Anticipation

I try, and am generally quite successful, at living in the present. But right now as I sit bored and antsy at my desk (don't tell on me please)I need a healthy dose of future to get me through the day. For the past few weeks I've been obsessively checking my e-mail to find out which of the pre-orientation OxyEngage trips I'll be leading. Just checked again, no update. I'm counting down the minutes to Yoga at 7. I'm jumping for joy because KC and I are buying tickets for The xx AND for Dr. Dog. I'm plotting adventures for WS's visit this weekend. I am ecstatic whenever I think about the upcoming semester. For my friends to return, for the people I have yet to meet. For the endless studio hours. For getting back into rock climbing. The list goes on. So maybe its better to live in the moment, but a little positive anticipation can't hurt either.

Family Dinner

I imagine the scene from outside the window. Six twenty-somethings gathered around the Sunday dinner table laughing and digging into a homemade chicken pot pie. Mason jars serve as glasses, and paper towels are ripped off and passed around. MH, aka "mom" provided the venue and the food. MW claims to have helped. PF brought popsicles and a new friend. Not to mention he brings the only testosterone to the table this evening. KC, fresh from her trip to Berkley, brought me. As for me, well I got one heck of a deal: free food and good company. As I stuff myself past capacity,I glance around the table and feel nothing but fondness for the people occupying the other chairs. Laughing about our weekend escapades, showing our love by poking fun, and sharing a banter peppered with inside jokes, I catch myself wondering: how did this happen? Aside from KC, these people were merely strangers or footnotes in my life story. But now, reasoning aside, we've come together this summer and there is no denying that we have become an impromptu, dysfunctional, but happy family. I wonder what's for dinner next week?

Single Ladies

Today I cashed in on a free introductory class with M at a new yoga/fitness studio that opened up down the street. The class was called "BUTI", and the title couldn't have been more fitting. I say this because the class was basically a combination of yoga and shake-your-moneymaker club dancing. No, I didn't know such a thing existed either. At first, as I tried to mimic the impossible orbits that the instructor traced with her hips, I felt like a middle-schooler at my first dance. But a few minutes into the class I closed my eyes and let just myself flow. I laughed. I shook it. I sweated until I was slipping in my downward dogs. I felt energized, strong, and most importantly, I felt sexy. And not because some man was gawking at my newfound dancing abilities. No, in this room full of women, it just felt good to move. And so we forgot about one another. We glanced at the instructor, listened to her cues, but we departed. We were lost in the wonderlands of our own bodies, drunk off of our own beauty. Today I got more than just a free class. I enjoyed a full hour and a half of bliss. I loved my body, because every imperfection aside, look at all it allows me to do. Likewise, I loved my mind for taking the backseat for a bit, as I thought with my heartbeats and remembered with my breaths. And I was reminded, at an age where boys take up an appalling amount of my consciousness, that as nice as it is to have a lover, a crush, a fling, there is nothing better than falling back in love with yourself. To steal a song lyric from Third Eye Blind, "I've never been so alone, and I, I've never been so alive."

Secret Garden

Today I ventured to the Highland Theater to catch a three dollar movie with I. I found myself surrounded by both the poverty and quirkiness that I am sometimes starved for living on a college campus. As we hurried up a street with unkempt lawns and peeling paint, something magical caught my eye. Sandwiched between two large and decrepit brick buildings, a small garden teaming with life waved proudly at me. Her vines and plants hung heavy with some of the most enticing vegetables I've ever seen, and I fought the urge to dash in and pull a Peter Rabbit. I resisted because this was not my bounty to enjoy. Instead, I looked on at the families bent over on a hot afternoon to maintain this precious parcel, and I smiled to myself while silently thanking them. I thanked them for reminding me that people can still come together to create some good in this world. That beauty thrives in shadows and hides in plain sight. That sometimes the good guy wins. And I imagined, with the slightest twinge of jealousy, the bliss that will come to these families when they finally get to sink their teeth into one of those mouthwatering tomatoes.

Desert Storm

I'm nine years old playing hopscotch with with my neighbor. Lines of chalk creep from the front porch over uneven plateaus of concrete mapping a trail with no real destination. Summer has arrived and with it comes a hot dry air that is more suffocating than sustaining. The heat shoos the adults inside, and we laugh at their folly as they pass up an irreclaimable summer day. For us the antidote to the heat is as simple as a popsicle or a run through the hose. So we tirelessly stamp our feet all over the concrete, when suddenly we detect a change. Maybe it is a sixth sense that comes with being a desert kid, for this is long before we worried about the morning news and the 5-day forecast, but suddenly we know its about to rain. The air thickens and tenses in our lungs as we hold our breath for the gift that is about to come. Yet despite our anticipation, the storm still manages to catch us by surprise. In seconds the world around us is transformed. The sun departs its roost to course through our veins as we accept the weight of the entire sky falling upon us. We laugh and scream in delight, but every word that leaves us is an orphan lost to the sounds of water exploding. This is before the thunder and lightning crash the party. It is long before the rain stops falling. Before it leaves us with a smell almost as enlivening as the downpour itself, like a lovers smell lingering on the sheets. It is long before we know about that kind of love. And in that moment we feel something we don't have the word to describe, that only now we realize is something called bliss. And we fail to notice the sweet swirl of color as our chalk is swept away.