Rendezvous

"I will love you 'til the end of time" -Lana Del Rey Blue Jeans

My favorite Kanye song:

I took the 4 1/2 mile walk home from work a few nights ago. I needed the tranquility. Running is for clarity... walking is for thoughts and reasoning and the creation of blogs.

Being in the same position I was last year, looking for job security in a quality field, an understanding of self, and mostly, love is unnerving. I'm up at 2:51 in the morning, after having a relatively frank conversation with a friend, thinking about my future... I wrestle with security, being oddly ok with things not being where I’d like them to be when it comes to the aforementioned because of my idealistic belief that one day I’d get there… The fear motivates.

I'm also seeing people getting married and starting families and I realize I'm not 16, falling in love for the first time. I'm in my mid 20's still looking for those secure friendships that I looked for as a kid. And still questioning my own inadequacies, accepting my own shyness. Questioning if I'm good enough for law school, for a Ph. D in Black studies, for any grad school, for a job that pays well... so that I can do the selfish things I want to do, and provide for the children I want to have.

I nervously (angrily?) ate an entire family-size bag of Doritos because it was in front of me... it feels disgusting. I have rhymes and poems in my head. About one girl, existing on a planet that often reminds her of its ability to make her feel like a dot.

I envy my parents with their 26 years and their nuclear family... which moved from new refugees to being lower-middle class. How they raised two crazy-ass, completely unconventional children, I don't know---

Normal skips a generation.

I feel almost bad that I'm not on the path to doctor, lawyer, architect, or at least consultant. If I'm not on the path to have the family they have, then I should at least put my energies to creating a lifestyle they couldn't... but I'm not doing so well on that front either.

It's a catch 22... To get it all, DC is the place to be. But to be in DC and be successful, one has to have it all first: meaning the family, the friendships, the love (support system is the term... but I like rambling)-- in order to be strong enough to plow through her ambitions. To walk around by my oneself at night in DC... I see how vast the skies are, how dark they are, how quiet they are, and how small I am.

I am in love with my fella
But you. are. decadent
like a lust that still has fire

when ordin-airy love has fizzled to content
like a masseuse when
I am tired…

You are the lush grass basking in the sun after
its midnight shower
And all I want to do
is lay there and roll around in you
Best yet, let you roll around in me

So hard—we’ll make beds spring and melt chocolate
From the sweat of our love
Making- Clyde, my eyes have undressed you
On days when I am
Un addressed
Un sexed
Un heard
Un loved

I have savored your danger with my teeth
And it tastes like a desire
I have to creep,

Away from the mute of my everyday
Content to dispense
unrequited love
But my daydreams don’t want to share you and taint you
with love's settlement.

-- I wish I could still write poetry that could make people "suck my cockiness, lick my persuasion" (Rihanna) because it is the only art form that says exactly what it is I need to say, without withholding, irregardless of whether or not people understand... It's interesting that the real world has made me a little conservative when it comes to it... and I'm fighting to get back the unapologetic, the unabashed.

"If you'd let me, here's what I'd do,

I'll take care of you" Some Drake wisdom (of all people, right?)

When I comb my hair, it doesn't fall out, but it's been gradually thinning since I was 17. Maybe because when I was 16, I thought I'd lose my virginity before I graduated high-school because all the pretty girls did. Or maybe because when I was 19, I wanted to be single and unattached until I was 40, not like the naive girls from high school. And now I'm straddling somewhere in-between my needy 16 year-old self, and my radical, idealistic, feminist 19 year-old self. Anxiety plays out in body logic-- scary, right? I'll be the first to admit I'm not tough. So my heart grabs hold of care and chances to care that'll heal me. And because I'm single and "independent," a lot of that care has been coming in the form of unexpected everyday blessings.

A forehead kiss and hugs from Sam, the 67-year-old paperman/ grandpa-like figure at Wheaton Subway station who greets me each morning...

The handsome Filipino cashier at the Takoma 7-Eleven who took interest despite me looking like a disheveled high-schooler after sleeping on an overnight Megabus... and taught me a few words of Tagalog as I cashed up my cheap morning Cappuccino and banana...

And the conscious-like brother with dreads who decided to come sit next to me, 1-stop before he gets off the bus, to inquire about my upbringing and tactfully tell me I was beautiful.... Classy/Intellectual "hitting on"... a lost art.

It's nice that people choose to give away care to complete strangers, and for one that's just trying to create a sense of belonging in the world, it is THE WORLD.

----

My current muse-- Lana Del Rey-- odd, imperfect, old, kind of bitter with a quiet fire, but stunning and young enough to speak to the turmoil of this generation. And this song is spot on when it came to my first, my second, and this moment in time...