nataliekresen’s posterous

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September 29, 2009

A day in late September

 

9/29/09

The sky is gray and dark today, a washed-out-once-purple gray. Overcast and melancholy like the Damien Rice song playing in my ear, making me want to speak through stuttered breaths, something that is true. Being alive, in heightened moments, can be overwhelming. Other times it can go unnoticed and feel mundane, that sort of  t.v. watching, auto pilot living. 

This morning I woke up late, stripped of an odd dream that I can no longer remember cept' for the fact that it was odd. I showered, used a freshly laundered towel that smelled of sweet fabric softener and soap. It was the most pleasant thing that has happened yet today: smelling that towel. It made me happy.

The rest of this morning I have been holding something down, not quite sure what it is, but something. Something heavy that begs to be noticed, What next, Natalie? What next? Get moving, get more, make more, be more, do more, fix more. Ah. Shut up. Let me smell towels and look out at the grey sky and feel nothing but calm. Nothing but calm. Do you hear me? Settle yourself.

In these moments, I am reminded to breathe, sip my chocolate textured coffee and
have gratitude for simply being alive. This is also the time when I think of the manatees. I know, it sounds weird. Manatees? What the hell? But when I was on my vacation, in that little motor boat on the salty seas, something happened when those oafy mammals rose, face up, to catch air.

Something broke open in me, out of my chest, something exciting, simple & exhilarating. I had just walked through the rain forest, body covered in mosquito bites, dried mud, and heat. I was tired, lethargic, in need of a nap and some cool ice water. And then the manatee appeared, their massive rubbery bodies would cast a shadow before they surfaced. Their giant nostrils would poke up & gather air, before they'd dive back underwater, slump backed and slow.

Instantly, I was eight years old again, running around the boat, screaming & squealing, trying to touch their tails, pointing each time they were coming up to the surface. My friend thought I was nuts, suffering some odd form of heat stroke that left me giddy and elusive. But I was just so alive, so tapped in to the moment that I simply forgot about itchy skin, sunburn, cameras, and anything else that might have been present on that boat.

There was such a release in watching nature, as if I was able to detach some giant ball and chain that I carry around. The ball and chain of my goals and aspirations, my desire to make some tiny mark in this world. The ball and chain that just feels heavy and undefined, a fire ball of stress. Who cares about figuring out your future when manatees are surfacing and diving in the wild? Who cares about anything other than simply being alive?

I have been trying to keep that feeling like some seashell memento from my trip. Hold it close to my heart and have its wisdom excite me again, even when I am doing the most mundane of tasks, like separating laundry or cleaning dirty dishes. But alas, that moment is hard. The ball & chain feels so much more familiar. But I am just an animal, I tell myself, all I need to do is survive. Eat and breathe and watch the leaves turn yellow. Fold my knees into the sheets and sleep, dream of fireflies lighting up a night's sky.

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September 21, 2009

mucky, dirty, dark

I've been doing lots of brainstorming to save myself from the unknown. The mucky, dirty, dark, unknown. I tell myself: brain storm, c a l m yourself. 

I read somewhere that people don't really desire happiness, they desire peace. I think that's true. 

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July 28, 2009

It is said...

 

I've fallen off the face of the earth. My earth. The one I used to know so well, better than the lines on the palms of my hands. Someone once read those lines and told me I would live to be a very old woman.

Week folds over week, in one rapid movement. Time is compounded, lost, turned over, and more comes at me. Never ending time. For now, at least.

This past year has been something jolting, so much change-- haircuts and break-ups and moves. And in this upheaval, I am finding buried pieces of myself. Like fossils in rock. I am uncovering lost parts of myself that are so deeply embedded, I almost can't see them. 

It is said that we all have an inner child, an archetypal symbol of our youth. Mine is spunky, she's fun, she wants to run around outside until her hair tangles with the scent of summer. She wants to battle the big Me who wants to nap and groan about the responsibilities of life.

Do we all pull against some gigantic force that wants to crush us under its pressure? Some force that says: Stop Trying.

Life is a series of mind battles, I think. For each voice we hear, there is another that appears. And the trick is not to live in those voices, not to let them have all the control. For they are simply voices in the darkness of our minds. & if we shined a light on them, I bet they'd run for the hills, scatter like cockroaches to the corner of a room, show themselves as the insubstantial fluff that they are. For all they really do is keep us small, keep us stuck, keep us from stepping into something unknown. Cause the unknown is where the action is, it's the home of surprise and adventure, & my little girl is just dying to get in there, get in there and explore the giant tunnels of not knowing. For I think she does know something I do not. Like we are all resilient and wired to survive and life is not sooo scary if we choose to take the dive.

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May 16, 2009

breathe. gasp. swallow.

Breathe, the voice says, rising through the silence. Rising like steam off water, curling into, out of, the ear, bubbling up, dissipating, disa-ppearing. This is where truth lays, in the silence we can barely hear. Here. Ha. Ear. The silence we mute after childhood. 

Running with an Ipod on, volume cranked & booming, we can't hear ourselves: breathe. gasp. swallow. It all gets lost between beats. Diluted moments. Dilution of selves. Dissolution. We're losing the ability to read between the lines because we aren't reading every line. My dad finished a 400 page book in a night and half. A night and a half, scanning through the pages clumsily, half heartedly. We're melting through moments, missing the passion in a bike tire spinning against pavement, tuned out to the way laughter moves and rises, rattling the air above a mouth, below the sky.

We're too busy protecting our hearts to hear the gravity of our words. Someone once told me what he'd miss most about me where the subject lines of my emails. My emails. Where the hell was I in that statement? I. Me. He should have said, I'll miss you never. Never. But those subject lines, man, they stole my heart. Hearts are closed all over the world, clammed up like pearls in suffocating shells. Soon we'll have to shuck them open, pry them suckers out.  

I can't tell you how many times I forget to simply listen, too busy trying to come up with something brilliant to say. I can see the person's lips moving, but I can't quiet myself, get out of my own way. And I lose in this, in missing the things others say, all that unheard wisdom drying up in abandonment. If a word is uttered and no one was listening, does it make a sound? 

A s-o-u-n-d? A sound? A sea hound?

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March 9, 2009

Along the way



"The greatest precept is continual awareness."
                                                            -- Buddhist saying
 
This morning I awoke in my close curtained room.
 
It was softer, more quiet than usual. Slivers of light pierced through the fabric folds and something stirred slightly. Something unnameable, alive but muted. I lay there groggy, limbs comfortably askew, trying to bring my mind into full consciousness, trying to connect with the moment & be present. After all, there was nothing outside this except past and future, there was no need to think at all.
 
But I could feel my mind grow brighter, clearer, and it came out screaming like a baby from a womb. Battling the peace in that room, shouldering through with must do, must do, must do, drowning out all the glory in silence, in morning, in life and its sublime moments. And I learned something altogether new about my mind. Learned it wants a war with the present, wants to pull me down with it. And we left that moment, my mind and I, stumbling together, crashing & rolling, bruising all that was holy along the way.


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February 17, 2009

Sift through

 A first sign of Spring this morning: birds chirping through the bitter cold. The hard crusted icy cold. And I'm pensive (what news! as if I'm not always pensive while writing or spilling my guts). You couldn't see them, their fluttery wings. Their birdsong just echoed through the stark trees, the blowing wind. So much in life is inconsequential: a plastic bag tumbling in the wind, a smile unnoticed, an empty belly moaning at night. And my pensiveness builds, it mounts, it rises above the sea of my emotions and sits there, about to break.

I scribble in my notebook on the subway this morning. A homeless man screams loudly at the tip top of his tired lungs. His exhausted lungs, rising and falling like a dusty accordion. He starts with a soliciation, a plea for money, help, support, but somewhere along the way he forgets and breaks out into song. A loud song woven with lunacy and madness, alternating, God bless you. Happy Birthday with Fuck you all, that's what you think and people's eyes stayed glued to the floor, the mud stained, dirt trodden floor. Because they know: so much in life is inconsequential.

And we must sift through. Know what to hold on to and what to throw away, because you can't hold on to everything. That's what destroys you, all that weight carried from a life of greed and collection. No, it's better to be an observer, wandering through these days, these years. Better to hear the birds chirp and the insane ramble than to listen to your own ramblings playing like an old fashion record, rich with pain & heaviness. Better to feel the grumble rise in your sunken stomach minutes before you go to bed than to stuff yourself like a baby, full. Because full bellies lead to strange dreams and, upon waking, even stranger perceptions...

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February 10, 2009

In the turn of a day...

 

I drag my feet sometimes. I do. It's not that I don't push my toes forward, but my heels keep me back, scrape the tread off my shoes. I can't help it. It's my physical groan, my active grumble, my shoe filled complaint. Not that I've much to complain about these days. Nope, no sir, things are just dandy over here.
 
I went to brunch with a friend on Sunday, we shoveled mouthfuls of food slowly, passionately, while we talked about life and its freak occurrences, random encounters. Amid the crispy fried potatoes & fluffy eggs, spirituality and storytelling spilled out like yoke, running across the plate of our conversation. We made a pact to spend a day together, starting in the morning ending at midnight, without any plan. We'd just meet on some random corner and see where the day takes us. New York at our fingertips, any street just a shoe drag waltz from our starting point. 

Yes, Manhattan as our oyster, cracked open and ready to be swallowed. We'll watch the city breathe and see where life takes us in the turn of a day. Cause you can do that in New York. Here, anything is possible.
 
I once ran into an old friend on the subway [Old: not seen since preadolescence, budding teen days]. I instantly remembered her house back in Pennsylvania, the brown dog, her bedroom's sloped rafters, the secrets and teachings whispered amid a circle of girls. And there she was, sitting, not making eye contact with anyone like a polite and proper New Yorker. We chatted a bit. Me, leaning down from the handrail, and she, head tilted to the right, chin pointing up. We never exchanged numbers, that's too intimate. Just a smile and nod hello. 
 
Cause that's how things work. We spend all this time meeting and then dismissing people, loving and letting them go. All this time spent on pleasantries only to meet that person on the subway, years later, a hair away from being a stranger. A moment of reflection & remembrance. A moment. 

That brunch felt longer, felt like eternity, chasing after stories and pulling them forth. Because we do that, don't we? We drop stories from our mouths like a cat drops a dead mouse. Look what I've done, all this effort and here's my prize to share. With you. Because that's what friends do. And it makes me wonder if my brunch friend will be some random occurrence too, years later, that I bump into while walking along the gum speckled pavement, panning the view and dragging my feet. And that thought makes me sad. Sadder than I've been in awhile. 

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February 5, 2009

yellow and black and grey and other Winter woes...

 

The way I see it, Winter lasts too damn long. Sure the snow is beautiful, falling ephemerally, delicately, piling into bulky hunks like white icing on the ground. Nature's cupcake. But damn is it cold. Not to mention the fact that that pretty white snow gets tainted like all pure things eventually do. It gets peed on, tromped & stomped on. It turns yellow and black and grey. 
 
I walk the streets buried in my parka, hood buttoned and erect like an igloo blocking my face from the urban tundra. My face! It's peeling from the wind; I pulled a tiny piece of skin off my forehead this morning in horror. I'm starting to feel like an onion, shrinking with each layer the cold slaps off. I'd be okay if it was the result of sun soaking and salty margaritas but there's no joy in losing your skin to an ice battle. I'm on alert, the guard is up, I'm ready to fight at any moment with this atmospheric warrior. Dukes up, you! I've got my gloves and scarf, fuzzy boots, my fleece simulated hoodie, and wool slipper socks, I've packed my hand warmers and chapstick, my snow goggles and Theraflu. I'm ready now, have at me. 

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January 18, 2009

Carry Us Through...

Everything old becomes new again. And so it goes with life. Plants sprout, grow, whither and die, but not before burying their seeds deep in the earth, and those new seeds, sprout, grow, whither, and die too. The cyclical nature of things. It all comes full circle again. I remember the first time I experienced heartache. Heart ache. It was as if someone was burning out my insides, stealing my breath and replacing it with deep pockets of sorrow, heavy like sand. But we heal, we grow stronger, we stitch back together all the parts of us that have split apart. We forget. And then remember-- through experiencing the emotions all over again, at slightly different degrees and with new back stories but the same familiar feelings take hold of us again. 


On this same vain, good things happen like this as well, euphoria, excitement, glee, connection, the pendulum swings in their favor too. So, whatever side you're on, whether it be grassy and green or glum and grey, things will keep turning, this too shall pass. Change is the law of life, it never stops happening from the moment we are born. Embrace it, for it will carry us through the highways of our tumultuous lives. And never fear, while things are constantly in flux, we are always returning to the familiar roads of our past, and we carry their lessons, their comfort, with us into the dark roads ahead.  Nobody knows where this is going, we're all along for the ride. But one thing I do know is life is not linear, it's a series of related events, all swirling backwards, forwards, in place, at the same moment in time. Time, spinning. A million different directions.  


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January 5, 2009

Finding Home...

I thought home would just be, in all its glory and comfort, waiting for me when I returned there. Thought I'd find slivers in my mother's smile; thought it'd be lingering in the air of my childhood bedroom. Childhood. Looking back it all seems so simple. But that is never the case. Even children have their struggles.
 
But alas, home was not found in that first week. Frustration, confusion, unsettled feelings, they all greeted me at the door but that warm bellied feeling named Home was no where to be found. It was only after the current of emotions settled its tides (in the second week), that I began to glimpse moments of it. The soft hum of the computer in the library room, the hardy breakfast and strong coffee consumed alone in the morning while sitting at the first wooden table I'd ever known. I traced the rings in the wood, the creases in the panels. I found home in soft blankets, the cooing voices of friends who'd visit late into the night, found it in old photographs and my father's tools in the basement, in an old wicker mirror and a shoebox filled with memories (old ticket stubs, dried out flowers, fraying love letters)... and home brought me a feeling of love, of loss, of nostalgia, and heated connections. It brought me happiness & melancholy and whispered in my ear, you know nothing yet, my dear. you're only just beginning all this... 

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