October 2001

Do you know me? I am that bird who has the hand clasped over her voice, choking to sing, traveling miles to chirp. At times I am set free to whisper to the eagle that wants to eat into me, and sometimes, I stream miles that make it closer to the moment my voice shall return.

I still cannot speak, my voice is still trapped in my throat and my wings flap at a stillness I shudder to invigorate. Do you know me? I wish you did, because after all the miles I’ve run to find my voice, my speech, my song, I am afraid the race has lost me my self. So even if I do sing, I wonder to whom?

I like to imagine a world where you are, if I could imagine it hard enough it may give me the chance to live in it, perhaps through your eyes. I like to imagine that time how widened my smile and rested my heart shall be.

Busy, busy, busy me. It’s October already.  Yikes! Look at how far gone the year has come, I remember starting this year and starting this diary. I remember saying to myself that I was sure several parts of my year this year would be comparable to last year and might be to some parts of next year. That was one of the reasons why I started a journal, I wished to prove my own theory wrong, so I wrote down my year in months, wishing that in the future when I read up on it, it would read differently. There would be contained in it small patches of fun here, escape here, happiness here, accomplishment here, creativity here, chance meetings, (okay there was one, but I can hardly call it a meeting, remember my BSB moment in June, okay that one) lurid affairs and just the general gaiety of life and youth. So far, there is no steam to exert the engine causing any of of that to happen and being that this is October, with only 3 months left for another exaggerated New Years celebration so much of my life still seems so identical to last year’s happenings that I wonder when is change going to happen, if at all.

Let's recap, a bit shall we?

I am still single, having met anyone, haven’t been out on a date in so long it seems like a decade, I feel like I must have turned male or grown unfamiliar genitals perhaps. *sniffs*. I haven’t lost any weight, instead I am sure I must have added several ounces of fat from when I last wrote in here. And most importantly, I haven’t found my place, that place that truly describes me and makes me happy. Every time I speak these words to my sister, not in these exact words but clues here and there, she keeps assuring me that, I have this and that more months left until the year is over so I should keep the hope candle burning and expect my surprise possibly at the last minute. The first time we had this conversation was in February and we have had it every first day/week of the month ever since. Nothing’s changed. I am still me and that me is still ungrounded.

The only turn I can say that has come of this month, I choose not to call it a high or a low point, but definitely a humiliating intermediary is that my ex moved down here and decided to drag me down heartbreak dungeon again. I know, the way I describe it makes it sound like a definite low point, and so why didn’t I label it that? Simple, because heartbreak dungeon is for those that let their minds get sucked into it with words like: I missed you, I missed what we used to do together, I don’t want you to be with anyone else except me, etc. These were soothing words, which at the time when I was longingly in love with him I so wanted to hear and must have imagined myself hearing even in my sleep but now, they sound, condescending to someone of my capacity and strength. When I wished he would say those words to me, they sadly never happened. Now, a year and a half later, it is happening, and I wonder if that bit of my dream though it is now past tense can come true now, that can only mean that some day some things I think about and pray about endlessly, and imagine hard about now, may, just may come true. Now, that I have become a stronger woman---one of the qualities of spending so much time with yourself, you get to appreciate your company much better than any man can give you---I don’t see the need in starting anything be it purely sexual or otherwise with him. It would be fun to have someone to "kick it" with once in awhile, but that’s just about where the fun level ends. He wouldn’t love me and me, being a woman with a soft heart I would fall for him hopelessly (women have a hard time separating sex from love we all know that) and get sucked into that whole, “I can’t make you happy” melodrama. That, is change I really don’t need.

Asides from that there was ultimately no high or low point in my month, several things did occur that caused me to gasp once in awhile. I remember thinking about writing my dreams, my hopes, and aspirations down one after the other. Though it would break my heart when they don’t get answered but it puts a name to the dream, giving me something to work to, and everyone needs that energy jolt once in a while. I know I do. Every time, I often say, I wish my dreams came true, this and that should happen, but what in the heck are they? What are these dreams, classify them into the ones that mean as much, some that don’t, the flimsy wants and then the ones that are dependent on some others realization. It’s crazy and stupid, I see, at a point I couldn’t believe I was the one taking my time out one evening to do it. However, if I check back on them next year, I pray that at least one of those items would have come a level closer to reality, so I can check them off satisfactorily and proudly.

I remember I had this dream to publish a book of my poetry by my 21^st birthday. That it would be part of my speech on the day of the launch, that I, as a Littleton, had a book of my heartfelt, though childish, considered deep and profoundly written poetry published and in print. I said I wouldn't care how many copies got sold eventually as long as it was in print, and had my name emblazoned on it, it would fill me to high heavens. When I think about that dream now, it seems like it was someone else’s, and not mine. I hardly write poetry anymore. I just put down words, harsh words, windows to my bruised soul that repeat my constant longing to escape into a world that floats on the sea of my dreams. I feel unspent, unused, a waste of accelerated hope likewise clinging onto its strands and this reflects in all aspects of what I do or write. My mind keeps straying to some passages in Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses’…

...Unequal laws unto a savage race,
that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I think my family has heard about this bit enough from me, particularly the last 3 words and the unequal laws part too.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.

Don't I wish that all the time. I wish to live life, live it to its fulfillment. Sometimes, I feel my wings have been clipped and suppressed to stop them form soaring. It’s a pity fest but I feel so. My best friend says, we are bearing a cross by being “clipped” this way, and one day, when our dreams shall come to pass, we would look back on these hard times and smirk, or as Alfred says, drink (to) life

I am a part of all that I have met;
yet all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
forever and forever when I move.

I think maybe I should count all my life experiences, good or bad, mostly bad, as a stepping-stone that takes me one step closer to that world, that life I crave, that draws farther and farther away from me.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little…

How true! I recite this everyday. I cannot hold still, hang my breath and lie lifeless; I have to spread what is in me…though I know not what it is.

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
to follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

I guess this answers my earlier thought of what indeed I am.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are…
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

We are that searching spirit that longs to live unburned and strive for adventure until its rest when it shall hang its hat in full feat, having sought, strived and found what its heart desired.

It’s been a soul searching time, when isn’t it? Let’s hope November would be more exciting, and not quite so same. I did drink to my life, thanking God for the sameness at some point. There's this little prayer I got from this girl who says it's from Kevin Richardson, it goes: I thank God for this day, another day to breath, to think and to move. That in effect summarizes our days and no matter how simple that may sound, we still should be thankful for that.

I didn't think any I will insert the first paragraph to the sequel to Simple Kind of Life, which I decided to work on this month. I had to find that thing I loved and harness it. I had sacrificed so much of my fun level in the accomplishment of a career. I shouldn’t do that.

****

The cabin was no. 6. A brown wooden building with 2 bedrooms and a large sized full bath, that was perched on top of the sandy hill facing the beach and some rocks, boulder rocks, black and shiny unlike the sea sand underneath them. She had chosen that cabin because of those rocks, particularly drawn to the abstract shape they formed as they piled on top of the other. Forming an A depending on what time of the day and mood and possible level of inebriation you stared at them; the capital letter A, not the lower case one. She always liked the letter A, after all it was the first letter of the alphabet, one of the first letters a child learns, an interesting vowel that sets the tone for most words, softening and feminizing them. To her it was representative of a new beginning, a new chapter, and a metamorphosis in her life. Shelia’s life: the first chapter, and it would start with an A, the A that was written on the rocks opposite her window. Suddenly the melancholic charm of cautiously reeling your life to start over when the old was not that well worn did not seem so overwhelming after all.

Without thinking, fighting back a chuckle she turned to the elderly carpenter who was showing her round the place and smiled to his small self bent over the wooden slabs on her floor, “I’ll take it,” she said. He lifted up his head forced Shelia to smile back at his missing teeth and staggered away to inform the agent of the good news. Later on that day, the agent came by with the papers, Shelia paid him cash, and moved in 6 hours later.  The place was Cityside, Maine and her new name was Sheila. She was now the landlady of her own home.