Sunrise, Sunset

Everything is slowing down, I think. I feel as though I am making moves that all lead toward settling in. Comfort. A sort of routine. A rounding of edges. And even more than being able to tell exactly what I am doing that makes me feel this way, there are the sort of thoughts that won't allow me to ignore that settling in and seeking comfort and rounding off edges are things that come with the territory. This time in life.

This really makes me angry. I think it ridiculous that I should feel as though I had better bunker down. I'm 26. Only. Whenever I say this, it is always in just this defensive a manner. I have to qualify my age. I can't just be 26. It's always I'm 26 and have never even...or, I'm 26 and don't even know about...But so many other 26 year olds have made decisions that write incredibly large chunks of the next 20 years or so of their lives. Children, for example. They decide to have children. Or having children happens to them, I think some of them would argue. Still...they are Papa's and they are Mama's. And I can barely wipe my ass in a straight line. What a stupid postulate that I could be somebody's mother. Right now. Or that I should have known for certain at least 6 years ago what job I would want now. Also for example.

The best way to keep up with being myself, it seems, is to do everything double. Have two sets of clothing. Have two hair style categories. Maintain fluency in two dialects of English. Fall in love in two kinds of ways. With two kinds of men. In short, because this could go on, I never want to be caught without a backup. I have to have at least one other option. Because having to make a decision one way or the other concerning anything is much too much pressure. And all it is is that I could choose badly. Just choose the wrong thing. I am much more comfortable with blurring, where things slide back and forth into one another, sharing, ambiguity, by day-ness and by night-ness.

My father says I'm the type of girl who never wants her right hand to know what the left one is doing. My grandmother says I was and still am the kind of girl to throw a rock and then hide my hand. My mother says being around me makes her desperate for a cigarette. My students say they want me to be their mama. My friends say I am special. My sister says I am Little Miss "I know this/I know that." My employer says I am invaluable. My roommate says I need to come home and sleep in my own bed more often.

I like t-shirts that state my philosophies.

"Bacon is a vegetable."

"Nothing is any good if other people like it."

"Lucy's Truck Stop: Park it in the Rear."

"Stuff is Awesome."

"Women hold up half the sky."

"Chu-Chu-Taco: Cute and Often a Little Bit Forward, Taco Doesn't Hesitate to Ask her Boyfriend for a Kiss."

"Agnes Scott College: Not a Girls' School Without Men but a Women's College Without Boys."

"Official Which: In charge of choosing which words are to be used for all occasions, which ones to say and which ones not to say, which ones to write and which ones not to write."

...and next on my list of acquisitions...

"M.C. Menses: My Flow Be Fresh"

I know. Gross. But I really don't care. It makes me laugh so damned hard.

Can't really show up at the bank asking them to finance a starter home wearing any of those, could I? No going to the boys' ballet recitals and the girls' soccer matches either. But more importantly, that is rather too much philosophy to try to tame. But I have real bills and real responsibilities and real consequences to flights of fancy and whims. Mercurial and fey are standing down for consistent and ordinary. By day. And I'm dying while the sun is up.

And my friends keep trying to domesticate me. They want to buy me things like book shelves and hand towels. Lamps and DVR's. Novelist's non-fiction (that isn't Bessie Head who doesn't count because it is all sort of the same with her). But, really, me? Nonfiction? Since when? For what?

Hand towels are not all. There is trouble, too, with loving. Or to be more precise, love's inconstancy. And the more it happens, the more someone teaches me how to live without them, the easier it gets to forgo fighting it. I can't pinpoint a time when being resigned to something or other was OK. I would holler and fuss and cuss and charm til my desire was my actuality. I concede too much, these days.

I bought hand towels. I bought a curtain rod. I apologize for my pint-sized, woman-with-no-kids car, Magdalena, with no back seat to speak of.

My power is waning. The jig is up. And I'm 26. Only.

All this to say, it is more and more difficult, in the face of all the ideas of you other people have decided on, to walk it your own way.