The Re-Turning Point

I am writing again. ...Well, obviously.

I last posted, it would seem, on September 25, 2008 ...and it is now November 10th. Obama has won the election. The leaves have changed their colors to a warmer tone and are learning to fall again. America is America; Europe is Europe...And I am no longer in Europe.

And I have a yearning to write. Or eat. Or stare out the window. Or sing or scream or cry or...something.

So, hello again, and I am writing. Obviously.

I am back in Portland, Oregon. I don't know that anyone still reads this, and I'm not sure that I really want to know for certain: if you know the people who read your ramblings, you have a way of editing rather than speaking truth...I wonder if we didn't edit what we say or do in the company of those we care about or have to encounter on a constant basis...would we all be much happier? I doubt I would get as offended by some remark on how I look or what I like or my measurements of success or failure in the world, if EVERYONE were just straight forward all the time... and if I had the courage to say what I really think to those around me, rather than being polite?

...It has been hard to come back to the computer: I have intended to write each day since I returned (a month ago, actually) but somehow...it has felt-- very literally-- as though a 7 foot tall, five foot wide block were standing smack! in front of my computer, so that, even when I WOULD turn the darned thing on, it was there in the pit of my stomach, nagging at the corners of my brain and my breath, both to get the hell out, and magnifying that pit of guilt in my organs, saying, "you know you should; you know you promised; you know you WANT to..."

The truth of it is... I feel like a coward. I feel like a failure. I feel all those unfinished assignments and broken promises and years of little white harmless pointless lies have been blasted through a megahorn... and now the world knows-- if they ever doubted it in the first place-- just what kind of a person I really am.

This sounds terribly self-indulgent and over-dramatic, I am well aware... but it is nonetheless true.

For all my big talk and stories of promised adventure and strength and self-confidence and heroism... I came home. Not even a month later. I spent the last of my savings on a plane ticket...and gave up.

My mother says to her students, "Courage is the willingness to be afraid, and act anyway." Strong, moving words...no? But who wants to HAVE to be courageous every waking moment? To know that, yes, you CAN survive and defend yourself from all the men who intend you ill and all the people who wish to steal your pack or your money... but it will mean that you forgo forever a good nights rest, or letting your guard down in enjoyment or life without...FEAR.

Or, perhaps, the real lesson was just to let go. But it seems to me, the world of adventurers was, indeed, built by men. And made for men. It disgusts me and frightens me and angers me. But it is true, nonetheless... or maybe it was just a really cold autumn.

I never realized until this trip just how female I actually am-- not feminine, but female.

On one hand, when you are a woman traveling the world, alone, it inspires and moves people. On the other it shocks and confuses...sending out all sorts of unintended messages. On still a third, it puts you in peril that I doubt a man will ever understand.

An interesting revelation-- and not one I am keen to admit, even now. I am a creature who truly wishes for equality...I think. But the world shifts when you are alone in the world. People react to you differently...or maybe you just learn to notice.

In any case...

Better late than never...right? To write, I mean. Or to...well...

I wonder what my teacher at Cornish would say if, five or more years later, she finally received my unfinished "Songline" project that was never turned in...what would she do?

It's so easy to say that it's too late to do something, but it never is...really. And if you do not finish the things you begin, they stay with you forever...is the lesson I think I am learning...

So, in short, while I will not probably write much more in this entry, I am choosing to write again.

No, I am not still on my journey around teh world (in Europe)...for now. It has come to an abrupt...pause. I just can't force myself to say "end." And I do not believe that it has, at any rate.

I am in a state of confusion. I do not know why my words should be important to anyone, now that I am not on the greatest of adventures...

I am a little thrown off by the constant knowledge in the back of my mind that any of my co-workers, friends, family, and connections could be reading this...

But, I feel I need to write-- and write truth-- just the same.

...and what's more, while this writing is more for me than for anyone else...I am hoping for some advice...some connection...some...one out there.

I ran into a friend yesterday, and we commenced to talking a bout another friend of ours who is going through a difficult time with a boy, and she said something which caught my ear,

"I want to be supportive; I don't mind if she wants to hang out, as long as bitching about him isn't the ONLY reason she wants to hang out with me..."

And all I could think in that moment was, well what if I needed to vent but what I wanted more was your ADVICE...

It's a strange thing, but in my rather large amount of listener/best friend/ fixer of problems and comforter of the sad (now that doesn't sound stuck up, does it- haha) I have found that when people want your advice, your advice is rarely ever what they want. What they NEED and long for is someone who will actually hear them...and so they can hear themselves...because that is, after all, how we recognize the truth-- it's a way to get the other persons point of view...sort of, anyway. In any case, I realized that I really did, for the first time, want advice. But more than that-- when I dug a bit deeper-- what I wanted was connection.

I am a self-proclaimed hermit, it is true. And the last thing in the world most people would think would promote connection, would be to sit down at a computer and type, but...

Well...words seem to touch people. And I need my words to go somewhere.

So I think better than keeping just a journal or diary, or confiding in one friend or another, than turning around to confide about that same friend to another...

I want to write.

I'm sure I will re-read this entry a thousand times and judge it harshly and feel stupid for posting, but as I found in school, writing papers 2 hours before class bagan, my best writing comes through when I just stop THINKING... and let someone else do the editing.

So for now, here I am.

And, until tomorrow...or the next day, or the next,

"Goodnight and good luck," (haha)

~ Genevieve