....And catch!: Why I Will Always Row

I remember the moment I fell in love with crew.  The sport.  It was a November morning in 2006.  I was 20, the temperatures had been dropping since Halloween and we couldn’t muster enough people to run either a full women’s or a full men’s 8. So we were running a mixed crew. Standing at the edge of campus, waiting for a van to Hagg Lake, one of the guys was walking up and down a strip of lawn, listening to the crunch as the ice crystals shattered under his tennis shoes.  We could see our breath on the cold morning air and I remember rubbing the newly formed blisters on my hands.

One.  Two.  Three. Four.  One.  Two.  Three. Four.  Five.  Four on my right hand, five on my left. My brother/Irish-twin was being non-communicative. Fairly normal (and totally fair) for him on a morning when he'd been pestered by me non-stop.

It was pitch black, four forty three am.  No moon and a the sky was like dark velvet, peppered with diamonds of light.  29 degrees fahrenheit.  One degree colder and we could have crawled back into our warm beds and slept until class.  Instead we stumbled blindly into the van and dozed through our 15 minute ride from town to the lake.  Winding further and further away from city lights. Past the herd of elk that while still exciting would become a daily sight for us, and then up and across the dam.  The dark water stretching it seemed like forever into the hills.

In it’s early years, and maybe today--I don’t know--Pacific University’s rowing program was about as hipster as anything comes.  

We did not have a boathouse.  We had a rack, and a railroad storage container.  We did not have a dock.  We had mud and shoes we didn’t give a damn about.  Our equipment, boats, oars, etc. was ALL from the 1970’s.  Beauty and The Beast, our two eights were wooden framed monsters weighing between 300 and 400 pounds each.  The internal ribbing visible.  No deck to stand on.  Just a couple of wooden slats near the foot stretcher and under the seat.  I’m not sure how many hours of my life I’ve spent sanding down the wooden bellies of those boats--and our four, The Andrea--so that they could be re-sealed, or helping with what seemed like an endless chain of patches and new paint on the fiberglass hulls, but we stayed afloat as a team, financially and literally, together.

That morning I was bow.  The shortest person (save the coxswain) who’d showed up.  By the time we’d broken the ice, waded into the water carrying our several hundred pound boat, and locked our oars into place I was freezing.  By the time I hauled ass into the boat (after pushing us off) I’d stood in thigh deep icy water for what seemed like an eternity and couldn’t feel my legs.  Even the edges of my orange shorts were dripping and freezing to my thighs.

There’s a sort of magic.  When the world gets cold enough.  When everything seems to hold it’s breath.  Even the air settles, still and quiet and unmoving.  Letting the surface of the water turn into a perfect reflection the sky.  The darkness was so complete that the outline of the trees turned the valley and the lake into an oval of darkness.  Peppered with light.  Stars above.  Reflections of stars in the perfectly still water below.  The only sound was the rattle of our slides and the steady clips of our oars locking into place, followed by the tap into the water.  Breath, slide, tap.  Breath, slide tap.  Our trail marring the surface of the universe itself. Pushing stars to tumble and reflect.  Spiralling off into the darkness of the water, before reforming in our wake.  Breath, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.  As we cycled from rolling fours up to sixes up to all eights, our rhythm never changed.

Breathe, slide, tap.

Suspended as though between worlds.  Sweat gathering under our fleece jackets even as our breath froze on our lips and noses, we hit a moment that lasted an eternity where nothing else mattered.  Just the steady strain of our legs, pulling our boat through the belly of existance.  Nothing in our minds except the pace of the person in front, and the perfect synchronicity.

Breathe, slide, tap.

I remember that moment.  “Easy there.”  Pausing at hands away, our oars suspended not over water, but over the depths of eternity, our boat just cruising into nothingness.  “And down.”   We shattered whole worlds when our blades hit the water.  Skimming along and breaking apart stars and endless night and even the patterns our breath made in the air shifted.  But we’d held it, for a moment/eternity.  We’d been a crew instead of eight people in a boat.  Each a part of something greater.  Connected inexorably to each other through the rhythm of our blades and the laces of our shoes.     I can’t say that moment lasted or the outing was perfect.  It wasn’t.  

Far from it in fact.  

Seven wouldn’t set the boat and three kept catching crabs. Like all outings ever, other people's flaws were easier for me to see than my own--even though I know they were there. But we had our perfect moment.  We’d not just been a crew.  

We’d been a crew cradled outside of time.  

I was hooked.  I knew, even as I jumped out of the bow of the boat in our morning parking ritual to keep us from hitting ground, that I’d get to a point where I couldn’t count the number of mornings I stood in ice-cold water, waiting for people to number off and clamber in. As the sun crept over the horizon, shattering the perfection of the illusion of being outside of everything, I knew it wouldn't be the last dawn I'd watch break over the hills surrounding the lake.  I was short, and athleticism was not “my thing” by a long shot.  
 
But rowing was more than a sport.

It was a part of who I was becoming, and who I will always be.  Something I remembered again, for a moment/eternity in the afternoon sun on the Cam when the world shrank to the back of the person in front of me and our blades dipped into the afternoon water in perfect rhythm. Breath, slide, tap. Breathe, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.

When our motley group of eight girls in a boat became--for that moment/eternity--a crew.

The Man in Black

       Admittedly, my original blog post plan was something like 1-2 photo blogs per written blog.  Mostly because it's a LOT easier to wander around town with a camera than it is to think through saying something mildly intelligent, structure it, write it, edit it and then wonder if you've inadvertantly plagarized anyone/anything.  That said, my camera broke on the very horrible, no good, shitty bad day two weeks ago.  And then on the Sunday following I dropped my phone (which also had a camera) so there are no more pictures.  At least for a while.  As a direct result of there being no more pictures, there will also be no more picture blogs for a bit.  Meaning that I'll be posting blogs sort of based on whenever it is during the week/month that I feel sufficiently self absorbed enough to sit down and write 500ish to 700ish words about Callie and Callie being in Cambridge.
       Apparently today is one of those days.
       One of the things that I am learning about myself by being in Cambridge, and really just outside of the United States of A as a whole is that I am utterly and completely "American."   And not just in the sense that yes, I am one of 953.7 million people born into one of 35 countries sitting squarely on either the North or South American continent.  No.  I am American in that 1950's, blonde, blue-eyed, stoked about the space program sort of way.  I am an apologist for the biggest war machine the world has ever seen, and simultaneously confused--on an emotional, not intellectual level--as to why people hate 'us.'  Yup.  From "Leave it to Beaver" all the way up to "Breaking Bad" I am a fan.  American Camelot all the way through to dystopian dream.
       That said, one of my solidly American habits is an obsession with Johnny Cash.  I do not use the word "obsession" lightly.  I. Love. Johnny. Cash. 
      And by "I, Love. Johnny. Cash." What I mean is that I FREAKING LOVE JOHNNY CASH AND ALMOST ALL THE MUSIC HE EVER WROTE AND/OR PERFORMED. 
       As an artist--just to clarify. 
       Johnny Cash is in many ways an emblematic icon of America and everything she stands for.  He struggled his entire life with the darker side of himself.  Sometimes turning to drugs, sometimes to alcohol and sometimes to God to quell his inner demons.  Despite never serving a prison sentence himself, Johnny Cash identified strongly with men who would never walk free.  Singing concert after concert in prison cafeterias and writing or covering songs such as "Mercy Seat" and "Folsom Prison Blues" Cash walked a line (pun intended) between the socially acceptable, what he should say, what he would say, and those inner demons that never slept.
       For a person who likes to anthropomorphize her desk, it's not a hard leap for me to decide that Cash's music is so powerful precisely because he struggled so deeply.  It's that struggle that I think echoes through "God's Gonna Cut You Down" "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and Cash's last recorded song--a cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt."  Normally, I can listen to Johnny Cash songs (on youtube, because I'm just that good at maintaining a library of music) with limited negative impact.
       However.  "Sunday Morning Coming Down" listened to first thing on a Sunday morning is the best way I can think of to blow a whole day.  Just gone.  From the first stanza where Cash infers the view of an alcoholic (beer for breakfast, and one more for desert) I'm stuck.  Wondering and thinking about what it is that we're all up to on this comfortably warm rock hurtling through space.  From there I'll usually start wondering what significance anything has--if not social--and how it is we manage to assign value to anything.  And then I start to think about what makes me really happy--being around friends whom I can trust implicitly.  Then I realizing I chose to move away from a very solid group of such friends, maybe the first group of such friends whom I hope to know for life.  Friends who are currently chilling out on the other side of the comfortably warm rock we call home that is hurtling through space at speeds that the human mind can barely comprehend.
      Then I think about the scale of the earth in comparison to the sun.
      Then I think about the scale of the sun in comparison to the galaxy.
      Then I'm toast.  Like at that point I've broken my brain for the day.  Just done.  Usually I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.  Because it seems as interesting and meaningful as anything else if all context is taken into consideration. It's certainly more meaningful than my homework, and decidedly more meaningful than my problems.  Which when compared to the cosmic time scale of the universe, have no meaning at all. At some point the sheer scale of the EVERYTHING is the most unutterably overwhelming sensation I think people can experience.  Particularly when held in context with Johnny Cash soulfully singing about heroin addiction and the regret of a life not lived well.
       That's usually when I revert to watching YouTube videos of Mr. Rogers neighborhood to remind myself that the shit we care about matters.
      Even if it only matters because we have decided it does.  And maybe it matters even more, because it's what we've decided matters.
       Either way, it makes the headcold that I'm rapidly developing seem suddenly far less impactful on life, the universe and everything in general, than I would normally--had I not listened to "Sunday Morning Coming Down."
It's a great song.  Listen to that and then "Hurt."  And yes.  It's okay to cry.

I promise in my next blog to be more descriptive about Cambridge :)

An Evening on Broadway: Callie Reviews a Show.

I've been seeing some shows around town by writing reviews for the The Cambridge Student. It's a good gig. I get to see performances I normally never would b/c being broke means no going out to things that require tickets. Unless tickets for free can be acquired. But like all good writing gigs, I get edited. I liked this review. A lot. It got edited. A lot. So I'm posting it here as a blog entry. Unedited.

Meet "Callie the Reviewer."

Maybe it was the weather, or the stars, or 4 hours in a bus in London traffic after the least productive day of my as of yet very short Cambridge career, or a broken camera, or being called names viea facebook message.  But by the time I walked into Trinity Chapel two minutes before An Evening On Broadway by the Cambridge Pops Orchestra began, I was shivering, starving and ready to burst into tears.  Not the best mood to start a review in.  By a LONG shot.  I was prepared to be disappointed.  Because EVERYTHING on Friday had been disappointing.

And then, barely two minutes in, an energetic, engaged, tap-dancing Henry Jenkinson (SUCH an expressive performer and clear vocalist) sang the words “Outside it’s winter...but in here?  Here it’s beautiful…..even the orchestra is beautiful”

And damn it, he was right.  

From the first burst of the organ, to the colorful witch hats, to a bright orange boa, to the violins, violas and trumpets, it was beautiful….and that was before they’d even really gotten started on the evening.  Ranging across the decades and styles the compositions chosen were a showcase of Broadway’s best--even if they were not all the ‘classics’ we are so used to hearing.  The arrangement was both smart (drawing the audience in) and fun.  Bright and vivacious the conductor Simon Nathan wasted no time getting started, and it was clear from the moment he walked into the room, that he’ll have a career in music if he wants one.  His personality shines through his selections and the verve with which he handles his orchestra and choir demonstrates his skill and confidence.  Eight soloists soared (with the help of a microphone) over the orchestra and choir.  

Sam Oladeinde is a man with stage presence.  Also: he can dance.

Bethany Partridge, and Hetty Gullifer, two very contrasting voices, were showstoppers.  Each in her own way, and her own right.

The applause lasted 5 minutes before an encore was called.

And oh what an encore.

By the time I walked back out into the cold, I was no longer hungry or cold or even angry at anything.  I was on cloud nine.

The worst thing about this preformance?  They only did it ONCE. I CANNOT GO AGAIN TOMORROW OR SUNDAY OR THE NEXT DAY. OR EVER AGAIN.

Cambridge?  Send them on tour.  They deserve a larger audience and a bigger space with better acoustics.

10 stars.

Or 11.

Hell.  42 freaking stars.

This rocked.

And Mr. Nathan?  You bet your buttons I’m buying tickets ahead of time to ANYTHING you conduct.  Because you know what?  Your orchestra?  They are god damn beautiful.  In every way.

Callie and the Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad Day.

       The nature of life is that there are a lot of bad days.  We're essentially really really really smart monkeys living within a complex social and economic structure that we depend on because our preferred/required habitats have been niched to the point of non-existence in the natural world.  We fuck each other over, starve each other to death, kill each other en-masse, beat the crap out of our young, and generally make life miserable.  Every.  Single.  Day.  All because we're all sort of scared we won't get enough to eat, crave control and desperately need to be loved and valued.  And because significance is the one thing we can never really believe we have in the grand scheme of the universe once we actually start to contemplate the scale of it all.  Or if we're left alone for too long.
      In light of that over-arching reality, Friday, November 8th, 2013, was actually a pretty good day for me.  From my limited personal perspective, constrained by my ongoing delusion that I am the center of the Universe (at least as it pertains to me) and that the comparison of my suffering to others is semi pointless as I cannot possibly really empathize with them in any real way, Friday, November 8th, 2013 was a fucktastically craptastic day.  In every way possible, short of a relative dying of a sudden heart attack.
       From that very limited perspective, it was a Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad day with exactly two bright spots.  Each of which lasted less than an hour.  I started my Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad Day 12ish hour before Friday actually began with a minor social disappointment on Thursday.  One of those times when you suddenly realize you are maybe not as cool as you wish you were, or when you suddenly realize that you and another person are NOT on the same page.  And that because you are NOT on the same page, you've likely made people very uncomfortable.  Which is awesome.
      NOT.
      So Friday morning I was already a little sluggish, a little sheepish and feeling a bit put off by the Universe in General.  That was before I woke up.  At 7:02am.  I should note here that I had a non-refundable, non-transferable bus ticket to go to London that was scheduled for exactly 7:28am.  At a location that is (by foot) about 35 minutes away from where I live.  The resulting stumble out of bed, into clothes and towards the door meant that Callie did not shower, Callie did not eat and Callie forgot her actual wallet.  She brought her old wallet.  The one that stuff falls out of, and that she had a few things in, but notably not cash.  Yay step one.  I took my bike, locked it at the Downing Site and then ran to catch my bus.  Which I reached just as it pulled out.  First (of two) small victory of the day: I got a window seat.  First victory soured: said window seat was under an air-conditioning vent that was stuck on high.  I froze my ass off while reading Gender Trouble by Judith Butler for the next 2 hours.
      London was everything I'd imagined.  Cold.  Wet.  Confusing.  Ancient.  Modern.  Cosmopolitan.  Entertaining.  Kinda like New York, but Not.
       And expensive.  Particularly for a person without everything they need in their wallet.  Traveling one of my most favorite things to do is to just sort of pick a direction and walk.  Just to see.  What are the stores, the little hole-in-the-walls.  Who is driving by.  It's a good strategy.  In a city where it doesn't rain.  All the time.  Every day.  All day long.  I'm from Portland.  I should have been prepared.  But alas, in my stumble out the door and towards the stairs I'd pulled on a cotton jacket.  I had an umbrella.  But not a real coat, and certainly not the kind of coat tat keeps one happy and warm when walking through 40 degree rain all day long.
       I did see Buckingham Palace, and the Halls of Justice, and a cool little market thing.  I walked through a park and even bought some postcards and stamps at a post office where my Visa worked.  It was at Buckingham Palace that my little Canon Powershot finally kicked the bucket, and somewhere between there and the Victoria Tube station that my University ID card (also known as the key to my house, my library card and my meal ticket) mysteriously disappeared.  But on I persevered.  This was London, I'm an American, and Yes is a much much much much better answer EVERY TIME than no.
       Keep walking?  Yes.
       Look at the Thames?   Yes.
       Stare into a coffee shop dreaming of food?  Yes.
       Check my facebook messages and email only to continue a non-productive semi-painful argument with a dear friend/relative?  Hell Yes.
       Yes.  Yes. Yes.  I'd actually come to London to see a cousin whom I last saw when I was 11 or 12.  We were going to meet at 2:30.  But the Tube had a hiccup, and our hour long meeting turned into a rushed 20 minutes in a Starbucks.
       That 20 minutes was the second bright spot.  And it was a good bright spot.  I am occasionally amazed at the intelligence and talent of people I am related too.  It is awesome.
      Then I caught a bus.  That got stuck in traffic for four hours.
       Four.  Hours.
       By the time I pulled into campus, my phone was out of battery (and credit), I was sopping wet, freezing and mad at the world (should not have read Carol Gilligan all the way back) and ready to bawl.  But I'd committed to reviewing an orchestral piece.  And failed to invite a friend.  So I gave the second ticket away, loved the show and went home (with no uni-card) to no food (hadn't gone shopping) and a bit of mail letting me know that a package I'd been really really looking forward to was going to cost me 50 UK Pounds to collect.
       Because apparently 10 year old cowboy boots need a helluva tax.
       And oh, then Sunday I broke my phone.

Today (Tuesday) is as of yet, significantly better.  I rowed a 1:49 500 meter for NWBC NW1 and even if I am socially awkward, phone-less, camera-less, uni-card-less, antagonizing to my relatives/friends, cold, tired, hungry and can't have my cowboy boots, Friday is over.

And you know what?  Even though there won't be a blog with pictures again for a bit, I never have to live that Friday again.

Rock on.

     

Newnham College

       Named after Newnham Village, Newnham College was the second of Cambridge's 31 Colleges to admit women.  It was established in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick and Millicent Garret Fawcett.  Many of the lanes and buildings in and around the college are named in their honor. 

       Henry Sidgwick, originally a fellow at Trinity College--one of Cambridge's oldest--was known as a mover and shaker, giving up  his fellowship at Trinity in a dispute after refusing to take an oath of faith to a God he didn't believe in.  Henry Sidgwick spent his life challenging University policies (including that which kept women from attending the University proper) and legend has it that some of his peers coined the term "Sidgwickedness" in reference to his antics and sense of mischief.  

       Originally a single house, where rooms were rented out to young women under the supervision of Anne Clough (who never attended secondary school or college herself) Newnham was a response to the overwhelming demand for accommodation near the University after women's lectures were begun in 1870.  By 1875 Newnham's first building--Sidgwick Hall--had been constructed, and the archetict Basil Champney's was in the process of designing what today makes up the bulk of Newnham's campus.  A series of graceful Queen Anne Style red brick buildings linked together by Europe's second longest indoor corridor---so that young women studying would not have traipse out of doors to get from their rooms to their meals to some of their courses.  

       Newnham is also home to one of the most extensive College Garden's in Cambridge, in addition to a beautiful historical library that is a protected site.  Said library has an extensive collection, and many alcoves for study and work---a vestige of days when female students were not allowed in the Main University Library, and needed separate resources of their own.  Newnham even has a series of buildings which once housed science labs for women studying who were not allowed in dept. laboratories.  Today this space, fittingly titled "the old labs' is used mainly for performance.

       It wouldn't be until 1948 that women gained full acceptance at Cambridge (Oxford admitted women in full in 1920) and as late as 1921 male undergraduates destroyed an ornamental gate at Newnham in celebration of their "victory" when women campaigned for, but were denied, full admittance to the University.  Today Newnham is one of three remaining all-female colleges not only in Cambridge, but in all of the UK.  Lucy Cavendish and Murray Edwards make up the triad of women's only colleges at the University of Cambridge.

       Today Newnham is home to approximately 400 undergraduate students, 150 graduates, and 70 academic staff.  The college fields a competitive crew team, and has sent rowers onto compete in the Olympics.  Women at Newnham participate in a variety of extracurricular activities, including a termly lecture series organized by students and share in chapel and music services at the nearby Selwyn College.  Considered one of Cambridge's "new colleges" Newnham graduates include Emma Thompson, Mary Beard and Ruth Cohen.  The College has an active and engaged alumna society that frequently hosts events on the college campus for current Newnham students, or "Newnhamites" as they are fondly referred to within the walls of the college.    
       Newnham students pursue degrees across all academic fields, from science and engineering to literature, sociology, art and music, and at all levels from first undergraduate through to PhD or even post-doctoral fellowships.  Each spring Newnham provides students with hands on opportunities to present and share research through a graduate fair--designed to both expose undergraduates to the opportunities awaiting them, and to give Newnham's vibrant graduate community a chance to practice the presentations that will in part earn them their degrees from Cambridge University.
       

       Academic life at Newnham is managed through the Junior, Middle and Senior Common Rooms.  Each of which provides meeting space, study space and events for the students and fellows which they serve.  Events such as Formal Halls frequently extend to include individuals from all walks of college life.  Newnham is also known for it's support of students pursuing music in addition to their other work.  Providing ample opportunity and even some limited funding to students who wish to continue pursuing an instrument or vocal instruction through the University Music Dept.  Less well advertised, although perhaps occassionally capable of also being heard throughout the halls of Newnham are the Newnham Nuns.  The College's renowned drinking society.
Less important to the general history of Newnham College, but seared forever into my memory is this tree and this lawn.  It is where I watched the slow degredation of a pigeon's body over the course of six days.  Six days during which I was exceptionally vocal about the state of the bird, it's location and suggestions as to an appropriate course of action that could be taken at the Porter's Lodge, or P'Lodge, the general entrance to the College, where students keep their Pigeon Holes (mail slots) and interaction between Newnham College and the general public ostensibly begins and ends.                    

Upon admittance to a program within Cambridge University students applications are forwarded onto the 31 colleges for consideration.  All students are promised at least one offer of placement froma  Cambridge College, however if you turn down your primary offer, you may not be given a second.  Students have the opportunity to rank their first two choices on their application. Yours truly knew nothing about the Colleges, nor the ranking system and as a result ended up in Newnham either through blind luck or simple happenstance.

       Living in an all-female environment takes my last job (for Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington) and makes the gender breakdown there seem absolutely diverse.  While the general subset of human knowledge present on the internet seems to agree that gender segregated environments foster educational attainment in girls aged 13-17, I'm not sure that it extrapolates to people in their late twenties to early thirties.  However, since my program (MPhil in Gender Studies) is one that has essentially self-selected to be over 90% female, that's a hypothesis that I get to suss out personally.  I'll let you know.  I will admit that I am certainly far more likely to wander around the halls of the college barefoot and in my pajamas than I did as an undergraduate where there were (GASP) boys.   That said, my general level of personal shame drops a few notches every year, so while I might be able to chalk tht up to a gendered environment, I might also be able to chalk that up to "Callie has gotten older, realized more thoroughly that we're all just biological organic goo smeared on a rock, and gives less of a shit about the little stuff." 

All that said, Newnham seems to be a good fit for me.  Everyone is either nice, or I haven't figured out how to read British-not-super-niceness and as long as you are competent enough to figure out your own problems (there is a lot of hand wringing if you need help) it's an easy place to get people to slowly come around to solving those problems if you can provide clear easy steps and an understanding of what went wrong and why.  If you are patient.  Patience is key.  Housekeeping does leave mildly passive aggressive notes whenever something is found to be out of order and the cleaner comes to the house I am living in at 8am---making morning prep either early or awkward.  (In 10 years no one besides me has brought this to the attention of housekeeping.  They claim that means it's not a problem.  I claim it means they haven't put enough pushy US citizens into this house in the last 10 years).  

       One way, or another, Newnham is "home" for the next 8-10 months.  And it's another reminder to me that "home" is not a static place, thing or idea.  Home can move with you, or not.  Or bits and pieces of home can come and bits and pieces can stay.  Our ancesters, unless we are grossly misled by the historical record, didn't really do a whole lot of picking up and moving half way around the world.  So it is up to us, in our vague, odd modern epoch, to create new definitions of "home" and new forms of "community" that stretch beyond geographic boundaries in many cases.  We get to relearn what it means to be happy.  What it means to be connected, and what it means to be whole in a wide open world of uncertainity.

       Good luck on your quest.  Whatever it may be.

      Much of the information gathered for this post was gleaned from walking tours of Newnham provided during Freshers Week, the venerable Wikipedia, signs in and around campus, and of course the official website of Newnham College.

Homesickness: Something I Always Equate to Death.

Be forewarned, this post is rather self-indulgent.

One of my earliest memories is of lying in the dark at a cabin that my family was visiting in the Uintas Mountains, hugging my Amanda Doll.  The weight of the unfamiliar night shrouding in around my body like a vivid and complete thing.  Something present, something aware.  Something Invading the space of my brain in a way I did not like.  Pushing out the comfort of what I had known and inserting in it's place a dread.  An unknown.   Like a physical compulsion I could not squirm away or hide.  I just huddled.  Letting it wash over me in waves until I silently sobbed my little self to sleep.

I might have been about 6, and a neighbor's dog had died a few days prior.  I don't even remember it's name now, but what will never leave me is that moment of waking up in the pre-dawn hours to the sound of my sister snoring next to me, suddenly knowing beyond the shadow of any doubt that I too, was going to die.  Some unknowable, utterly terrifying nothing would swallow me up and make me disappear.  I was capital A Aware for the first time in my life.

Fortunately children are not capable of maintaining or contemplating abstract thought for long, and my limited brush with the idea of my mortality faded as quickly as it had sprung up.  I woke up the next day none-the-worse for the wear, and went fishing.  Where I caught a fish.  And then had to put it back because I couldn't stand to let it die.  And that was that.

Life went on.  And on.  And on.  When I was 10 or so we lost our dog Dino.  Troubling, but not so bad. And 10 of the 12 or so chickens we had slowly disappeared or turned up sick and then dead.  Every fish we put in the 10 gallon tank died.  Usually horribly.  Death was not the constant companion that some people learn to live with day after searing day, but it was not an unknown.

Then,  when I was 13 I read the book Dracula.  At night.  Alone.  On a dare.

Bad idea.  From an adult's perspective it is a quaint horror, written in a language resembling English that has long since morphed into something new.  13 year old me saw in Dracula that literary tide of death.  Rushing in when unexpected.  Stalking in the guise of friendship.  Obsessed with the beautiful, the young, the new, lurking around every corner.  That idea of Death as inescapable.  I lay in bed that night.  Clutching my pillow (Amanda Doll was on the desk--WAY too far to get too) and chewing garlic.  Knowing again, in that unmutable unutterable way, that I am not a thing that gets to last forever, and that forever is almost too terrible a concept to even pretend to want to understand.

I chewed garlic every night for a week.  But teenagers are immortal.  And so I moved on.  But I was old enough by then to know, every once in a while--usually at night--that while the world was wonderful and full and amazing and alive, that there was something dark.  Something grim.  Something that tore at my soul every time I glimpsed it, that existed in partner with the stunning rise of the sun, or the light bouncing off a moonlit lake.

Impermanence.  Utter, complete and unavoidable.

As an adult I am unfortunately capable of abstract thought, but fortunately mostly capable of self-distraction.  But sometimes that understanding rears it's leering head.  Sometimes when I'm mourning the loss of someone I loved.  When a pet dies or runs away.  When a childhood toy disappears or breaks.  When an idea slips away--never to be thought again.  When I move, which I've done a lot, and have to face the idea that everything familiar will change.  Will morph.  Will shift irrevocably before I return.

That I will change.  Will morph.  Will shift irrevocably before I return.

And worse than that, that someday the little goodbyes I say for a year here, or two years there, will become permanent.  To the point that I will someday lie in a bed, and say goodbye to myself before slipping off into oblivion.  I will say goodbye to the bend in my index finger, and my slightly obnoxious taste for sweet white wine.  To the wrinkles I have and hopefully will form.  To my hands and feet---my tools and navigators through this world.  To ever feeling bothered again.  To biting my lip or feeling my bottom rib slip out of place when I stretch too far to the right.
There will even come a time when no one remembers me.
No one loves me.
No one is annoyed by me.
No one misses me.
And that is the way of the world.  The circle of how things are and ought to be.  There are days.  Usually when I am warm, it is light and I am with friends, when that seems alright.

But lying alone in a new bed?  Staring at a unfamiliar ceiling in the dark?  Feeling and being utterly alone, just a snapshot of a second in the grand scheme of things?   There are times when my heart breaks for everything I will lose.  For my family, for Amanda Doll, for how much I hate the line of my neck in profile.
There are times when I need to mourn not just the inevitable loss of everything.  But also the eventual loss of me.  For the ceramic filling in my teeth and the way my hair won't curl or even wave.  For the sting of the cold beach air on my nose, and for intestinal cramps when I eat fish.  For the feel of my hand on the keys of a piano and the joy of wearing knee high socks.  For how grumpy I get when someone else is right, and the pain I feel when I disconnect--somehow--from friends.

Sometimes I have to cry, to mourn all that, because when it comes down to it, I won't be able to after I've gone.

I don't even remember when, but at some point I learned to play 'Taps' on my Harmonica.  Nothing else.  Just 'Taps' because hearing it makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing.

I've played it every night, lulling myself to sleep, since I got here.  Since I really committed to leaving home, leaving friends, leaving the familiar, the comfortable, the distracting.

Reminding myself, every moment could be a goodbye.  And reminding myself to live every day like seconds are more precious than diamonds.

Because they are.  Far, far more.