up and down and in between

3/5/08 1129 am
i want to create something.

i want to build something with my hands. i want to take an imageideathoughtfeeling in my brain and see it in the physical world. i want colors. i want shape. i want to feel it in my hands.

sometimes this feeling is overwhelming. most of the time it's fleeting, this urge. this need. sometimes the image in my head is a building. other times it's a painting or a book. i need to take this something that lives in my imagination and see it under the sun.

i woke up with a headache today. dreams of surf reports and incoming tides and grocery stores. i've been dreaming of grocery shopping a lot lately. did i tell you about the one where i went to the grocery store in my socks? i had to get eggs. the only eggs that were available were the big 36 egg packs. when i opened a box, all these little baby chicks flowed out of it. i tried catching them in my hands. they kept coming out of the box. little yellow blops of fur with tiny feet flowed out of the box. their fluff hanging in the air, their little feathers suspended as they rolled out of the box like a wave. and then i didn't want anything to do with scrambled eggs or omelets or any of that anymore.

what was i saying?

oh.

dreams of surf reports. i slept through my alarm clock. woke up to the surf report. got to work late. parking lot is atrocious. really. big F2355s taking up three parking spots. other cars not pulling in all the way, making me drive serpentine through this obstacle course.

oh yeah.

oh, so bad mood today. i'm tired of thinking of protein and fiber. i'm tired of drinking 8 glasses of water a day. i went to the gym on monday and tuesday. a few observations:

gyms STINK. they smell like sweat. old socks. sweaty towels. B.O. and crotch.
it's funny seeing all these people (myself included) runningwalkingsweating soooo fast--to nowhere. soooo fast. rows and rows of treadmills and ellipticals. men and women running up stairs that go nowhere.
we live in san diego. san diego, people. and we're crammed into a gym running ourselves silly watching tv.
yep.
hamsters in wheels. instead of calling it a hamster wheel, i decided to call it a ferris wheel. i ran the ferris wheel yesterday. sounds mo' bettah than a stinky gym next to stinky people (or is me stinky?) running stinkily toward the news and shows on tnt.

where was i going with this?

creation. i'm not talking babies or anything. a project. hmmm.... i have a few ideas for sketches. some ideas for painting. some framing ideas. some sewing ideas. quilts. my mom had a sewing room. she used to make sunday dresses for me and my sister. every sunday we had a new dress. lace. buttons. puffed sleeves. ribbons. flowers. beautiful dresses. her sewing room was yellow. piles and piles of fabric were all over the place. sometimes i would wake up to the sound of the machine. i fell asleep to it. we'd pick out colors. we'd go shopping for patterns. we would stand in that room and she would press patterns to our bodies, getting measurements. oh, the measurements! arm measurements, length, waist, stand still, hold this. i can feel her hands holding that thin, wrinkly brown paper to my back, smoothing it over my shoulders. i can hear her voice, muffled from holding pins between her lips. i can see all the sewing projects in different stages of completion. draped over chairs, over themselves, over the ironing board, hanging on the closet knobs. the carpet is full of pieces of trimmed fabric. little whisps. vivaldi plays in the background.

oh, mom.

nurse nell was just here. i hope she doesn't mind me posting about this. her family suffered a loss recently. i remember that feeling. those feelings. i remember wanting to be out of it. or at least to know when the grief would stop choking me in the middle of the night. when i would be able to breathe without feeling like i was drowning. i wanted to know when. six weeks? six months? when would i not miss him so sharply.

there's no time limit. i thought i saw him at a bus stop in claremont a few months ago. right across the street from where i was getting my car washed. the car wash i took his car to many years ago. i had forgotten to turn the radio off, so the antennae was left up. it went through the swish swishing brushes and soap. the antennae never went down without a fight after that. it was always a little crooked. i don't remember if i told him about it. ("dad, i'm the one that broke the antennae." i loved it when he drove. i always felt so safe. like a rockstar.) so i thought i saw him sitting at a bus stop. i sat on the bench across the street and watched him. i knew it wasn't him. i let myself pretend for a minute. wouldn't that be funny. my dad's afterlife and he's taking bus rides through claremont. he was wearing what he usually wore... a polo shirt, cargo shorts, a good pair of running shoes. sunglasses.

face to case.

crap. this wasn't going to be this kind of post.

there should be a book. "grieving for dummies". i suggested it to nurse nell. maybe we can start a book club on it.

what was i saying? oh... creation. yes.

****
post script: i googled "grieving for dummies"