earn your shine

The new year has almost lost its shine.

Four days have passed in 2015.  Four days, for me, fraught with personal conflict, sickness, and rain.

I know, I know -- Somebody call the waaahmbulence.  (oh look, now it's fraught with bad jokes, too)

For a new year so devoid of ceremony and shebang, this one is starting off smack full of promise for our little family.  I'm taking this unusually high level of headaches as a sign that 2015 will be what I call hard/good.  You know, like a beer at the end of a longass workday.  You earned that beer, dammit, and it tastes so much better than usual, following the hours you just sweated for it.

Jonathan is going back to school, and will have to quit his job to do so.  I'm taking on a second job. Both of us are excited/scared for the learning/stretching/tearing/growing ahead.

It may be unfair of me to say that the new year has lost its shine, when in fact the new year is earning its shine.

roses and summer

The roses I brought home from work last Saturday are dying.  I should toss them out, I know.  Their petals litter my entryway and leave sticky dark shadows on my olive green credenza.  Every time I grip the borrowed glass vase with intention to discard them, I'm struck by a wall of fragrance.  Well, not fragrance, exactly.  Gone is the bouquet of dust and lemon that sighed from their proud heads upon arrival to my house.  Gone - and as the roses bow their faces, they exhale a sour dying breath, disrupting my every coming and going.

The truth is that I like this smell, it's obscenity.  I like the way they look, weeping color and life.

Three months ago, summer hit the South like a visiting in-law - rudely, but with fair warning.  In summers past, I had a habit of shutting off.  I would forego swimming holes and barbecues and bide my time until autumn rose from the ashes of summer's heat.  I would sing autumns praises in unison with the masses and thank God that the devil's season was through.  How many days have I lost with this kind of thinking?

As a girl, I don't remember having hard opinions on which season was the best.  Every season grew wildly into the next and each held surprises and banner days.  When did I learn to hate the life-giving sun when he burns fiercest, or the slate-cleaning wind when he blows coldest?  When did I forget how to be?

It's the end of August.  The temperature is dropping off as leisurely as the drawl on my father's tongue.  I sit out on the stoop most days after work and get reacquainted with this middle season that I used to know as a girl but have lost contact with over the years.  All over, folks are heralding fall.  As much as I want to dream candy corn dreams with the rest, I'm trying so hard to redeem the lost days of my adolescence.

Summer is dying, just like my roses.  I'm listening to her swan song eagerly, hoping she feels my apology.  I'm sorry I wasn't present, I'm sorry that I missed so much.  But the beauty clings on like pink on a rose.  Fleeting, immortal.

begin again

Been a while, huh?

I thought about jumping back in with a big long "catching up" style post, but I'll keep it simple instead.

Life for me has taken a couple turns in the past months - good turns, sharp turns.  Challenging myself to rise to the occasion of my new responsibilities, and to use my newfound free time wisely (easier said than done).

I'd hate to try and sum things up - it feels trite and unnatural.  So, let me say this - there is no sum.  The road is still before me, the book is still open.  I ain't done yet.

snow day

on truth

Stretched white milk met with golden brown crema, sharp and clean, the one cutting the other with such clear distinction, a lovely rosetta forming on the surface.  I brought my cortado to the table, where it sits now, half drank.  Ten, maybe twelve minutes have passed since it was made, and now the surface of my drink is muddied, marbled as an oily swamp.

Every time I lift it to my lips, the picture fades more.

Truth seems to be fluid, like espresso and milk. My truth does, anyway.  A crossroads has been racing toward me, a time for decision and turns.  

To my left, a leap.  Take a risky risk, make a chancy choice.  Jump with eyes closed into a freezing lake of possibility - or maybe, ruin.  This would make for a wild story to tell the grandchildren one day.  “When I was twenty-five, I quit my job with not a prospect in sight, and my whole world changed…”

To my right, patience.  Stay physically put, but shift my outlook and, maybe, my reality. Financial responsibility, all that shit, but also learn to weather the dull seasons with a happy and adventurous spirit.

Either choice would make a rip in me, somewhere.

To some, truth is black and white.  There are those who would, and have, advised the risk - flee the scene, run towards a dream.  Life is short, right?  Why not run from the thing you hate?  And conversely, there are those who have advised patience - slow your breathing and look around.  What can you learn? How can you carry happiness with you from this place to the next? Now, the crossroads is in my rear-view mirror, and I still can’t tell my left from right. 

I’m longing to see that bright-line and beautiful rosetta once more, but I’ve finished my drink, and now I’m not sure it was ever there at all.

52 portraits // 3

Here is girl like none other.

Her name is Crystal Frost, and - although a rose by any other name would, after all, smell sweet - her name precedes her like a banner.  Rest assured, she's one of a kind.

Crystal and I became friends in high school; the both of us shy, with nothing and everything to prove. She, being the only other girl in our group full of dudes, saved me with her wit and approach more times than I can count.  

Crystal is a storyteller, a brave and curious soul, and a woman who really gives that word it's definition.  She is independent, but loyal.  Classic, but a renegade.  She will make your belly hurt with laughter, and in the same thread cause you to question things you thought were black and white. 

I don't get to see this girl nearly enough; but when I do, I never leave her presence the same way I entered it.  

little things // 8

1 // taking a different perspective on the city via the rooftops of downtown 2 // accompanying these two amazing women on a merchandising trip and learning from them 3 // lucky to have these two men in my life 4 // this wild and wonderful marching band 5 // doodling just for fun (something there needs to be more of in my life 6 // finding my style day by day