the bottom of the cereal bowl

Ah, a fresh page.

A fresh page to say whatever I want about whatever topic I want and I can say it however long or short or BIG I want.

I took a drink of the milk left in my cereal bowl without thinking; I haven’t done this for a very long period.

It all started back when mom decided to read about a hundred nutrition books and found out that milk and dairy and meat were all offenders. I bought in at once, but never gave up cereal, because the alternative was oatmeal and I hate that pig slop. Once I scafed the offenders out of my diet I felt healthier and all the promises rang true and my life was marvelous.

But now, you know, slowly out of convenience, these have crept back in. On a smaller scale, but it still comes back, and before you know it

I’M DRINKING THE MILK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE CEREAL BOWL.

Once you pop the fun don’t stop;

If we let ourselves go for even a moment, the fabric

u

   n

      r

        a

           v

           e

           l

           s

and all hell breaks loose. The buildup is slow, but then the dam breaks and the floodgates open.

It seems too late at this point.

But I start each day with a fresh bowl of cereal, a new piece of fabric and a new pair of gates. I always still have a choice.

This seems the theme of my lately life—choosing. It’s called control on my more cynical days, and the loathsome, romantic burden of deciding on my less pragmatic days. But I keep revolving around this inescapable, wonderful ability and responsibility to choose.

Pieces

I don’t have the crutch of that little red wir-o bound book to type from today.

Today, I don’t have anything to copy to ON-LINE from my own handwriting and ink and paper that I bought for two-dollars-ninety-eight-cents [before tax].

I just have my bubbling thoughts inside my own little head to translate directly.

I don’t know why I never do this anymore. I guess I’ve just gotten used to the flow of my hand with ink on paper inside red, jotted quick in between classes, cross-leg-seated on a brown suede couch, or scribbling in the dark when I can’t fall asleep for a churly mind.

Now there are none of those things present. I’m pretty still. I’m pretty steady. I don’t have anything clawing my mind or my fingers; nothing anxious to be released.

So this is what I have to say today.

Peace of mind.

It’s worth it.

It’s nice to be streaming from this place of relative rest, just for a few hours or even days, if I get lucky. Just a few days to think slow, eat a lot of sugar cookies, type slow, savor things like fudge and Art Tatum and a beautiful pearl necklace from the love of my life.

It’s nice to have room in my brain for dreams; I remember them a lot lately.

Last night: Kaylie and I weren’t close friends, she was telling me stuff I felt like I should already know about where she’d been--Garrett was mandating I do something or other--my apartment was in the back room of Jamba Juice, but looked exactly the same--Faith was asking me questions about Jared and I had a million answers.

My subconscious still has a lotta stuff to sort through.

Mushball Brooke

 

I am lucky.

Not in the winning prizes or cakewalks or having the stars align every time I want something way, but in the way that helps me remember that it is not luck at all, but rather, some Higher Being watchin out for me. I’m glad, too, that “some Higher Being” isn’t all He is to me. Plus lots of caring people, lots of access to great beauty, and lots of privilege of circumstance I did not one thing to merit.

Christmas has been different to me this year. The smallest things have made me tear up; I think this is directly proportionate to the permission I have given myself to become a sentimental mushball on account of jrad.

Allowing myself to become a mushball has enriched my life greatly, I should let you know. If you are considering allowing yourself to accept the same fate, I am strongly in favor. This is a promise to love it if you would like to call me, if someone is asking you why the heck you are crying, and are you menstruating, or whatever insensitive question they could possibly pop along your journey of letting yourself become a mushball.

Mushball Brooke is also directly proportionate to Newfound Writer Brooke (I just erased ‘Wannabe’ out of that sentence because I am a writer because I write. That’s it). I’ve let myself free on a lot of accounts this year. Free in harmless, real-meaning-of-freedom categories. Thank you, Universe, for letting me be lucky enough to have time and space and support to try these things out.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I have been a bawlbag all holiday season. I have lost more water sitting at choir concerts or the ward Christmas program or thinking about the Christmas story than probably during the rest of the year combined. I’ve never been one of those people who always had to carry around those little mini-packs of tissues. I am beginning to believe this would be a wise practice.

 

I feel like I’ve arrived, finally, this year.

I’ve been able to internalize things. I’ve been able to let my tender emotions be totally pricked at Chopin and Wordsworth and Angels We Have Heard On High. This pattern I’ve allowed through the latter part of 2009 has seemed to culminate during Christmas and I don’t think it will ever be the same for me again; in a delightful way.

I have let myself finally paint Mary vivid in my mind—how we’re a lot the same, probably. I’ve let myself see every kid as a heaven-sent gem, for REAL. I’ve opened my mind to thinking that the birth of the Savior meant, too, His death and suffering. I’ve allowed myself to mull over these thoughts with no iPod buds in my ears. I’ve contemplated in depth and written, streams of consciousness and very personal thoughts—the kind you want to write in itty bitty writing because you’re still a little scared of them. I’ve let myself be okay blabbing to my mom forever about feelings and mental processes instead of doing my homework right away. All this makes me a better thinker,

and, too,

a better feeler.

I never knew this would be the result of writing and internalizing and talking and contemplating while walking home in the freezing icy bluster, starving and exhausted.

I think we often have no stinking idea what the results of our “starts” will be. I think that is a wonderful thing about living.

Luck really has nothing to do with it. It’s a lot of people working behind the scenes, and somehow I end up getting to be the one riding the wave.

17 of love

 

LOVE:

1. Going home for play time and Christmas treat baking.

2. Making weird noises on the couch while studying.

          2a. Trying to make Claire laugh

3. Snuggling and playing would you rather.

           3a. I would rather have a jingling anklet than balloons tied to my wrists, fly than breathe underwater, and (the hardest one of all) LISTEN to music than create it (if I had to choose).

4. Michael Jackson.

5. Christmas tree in our very own apartment

          5a. WITH PRESENTS!

6. Making grilled cheese for the boy I love.

7. Finishing up my music education class and having my professor tell me that I am wonderful.

8. Christmas cards

9. New socks

10. Time to read, FINALLY!

11. Several pink starbursts, thrown.

12. Taking pictures of my BROTHER GBEECH.

13. Smiling a big fat cheesy smile at myself after I brush my teeth—this is a habit.

14. Visiting teaching.

15. CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS

16. New Years with the hottest man alive.

17. Almost falling every time I walk due to shoes with no traction and the uncontrollable urge to travel by means of DANCING.

the room of requirement

this life is a crazy little thing
that throws unordinary but BIG and crazy-to-only-you things
at you at seventy hundred miles an hour
and you cannot keep up with any of these things.
you are jelly that is spread really thin and you know this phenomenon, when jelly is trying to spread itself but IT ALWAYS CLUMPS UP ON ONE LITTLE PART OF THE BREAD.

there are requirements.
requirements to walk in the freezing, frigidly freeezing cold until your legs are numb.
but the moments right after your legs get numb and you stop for a stoplight or a patch of snow or black ice
you feel warm. you feel burning hot even, and although your legs can't feel a lot all you DO feel is warm.
but it's negative a million--you're really cold.

there are requirements.
requirements to get letters that add together to make numbers that determine your whole destiny and decide whether you'll get to translate your tears to a conducting pattern and eventually be the one up there telling your twohundredstudents what you feel about this thing you're about to do. numbers and letters and requirements and formulas decide what emotions you'll get to express and to how many people.
it all adds up right quick
and i feel in debt already.