my baby-sitting job

for the night: a 7-week old "swimmer puppy" (disabled).

http://www.swimmerpuppy.com/

eliz's visit

i heard there was a secret chord
that david played and it pleased the lord
but you don't really care for music, do you
well it goes like this
the fourth, the fifth
the minor fall and the major lift
the baffled king composing hallelujah
hallelujah...

well your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to her kitchen chair
she broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah
hallelujah...

baby i've been here before
i've seen this room and i've walked this floor
i used to live alone before i knew you
i've seen your flag on the marble arch
but love is not some victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
hallelujah...

well there was a time when you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show that to me do you
but remember when i moved in you
and the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew
was hallelujah

well, maybe there's a god above
but all i've ever learned from love
was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
it's not a cry that you hear at night
it's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah hallelujah...

jeff buckley

i give the puppies back tomorrow. and i'm sad. but i am going to get through this. i am going to do it again. because i'm not a black hole of emotional neediness. i'm so full of love that what i need is to give it all away.

i'm going to fill my heart with love and hope
and give it all away.

but lord, lord it's hard tonight.

sleepy time

playtime

my babies

i have been taking many pictures lately. mostly because this is the end of the road but also because the puppies do so many funny things now.

tomorrow eliz is coming and we are hitting up the outlets and whatever else our little hearts desire.

my heart has many desires.

On the Radio - Regina Spektor

This is how it works

It feels a little worse

Than when we drove our hearse

Right through that screaming crowd

While laughing up a storm

Until we were just bone

Until it got so warm

That none of us could sleep

And all the styrofoam

Began to melt away

We tried to find some words

To aid in the decay

But none of them were home

Inside their catacomb

A million ancient bees

Began to sting our knees

While we were on our knees

Praying that disease

Would leave the ones we love

And never come again

On the radio

We heard November Rain

That solo's really long

But it's a pretty song

We listened to it twice

'Cause the DJ was asleep

This is how it works

You're young until you're not

You love until you don't

You try until you can't

You laugh until you cry

You cry until you laugh

And everyone must breathe

Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works

You peer inside yourself

You take the things you like

And try to love the things you took

And then you take that love you made

And stick it into some

Someone else's heart

Pumping someone else's blood

And walking arm in arm

You hope it don't get harmed

But even if it does

You'll just do it all again

And on the radio

You hear November Rain

That solo's awful long

But it's a good refrain

You listen to it twice

'Cause the DJ is asleep

On the radio (oh oh oh)

On the radio On the radio - uh oh

On the radio - uh oh

On the radio - uh oh

On the radio

letting go

i think i will cry every night this week.

i have started to say good bye to the puppies. i have always known this day would come. i have always known it would be hard. but knowing and surviving are different things.

to my puppies i say this:

i have made this family. i have raised you. i have created pounds of you, your flesh is my responsibility. i have loved you. i am giving you to the world that you may be loved more and forever. but you are my first. you are my babies. i understand now a little of what it means to be a mother. that birth is only part of something. i took care of you when you needed everything. you would die without me and that is a feeling so powerful it brought me out of bed all night, a responsibility that makes me take second place.

but you're growing up now. i can't take care of you forever. i would but then i could never raise more puppies. and the truth is, you don't need me anymore. you are beautiful puppies. you are full of love and confidence and joy. you will find homes. but i will miss you. i am trying to write these memories in my mind, to record the feeling of your tongue on my face, your paws, the jostling of three bodies trying to fit on one lap.

i made this family. it was my strength that did this. my joy. my love. you are a reflection of my ability to create and to love. you are my gift. the love i feel for you is your gift to me. to create love, to create purpose, for need to exist and be met. these are the things that make it worth getting up in the morning. i thank you for that. for giving me a reason to get up. a reason to see beyond tomorrow. hope. confidence in myself.

i'm going to miss you so much i think i will just lie in bed and hug kitten. i'm crying as i write this. i have started to say good bye.

i has been a privelege to lay down my life for you. to put on hold the things i had valued and discover instead the strength that had lain dormant. i am stronger now because you needed me. you are alive because i needed you.

i love you. be good and may the world be sweet and gentle with your souls.

an outpouring

of my soul.

i realize i haven't written anything of merit in a long time. not in my blog. not in a journal, if i had one. i haven't written any poetry. i've read some poetry (most recently The Seven Ages by Louis Gluck. I finished it in the middle of the night when i couldn't sleep and had some very deep insights about where i was in life and what it all meant but i couldn't quite remember when i woke up the next morning).

but it's 10:03 pm. I can't sleep because i took a nap this afternoon and because tomorrow i have work. i hate going to work. i like the people there and i don't hate the job really. but i feel like being there cheapens my soul. i don't try as hard as I could. i try as hard as i can make myself but i have no passion, no pride. i should have pride in my work. if i were a better person i would have pride even without passion. but i don't have the strength right now, mental or emotional, to force myself to take pride and passion in something that i don't love.

so on to things that i do love. i start vet tech courses at harcum on may 16. i will probably be taking 4 courses a semester for 3 semesters (summer, fall, spring) then do my two hands-on sections (large animal/small animal) and finish up around dec 2008. This is when i will be applying to vet school as well. I will (hopefully) find work as a vet tech and can work for a few months (while living at home = making some $$??$$) and then (hopefully) start vet school in the fall of 2009. these are my tentative plans.

i didn't mean this blog entry to be so pedestrian. i don't just want to talk about my plans or my dinner or my new exercise theories. i have been engaging in a love/hate affair with my own mind. there are moments that i am struck by my own brilliance and the rest just sick at myself--who says that, struck by their own brilliance? If i were so brilliant, why wasn't i phi beta kappa? why didn't i get a 4.0? fact is, i'm damn smart and i am book smart but i'm not strictly test smart. and i'm not a grind. all these years i thought i was, i thought if i just worked hard enough and pushed myself i could churn out perfection. because i know i'm intellectually capable. but i don't think i'm emotionally capable. i'm gentle with myself. mostly because i'm so fragile. because all the things about me that make me smart and sweet and funny make me sad and crazy and scared too. i'm janus. i need to love both faces.

i lie in bed and can't sleep and have deep thoughts. every night. lately the thoughts i've been having have to do with age, perspective, the self, knowledge, etc.... it always starts with the same line I am always the oldest I have ever been. this is an obvious statement. it's just that i don't think people think about it that much. I am always the oldest i have ever been. not that i ever will be (hopefully) but that I have ever been. at no moment more than the present have i ever been the total of more experiences. I spend a lot of time sifting through my memories and there are so many things i've done and said that if i were living the moment again i would do differently. but you can't live the moment again. and maybe the reason i would do them differently is just because i learned from how i lived them the first time.

to explain some of my thinking i need a little explanation: i watch a lot of crime tv dramas. (law and order SVU, CSI, NCIS, criminal minds etc etc etc) obviously pedophila is wrong. teachers having sex with students is wrong (genders regardless). I have cousins now who are 12, 13, 14 and I know they are children. Because I am 23 years old. I remember being 12/13/14. I remember having romantic feelings for older men (much older, like, nick-at-night older. I was so in love with larry hagman from the 1960s when i was 12). when you are 12 you are a whole person. you are the wholest person you have ever been. that statement is always true. but you are not the wholest person you ever will be. that's why adults need to take responsibility for actions. it is hard to be 23. i'm not a teenager any more. i'm on the cusp of being a legitimate adult (i feel i've been posing as an adult for the last 16 months) and i'm seeing things clearly for the first time. seeing how murky it all is.

i think some of why the teenage years (and indeed, all of the parent child dynamic) is so difficult is because you and your parents are never equal. they will always be older than you are. they will always have lived more life than you have. but they will always see you as a child. as hard as it is for you to see them as having lived a life beyond you, it is hard for them to see you as a functioning, capable (quasi-)adult. but it's more than that. youth is arrogant. age can see that but only because the aged and wise were once youthful and arrogant. when you haven't seen much maybe the world makes more sense. but part of the arrogance is this--every moment you grow older, you do get more mature, you do see the world more clearly-at 10 than an 5, at 15 more than 10.

i guess a lot of what i am saying is obvious. it's just stating explicitly what everyone already understands to be true. but maybe we don't really understand. or maybe i don't. maybe i'm just starting to.

if you've never had a real relationship or maybe just the first time you fall in love with someone, even from afar, the pain is real. it isn't the same pain as losing a lover or a husband or a soul mate. but if it's your first loss, it is hard. if it's something that never even happened, it only felt like it could and it should if the world had opened differently and the corners were folded over so the lines that separate people and places crossed--it hurts too. it has hurt for so long that i worry about ever loving someone for real and having them love me back. because i can't expect my first boyfriend to marry me. and i don't know if i can deal with the heart break. it's taken me 2 years to fall in love and then try to get out of love with someone i can never have. so it's simpler now. i don't think about him. i don't talk about him. i have shut myself down as a romantic being.

but there are moments when just for a second i have a glimpse of what it would be like to come home to a house where there is a man waiting for me. who thinks i'm beautiful and smart and sexy. who gives me a hug. who watches tv with me. who plays with my pets and tolerates my crafting. who i cook dinner with and go on picnics with and someone, who, when he looks at me, sees me in my entirety, as a human being and a mind and a body and a soul. i love my pets but they can't see me as another human being. they can love me and i do love them. but i would be lying to myself if i said it was enough. it's not. and i'm struggling all the time with the strength to keep myself together when i am so alone.

i've made friends in L.I. (some, mostly work) but people who i really care about and will miss when i leave. but i am alone 16 hrs of the day. i sleep alone. i eat alone. i am sitting here alone in the dark, listening to mr. mouse scurry and the birds sleep. kitten was haivng the happy dance ith the love puppy and i heard him purring a while ago but now it's quiet, save for my typing.

i came in here to write about maturity, about what i thought about where i am in the world. other key thoughts i have been having lately include:

i want my real life to start.
am i a real person?
what if this is my real life?

i don't think any of these are unique. i don't think there are answers necessarily. that's probably why i lie awake and think. because there are moments when i see it all falling into place, just a glimpse that says to me there's more to this confusing mass of pieces than chaos--there's something like the twilight, swaths of teal and purple and clouds bright backlit and dark branches and the moon. it's all there, it's real, it's that feeling of peace inside me that grows so heavy i think i could just sink down into the sky. it is out there. i have to have the strength to look for it.

because it's not actually lying on my futon, where i spend most of my time. lying on the futon is fine. but it shouldnt' be my major activity. i need to spend some time out of the house (not a ton, lets not go crazy here). but i don't owe my pets my every waking non working hour. i think i am losing touch with the world, getting sucked real deep into my own brain, puzzling and puzzling for so long i have forgotten what assumptions i made to reach the conclusions i've reached. and then they're pretty much worthless.

i have done a lot of good thinking. and i want to start writing again. but i gush. i use too many words. i say things generously and spend-thrifty. i don't have the discipline to make my words count. i see them as a wave flowing out of me and then receding, over and over like the water at the bay on the round rocks. always mussels and mussel shells and the smell of the salt and the water and sand. sometimes i think i can see it all, see where it fits, see the whole world as a construct of light and color in which emotion and human interaction are as real as walls and streets and i can see this world, see the currents and the patterns and the way things move together and change and the bigness and the small ness of it all. i can see it. but i can't put it into words. and that's what i want to do.

sometimes i see also how much i don't know. how much i need to learn. because i don't know everyhing. i can't solve it all. but sometimes i think i see that there can be a solution.

not equilibrium of course. equilibrium means death in a living system. but something fluid where i can fix each moment in time if i want to. i want the sunsets and the warm wind and the smell of fall leaves. i want the grass before it is cut, the tickly feeling of leaves and bugs when you lie down on the earth--on real earth, not concrete or carpet--until the water seeps into your skin. and then you feel it, the water the earth and it opens up--the water cycle, the rain, the river, the basin the way things move and repeat and are ruined and work and the life, the lie, the ecosystem, the sun the energy the photosynthesis keeping the grass green and directly (and indirectly) powering everything on earth through just a fraction of its energy. and that's just biology. that's not even moving farther into the mind and the concrete and the asphalt and exhaust and the urges, the drives that keep people moving, that bring despair and structure, that give things a reason.

this is generally why i can't sleep. my mind doesn't race so much as pan out with a wide screen shot when i'm standing in a field and the camera pans back taking in the whole field then the forest and the horizon and the sky and you realize you can't see me anymore.

i sometimes wonder how people imagined thoughts like these before tv and movies. i see my life in the third person a lot. see it as if it were being protrayed and the angle and the light and the soundtrack. i wonder about before this. did people fantasize in words? or were there just fewer fantasies? hopes closer to home? no need to be as beautiful as a model, just as pretty as the butcher's daughter and hope the world plays out with you in it.

i would like to end with words of encouragement to myself. not plans to continue diet and excercise, or promises to go shopping. all those things live in my head and don't really need to be written down. what i want to write down, what i want to lay down as neural pathways in my brain are ideas like these:

you are a wonderful girl. you are sweet and strong and you are special. you don't need to do great things with your life. you will do them if you seek to bring happiness to yourself and those around you. forget the big picture for a while. live in the world bounded by your immediate reality. accept it. enjoy it. remember the peace, the feeling at the top of pine cobble. the sunsets. the feeling of being surrounded by people who love and maybe, mostly, understand (at least accept you). Know that you will have that again. but don't plan a date for it. be as strong as you can be and learn how much you can do alone. but when you have a chance not to be alone, take it. you don't want to be alone forever. use this time, this freedom, to have the tv on when i want it, the light and dark obey my preferences, the music and food and every choice i make every day is mine. that's freedom and a responsibility. make what you will of it. this, like all things, will end. and you will look back and see it fondly. because there are things in your life that fill you with joy. seek them out. bask in them. if you need more sunlight lie on the roof and be grateful that birdy is inside and not out in that tree. think about your hair growing out and maybe going blond again. i want to be a tabula rasa. I want to be pure (lord knows i am of body) of soul. I want to have let go my insecurities, my guilt over not living everyone else's life. I can only life one life. maybe i won't ever tour the world (who would watch my pets) maybe i will .the future is unpredictable and i would do best to ride it, not harness it. i can live one life. other people's accomplishments are not my failures. I believe that when i truly accept that i will find some peace. not all of it. a piece of peace. i can see it.

they're even bigger

this is a three way puppy fight--i believe F and H are wrestling and G is about to bit the extended tail of one of them!



F and G are so big and so cute!


i call this the "line of whine". It is the moment right after i get out of the pen when they all sit and cock their heads and look at me like "why, what are you leaving". It is immediately followed by crazy puppy piling.

example of said puppy piling. i am the backdrop of this pile.



H and the rest do a lot of this tentative pawing manuever. it gets a lot less tentative over time!

I'll have the puppies one more week from today. monday, jan 22 i take them to little shelter for fixing and then eventual adoption. is it going to be hard? oh god yes. but i have to do it. if i ever want to foster babies again i have to let them go. and the truth is, i can't take care of them. my apartment is too small for a crazy puppy (never mind three) with an estimated final weight of around 50 lbs. right now everyone weighs in around 11-12 lbs. that's a lot of puppy.

mini retrospective

more puppy action

big monsters

puppy G is sitting in the food. i don't believe this is sanitary.


puppy H wants the camera!


puppy H playing with a toy i bought him 3 weeks ago

Puppy G being adorable

sleepy sleepy puppies

play time!