Only 6:30pm. It's only 6:30pm, only been an hour since I arrived here at work but I already feel like I've been here ages. It's the little things, the odd things that most affect the passage of time.

Lately I've been feeling like there are lots of little odd things, things that make me feel and think in ways I don't particularly care to. I've been sensitive lately, a little more apt to keen observation and speculation. I'm doubting myself a little more these days. I feel imperfect. Horrendously so. I almost feel like being cryptic.

But that's self defeating, a tactic I used to use when I felt like talking without talking. Cryptic is childish, particularly in my case because I was so good at it as a child. No, these days I need to be honest.

I'm sort of at a place where I'm not entirely proud of myself and I sort of feel slightly disconnected. I feel a little like I don't know what I'm doing, that the decisions I'm making lately aren't ones that I'd ordinarily make. Or, perhpaps its that I'm making decisions that I would ordinarily make, and perhaps that is no longer acceptable.

*sigh* It's only 6:45pm. This day will not end.

   
Folks at my bday dinner
 
Me in the green dress I bought a year ago and my short hair I got two weeks ago...

  My beautiful siblings and I. We are a pretty good looking family.

My birthday was good. It was, like I said, emotional but it was good. One of my best high school friends drove up from North Carolina to surprise me. It was probably the best part of my birthday. I spent time with good friends and family, and I made out pretty nice too (I didn't expect much in the way of presents but was pleasantly surprised).

My week so far is busy, but also good. I wish I had more time to be more detailed. But I don't...

Today is my birthday, and it's a beautiful day.

I stared out the sliding glass door in my mother's living room in NJ as I stood over her,  listening to her, curling her hair, taking care of her today on the day that I was born, on the day that she gave birth to me. "It happened at 7am. Yuh uncle Andrew drove me to the hospital I think. That was the day Bishop die yuh know. I remember your uncle Valier visiting me and telling me that they kill Bishop. He was a good leader in Grenada. You born on a memorable day." I've heard this story of my beginning from her before, and every year I get just a little more information, just a little better of a picture of that day 25 years ago.

The trees are orange, and red and purple. And the sky is blue. It's a beautiful day, maybe just because it's my birthday. My mother is asking me about my future and it pains me, because on this birthday, more than any other birthday my future is...I can't describe it. Uncertain? Hazy? None of those describes it because generally speaking uncertain doesn't bother me. But something about it today, bothers me. Scares me. It's bad enough I've been hovering close to tears all morning, not all of them bad or sad tears, but tears just the same. It's my birthday.

I celebrated on Friday night with a large group of people, eating and dancing and smiling. I celebrated Saturday night by attending a step show my brother co-hosted, laughing and poking fun with one of my high school friends at barely dressed undergraduate girls in red dresses and heels trying to impress undergraduate boys, laughing at myself for remembering that I used to be just like them (minus the red dresses). Today is my birthday and it is quiet and I can see the leaves from the door, and I can see the charcoal drawing of myself that was done in New York on my 19th birthday. And there is nowhere near the hustle and bustle of the last two days, but I think I'm ok with that.

Because this birthday is different. This birthday sees me without people I've spent the last five birthdays with, but has also included new people, people I've only spent a few months with but who are now a part of my life. This birthday has me emotional. For various reasons. But I think I'm ok with that.

Today is my birthday, and it's a beautiful day. And I think it'll be a beautiful week.

I sat today with my feet hanging off my couch inches
from the floor, as though I were a child, as though the calm I feel today is
the way children feel in light of things they don’t understand and have the
wisdom not to concern themselves about. I sat with my patio door open and
though no sunlight streamed in because the day is oddly overcast, in spite of
my inner sunshine and calm, there was a breeze, a warm sweet rousing breeze.
And I heard a sound, a noise I thought was rain, but was rather a shower of
yellow leaves, light and fluttery like feathers. And inside and outside I
smiled, longing to capture it visually, but only being able to do this. To
write it. 

And I am left listening to the
trees tell secrets to the wind, and vaguely wishing, maybe like a child, that I
could understand them.

As a result of the full moon, the caffeine, and the massive amounts of work induced stress I've encountered today, I drove home from a 9pm class blasting T.I. with one hand on the wheel looking much cooler than I am in reality. Particularly because I was dancing as I drove.

Maybe I should have taken the glasses off.

After opening my email inbox this morning and being greeted by a nice long list of papers that need grading I groaned out loud...and promptly had to cover my mouth.

Note to self: Do not check email in the library.

I took the opportunity this weekend to disappear entirely for two days from close friends and family and classmates. And it was great. Except I got nothing done. I was not student, nor teacher, nor anything much this weekend beyond relaxed. And now I feel slightly guilty, but I'd do it the same way all over again.

Now I'm at work (I feel like I'm here every day, which is odd because it's a part time job) and of course, tired. I had to wake up relatively early this morning to drive the two hours back to Delaware from my escape. And now I wish I were at home napping instead of holding in my thinly veiled irritataion at the woman who I'm normally very patient with, a woman who insists on repeatedly asking me questions about setting up email accounts and looking up videos online. Normally I'm patient and very sweet. Today she is irritating me, and she can probably tell.

I'm at work and I've had to repeat to myself several times as justification for not grading papers while I'm here that I'm going to be very good this week. I just said it out loud, three times. "I'm going to have to be good this week." I don't know if I've convinced myself, but somehow or another I'm going to have to get in some serious grading, reading and writing before Friday.

Good lord, it's mid-October already. I am horrorstruck.

I always know when I'm getting slightly busier than I bargained for. My modes of entertainment start piling up. I have four DVDs sitting on my TV, all from the library of course because I will not risk the late fee-wrath of Blockbuster or Hollywood. I'm pretty sure I'm already in trouble with one of those organizations. I got to work today at the library (where I have no late fees ever because I am a stellar state worker) and there were two more movies waiting for me, along with two books on CD (which are most defintately not entertainment, but more like an effort to multitask during this semester. I can't honestly say Mrs. Dalloway or Portrait of a Lady is entertainment for me, but I must plough through my list of almost 100 books in preparation for my comprehensive M.A. exam in Janurary). There are at least two unread magazines sitting on my coffee table, one Essence and one Elle. I'm pretty sure my Travel and Leisure magazine is on its way to me. Additionally there are like six movies out in theaters that I've wanted to see...since like September. Probably not going to happen. Probably won't see any of them until they come out on DVD. And then I'll just sit them next to all the others.

Surprisingly though, this busy-ness is refreshing. There is the occasional day, like today, where after teaching at 8am and waiting at the mechanic while I shelled out $350 for my car to get worked on (again) I went back to my apartment at noon and took a three hour nap. Some serious sleep. I missed a call and a text message, which is significant because my phone is usually practically next to my ear on my nightstand. I was tired. And though I woke up feeling slightly disoriented and a tad nauseaus (probably because all I'd eaten at that point was a bowl of cereal) I feel good. I feel like there's a certain rhythm I'm getting used to, one that allows me to feel free and secure all the same time.

Which I think is what life is about. A certain amount of freedom combined with a certain amount of security allows us to feel simlutaneously in control and curiously safe.

And now I must be productive and start working on my statement of purpose. It's application season, and since I'm pretty sure my PhD is the last degree I will ever apply for I'm trying to get this thing out of the way sooner rather than later.

It is uncharacteristic of me to post twice in one day. Within a few hours of one another. But I saw a woman today, an old woman of asian descent who reminded me of my grandmother. And I needed to write because writing is like thinking. I write to think.

This woman wore large plastic glasses, the kind that seniors wear, the kind that has no particular stylistic quality but have so much character. She sat on a chair in a corner of the children's room with her hands folded in her lap. She checked her watch. She yawned, and as she yawned something in me broke.

She looks like my grandmother, with her round face and her wrinkled but strong looking hands, and her aged mouth. She looks like my grandmother, even though my grandmother was not an asian woman, and even though my grandmother has been dead for four years now. Only four years. Sometimes I forget to remember her.But I remember her always in my flesh, without thinking, so that now, when I least expect it she is reincarnated and sits here and looks at her watch and waits. Wordless. And I am seven all over again and she is feeding me mangoes, and I am ten and she is cutting up fruits and baking tarts. And I am a baby laying on the chicken feed bag in the grass watching her working, watching her strip away long thick blades of grass with a rusting machete. And I am 21 holding her feeble hand after years of not seeing her, watching the death hang on her like a veil.

And I am broken.

For a few years now I've been a little psychic.  I can't actually read minds or anything, not really. I can't predict to the letter what people will or won't do. I do know, however, with certain confidence, when a man will look at my behind. I don't remember when I first realized this, when it occured to me to look out of the corner of my eye as I walk away at the eyes of the man I may have just been speaking to or just so happened to walk by. I must have been fairly young though because I do it now without really realizing it, sort of like the involuntary scream that rips from me whenever I see a slug. It just happens.

I was sitting at the desk at the library today furiously typing away, when a man in army attire walked into the room. I looked up and gave him my pleasant but hasty smile, like I usually give anything that moves into the room while I'm not looking, and returned to the screen. He wandered around for a bit, occasionally looking in my direction, which I've come to learn really means "Hello. I have no idea where what I'm trying to find could possibly be. Could you help me?" In response to his unasked question I stood up, walked over to him and asked if he needed help with something. He proceeded to ask about books for both his six year old and his eleven year old children. I explained things a bit, walked him to a few shelves, told him about the catalogue computers, and then smiled and walked away. And there it was. It's as if I had a third eye. He followed me with his eyes, I'm fairly certain, until I sat down again.

I'm not offended. Not really. Not since the days of high school boys exclaiming "Damn she got a fat a$$!" while on my walk home to my apartment during my undergrad years. I've learned to take it all with a grain of salt. I've effectively prevented men from touching me as I walk by (an occurence that happens quite often in Philadelphia) and so since there are no longer men trailing their fingers over my inner elbows and forearms I suppose I'm ok. There is still, of course, the occasional butt graze in crowded rooms, and I've cultivated a very nasty look for just such occasions.

On his way out the gentleman paused to give me his card with both his cell and office numbers on it. Somehow I don't think his wife would be pleased (although perhaps he was just trying to recruit me, since his card says he's in recruiting and retention).