more about A's: the intersection of alone and alive (or) lessons from cooking (or) my name isobel

right now she's singing:
you are going to have to find out for yourself

i've been experimenting with aloness. successfully. it is honestly unlike any endeavor i've ever set myself upon. i don't feel like going into the details of it's all encompassing-ness. but one of the effects. some days i am bursting with it: the desire and drive to put into action my big ideas. there are two big BIG projects i want to take on. i go back and forth from meetings between the 2, the buildings where the meetings are for each are right down a path from each other. one involves a huge state grant, nearly a half million, for designing and implementing a community-based urban stormwater runoff program. education, landscape design, schoolkids doing GIS, the works. this comes from my work study job. this could be my thesis. this is my re-entry into the water world. the second is developing a campus energy efficiency campaign, working with facilities management and students to reduce electricity use at dorms. this keeps my in touch with my present expertise, but expands a bit from the world of renewable energy. this is something i could really take full control of. this would put the years of sitting behind my desk at my old job into action. this is what i wanted to do at my old job. this is something i for which i would apply for a fellowship.

with the aloness taking effect more and more, suddenly i see myself throwing myself into these time consuming, energy slaking projects. and i want to. all through college, and in my fair city, i wouldn't commit to anything, not anything beyond the requirements, that would keep me from hanging out. this was, in part, a reaction to my life from k-12 grade, when i held numerous class president positions, academic challenge membership, model u.n., etc. back then i strove. then striving wasn't cool anymore for me, i guess. but it's always been in there, my ambition for being extraordinary. i think the timer wrote of this once, maybe in different terms, about 'whats so wrong with ambition?' and so now i see that in aloness, i can rekindle it, and like it. nay, i can't be alone forever, and i'm guessing (hoping) that i can strike a balance down the road. but right now it's gaining momentum, propelling me. my concern was that i could not handle 2 big projects like that at the same time, plus school, plus enjoyment. but tonight, in crisp air with clean clear darkness around me, i felt so energized with it all, catapulting forward. i don't know if i can maintain it. i put some things away to get to the aloness, but they are not gone, and i don't know how where the integration lies. but i have faith in this feeling. while preparing stir fry sizzling and popping in the background, i was chopping the beautiful yellow and green pepper, slicing through it with a very sharp knife, and i said yes, this is what i feel like right now.

A to the muthafuckin' K

i'm in a celebratory mood tonight. listening to french hip hop. five dolla' wine. full on dinner topped with my favorite goddess dressing, the first bottle i've cracked since i had a kitchen in my fair city. and now my housie cracks a new bottle, too, of our favorite cheapster wine. the wine's name is borgia. i like to think of it as victor borgia, who is actually a woman, but also a man. like victor/victoria.

why all the pomp and circumstance? why the grand toast, bird?

tonight, i initiate myself into the halls of studentdom. yes, boosted by the receipt of good grades and pats on the back for a job well done after two monday nights in a row of up after 2 am writing, but that's only 33% of the equation. the middle third is my shift in commitment to studies - baa, i managed to stay away from my fair city on hallowed halloween weekend. it's easy now to just say no (except on tuesday nights. tuesday the closed sign is on the door). in fact, i have never ever known a better excuse for ducking out of any social engagement "oh, i can't join you tonight, i have too much work, too much reading to do." a fellow student can never argue with this. the beauty of this excuse is that it can always be said with a straight face; it's always true, even if only in the long view. perfect. the final 33% is attributed to the blossoming of my interest in classes and topics, i.e., getting into it. infact, i currently have a huge crush on landscape design and urban planning. in the course catalog, the three letter specification for the department is LDA, but i prefer to list it as LSD. indeed, maybe in fact that's the extra 10% - when becoming immersed in a subject so much that it seeps into the space behind your eyes, so that everything seen goes through it. now i walk around looking at sidewalks like never before, watching people cross the street with peaked curiousity. oh, the differences between a crush on a human and a crush on academic subject matter. much more managable, the latter. and i hearken back to a card i sent to lady v the first time 'round in college that quite rightly declared:

book lovers never go to bed alone