When sad things happen

Let's hold our precious ones close and resolve to love and serve more than ever.
Let's heal our world as best we can, a little bit every day. Let's just love people.

So many prayers.

Poor banana

Today I went on a great run and got an amazing facial and made lunch for my darling girlfriends and went to the temple (and it was nice and very holy) and performed in a beautiful play. Then I came home and cried my false eyelashes right off. Literally...they slipped off my lids and down my lashes due to my powerful, seemingly bionic, glue-eating tears.

Why, you ask? Is your uterus bleeding? Are you a victim of a sublime, destructive unrequited love? Are you just bored and tired and inferior and lonely?

yes yes yes.
 But I'm also a beneficiary of a very nice life.
So why is it such a poor, sad, desperate little banana?

HMMM?

The thought occurred to me while I was dish washing today, this very nice little day, that I need to start writing.
I need to start writing.
I NEED TO START WRITING.

What should the poor banana start writing about? She's awfully tired of her weepy little self. 

is it okay

to go to bed for the rest of my life?

well... IS IT??

Tristesse?

trist·esse foreign term \trē-stes\  - melancholy; sadness.  Origin: French

I can only come up with four possible explanations for any level of tristesse at this point in my mortal existence (i.e. today).

Could it be because: 1. I drank half and half with my Honey Nut Cheerios this morning, thinking it was my roommate's milk (serves me right for thinking I could borrow just a little)? Good at first, nauseating after the second bowl.

2. I watched When Harry Me Sally last night, and now I feel lonely? (Serves me right for thinking, "yay! Let's watch a happy romantic movie!")

3. I had a dream last night I was married to someone to whom I am most definitely not married?

4. I'm just a dummy dumb dumb dumb?

What do you think? I have no time for the unexplainable,  deep-set, french variety of sadness.

And then she's gone.

Sometimes your bestie walnut muffin/ artistic soulmate decides to move to London.

 Obviously you're sad.
So what do you do?

You play with an old Polaroid camera and send wish lanterns into the sky from the roof (and almost burn down the whole world) and watch the most incredible lightning storm and wait patiently for her to come back.

Come back, Brookie.
Come back, Bunny.
Come back, Summer.

...please?

love, Nan.
p.s. look at her beautiful art she's leaving to make even more beautiful: here

Being sad in Holland

Look how happy we look.

I know I've written about this sadness phenomenon maybe a smidge too often. Sorry. But, as I sleepily told Brookie on an evil Skype connection last night, "So much of life is so sad for everyone."

Anyway, when you love someone and (Coldplay is expecting me to break into song any second here) you do it so much for so long, and it happens that for various reasons you have to not do that anymore, then you spend months trying to fill up your life and your sadness with other things and other love, but they don't really work out.

So you get a prescription and you run away.

And you realize that you don't understand anything about anything and you make horrific discoveries inside your little self like vanity, fear, and need. And you feel like nothing is quite as shiney as it should be, and the universe feels a little crumbly and unstable, and suddenly you find yourself in Holland.

And here's the thing about Holland:

It is so beautiful.

Hallo, Kinderdijk. I love you.

Capelle Schollevaar, where I'm staying, is a haven of peace and quiet, canals, lily pads, and the ubiquitous bicycle. Even a thriving community of 18th century windmills! It's almost too cute. And clean. And quiet.

Beautiful Delft (not Gouda, which is also beautiful-- like the cheese). Gracie dearest is sharing her camera.

And beyond all that, we've had two (very rare here) warm, sunny days. Even the elements are trying to convince me to be happy in Holland. And, ungrateful wretch that I am, I'm being a sad, crumbly-universe-observing fool that is sad in Holland.

Some very unAnna-like behaviors have reappeared. Namely, inability to sleep, lack of appetite, blah blah blah. I just want to wear wooden shoes and smoke weed (just kidding, I don't do that... wear wooden shoes, I mean).

And here's another thing: There are baby animals everywhere. Fuzzy swans, awkward calves, prancey lambs, ecstatic puppies. I ride through the countryside (the whole country is a countryside, I've noticed) on a generously-loaned bicycle, and smile at all the baby animals and baby Dutch humans on their Dutch mommies' bikes and think about how much I miss those three little human girls that my siblings gave birth to, and then I remember that I'll never be loved enough by anyone to have babies with them.

...Brookie says this form of paranoia is quite common, but I question the normalcy of becoming devastated at the mere sight of a duckling who is minding his own Dutch business, or how possible it is to even be sad in Holland.

Wednesday Gracie and I leave for the Mother Country. Jolly Old London. Do you think I can be happy in England?

Love, stroopwaffles, and Anne Frank,

Banana

Other People's Ghosts

I love being up here.

Okay, so maybe I'm beating this "going-to-Europe-to-find-myself"thing over the head, but bear with me. Plus it's my blog.

 I don't know if I've mentioned that I'm kind of crazy? I won't go into detail, but I am. A little.
Not the cute, eccentric, "just-a-little-batty" (think Aunt Clara from "Bewitched") type,  nor the exciting Gothic romance broody-dark-eyebrows-and-chiseled-jaw-he-has-a-past-ooo-I-wonder-what-it-is type. I'm just a little crazy, and I'll leave it at that.

But just as I was reaching the apex of my craziness, it was time to come to France. Finally! The distant dream always somewhere in the mid-section of my brain, nagging to be realized, begging to be fulfilled!!!!! (!!!!!) It was time.
So I told my demons to hold still for a minute (these aren't the freaky type that need to be exorcised or anything. They're just metaphorical and pretty mild, but follow me everywhere.) and wriggled them into my backpack. I reminded my ghosts to be quiet, and brought them along in my faithful Target messanger bag.

And I walked right up to my new Parisian apartment in the Seizième, demons and ghosts in tow. Nervous smile on face. Dear friend Gracie at my side, blissfully unaware of any supernatural danger lurking in my luggage.

As soon as I unpacked them they convinced me that coming here to learn about other people's ghosts wouldn't get rid of mine. Those other, deeper ghosts would merely give my young, less experienced ones more material to work with: Oh! Foreign culture? Alienation. Check. Masterpieces and glamorous, happy people and ridiculous amounts of public displays of affection between unbelievably hot twenty-somethings? Inferiority complex back in black. Loneliness. Constant reminder of tragic love life. Check check check.
They took me off guard and found it much easier to plague and haunt me than I expected them to.

So sometimes I let them stay in bed with me half the day and ache, and sometimes I kicked them in the face and ran to the Musee D'Orsay to lose myself among the ghosts of others. But even when they weren't with me I thought about them and looked for them between every gargoyle, along each tree-lined boulevard. So they haunted me all the same.

I, however, have an interesting paranormal discovery to announce. With only a few official nights in Paris left, I've noticed a certain vacant space behind my shoulder that's prime lurking real estate. Maybe my ghosts liked the chilly atmosphere of the Bayeux cathedral's crypt or the stinky one of the Miromesnil metro station on Line 9 (always like rotting fish. always). Perhaps my demons have become as fond of inimitabile gelato as I have and now spend all their time at one of Paris' twenty Amarino's locations.
But whatever their sight-seeing and dining schedules as of late, I'm definitely seeing the little guys around a lot less often.
And I'm just here to say...

Hey. That's totally cool with me.

Love, baguettes, and it's almost time to take over the world with a backpack,

Banana 

human hosepipe.

I will not say much beyond 

the fact that heartache

is inescapable, probably necessary to ultimate happiness,

and positively rampant in my little household. 

So let us turn to our ever-wise friend and posthumous mentor, Clive Staples,  for a bright and beautiful thought my dear dear friend, Jacob, blessed me with the beauty of:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

-C.S. Lewis

Ah, wisdom. It's delicious, is it not?

My roommate showed me this gorgeous video made by a BYU Professor that captures so perfectly the essence of relationships. And the wonderful Weepies' lyrics can never hurt:

So here's to vulnerability, still missing him every every minute, and this beautiful world that still spins madly on,

Banana

the end.

 
Last night's "LOST" was beautiful.

I'm not a TV watcher as a rule, but I've been enraptured all six years.
Okay, I'm a total Lostie.

And no matter what anyone says, I think the season [I can't quite bring myself to say "series" just yet] ended perfectly!

I don't think I'm ready to say goodbye to Vincent, Smokey, the Hatch, the Hippie Van, the Polar Bear and the Others forever, but if I learned anything from that masterfully executed episode,

it's okay to let go and move on. 

[the LOST party I went to last night had awesome

favors like Dharma "beer"- mine was Diet Pepsi- and fish

biscuits]

Good thing I still have my pictures from the set to brag about. :)

okay. I'm totally ready to move back to "The Island."

Who knows... perhaps it's my destiny?

cross your fingers.

love, light, and loss,

Banana

I....

......miss Hawaii!!!!

Will it ever forgive me for abandoning it?

Today I particularly miss:

-yowling, mating feral catsong in the night

-hi chews

-that eating spam was okay. even encouraged.

-(somewhat) safely picking up hitchhikers and kindly being offered marijuana in return

-sunrise rituals with the ocean, the sand, my thoughts, and God

-warm rain dancing

-rainbow-speckled moonshine

-handlebar cruiser rides through laie

-climbing mountains and seeing a new, soul-taking view every few minutes

-birds and dumptrucks waking me up every morning

-aloha. aloha aloha aloha.

love.

comradery.

campfires and songs and mud and toes

and insence and water and flowers and sand and smiles and

long, satisfied, thankful breaths.

every single magical day.

Leaving

A somewhat melodramatic poem I wrote on the plane flight back from Hawaii. Part of a renewed effort to share what I write without dying of shame.

"Leaving"
I tried to give the island a goodbye kiss
but it melted at my touch.
An eight-month mirage,
dissolved in a minute.
and leaving nothing but a bit of sand in my ears to remind me.

I tried to hug the ocean,
cradle the sunset,
fill my lungs so full with the precious sunshine
that a little pocket might stay there forever-
Sweetening each breath with a bit of illumination.

But they each slipped through somehow.
dripped through my fingers,
poured through my memory,
then washed right over me.
The horizon turned black
and the waves went to sleep.
I want to go back.
but the sea would get one taste
and spit me right out.
"You don't belong here," it would say.
"Look at your pale skin,
your tired eyes,
your unrealized ambitions."
And so i would turn to leave,
nothing but the echo of the tide
and the dull roar of the engine
to lull me to sleep.
Whispering through my sandy ears
and bursting through my aching heart.Aloha Oe, my beautiful Island. I'll be back someday.

Love, jet lag, and sorry no meter or rhyme scheme,
Anna