Practice

Books and pizza intimately entwined in a love affair. Both are rewards, and thanks to Book It, one leads to another which enforces the first. It's hard to rip these lovers apart. I'm caught in a menage a trois of different mediums and all I want is monogomy.

I've had many encounters with cabbage, but none of them are memorable enough to tell at dinner parties. I can conjur up images of slicing and dicing for dinner salads, and if I sit still enough I can feel the purple squeek between my teeth. I wonder, though, how much of this is all just imagination.

I wonder if I knew I'd marry him, as I stood in his tiny Canadian apartment washing pork chop residue off the dinner dishes. His apartment always smelled like meat and empty coke zero cans. Washing dishes used to be my least favorite chore, which is now replaced with lugging a whirring sputtering vaccuum cleaner around my apartment, balancing the cord while lifting up chairs.When did I begin to recognize the meditative quality of swishing leftover dinner scraps down the gurgling drain?

Real jello is red with raspberries suspended lovingly in every bite. It has power on holidays, but only if eaten with Coscto white rolls or grandma's overnight dinner rolls.

prompts taken from Old Friend from Far Away by Natalie Goldberg

Dreams

At 5 am the other day I woke up feeling incredibly sad. Normally I feel a complex set of emotions at one time and cannot really tease out what I am actually feeling, but in the early mornings I am the mnost vulnerable to intense emotions.



I had been dreaming. I love living my life in dream-land and find that the waking up part is the hardest for me. And this day was no exception, as I had been dreaming of my best friend, and spending time with her and her husband on the Oregon Coast, and when I woke up I realized how much I miss her, how much I miss the time we spent in college, and how I can never replace her friendship...but I am longing for a similar connection with people that I had with her.



Don't get me wrong, I have friends here in Seattle. Good friends. Friends I feel a great connection with. But I've never had a friendship like I've had with her, and I worry that I'll never have a friendship like that again.



So after I layed there feeling sad and alone, I tapped Kyle on his shoulder and told him I was sad. He rolled onto his back, and I put my head on his shoulder and he put his arm around me. He slept and I cried into his shoulder. The sadness is still there, but it felt so nice to have someone to share in my sadness.



And I thought that sharing my feelings with Kyle and with my best friend would help me feel better, but last night I had another, similar, dream that left me feelingn sad upon waking.



So I wonder what exactly is going on in me. Is this as clear-cut as it seems? Is it symbolic with a deeper meaning than missing a friend and time in my life?