Don't Panic

I've had to answer this question so many times: What comes next? What degree are you going for? What are you going to do with it? I thought by enrolling in university I would appease all those well-meaning doom-sayers that would leave a few too many seconds of silence after my answer of "I don't know". Apparently, they are not satisfied yet. I wish I could tell them all that I am not worried about what I am going to do. I wish I could stop them when I recognize the look of doubt, and tell them that no matter what happens to me, I am sure it cannot stray far from what I am built for. My life will always be consonant with what my capacities and my needs. I do not distrust my nature and my strength so much that I would compromise certain things, on any path that I choose. So stop making those faces! Stop asking me to scramble for the most possible future. I am not worried, do you really care enough that you are? What have you invested in my life more than I have? Or does the answer of "I don't know" just leave you without a socially prescribed response. If I said something you recognized: "Social Worker, Journalist, Teacher, Mother of 5", you would be able to say "Oh, my cousin did that at UBC and is now the happiest individual in the western hemisphere, according to Newsweek". Well, I'm not going to feel anxious about the future so you can have an easier time conversing with me. I know that those conversation are like games of Jenga... we take turns to make legal moves, removing and dealing with the normal questions and comments by saying them. The person who makes the comment that crumbles the tower loses, there is a moment of silence, a smile, and we turn to the person on our other side and start again. Block of wood #1: "Hi!" #2:"I know you from that wedding 5 years ago" #3:"What are you up to these days!" #4:"Oh yeah, what's next?". Let me just crumble the tower before you get too into it: I don't know, ok? And I don't care to know. So deal with it.

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I'm in Ontario, and everywhere, there are holes. I thought this visit would be very different from the last two, but it's like the negative of the previous image, the mirror's view, because everything is different, but not separate. Suddenly, you realize the mechanisms that held this house together have disappeared. Toilet paper runs out (I can never remembering being in that bathroom and running out of toilet paper, before yesterday). I do things I never would have had to before... serve the coffee, clean up the cake. Before, this place was so restful but now, there is so much to be done! So much to catch up on. Groceries, cleaning the bathrooms, changing the sheets. Where has the once unlimited supply of Kleenex gone to? This is not what a life boils down to, but this is what has struck me as I walk in to it all. I feel all our lives are that much more scattered, because the pivot is gone or moved, or lost for now. How to live with this scatter, with the shards inside that still cut once in a while. I agree that I would like to keep them... in fact, I find more shards all the time... things I thought I had lost. Memories of moments, of words... I can't conjure them, but they have come to me. I remembered those jeans she bought me that I loved and my parents hated. I remembered what she ate for breakfast, or what her hands felt like. I'm glad to have more of the glass shards. Yeah, they hurt, but they are supposed to. It means they are still growing, you are still moving, and the pain is that reminder.

Will It Blend?

Wouldn't it be great to throw Bush into that blender?