the craft of wall building, but now is not that time. Now is the time for taking a sledgehammer to the slowly built walls; the hollowness behind the Sheetrock will be okay. It is okay. It makes the tearing down process easier and the excitement of furnishing foreseeable.

I use a lot of abstract language. It kind of gets on my nerves. Anyway.

Behind these walls are chambers, waiting.

A night full of talking that hurts by Rumi

A night full of talking that hurts,
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.

Talking about myself in both the first AND the third person... Can I do that?! Is Meghan allowed to do that?

I want so desperately to shake off whatever is on me that has made me feel a million miles away from Meg.

bell jar glasses

Ten minutes to get ready and leave - but here I am!

WRITING A BLOG ENTRY!

I want to have a good outlook on life and events and people and places and everything else in and on and around this planet. I forget what my friend Megan called her new outlook on like, but it had the word "bemused" in it. What was it again? I liked it. And I am going to like life again!

But of course, the coffee will wear off in a few hours (or minutes, as it seems to be doing lately) and then I'll be back to Sylvia Plath-ish lenses. Which may not be SO bad...