Words to live by

"What if the point of life has nothing to do with the creation of an ever-expanding region of control? What if the point is not to keep at bay all those people, beings, objects and emotions that we so needlessly fear? What if the point instead is to let go of that control? What if the point of life, the primary reason for existence, is to lie naked with your lover in a shady grove of trees? What if the point is to taste each other's sweat and feel the delicate pressure of finger on chest, thigh on thigh, lip on cheek? What if the point is to stop, then, in your slow movements together, and listen to the birdsong, to watch the dragonflies hover, to look at your lover's face, then up at the undersides of leaves moving together in the breeze? What if the point is to invite these others into your movement, to bring trees, wind, grass, dragonflies into your family and in so doing abandon any attempt to control them? What if the point all along has been to get along, to relate, to experience things on their own terms? What if the point is to feel joy when joyous, love when loving, anger when angry, thoughtful when full of thought? What if the point from the beginning has been to simply be?"
— Derrick Jensen

Cleaning out my closet

I'm up at my mom, and I'm attempting to clean out the closet. What is it about cleaning out old notebooks from school? I never can seem to just dump them all without a second glance. The problem is, the longer they sit in the closet, the more interesting they become to me. I go to flip through them just to make sure there isn't any....well, important information i may have missed when I was actually in the class.
Honestly, Brenna?

Why do I insist on deluding myself? OF COURSE I missed important information in class. It's SCHOOL. I don't remember 95% of it because I was bored and unengaged about 95% of the time. And what little I did remember, I only remembered long enough to pass the tests and get the H out of there.

Nonetheless, what should be a 5 minute process of grabbing the notebooks and tossing them over an open fire always turns into me, crouched in the closet, scouring these things like they might contain the god damn dead sea scrolls.

To anybody out there-I would like to ask the audience. Do I keep these old documents, knowing full well that I will never read them again? Or do I dump them without a second thought?

And and said to the sky....WHY?!

I feel. . . neutral.

But, ultimately...new.

Mental Fortitude

I wish somebody read this thing. Not that I write for other people, but it is on the internet so there is an air of exhibitionism that undercuts it's integrity as a journal.

Whatever the hell that means.


Jesus. Don't drink coffee when you are having issues. And if you do, try not to talk to people until the caffeine wears off.
I know what I need.
I know what to do to get it.
I'm scared sh*&less to do it.

There are all sorts of aspects that scare me; hurting people, the unknown, failure, going broke, disappointing people, disappointing myself.
The worst part of this is that fairly benign question that we all ask each other, "What are you up to these days?"
Humans. We are all formula. Predictable. Myself included. We all ask this question - as if it makes a difference. We think it gives us an idea of where people are coming from. The answer helps us make assumptions about people.
It's ultimately a flawed assumption - just like every communication we have with each other. But I'm headed down a rabbit hole, thus I will digress back to the point I was originally getting at.

I'm embarrassed to answer this question because the answer could change at any moment.
"What are you doing?"
'Going to New Zealand to pick fruit.'
"I heard you were headed to Austin."
'I was, but I changed my mind.'
"Oh. Well when are you leaving?"
'...I don't know.'
"...I'm worried about you."

I keep answering that question with whatever is in my mind at the time and I can't remember what I said to whom and then people are surprised, annoyed, and confused whenever I do the complete opposite of what I told them. I am also surprised, annoyed, and confused as a reaction to them because I thought I explained myself to them.
I ought to prepare a short statement about how things are going, where I'm going, and where I am right now.
"I don't know" doesn't work. "I don't want to talk about it" isn't getting me anywhere.

Hmmm. Here are some ideas:

"I have some ideas but it's too soon to say."

"In the interest of brevity, you wouldn't want to hear it."

"It's a surprise ending. I wouldn't want to ruin it for you."

"Oh! Look over there! Is that a double rainbow?!" (run away quickly)

"I'm taking life as it comes, striking out on my own, and following through with my life-long dreams."

"I'm keeping you in suspense for a reason."

"All in good time, my pretty..."

"The future is uncertain. Shouldn't you be worried about where YOUR life is going?!"

You know, through all of this, I haven't lost hope. I have a vision and I'm trying to follow it without going crazy. I can't define that vision in words for you exactly, because it would take too long, but I have it. It's a feeling. I don't want to talk about it because I'm done thinking about it. The more I roll it around, the more it's ever-changing and ultimately confusing. It is high time I shut my mouth and take action.

My blog is dismal. I hope no one reads this.

The Prisoner's Dilema

"Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?"

I hope this doesn't sound sad, but when I face this situation in my own life I feel as though I care too much about other people's feelings to do anything other than cooperate. Which means I'll never get off scott-free doing exactly what I'd like to do when others are wrapped up in the scenario.

Sometimes I'm a sad character.

I want what this computer can't give me.

I've been increasingly withdrawn today.

I want that which is elusive and seemingly unreachable - my untapped potential.

What I regret.

I decided a long time ago that it's silly to regret. Unnecessary because every choice you make brings you to where you are right now. Until recently I haven't had trouble avoiding regret, but there is one thing that trips me up and has for the past year or so. It is one of the biggest things that has brought me to the place that I am in now.

Fall of 2006 marked an important time in my life. I started to question the direction of my life and everything around me. I wanted to take a step back and reassess where I was going, and feel like I was the one in control of this life I was living. I reached out to the people around me for advice. I felt like I was waking up every day directionless and confused. I wanted to take a break from college, to take a few months, just work and play music and not worry about school work, remember why I was in school in the first place.
However, when I asked the people whose opinions on the subject I valued the most - parents, grandparents, advisors, many adults I have known for awhile - they all discouraged me from taking time off school. They said I should keep working toward the goal of a degree. They filled my head with worries like, "What if i leave school and never finish my degree?" "How will I afford to go back to school if my parents stop supporting me?" "How will I succeed in the world if I don't have a degree?" "What if I become a bum by just sitting around playing music and enjoying myself for 6 months?" "How will I expect to get a job someday if I enjoy traveling and 'flying by the seat of my pants' so often?"

Even now as I write it, I feel a twinge of anger at those thoughts they introduced me to. Here are the people who are supposed to help lead me to myself and all they have for me is worry. I come to them telling them what I think I need and they make me doubt myself further. Which leads me down a more directionless path.
So I stay in school. I take less and less hours each semester. I kind of have a job. I kind of play music sometimes. I kind of work on my portfolio. I kind of graduate.
They are kind of proud of me for that. They give me gifts for kind of graduating and kind of completing something.
And the whole time I feel unfulfilled.

I find myself half-graduated, but with an incomplete in one area that just weighs me down more every day. This project I have to do, this town, this existential crisis I'm floating around in. I have all this graduation money. I want to use it to hit the road and get the hell out of dodge for awhile.
I tell my trusted advisors. They tell me how disappointed they would be if I followed my heart into that scenario. They want me to finish my degree for real. They want me to work toward the goal I've been in pursuit of for 5 years.
But what goal? I don't feel like I have a goal. Whose goal is this? Mine or theirs? Why do they need me to do this so badly RIGHT NOW? Why can't I do it on my own time and have them be accepting and encouraging of that? They didn't help me, they just pushed me when they should have listened. And now here I am.

BUt you know what? I really can't regret it. The reason that the people I need to have faith in me don't encourage me to follow my unconventional ideas is because I have never shown them what following my heart can do for me. And the reason I haven't followed my heart is because they have discouraged me on behalf of their potential disappointment. So something has to give in this negative feedback loop that I now find myself in.

So, trusted advisors - prepare to be disappointed in the near future.

Sometimes the sky opens up.

I'm ashamed of the amount of time I spend on facebook. Sometimes I limit myself because I think it's getting out of hand. A kind of fasting procedure. I think I've figured out the central issue.
I look to facebook for social stimulus. I don't work in an environment where I see very many people (for more than 5 minutes and more than once in a lifetime) and I'm not a student at a school. This leaves me, at this point in my life, feeling like there is a hole where social networking in real life once fell. I go to Tantra sometimes for the same reason. I just need that consistency of being part of a stimulating community. I need to laugh at someone doing something ridiculous. I need to be inspired by someone else's ideas and creative work and I need someone to ask about where I can find those little thingy's you put in the walls of book cases so the shelves hang up. I need to know how to find adventure and where the party's at.
I use to get all that from school.
I spend a lot of days just bored now, so to speak. Not entirely, but it really makes a person feel old. I don't know about the newest trends or bands because I don't hear about them from the immediate circle of people I see everyday. There's not the constant bumping into each other that I use to get from school and extracurricular activities. Maybe if I were in a band that would be different? I dont know though.
After making this movie this past weekend, I remembered all of this. It was thrilling to be with a bunch of people who were kind of randomly thrown together and working hard toward an artistic goal, exhausting and depleting our bodies and minds but feeling accomplished by the end of the day. So much good mojo flowing back and forth between people. I'm still riding this high from it. Like summer camp. But I truly don't feel like that's a feeling that should be reserved for once a year in the summer. I think we should constantly strive for that zen in the moment totally caught up kind of vibe - the kind that makes you want to look back on your experiences and tell people the crazy story of it all the next day.
Life is captured in these times. It's what we remember - I can think of a handful of times in my life that I felt like this, and all of them were marked by one or all of the following things:
good friends coming together to celebrate something
hanging out with people I just met and realizing we get along like the best of friends
falling in love with someone
doing something otherwise deemed ridiculous or irresponsible: (this next part is self-indulgence, but maybe you knwo what i'm saying...)

staying up til the sun comes up
going to a hotel 20 minutes from where you live and requesting to stay in their finest suite,
drinking a little too much - caffeine, alcohol, milk?
going to a show when you have a paper due the next day
canoing an overflowing river in freezing weather in a boat you can't steer when it's raining
trespassing and climbing public towers and scaffolding
ruining your clothes ie food fight, mud wrestling
going to mardi gras and camping in your car
riding your bike somewhere stupidly far away and having to call a friend to come get you
going out to douchy bars in san marcos and telling people you and your friend's names are mary kate and ashley and you're not from here.
Playing wingman
skinny dipping at night
letting john-michael krakowski pee on the alamo ( oh wait no osmeone stopped you)
Crown royal + Christmas 2004 + Chronic 2001 + Dance party at Joey Kendall's house
Putting together the most epic birthday party for a certain curly haired person so he will never forget it as long as he lives
drinking whiskey on the hood of your car and watching a meteor shower not knowing what's it's going to lead you to
sailing
dancing outside at a wedding
laughing so hard you pee yourself
going to the kerrville folk festival for the first time
road trips
backpacking trips
hanging out with someone nonstop until you are sick of them
riding a mechanical bull in a sleazy bar\
smoking swisher sweets you found on a sidewalk in a sleezy town
eating food off the floor with someone you just met and not being ashamed.


Some people say it's not a party if it happens every night. I say screw those people.
There are times in life when these times happen back to back. Life is hitting on the one. and there is nothing like it. That's where I wanna be.

So, to quote an old friend - "here's to feelin' good, all the time".

BANG! CLANK! GRINDNDNDNDND! CRASH!!! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! [another morning on Haynes st.]

This is how i wake up. AT 7am every morning. To this god awful noise. I moved away from the river and I have yet to match the beauty of that place. I miss it more and more each day.
Can someone explain to me why the hours of active construction in my neighborhood occur from 7am-11am? I mean, seriously guys, there are 9 more hours of daylight where people are very likely not sleeping. Why can't we get the best of those? You guys work for the government. Isn't there some kind of union smoke break you need to go on at least until 9?!?! UGh. It's making me crazy.

I guess I'm moving in not that long. I'm still trying not to go mad before then.

Stumped

This isn't a post to say anything in particular other than as the near future is concerned - I am stumped. I keep waiting around hoping that the answers will come to me, but they just AREN'T! I'm waiting for the damn idea light bulb to pop on but I think it's burnt out. I have ideas about the long term future, but the short term seems to evade me at every turn of the corner.
I can only hope that by changing my daily circumstance - i.e. moving out of my house, going on a lengthy road trip - will change my perspective and thus clear a few things up for me. But I'm banking on that pretty hard. It doesn't feel great, but maybe it feels like it's supposed to feel.

I'm a firm believer that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. However, I don't really see any other viable option than to surrender myself to the uncertainty of my jalopy of plan. Sometimes the only way to see what's just beyond your headlights is to just move forward in whatever direction you feel. Something is bound to shop up. A street sign, a lamp post, a job, a place to live.

Jesus....

Old.

When I was younger I use to see the many adults around me and wonder how they were ever the youth. To me, as to most people I'm sure, there seemed a chasm between my peers and adults. It didn't make one lick of sense to me how my peers were ever going to get there either. The thing I'm talking about isn't so simple to describe with precision.
Allow me to pose a question:

What do you call the corruption of the ideal we know to be "responsibility?" Refusing to get out and enjoy a beautiful day because you need that second job. Opting out of that exercise class because you just can't afford it this month - and then there you are daily at the bar after work. Being OK with 2 weeks paid vacation. Selling an instrument you once thought you'd learn to play because let's face it - you'll never find the time. Staying in hotels. Being too good for the greyhound bus. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Girls night out. Random drug testing. Credit Card debt. "Starter homes." Weekend getaways.

The older I get the more I understand it. I use to think when you get out of school you have all these options and no one is telling you what you SHOULD do anymore. I don't know where I got that idea but it's certainly wrong. I get it now. There will always be a path I should follow.
A path I'm currently not following. The trouble is, I'm not exactly doing anything all too fabulous or worthwhile as an alternative to following that path. Life is largely mundane from the outside looking in.

It's kind of like this journal entry - I had potential when I started writing, but then I just gave up.

Come sail away, Come sail away, come SAIL away with me-e-e.

This is now my blog where I talk about whatever I want to. What is going on in my life, things I'm thinking about momentarily. I'm going to write it down in a sort of narcissistic 'I'm-important-enough-to-post-my-thoughts-on-the-internet' journal.

I'm working on writing something resembling a love song. It's my first attempt to do so ever in my life. I was thinking about my lover, obviously as I was writing this, and about how we first met when a story came to mind. I felt I needed to recount it to someone because it's a favorite I had almost forgotten about. [note: this story will be of less value to you if you don't already know Felipe].

Once upon a time, I was sitting in my dining room at clear springs apartments with Jessica- my room mate at the time- in the fall of 2006. I was single. Now, there are two things you must know about me as a single lady before I go on. I was incredibly selective about the guys I found romantically interesting, and although I had romantic prospects, I spent the better part of my first 22 years wondering how it could be so damn difficult to find a worthy adversary of the male persuasion. A few had caught my attnetion, but they eventually proved themselves to be; foolish, gratuitously brooding, gay, really stoned, dating someone else...

So there we were at the kitchen table, homework spread about. Or maybe dinner. I don't remember and Jessica says to me, "You know, so-and-so asked about you after you left the other night. He wanted to know if you were single. I told him yes and to get in line." We laughed. She continued, "Guys ask me that sometimes, and I pretty much tell them all the same thing. I know that you wouldn't be interested because they're never your type. In fact, I can't think of anyone that I know whom if they ask I would say anything different."
We both laughed again and I said, "I don't even know what my type would be. I can't even give you direction as to whom you SHOULD say something like 'yea, she's single and you would totally get along'. What IS my type??"
We sat there thinking, and Jessica's wheels in her head are turning. She says, "I think I'd know him if I met him."
"Oh yea?" I inquire.
"Yea. I could describe your perfect man."
I pulled out a paper and pen - because I compulsively make lists. I scribbled a title at the top of the page: "Jessica's Definition of the Perfect Man for Brenna". I dated it "Oct. 9, 2006".

This, ladies and gentlemen, is that prophetic list:

-Earth Conscious
-musician
-emotionally stable
-curly/shaggy hair
-good looking
-can dress - shoes (haha)*
-quick witted
-driven to do something with his life
-has some background or was brought up with Christianity
-Will dress up
-will travel
-doesn't do drugs/drink all the time
but likes to perhaps on occassion ("dabbles in the lesser drugs")

[*What Jessica meant by this was that when I found men attractive I took note of their footwear and sort of rated them by this fashion choice.]


At the time, Felipe was a casual acquaintance whom two of my classmates/new friends Jared and Elia lived with and related anecdotes about in class discussions.

On October 28th, we drank some Jack Daniel's on the hood of my car and kissed each other at a halloween party. He wasn't wearing shoes. Or a costume.