a stellar smashing

Now that school has started, updating this blog is going to be rather difficult. Not that anyone, except for my roommates and boyfriend, read this thing anyway, but I like to pretend I’ve got a following, and I don’t want to disappoint. So, since I will be doing a LOT of journaling these next 3 1/2 months (as it’s required by my department), I’ll simply type up some of my favorite journals or works in progress and stick ‘em here.

Everyone’s happy.

Come back soon–there’s definitely more to come!

I’m back to lists. Again.

(Good news, though. With the arrival of summer comes more from A Stellar Smashing! You’re excited!)

Things I Hope For:

1. To be in love forever with my very best friend
2. To travel, travel, travel, travel, travel, travel, travel…
3. To someday trust God completely
4. To always feel more passion for love and life and friends and family than anything else
5. To die without enemies
6. To have curly-haired children
7. To one day consider both/either of my parents my best friend(s)
8. To learn to play another instrument, or take up the oboe again
9. To learn to forgive without hesitation
10. To accomplish great things and still seek humility
11. To find that inner peace that will quiet my neurotic thoughts
12. To learn to love the world

I’m interested in your desperate hopes, too. Let me know what they are!

Goodnight.

I’m a very, very different person from the last time I wrote.

Since then, I’ve become the person I told myself I would never be: someone who works too much and thinks about money far too often. Someone who neglects her passions to make time for sleep and school and obligations. Someone who, when dealing with stress and mistakes, turns into herself. Someone who groans about tomorrow, about everything.

I’ve been trying to do too much. I’ve been trying to accomplish more than I can handle, just for the sake of a bigger paycheck, for a higher self-esteem, to feel like I’ve earned my right to complain.

I’m not happy, but I will be soon. I’m cutting my hours at work. I’ll just spend less and…figure out another way to save for next fall’s rent and my trip to Italy. I’m going to set aside time for school, for reading and writing and walks in the city–the stuff I LOVE about being alive and living in this city.

I’ve stopped pursuing the things in life that make me the happiest because of a slip in priorities. I thought I’d be happier with more money to spend or save, but everything I buy loses it’s newness as soon as I walk out of the store. I thought I’d feel accomplishment with a 30+ hour work week, but I only feel like I’m wasting time when I’m at work. I thought I could get by in my classes without pushing myself, without taking the time to employ my creative faculties, but I just don’t feel engaged.

So, here’s to spring and the sun and absolute clarity. Here’s to self-honesty, and the pursuit of passions, and to what makes life enjoyable. Here’s to the old Naomi.

This is a section from the creative essay I wrote this past semester for my Prose Forms class. The essay was entitled “Growing Things,” as in the act of and things that do. Even though the essay contained a lot of personal experiences, this one turned out to be the most…emotional, I suppose.

“Irrigation”

Summers in the Midwest can be hot and dry, and the garden needs cool, dank moisture to absorb nutrients and avoid dehydration. After a particularly harsh July day, the plants thirst and the soil is dusty and broken. It needs water.

Wait until the sun has almost dripped out of the sky, and then attach several lengths of hose to each other and to the spigot at the back of your house. Turn the rusty spigot until it creaks, until it won’t turn anymore, and then walk out to your garden, stretching the lengths of hose behind you. Attach a nozzle to the end. It doesn’t need to be one of those colorful plastic cones that look like something you’d shower under. It just needs to produce a steady, strong spray. It just needs to bring water.

Take your shoes off. If you’re not wearing shorts, roll the hem of your pants to your knees. Coil as much of the hose as you can around your arm or over your shoulder so you can flex it and bend it and control it, and then step into the garden. Feel the cool soil between your toes and wiggle them, letting the dirt tickle the tops of your feet. Laugh.

Point the nozzle at the sky, out and up and away from your body, as far as you can reach. Squeeze the handle, and feel the water course through each inch of the hose and explode from the nozzle in a spray of water droplets that dazzle like jewels of every color of the tragic sunset dying in the opposite horizon. Walk, slowly, between each row of your garden and let the water shake the leaves of your plants. Let it hit the soil and make thick mud that splatters chocolaty drops up to your knees. Let the spray drift on your face and arms, and relish the creeping shiver that raises the fine hairs on the back of your neck.

Lower your arm and point the spray at the earth. Let the water reach to every vein of every leaf, to every finger of every root. Let your plants feel this sweet rescue. Let them rest in cool, dark quiet tonight.

This is your rainstorm.

It’s been awhile since I prayed.

I mean, okay, I pray nearly every day. Small pleas to God to make my train start moving again on the way to work, to grant me patience with the slow walkers in front of me on the sidewalk, to make it snow.

But I hardly talk to God anymore. It used to be something I did all the time. I used to have whole conversations with Him as I drove around town back home, or as I walked to class, as I straightened my hair. I don’t remember when I stopped, and I can’t tell you why, because I miss it. I miss God.

…Which is sort of silly, because I know He’s there. I know He’s waiting, watching, arms outstretched, ready to welcome me, ready to take me back, to listen to me and let me revel in the joy of His love.

I just don’t understand why I’m not running back to Him, why I’m not falling all over myself to get back to Him in any way that I can. When did I become content with this disconnectedness?

The clouds tore themselves open.
The sky steeled itself for the cold.
The sun dropped to its knees at the edge of the earth, and it snowed.

She cried, and her tears froze, crystalline.

A cold breath, sharp in her throat.
A match was struck, a flame took, amber burned at her lips.
Rush of menthol, heat slipping into her veins, a relief far too fragile to dilute despair.

Another cigarette, a nicotine savior.
Another tear, another sob, another heart broken, another love choked.

The snow falls still. Pure and white and clean, it falls to the dirty earth.
It clouds the lamplight, muffles the sound of the train creaking by over her head.
It blankets the hurt, but doesn’t heal.

(11-29-07)

Sometimes I wonder why I even listen to myself,
especially when it’s my heart I should be following.

The most obvious marks of my venture to Mexico have all worn away. My suitcase is empty, my clothing washed, folded, tucked away into my drawers. The russet lines of dirt, having once formed crescents beneath my nails, have disappeared. The sour, coppery smell of the water that ran from the hotel’s shower has left my skin, and in it’s place, the soft, coconutty warmth of my lotion. My burnt part line has healed, my strained muscles have relaxed.

From the looks of me, I never left America.

But if you were to perforate my skin, peel it back, and leave my heart exposed, you’d see the change.

I know, because I see it, too.

I can’t spend a dollar now without thinking about Luis, and what ten pesos would have meant to him. Every meal I consume makes me wonder when Miguel ate last, and how much he ate. The screaming kids climbing through the colorful tubes at Escapades, shoving handfuls of tokens into the arcade games, makes me think of the deflating soccerballs Denzel and Samuel kicked around in the naked dirt. When I climb into my bed at night and burrow beneath the layers of blankets and snuggle into the warmth of my mattress, I can’t help but think of the splintery, unforgiving beds we built for the families of Camalu.

My heart has been touched, my attitude softened.

I assume that eventually, these reminders of the conditions I left behind when I crossed the border will fail to be triggered by my daily spending habits, that someday soon I will be able to lift the first forkful of a meal to my mouth without thinking about what Enrique’s mom might have put on the table that day.

But I know I will fail to forget completely. I know these children’s faces, their laughs, their smiles, will find a way to seep into my life, to wedge a space in my heart, my thoughts, and take root at the center of me.

And if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to go back and know the reality once more.