I'm frustrated for a myriad of reasons, one of those being, of course, my frustration.  The last few months have been a time when you kind of feel unbound from gravity, just sort of . . . floating . . . But it's a new semester now, and although I've never been a disciple of the "fresh slate" society, there is something about a dawn . . . yesterday doesn't go away, exactly, but there is the opportunity to add more to your story, and a story is always the sum of its parts.

About a year ago, I read a collection of poetry known as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.  As its name somewhat hints at, it's a Persian collection, translated in the nineteenth century into English by Edward Fitzgerald and given its title because all the works are attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer (I really love the resumes of scholars from before 1700 or so).  Omar Khayyam wrote roughly two thousand poems, or at least one thousand surviving poems, and 110 four-line separate stanzas are including in the Rubaiyat, which is derived from the Persian word for four and basically means "quatrain" (a ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts).  Fitzgerald took liberty with the poems . . . he translated based on concept, not word-by-word.  I prefer this method; nonetheless, I fear that he probably diluted even that, because if you read about him, he just kind of seems like a jerk.

Anyway, I digress.  The theme of the lines are all roughly the same . . . A sort of nihilism, tasting slightly of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and softened by an appreciation of Earth's natural beauty.  The seventh:

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling;

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing."

Followed by:

"Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,

The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one."

I take his poems not to be a preoccupation with mortality or obsession with death, but rather this intoxicating celebration of life, the very mystery and miracle of it, coupled with an admonishing reminder that life is short, it is a wave on an ocean, ash in the wind.    

"Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin

The Thread of present Life away to win -

What?  For ourselves, who know not if we shall

Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!"

Your life, your thought and time and energy, is the most precious, unique, timeless currency you have.  It is you, you as a being, you as an individual, and what you pour your time into, you pour yourself.  To pursue the act of living without actively considering to what (whom?) you offer You is just an immense waste.  And perhaps, one day, you will find yourself chasing after the wind, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless . . . There is nothing new under the sun.  We research where we open 401(k) accounts so fastidiously, and yet we fail to consider where we place ourselves and the people we love and the people who love us.  And what is more valuable than humanity, collective and singular?

"In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / Where you invest your love, you invest your life." - Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul.

It seems so easy to sacrifice, to sacrifice your interests and dreams and - well, I guess I'll just say it - happiness for the promise of betterment, of comfort, of prestige and respect.  It's interesting how hollow those things can be.  And it is interesting how one small concession here, another there, can add up.  Remember, the whole is the sum of its parts, and sometimes more.

This painting is entitled A Few Small Nips (that's what it says in Spanish at the top), by Frida Kahlo.  She's speaking specifically of the sacrifices women make, and even more specifically, after the Mexican Revolution, but broad messages speak out beyond their frames.  

Continual sacrifice of happiness for the attainment of a goal that will leave you hungrier than when you began can cause you to bleed to death.  To support oneself and to be secure is to be an adult.  Money, envy, materialism, the endless racetrack, is to lose happiness, and maybe to be insane.  The pressure to lose your identity, the individualism that you were blessed with and what makes your soul both vibrate and fall silent, is enormous, but it leads to the death of your potential of self-fulfillment.  Preaching is ridiculous, but it makes me sad to see so many forget the rioting and quiet joys of the heart, adventure, experience, love.

I refuse to be told who, or what, I am supposed to be, how I'm supposed to become it, whether or not I can respect myself, or where to invest myself.  I refuse to give over to selfishness, I refuse to abandon responsibility to my own person and to others to adhere to some kind of social creed I don't believe in.  I pursue a balance: a balance in which even my duty is a part of my happiness, and sought out with love.  This balance is part of being human, and being human, being organic, holding the capacity for wonder and reason and dream, is the most celebrated ability on Earth.  It seems we are so eager to renounce it.

"Alike for those who for TODAY prepare,

And those that after some TOMORROW stare,

A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries,

'Fools!  Your Reward is neither Here nor There.'

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore 

Came out by the same door as in I went.

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,

And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;

And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -

'I came like Water, and like Wind I go.'"

insomnia.

I haven't been able to sleep lately.  I'm not sure why.  I've always been what I like to somewhat fondly call a periodic insomniac, and there are occasional, typically well-spaced nights that I toss and turn for hours and find myself exhausted and sore when dawn breaks.  This has happened four times in the past week.  I'm not exactly sure why.  The day is grey and wet and humid . . . I feel like I'm underwater, with all this pressure pushing in and out and the pressure, pressure, pressure is holding me together, like if this ever-so-delicate balance is erupted, if just one more pascal is added either inside or out, I'm libel to just burst.  Checks and balances.  Stress holding in stress.

Blood in the water.

I'm nineteen.  I grew up in your typical white Protestant home, with two parents and four kids (I'm the oldest).  We didn't have a perfectly painted picket fence, but we had the dog and the cat and the three car garage and the weekend soccer games and the seasonal choir concerts and everything else that comes so neatly packaged in the American dream.  I went to a private Christian high school, I led lots of activities, and I graduated at the top of my (wonderful) class.  I turned down Stanford for a full scholarship to Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where I wasn't necessarily happy but found myself gearing up to pursue a degree in journalism.  I got a job running a website for the journalism department, a boy from back home became the first to break my heart, my best friend left for the other side of the world, and life went on.

But things are losing their definition.  Borders are continuously shifting; it's like Poland some days.  Up is down and down is up, but more to the point, there is no down or up, there is no center of gravity.  Entropy, and beauty in the breakdown, I suppose.

My parents are in the middle of a messy-and-always-getting-messier divorce that stemmed from sins carried out by both parties, changing my relationship with each irrevocably, and forever disillusioning me from the idolatry we often commit over the people that raise us.  We're moving out of the house we have been in for six years, the longest we have lived anywhere, and I will from now on be a stranger in my parents' homes (plural - that's weird) who just visits on holidays, without a room or memories in other rooms to call my own.  Worse than these purely nostalgic consequences, however, is the knock-down-drag-out fight they seem to be having to see who can pull the other through the mud more in front of me.  Under the guise of "you are an adult, Kayla, you need to know," they selfishly and thoughtlessly pull me deeper and deeper into the vortex of their skewed realities.  Add this to the responsibility I feel being the only source of stability in my brother and sisters' lives, and maybe it's understandable that I have sought to be own my own a lot this summer, without a whole lot of family time.

And in this alone time, I fell in love again.  I'm not shy with using the words "fell in love," by the way.  I do not believe in being afraid of falling in love.  I don't believe in being afraid of a lot of things, but especially not love.  I don't say it if it is not there, but if it is there, I say it, and I feel like it really is that clear. . . I apologize if some feel like I am oversimplifying, but we sacrifice too much in this world to political correctness as it is, and I refuse to let love be a casualty.  I digress.  Summer love has been a kind of pattern for me. . . I don't know why, and I don't care.  But I am afraid, because sometimes when we try to carry delicate summer love into fall, it crumbles like the leaves.  I never asked for any level of commitment from him, but all of the sudden he started turning down far more lurid job opportunities to stay close to me and I began driving seven hours back to Pennsylvania from school every three weeks just to see him.  I am well aware that I'm leading myself further down the road of no return, and I do it willingly.  He's a waiter who doesn't speak my first language; his highest aspiration is supporting his family.  I want to get my fingers dirty with sand in Morocco, drink coffee in Buenos Aires, walk up towers in Prague.  I understand that the pieces in this puzzle don't exactly slide together.  I fell in love with him anyway and I'm drifting, drifting, drifting . . . Letting myself fall deeper and deeper because I feel safe and adored and he is wonderful and he gives me butterflies.  What does this mean?  I have no idea.

That fairly sums up the premise upon which I'm basing my life right now: I have no idea.  I'm writing, teaching, working for the journalism department, majoring in English and Spanish, carrying out my first real serious relationship with a boy about as far away from my life experience as humanly possible, watching my family crumble, and wondering what the hell is going to happen next.  I'm not unhappy.  I live by the day.  Whether or not this approach to life is self-sustaining, we shall see.

So there are few rough basics about me.  The finer details, of course, are still emerging.