My mom came into town to visit last weekend, celebrating my birthday and Mother's Day a week early. We spent a lot of time talking, hanging out in my apartment, enjoying each other's company. We spent a couple hours sitting on the back porch with the plants and my guitar, singing and serenading and looking at seedlings reach for the sun. We also went and saw the "Cezanne to Picasso" exhibit at the Art Institute downtown, which was a really lovely exhibit that turned me on to several new artists I was unfamiliar with (notably Odilon Redon and Maurice Denis), and revisited some of my favorite Van Goghs, which is always a good time.

She spoiled me with the birthday presents, though. A bunch of books, some gorgeous jewelry (a rhodochrosite pendant that has become my new favorite necklace), and an outdoor storage bench to hold my planting supplies and outdoor odds and ends. Fabulous!

It was so sweet of her to come, and it really meant a lot to me. I've been feeling very alone lately; paradoxically, really, considering how much I am in general loathing people these days. At the same time I'm wanting to retreat into hermit-dom, and not deal with anyone but my closest friends....I'm just feeling incredibly lonely. My family is hours away. My sister and I still aren't talking...which is like losing my closest friend. My friends in Chicago make space where they can, but they're all busy with lives of their own - partners, children, yada yada yada. And I'm still single, despite baby steps otherwise...so I feel tremendously alone. I come home to the cats and the plants and the guitars, and I don't speak unless I get a phone call.

The sad part is, I don't just want generic people. I could be hanging out with people. I could be surrounded by people. I want people who get me, people I get, people who nod when I go off on some poetical or political rant, instead of blinking a few times and glazing over. Surely I can't be the only one?

Tomorrow is my birthday: 29. Yikes. One minute, I'm just out of high school and learning that everything I thought about what my life would be is an illusion, and I don't have to do what I thought I had to do....the next, I'm rounding out nearly a decade of working for the same company, I've lived in the same apartment for four years, I'm swiftly moving past the age where I can consider it a quarter-life crisis, and that liver-spotted specter of getting "old" is knocking on my door with a bunch of ballons that say "30."

When I was young, I didn't really think about What My Life Would Be Like. I was too busy getting good grades and trying to get scholarships and denying all my issues. I didn't think about kids or a husband or a nice house or any of that stuff. I didn't think about what I would do every day, the activities my life owuld be filled with. I had vague notions, mostly - I was going to school for engineering, so I'd "be an engineer." I had no idea that such a phrase is pretty much meaningless outside of a paycheck, unless you're so passionate about engineering that it's in your blood...which is not the case for me. I didn't tackle this kind of thinking until my head was spinning after dropping out of school, wondering what the hell i was supposed to do if I was diverging from the expected plan. If it wasn't college, then get a job...what was it?

I'm still wrestling with it, and now I'm starting to feel like I should have an answer, not just more and more and more neverending difficult questions.

People from high school are finding me on myspace, some of them old friends I haven't been in touch with over the years...some of them people I knew but wasn't really friendly with. I wonder if some of them are wrapped up in similar questions and post-adolescent angst. Most of them still live in the area, give or take a county; most have families and kids and all that. With such disparate lives, I wonder if there's still that commonality of questioning - or if it's just me and my freaky weirdo self. Could go either way.

I'm 29 (practically), I live alone in an amazing city, I make music and work a day job and read and spend time with friends and grow plants in containers on my back porch and wake up to purring cats (still only two!) every morning. There are things about my life I don't love and am working to shift...but in retrospect, I don't really regret any of my choices. I guess that's something.

The plants are planted, and sprouting. The nasturtiums are thriving, despite the best efforts of the f-ing squirrels to dig up all their seeds and eat them, leaving empty seed casings and holes in my planters. The spinach, in the hanging basket I used to thwart the aforementioned f-ing squirrels, is merrily growing bigger and bigger. I planted some dwarf tomatoes (which will hopefully stay under four feet tall), three kinds of basil, marigolds out the hiney, chamomile, parsley. The best thing, though, is the mugwort, which somehow managed to survive the winter in a windowbox. It's already eight inches high, sprouting leaves and shoots like mad. It's beautiful and thriving and green.

I also planted forget me nots, some blue flowers I can't think of, alyssum, some pink flowers I can't think of, and snapdragons. Here's hoping everything blooms.

Every morning when I go out to water them, I stop and look at all the little sproutlings. I pull any weedlings I see (I actually am recognizing enough plants to pull them before they get a foot tall and suck up all the nutrients!), see if anything needs to be shifted so everybody has enough room, and generally just admire the little tiny leaves and stems. There's something inspiring about seeing how each sprout grows a little every day, always turning towards the sun, always getting a little bigger, a little taller. I think it makes me hopeful.

Today's playlist:

"Good People" - Jack Johnson
"Not Fire, Not Ice" - Ben Harper
"Unbeauty" - Rachael Sage
"See the World" - Gomez
"Memories of You" - Ryan Adams
"Mr. Curiosity" - Jason Mraz
"Easy Silence" - Dixie Chicks
"Superman" - Five For Fighting
"Lost Girls" - Tilly and the Wall
"Watch the Sky" - Something Corporate
"Will's Lullaby" - Joshua Radin
"Motorcycle Drive By" - Third Eye Blind
"Rain" - Patty Griffin
"In Repair" - John Mayer

Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.