I'm working on a new story for 100F.  It took me a while to get going on this one, but now that I have some steam, I'm really enjoying the writing.  Though...it is taking an emotional toll on me.   the subject matter is heavy, and trying to do it justice is difficult to say the least.

"They are in the car, driving towards his childhood home where his mother and father patiently wait.  A doula for most of her entire life, Jacob's mother has been promised the birth of her first grandchild.  His wife is pregnant for the sixth time and they are both certain that this time they will deliver on that promise.

Margot has made it to the eighth month.  She is quiet, her head resting on the passenger side window leaving a greasy stain on the glass.  Neither has spoken in an hour.  There is the fear that if either one breathes too loudly, the baby will come and it will be too soon.  They have never made it this far before and the unfamiliar territory they now find themselves in extends out like a tightrope stretched between two mountains.  They are balanced in the middle and afraid to look down."

my baby bianchi is being worked on by a lovely fellow who knows much more than i do about bikes.  soon enough, i will be back on two wheels!  i miss riding my bike through davis streets, especially now with the weather cooling down and the leaves falling from the trees.  a lovely refurbished single speed will be the perfect addition to my autumn days!

sitting at my kicthen table, sweating and nose running from my super spicy dinner, i cannot help but grin when i catch myself thinking, "ashleigh, you're so pretty!"  it's nice having confidence even when you feel so gross.

Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man

oh my goodness, Mumford and Sons. HOW DID I NOT KNOW?

this is just what i need to kick the last year of undergraduate work off right. music that is both mournful and uplifting.

WHY DON'T I LIVE IN NEW YORK?
california, you bore me.  i need skyscrapers and people with an overwhelming sense of entitlement.  oh, yeah - and the company of all the amazing folks i left behind last time i was in the true "city".  take me hoooommeee.

i'm in an american apparel deep-v feeling mighty douchy, at the computer lab, looking woefully out the window at a town i don't feel like belonging to anymore.  SOMEONE, SAVE ME.

i believe myself daily to be on the mend, to be the master once again of davis seas, to know this word "happy" and embody it fully.

all this means is that i am allowed a daily sense of accomplishment.  all this means is that i am allowed something small to be proud of,

until sleep and dreams come and rob me of my two steps forward, drag me that unforgiving one step back, leaving me with ground to cover in the morning.

it is a daily struggle.  i cannot see the end.  though i am convinced that as readily as i conquer day, i will soon be able to conquer night, i am weighed down by the enormous, daunting shadow of that looming task.  there is so much effort to be expended and i cannot find the motivation to expend.

perhaps this is melodrama.  i will admit to such possibility.  but have you, in turn, entertained the notion that melodrama is the loaded slingshot to my goliath?  my enemy is great and powerful in his lackadaisical apathy.  while he drinks the days away, i compose.  when we find eachother on the streets and his steps bring him unsteadily towards me, i will have no shortage of carefully thought-out barbs filling my bag.  i will be prepared to slaughter with a smile. 

i still love my enemy. 
i cannot imagine a world or a life where i do not wrestle constantly with the plain-as-day fact that is: i still love my enemy.
and so my tiny victories, my daily accomplishments are soured by love, by the repetition of the name in my head and the looping projection of the "good times", the memories i cannot bear to sully, the memories that sully me.

and what i wouldn't give for an accomplishment that is wholly mine.  a first prize badge awarded not for avoiding his street, deleting his number, not speaking his name, but for going a day without using what used to be as a way to define what presently is.

my prize will be a life reclaimed.  my only task is patience.

the band (whose record i used as a gift to first tell him "i love you")
is playing tonight at sophia's (where we had our first date)

everything is too relevant, too now
i feel PANIC.

so of course, my natural reaction is to drive home to my dad where we can play scrabble and eat food and fall asleep watching TV because we're cut from the same cloth, we are, we are.

and there will be no mention of boys or olive juice or Dawes or balcony B or that suit vest he wore or kissing him in the dark outside his bedroom door and thinking yes yes yes thiscouldbesomething.

no mention of the things that make me want to cry.