Ends and Beginnings

I am mourning the end of my last spring break for a very long time hard core tonight. It's way too late, and I have to get up way too early tommorow morning (What kind of twisted professor gets in a serious car crash, and somehow cons IT to wire the classroom and his hospital room?!) and I have accomplished way too little for this week to be over.

It's so weird to even think this may be the last "vacation" I get for a while. The last of a lot of things I get for a while. And even weirder to think whats coming. I spent a good deal of this week looking for work, printing out job applicaitons, filling out job applications, begging people to write me reference letters, begging hiring managers to look at my paperwork even though its like five months before I want to be hired. I'm happy to report, however, that I'm two for two so far with semi-complete applications and interviews. I even got an unofficial offer from a YMCA outdoor school/retreat center in Western Massachusetts. I'm not entirely sure that I'll take it, just given some of the specific responsibilities of the gig. But at the very least I'm not gonna be a transiet come September 1.

More on that later, 'cause I could go off on my not-so-super secret live in a secluded New England village fantasy. It'll be tough to turn down a year in the Berkshires, particularly given the fabulousness of a lot of aspects of the job and logistics, and my supreme and utter distaste for being in limbo. It is so tempting to say yes just for the sake of having everything wrapped up and pinned down. It would be a great plan B, should it come to that, and I'm working really hard not to convince myself it should be my plan A.

The semester is winding down, but I'm still waiting for crazy to kick in. I'm never quite convinced, though I'm pretty much having a blast wrapping things up. This week was a pretty rad mix of relaxation and hardcore thesisizing and I'm pretty OK with the outcomes. I had hoped to get a head on a research project I have due a week from Monday, plus this biology midterm thing that I cannot shit upon as I did with the last one (but seriously, cannot believe I didn't think to study at a brewery before?!). But its never enough, not till May 11 that is.

I've been sort of homesick lately, which is a huge shock and sort of not entirely unexpected. Every time I've lived away for long periods of time I make it through all the initial periods of heartsick adjustment just fine. I don't really feel it until its about time to leave, which is almost worse then, because I'm homesick in all directions. I will miss Portland, alot, though I'm fairly sure it'll be a so long and not a permanent good bye come the end of May. The part I can't quite make sense of is missing my family. It's entirely out of character, and really hard for me to admit that maybe it's time to live a day's drive away from family.

Weird. So Weird.

This week is gonna be killer, it's totally stairing me down and growling. I'm a bit apprehensive about heading up to Spokane for Percussion Festival on Friday. They're making me drive a 15 passenger-van full of kids for eight hours, which could be fun, unless shit goes down or kids start drinking. I'm more than apprehensive about the whole boy situation, 'cause it would break my heart if we couldn't be friendly, particularly while performing.

Ah, well.
Some more Mary Oliver, my new academic crush du jour, and then bed and impending reality:

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and theire it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?