Growing Up Tall

I never thought, not in a million years, that I would be nineteen...or grown up. I thought I would always be nine, and here I am, sitting here, finally understanding that I will never be nine again. "And they tell him take your time, it won't be long now till you drag your feet to slow the cirles down." I have exactly eleven hours left of being eighteen. My friends are throwing a little party for me, and asked me very nicely if they could use my birthday as an excuse to get drunk and I said..."Yeah, I guess," and I suppose that I should get drunk with them or else it will annoy me to see them being careless and unconcerned. This will be my drinking day of the semester (I've given myself one per semester 1, because I can't afford alcohol, and 2, because I refuse to become those idiots who knocked over our igloo).

Today I wanted to roll around in the grass back home. Marina has this amazing black lab, Toliver, and he makes me want to get down on my knees and rub my face in some mud. But it's too cold here, and I'm really beginning to understand what Dar meant when she said "February was so long that it lasted until March." I'm really homesick right now. I was starting to be homesick a few weeks ago and then I went to see Nerissa and Katryna Nields (actually I didn't have to go anywhere...they came to Bard!!) and the songs on this new album feel really domestic, about the ties of family , finding yourself, and learning to accept what can and cannot be fixed in life, and it all made me dreadfully homesick in a sad, wonderful way. And I started thinking about where I am and where i want to go.

This is the life that I want right? To be free and independent, doing something new every time an opportunity comes around, becoming a nomad, doing all the things that I never thought I'd do, going to all those places that i never thought I would see? Then why does it feel wrong sometimes. Shosha said that we should go where our hearts feel like spring. My heart's feeling like February in New York. My heart wants to be up at Carl Sandburg's in April or sitting on the porch with Daddy talking about Damn Republicans with Cocoa on my lap, but mostly my heart wants to be sitting in the backseat of the van drawing pictures of orphans on steno pads with Shosha singing our voices out to Late Night Grande Hotel while Nicholas pees in a Gatorade bottle. And yet I'm never happy for long at home which makes me think that maybe my problem is not so much place as it is company.

(Later) But what is this? Okay. Stop. I'm hereby giving up bemoaning my life for Lent...or at least for this entry.

Why, because right now I smell good. I just dragged my cd player and The Metaphysics of Morals into the bathroom and took a long hot bath. Also, I have decided to give myself the day off tomorrow to play music and write. I work with the babies tomorrow until 1 and then the afternoon will be all mine to do as I please with it. Maybe I will paint too. Nineteen will be the year that I take extremely good care of myself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I've been going to the gym four times a week now for the past month and a half and feel much better and am fending off the winter ick. I'm also going to start drinking more water, especially since I am going to be singing much more. I am writing and listening to good music and making my own and reading for pleasure and crying and laughing and watching good movies and building silly things in the snow. And spiritually, well I haven't quite figured that out yet. I think I may have a go at meditation. I got a good book in the library about Buddhism for beginners. I think Jesus and Buddha get on very well and so I'm thinking of just mixing the two and finding a good place.

That's all for now...I'm also trying to do some lucid dreaming which is very fun when it works.