secure?

yeah, there are sooo many things to feel insecure about. and having kathleen here for the weekend i felt zero insecurity. and i kind of want to just keep living in that-- there's no good reason for being insecure really. i know i'm great, even when i certainly don't feel great for whatever reason, i somewhere DO KNOW that i'm GREAT. and if you know me, you'll know that i don't mean that in a self-centered sort of way. but more in a self-loving way... and the more i love myself and feel great and secure, the easier it's going to be for me to really give other ppl the attention and time they deserve, so as to get to knoow ppl more.

it's amazing what being around ppl you love can do. everything sort of becomes okay.


even things like the reason i'm going to stop writing this blog-- paper/presentation i've yet to finish/prepare for which is tomorrow.

as james the cashier at rite aid told me this weekend-- "happy halloweekend!" (while it's still sunday)


have a splendid halloween.

jo

whew, i made it back to my blog

so it's been a long run without any blogging at all! why so long? well... I wish i had a good answer, i think i've been doing a lot of wordless growing, lots of emotions and experiences and music all feeding my soul lovely treats of nourishment. there's just so many different things to focus on it's hard to actually focus on one of them.

i realized this weekend that although parents are supposed to be the ppl who know you best, sometimes it takes extremely long explanations and answering lots and lots of questions to feel even remotely understood by my mom. the difference is expected between an NT and an NF-- thinkers just don't GET it. right, okay... so there's this amazing song i think everyone should listen to...

it's called "twice" by leo kottke and mike gordon. mmm and it was the perfect song to listen to after my eventful sunday morning in portland yesterday with my mom and one of the coolest ppl on this planet: deborah lloyd.

"when the stars up in the sky
when the lights along the street
when the tv's in the motel shine

when the fingertips are frozen
when the emtpy wind starts blowing
if they've got one,
they're all going home

we're just sitting here all by myself
you and me
nobody else but me
sometimes shadows are the only light we see

every night somebody's crying
down the alley on the cold cold ground
someones running but they'll never never flee

there's a shadow underneath the tree
someone running someone no one needs
sometimes darkness is the only light we see."


these lyrics and the somber rhythmic sound of this song is just soo amazing. seems like they're talking about homeless ppl a few times, and deborah started a church for homeless ppl, and its such a genuine place.

i guess what i've been thinking about lately, is that it would be a lie to say this weekend was perfect and wonderful, or that this semester is perfect and wonderful or that life is perfect and wonderful... not that life can't seem perfect and wonderful at times or that going to college doesn't have it's amazing perks and opportunities, or that this weekend with my parents wasn't enjoyable and fulfilling. it's just that there's more to it than that. there's bitterness, there's loneliness, there's HOMELESSNESS in the city, there's emptiness, there's frustration. it's all intertwined in the everyday's especially when everyday is packed with all these changes.

the thing that is important and healthy to do is to accept the damn changes, no matter how sucky they can feel or how much you want to ball up and cry sometimes. because eventually you'll discover something about yourself or about the world or about god or about your friends, and it'll be so worthwhile. or you'll meet someone amazing and connect to them, or you'll hear a song on a sampler CD from paste magazine and cry because it's beautiful and reflects a part of life that you've seen.

and yeah most of these "you"s are really about me. i've been feeling sort of sneaky lately... let me explain... it's like i know i have something great about me, or a lot of things great about me, but here not everyone can know about any of those things, except for when i make it known some way or another (hugs, cards, laughs, smiles, hello's, performances.. you name it), so i haven't really put on a parade of ME everywhere i go... it's a lot more sneaky, like hmm.. let me tip toe around and sometimes just go nuts with my own personality, but other times just sort of walk to class with my hands in my pockets and look around at the trees. i want other ppl to have space to be themselves around me, i want to be part of something beautiful.

i'll let ya know how it goes... though it never stops going.

tired happy

i'm exhausted beyond belief, but still in the best mood. going home was great! There's no "buts" after that phrase. Going home was great. So meaningful, and seeing familiar faces on campus puts me right at home, yeah I'm starting to catch myself saying "I got home last night at 1am"

which by the way-- my flight got delayed and then had fuel problems and had to land early.. pushing my 9:10 arrival in Portland to midnight. More reason for being tired (had to wake up really early to work on papers). But like I said, I'm in a great mood. Which isn't to say "everythings fine, nothing was ever wrong" because I think while I was home I got a clear view of what was wrong all this time here. It's that I wasn't being open all the time, and at home, anything I keep to myself will certainly be detected and processed with my friends... now it's up to me to actually put myself out there and make that effort that I got used to not having to make. So that might get hard sometimes, but hard is OKAY.

Even if things are bad, it's fine... as long as they're being dealt with, because then it's going someplace new, and change is a great gift in this world that we should take advantage of more as human beings. I guess that's why I'm all the way across the country. Just taking advantage of being able to change a whole lot. I don't mean change in a way that I lose myself, though that's possible if I'm not careful, but I'm here to change into a stronger more vivid version of me, whichever way I see fit.

"So how have you been? Cause I'm always changin'"


Jazz guitar is great, and so are Major 7 chords. mmmm, I'll have to play you some of those ppl back home (MD home I mean). Yes. I love eveyone in both of my homes, thanks for making my life so meaningful.


Jo

packed

I'm almost packed and ready to go after a truly meaningful time at home. Let's just say... I laughed til my stomach hurt at least twice everyday, cried everyday, and managed to do some pretty cool things on the way. I'm thinking about taking this mac to college perk to get the work I never finished, started (oops) and completed. As much as I have 9 hours on planes... I haven't slept much at ALL, so working then would be unreliable. But these are all surface things... the kind of "packed" weekend I'm talking about sort of goes beyond the time I just spent here... it's because of this time (and all the time before it leading til now) that my heart just feels so packed tight full of all kinds of love. Love that I don't know what to do with (or how to do without) when my body flies further and further away. Love that I don't know how to walk away from... but I guess I do know, since I've done it once already. And now it should be easier. Of course the walking away is temporary, thank god, haha, but okay... let me do a little awkward blog confession...

When I got really down at school I started to get this overwhelming feeling that I was going to die in the next few months, and it freaked me out a little bit... it freaked me out a lot. I eventually forgot what that feeling was like, but let me explain what feeling like you might die really soon was like: it's sort of sophocating, makes you want life so bad it hurts, makes you want to fall in love, and do everything meaningful under the sun (or the rain!), it also made me so sad for my friends and family-- wanting to see them, knowing how painful it would be if something did happen to me, made me want to do everything in my power to prevent myself from this omen that just sort of happened one day, but what's there to prevent, when there's nothing to know about the time and place it will happen. so i convinced myself i was just missing home and having a strange side effect of grieving, and eventually the feeling went away. it's weird to talk about that because no one wants to actually consider it being true (including myself). and really whats there to do about it? besides live.


so live, i did, after my successful flight home (during the flight i thought nothing about dying... really haven't thought about that feeling since it was so strong). and here i lived, rarely feeling out of place, spending quality time with people, not sleeping, diving through puddles in the rain/mud, playing guitar for lots of people packed in little dorm rooms, cuddling, drinking chai, eating italian food and chocolate truffles, sitting outside on lawn chairs on the new brick patio...

and i'll live some more at school, a lot more, with the many more hours available to build new friendships, play guitar for new ears, basque in west-coast rain for all 6 months of it, take road trips, be open with people, say what i mean, cry, and laugh til my stomach hurts.

it was good to be home. i'm SO thankful for my family and best friends. and i'm thankful for the wonderful new home happening with me on the west coast. sometimes i get scared, that i'll get too preoccupied with the things that don't matter and miss out on living the best kind of life. at home i just forget to do the things that don't matter because i'm so absorbed in the importance of every second of my life. so i'm going to finish packing my clothes, and let go of MD for a few months. MD is sort of like a dog, that i've kept on a leash, and i just need to trust that the base i created isn't going to wonder off too far without me... but it will change, and so will i.


breathe. okay. nothing to do but live. be strong. be honest. be.