nannying neverending nausea, nerves and narcissim

I don’t understand why summer days move at a different pace then normal days. They always have and while I still have more days of my summer left I am having trouble remembering how I got here.

I cannot put my whole summer into one blog post but I can put it in this perspective, if my summer were on a graph every two weeks would peak and then start heading downhill. It would look like the mountains in Montana, at Glacier National park that I visited with my sister. Huge ruff, ragged, up scales and declines some times kind of dramatic but also very natural. But what would my post be without a list!

Here is a list of things the summer took away from me…

Items Lost

Book lent to me by friend: Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan *found

Book lent to me by the Clackamas County Library: Why is sex fun, the Evolution of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond *bought new copy at Powells for $10 hopefully the library will except this copy when I have finished reading it sometime in the next 5 days

Bike biked it to the bus stop and got on the bus without it…something else was probably lost with it...like my sanity *found and rescued by my sister

Sunglasses the ones that appeared in Juno the movie must have left them on the bus 

Running Shoes must have also left them on the bus, possibly the same day

Hat my sister had knit, this amazing hat was to replace my old one that shrunk to miniature happy me size in the wash. Must have lost it downtown walking to Backspace or in Backspace I don’t know…don’t have the heart to tell my sister, more like the balls she is going to be pissed, I’m pissed it was an awesome hat.

Leather Jacket (most recent loss…still mourning)

I think some of this had to do with my goal for the year, which was to become less attached to my material things…which is good, but my leather jacket…really world?

I thought I would also do a list of things I gained, as in pounds after what I have made and then quickly consumed this summer. I was so excited for Gluten Free baking and cooking with my own kitchen and oven that I decided to document everything that I made. As you look through these pictures just imagine them purified, drippingly plastered against my innards…mmm now your excited.

First was rice pudding, it looks better then it tasted...i cooked things mostly that i missed eating from Latin America and things that i missed eating from the States. 

I don't remember the contents of this masterpiece but it included beets, mexican cheese and possibly an egg. SO GOOD

This is something I ate at Ceibo (sustainable community, see other posts) and wanted to try to make it myself. The only real big difference in making it was the fire taste i got from cooking on a fire stove in the mountains. It was still really good and i made it multiple times this summer actually. Garbonzo's, Carrots, Onions and best of all Rosemary!

Gluten Free cookies!

Made and shared with friends at the first house i house sat this summer. It was for my moms landlady's mother, an elderly woman who had broken her elbow. She was an animal lady with 5 different cats, a little dog (hardly able to call it that) squirrels, birds, raccoons and some stray cats as well. i felt like i had aged a century after i stayed at that house.

Oh yess

I did...but wait

It gets sooo much better

Joy the Baker's Chocolate layer Avacado Cake! (i made gluten freeeeee)

I miss good mango's! Adapted from a recipe i got from the yoga retreat in Nicaragua

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with lentils!

 

My dad makes the best Fritataaaaaa

ok, this was a little weird...i never had a real thanksgiving pumpkin pie

and yes i know its the middle of July or August or something..and it was like 90 degrees outside but...

It tastes soooooo good (again GLUTEN FREE)

Gallo Pinto (kind of a pathetic attempt at replicating my host moms but it looks the same!)

 *I also made a huge delicious Gluten Free Banana Chocolate Chip Bread but never took a picture of it because i was in too much of a hurry to get to the beaaach! 

I did a lot of things I wanted to do this summer. I sort of had a mental checklist of things I wanted to do. I did the Oregon coast, voodoo, music music music and I even made some new friends! I worked doing some house sitting and assisted at a camp at Waldorf for little kindergartners. My favorite quote from the camp was: ‎"Maya, please get those ants out of your pants". No explanation needed, these are kindergartners!

 

I also worked on my writing, participating in a workshop put on by ibex studios (http://www.ibexstudios.com/) with Becca. There was a group of 7 or 8 of us who met for 4 Wednesdays in a row.  I wrote one short short essay and two poems that I like. One is a poem about this moment I had late one night trying to find a bus home. I was in some sort of bliss about Portland and how grand it is. I crossed the Hawthorne Bridge listening to drum circle that happens sometimes under the bridge and played my harmonica while walking. Completely alone on this bridge I finally stopped and looked at downtown, it seemed huge and impressive, with the different colored lights. Mostly unexplainable what that moment was, some kind of awesome.

Here’s a video of that poem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wikT5GffFB4

The other poem I wrote unintentionally, the intent was to write a body of a piece of non-fiction instead of a poem…fail. But oh well here’s another poem that I wrote while having a series of nights of intense dreaming to the point where I would be exhausted waking up. It was after I had seen the movie Inception in theaters; the last movie I had seen in theaters was last Christmas so the experience kind of overwhelmed me.

Like a dream you don’t really remember where a poem begins

You only remember when it ends

You remember the last thing you hear or read or understand

And at the end you’re supposed to come out with some big realization

Like this: the truth of a poem does not come in the beginning

What would you have to look forward to?

And if it’s proclaimed in the middle

You would miss the unnecessary, probably inevitable dull ending that would have to follow that rash statement

You can’t trust time

Or your brain

I don’t remember where the memory starts

I just remember thinking ‘that’s weird, I wonder why dad is talking to mom on the phone’

Usually the preferred communication between my always-divorced parents has been through my older sister or I

It was Christmas time because the toy carousal was out with the horses dancing

It played a song I never got tired of

I liked to sit and watch it turn

I should have been watching my mom on the phone but she had left the room while she was talking with my dad

She came over to the carousal

I don’t remember where my sister was my memory cut her out

My mom came close, phone still in hand and said “Grandpa passed away”

And then like a dream I wake up

Except its real but I can’t remember how I got there or how it ends

I write poetry as a therapeutic decompression

To recycle and understand everything that has happened to me

Or maybe it’s to wake myself from the life I have been dreaming

It’s hard to know what’s more of a reality

Is it the words that sit immovably permanent on the page?

Or the carefully, and in perfect punctuality of life,

It plays and progresses in a time-line

But some moments seem to go at different paces then others

Like the first time you know your in love

And even if a second goes by on a clock, the one you watch change while waiting for the bus to come, or something like the length of a breath or the calculable minute

You wouldn’t be able to tell

Because in this particular moment nothing as understandably measurable as time, Exists

But maybe you’ve just wasted your time listening to this poem

But only 2 minute and 17 seconds of it.

In transition from summer to awareness/sanity (lets hope), or something like the next school year, I had a dream. This is what I told my friend about it on facebook.

 

       “i had a dream i gave birth to a baby that turned into a kitten. I was happy or confused at first and then really scared because i would have to give up everything if I kept it. People kept naming him for me, like Stephen and Lucas i think. There were a lot of tears. Also much confusion over who the father was..Patricia Lynch was there. It felt more real then a lot of other things lately...”

My significant dreams are usually explainable when I talk them through with my dad or look them up to try and understand certain symbols so this is what I found to be true about this dream.

“Pregnancy dreams, like real life pregnancies are harbingers of change, creativity, and new life being brought into the world…

To dream that you are giving birth to a non-human creature, signifies your overwhelming (and unfounded) fear in the health of your baby *<(nooooooooooooooooo!). You are overly concerned that your baby may have birth defects. This type of dream is common in expectant mothers in their second trimester. If you are not expecting *(phew!), then it refers to your fear in the outcome of some decision or project. You are trying to overcome difficulties in your life and achieve inner development.

For a single woman, loss of virtue and abandonment by her lover.

Dreaming of a difficult birth signifies that you need to let go of something you love very much; it also may refer to an illness. In relation to animals, the birth means a new opportunity, or a new phase in your life.

It also can mean a new attitude towards life.”

I think the last two sentiments are the most accurate. So I am saying goodbye to the big full moon here in Portland and taking off to a new space of discovery!

Next post will be from INDIA!