The Floors Could be Metaphors...

The best way I can describe where I’m living now is an intriguing hybrid between a construction site, an artists’ colony and a Jewish temple. My landlord is at least sixty, bald with a perpetually sweat soaked ruff of grey hair. He talks incessantly, about conspiracy theories, plans, beliefs, and keeping Kosher.

The house is massive, but still somehow homey. Musical instruments rattle and jangle in every corner; gongs thrash into a deafening roar any time of day or night.
More than anything the flooring fascinates me. The living room is honey colored wood that bleeds into the master bedroom, shiny and normal under the grime of indifference. Huge grey stones in a greenish mortar cover the floor in the dining room that opens into a huge office, lined with floor to ceiling windows. Dozens of cords from printers, computers, TVs and other blinking beeping office gadgets spiral across the grey stony floor.

The kitchen has linoleum, cream colored with spirals of brown, like a shepherdess’s hair, or a conservative paisley. There is another kitchen downstairs, but it has tiles instead of the lacy creamy linoleum. The constant building and digging for elaborate raised beds and steep steps outside cuts into red clay dirt, dirt like I saw once on a sleek race track in Kentucky. Here its deep clods, red and orange ground into the tan tiles in ever layered boot prints. This tile, under the orange and red treads marches into a bathroom, and down a hall ending sharply, as if shaking off the marching feet on its blank tan face.

At the end of this hall the room opens again with chip filled cement holding the room together. The room is tall window and a yellow too lovely to be mustard and too experienced to be buttercup. The floor sits there grey and stern, defying the cheerful red rug that smoothes its face, but confident that it is needed to keep the yellow and the windows from flying away.

My room is off this big room. The grey floor is comforting here, and a yarny red rug sits snuggly against its surface, sharing the load.

I already know I will be lonely here. My little bed, too short and flat reminds me. The grey of the floor reminds me. And my one lone window, long and dear the ceiling reminds me. But the rug hushes the floor. And a bright afghan and my nanny’s old feather pillow soften the bed. Pictures climb the walls beside posters that tell of memories and occasions still colorful. Books lean against each other on the yawning shelf, full of more to say and do.

An old woman lives beside the kitchen. Her husband lives there too, but he slips around like a shadow with many whispered thanks and welcomes almost drowned out by his wife’s breathing machines and the smell she drags with her. So far she watches CNN and eats canned peaches. She tells me I’m big, like I don’t already know. I want to tell her she smells like piss, but she must know, and she might do something dangerous with her yards of blue oxygen cord.

I’m sharing bathroom with a man for the first time in almost five years. I washed his towels today, and he was grateful. He has bottles of scent and lotion lining the countertop. He is a waiter, and he irons the same white shirt each morning. He tells me of his childhood in Romania, and offers me watermelon and Mexican beer. He has a little boy who beat me at checkers without saying a single word, then sat on the sofa, wrapped in a huge black and white checked blanket, staring out at me from behind round glasses.

Upstairs in one of the rooms with shining blonde wood a contractor lives. He grew up in San Francisco, and he comes home from working all day and walks through without his shirt, sawdust in his hair, and sticking to a pink scar on his side. I will ask him about it someday. I drove him downtown this evening, to meet a woman for a blind date. He drank two glasses of wine first, but he was still nervous and jumpy. He told me he was too old to be doing this kind of thing.

Everyone in the house is at least fifty years old. They have traveled been in love and seen things that the universe hasn’t yet led me too. They have all already told me I remind them of where they were once.

When I was unpacking I found my UTC course book. It made me think what I have been again, I should be picking my classes, running all over campus to see how much time I need to get from class to class, I should be tracking down the best book deals, and seeing which of my friends will be in classes with me so we can share the same book. I should be fighting with my boss over my changing schedule, and picking the perfect back to school outfit. This was going to be the best year, the best one yet. When I went to the writing lab I would sing in as “Hana Colvin, Major, Engl 2nd, Senior”. Instead I ‘m hearing about lives. His, hers, theirs, yours. I’m writing and reading, pretending to learn another language. I’m trying figure out where to do my Pilates, I’m catching lightening busy for the silent little boy with round glasses. I’m embroidering and watching pointless TV, I’m going on interviews for jobs I’m never called back to, and I’m polishing my resume like a diamond. And, I’m writing again. First draft by hand, at my favorite coffee house that is this city to me, writing it down in a notebook that I bought the other day, even though I already have dozens. I needed a clean, clear one, empty of Shakespeare notes or class schedules.

For a year I will be a bohemian. A learner, a transcendentalist, a dreamer, a horizon expander. And I will do this in my new home that has many floors.

stress

I could fill this space with all that is bothering/stressing/pressing me down.

but I refrain.































its still here though. in that spot.

yrs,
Hana

Bathmophobia

Falling up stairs
As easy as falling down
And there I sit, bruises blooming
Except its spring, and blooms are lovely
Not like these dark marks of clumsiness
And I want to take an elevator, I want winged shoes
I want never ever again to fall up stairs, while my heart sinks
And people point and laugh, and I pick up books. Or people sympathize.
So I runrunrun to class, and dodge and fumble and put one foot in the place of another.
Falling up stairs. Falling down. Bruises unlike the yellow of daffodils. Today anyhow.

Walking in Circles

My dear boyfriend and I have been walking in circles lately. This circle has gone around the fact that we are so busy there is really no way to give the most exciting and real love I have ever felt a chance. If this love is really all that, then it will still be there in time, that is what the circle eventually closed on. So we are going to take some time, and hopefully come back to this with some truth, love and hope in our hearts.

I miss him. But I miss him all the time anyway. And life goes, as it always does, inexorably on.

I hope I am always his Hanababy.


coming to you from a sad spot, but still with love
Hana

Untitled

I time so many things in my days. When to be to class, when to eat some lunch, when to take a break and hurryhurryhurry back to my computer as the last seconds drain from a moment that feels stolen but really belongs to me. Each phone call ticks away in a second that I will never experience again. It seems lately I wonder about each of those seconds, imagine doing something fantastic or unusual in them. Or doing what I ought, finishing a paper, closing my eyes to everything and finding the next bit of move on power to come to me in a dream like a biblical gathering of strange and necessary proportions.
Everything seems couched in biblical lately, I am so relieved to almost be done with Milton!!!!

time for more hurryhurryhurry.
love
Hana

...........

I fail.
I suck.
I try.
But I fail
and suck
and say the wrong thing
and think the wrong thing
and imagine the wrong people
doing the wrong thing to me.
And it imagines smoothly.
And it imagines nicely.
And it doesn't suck.
But still.
I fail.
I try.
But I fail.

I give up. Leave out. Pack up. Regress. Hide. Say farewell. And go back to work.

(cycle repeating cycle repeating cycle repeating.....)

HG

First Day

So yesterday was my first day at Convergys actually taking phone calls. It was at once better and worse than I thought it would be. I blanked so horribly on the first few calls, accidentally deleted one families programming....so forth and so on. I felt like I was treading water. But after our first break when I went back to my cubicle I felt a little more sure, confident. I had piles of notes I had taken in class, and instead of asking for help I started looking through them quickly. Calls went better, I sold a lot of programming, activated several accounts, helped an adorable little old lady program her remote...all kinds of good stuff. Oh, and I sold my first porn hahahah, the playboy channel. Interesting.

So I think it went well. I only got four hours of sleep last night because I did homework till two and then got up at six to finish some more up, but I think I can do this. Luckily I have spring break all next week, it will be a nice buffer. AND my awesome boyfriend is coming down tomorrow, and there will be a nap in his arms (the best place ever to sleep) so its all good, great, gravy and golden!
See you on the flip side,
love as always,
Hana Grace

Underwhelmed

I went to try and give blood again, its been my struggle for about six months now. Even though I'm taking iron, eating all kinds of broccoli and rasins I am STILL all anemic. Grrrr its really frustrating. They told me to stop drinking tea (black) and I did for a while...but whats the point?

So I started really thinking about deficincies. Things that are lacking. Of course that only frustrated me, but the perspective is so important! So I think not only am I lacking Iron, but I'm lacking so much whelm.

Overwhelmed, underwhelmed or somewhere in the middle. Where would you want to be?

Love as ever,
Hana

Sheep in the Bathtub

My bathtub is full of sheep, not the kind that smell like dung and farm soil but the white fluffy kind in commercials and cartoons. They crowd against the white sides, sharing not really matching. They should be hopping over fences as I snore into my pillow, drooling a tiny stream that could be a waterfall to tiny people with tin foil houses. Instead they baa against the sides of my tub, that’s deeper and smaller than any bathtub I have ever seen and that makes me think of a song we once sang in Sunday school, wide and deep that just seemed to turn into um and um. Whatever that meant. Nothing to do with Jesus really. The sheep have found my makeup, and they dab on the daring hues that I thought would ring my eyes with glamour and interest, but only scared me when I looked in the mirror and saw my face blooming with bruises that were like the swirl of sherbet when I pried the carton lid off, in the deep freeze like a frost lined casket of creaking rusting tin. The sheep have somehow climbed inside the drain, and their baas echo in the pipes and through the white room. The faces are now purple and pink and melon and orange and their hooves are daubed with the contents of the bend in the pipe, slick with rinsed away (not quite) conditioner, stubbled with the stubborn hairs from leg after leg after leg. One sheep stands white and apart, dripping slowly with what could be water, what could be every tear ever shed in that shower, a wet salty drop that should have blended with flowery shampoo or harshly scented manclean shaving cream and filtered through the lines and forgotten wet places. Some angry water nymph must have saved the tears and poured them wherever life needed salting. She has a heavy hand. I shut my bedroom door, considering the sturdy walls around me that almost block the baaing from the white room, daubed with sheep. I need to close my eyes, scrubbed clear of any color, scrubbed until they are hot and prickly, blooming with cactus flowers ringed with thorns, but I can’t seem to do it. What if the sheep decide to go where they belong? I don’t want their imposing hooves in my dreams anymore. Another baa and I may jump of that tall building in my dreams that always seems to be waiting for a needed plummet and leave the tin foil village and angry nymph behind. This idea makes me smile a minute, cracking across my cheeks an unfamiliar pattern of muscles and commands my face has to obey, creaking with misuse, angry to be disturbed. My pillow lies there, it pretends I am not considering it, but the dreams that I have had while I hover in agony and delight over its clumpy softness are as much a clump and less a soft as any feather or insinuating pillow case. Some mornings I feel it climbing into my ears, trying to bargain with my brain for just another moment of that dream, a few seconds to feel what was coming, barreling down on me with a sunrise awakening nightmare.

My bathtub can stay full of sheep.

Exhaustion

So I've been sick all week. Working "going to class" or not...and I am just so tired. I need this job, and I know it, but working until 9:30 has been hard enough, I can imagine when it changes to 1 am.

Its messing with me. And not just me, but the people I come into contact with, especially my poor boyfriend.

I don't want to be grouchy. I just want to sleep.

love to you all,
Hana

Germy Germy Play-Dough and Cubicles

So I had my first day at Convergys yesterday. HR spent about two hours telling us the many many reasons we could be fired. Then they informed us that we would really not have time off. Then our trainer started on the dress code.

Now I like to dress up most of the time. Jeans, tshirt and sneakers are really not my favorite things. Still, when I took the job they said that was fine. I still wore a nice outfit yesterday (first day!) Anyway, the dress code is changing, we all have to wear business casual which I am fine with....except it's no cleavage. Holy crap. Though I am not the biggest boobed babe out there, I am well endowed and its HARD not to show any cleavage! I went home and looked in my closet. Yeah, not going to be easy. I can swathe myself in scarves or buy some more turtlenecks... The reason I took this job is because I am in srrious debt. I can't go "oh, I'm in debt but I will get a whole new wardrobe that will make me look positively flat chested!" and even if I could I don't think I would want too.

Anyway, thats just a small thing. My training class is pretty large, 27 others. There are the normal people you find in a group in the south, several people who have done this kind of work before, several bratty college students who think they know it all, the older ladies that hate computers but can't work anywhere else, the dudes that dropped out of college because its more than drinking beer...Only one of them really annoyed me and I will just sit far far away from him. There are a couple of really nice girls my age, and a really really tall dude that sat beside me and whispered equally sarcastic replies to my sarcastic comments. Hurrah! We have to sit by someone different today, but I am enjoying meeting some new people.

One thing that really cracked me up, they had play-dough and slinkies sitting all over the tables, our trainer (Judy) said to play with it to keep our hands busy "and our minds awake" hahahaha they are trying so hard to be all cutting edge and modern, it cracked me up. We went on a tour of the building, saw our cubicles where we will be on the floor etc.

I hate cubicles. I hated being inside when the sun set, when the afternoon was the most beautiful. I went out on the smokers deck on our second break, and that was ok, but it was already dark.

Anyway, this is a means to an end. I can do this, and I can do it well, while learning skills that I can draw on in front of a classroom.

I seem to be going for quantity here...more later.
yours,
Hana

and I will be!

My reply

Pat,

Since we became "Friends" on face book the only times you have said anything to me is to judge my profile or to look down your nose at me and make assumptions about my life. My parents have no desire to have anything to do with my life, and that is why I have made a new one for myself. When I do speak with them they tell me the choice I am making to go to school to become a teacher is endorsed by the devil, and I am his child for doing so, etc. As for me "abandoning my faith" that is something that you may feel to be true when you look at my life, and that makes me sad because you are judging me without any real knowledge of my life.

I also think that in "trusting the sincerity of the parents hearts..." you could easily miss the true root of the problem. I am not saying that the parents are always to blame, but in some cases it is that way. You hold my parents in seemingly high esteem, but in leaving home I was able to put a past of hypocrisy, anger and abuse behind myself and focus on a future with hope, goals, and purpose. I would have been more than willing to share this with you if you wished to ask, though it is not something I really like to talk about with anyone, but instead you jumped to the immediate conclusion that as the child, I was in the wrong.

All that I can say here is the different path is not always the worse path.

Good luck with your worldview seminars, though I can't imagine sitting under you and learning about "worldview" when your own is so biased.

Hana

and her reply:

hese questions may seem startling unless you read my other message asking permission to ask you these questions. Hopefully you have, and you'll know why I'm writing these questions to you.

1. At what point in your upbringing did you begin to lose respect for your parents? Why?
2. At what point did you come to realize that you did not agree with your parent's morals and values? Why?
3. Do you believe that there is, in fact, a God and that the Bible is His word?
4. If the answer to #3 is yes, do you believe it's important for Christians to be obedient to God's word?
5. Are you a Christian? If so, how do you define the term "Christian"?
6. What do you believe is the determining factor, in your life, as to what is right and wrong for you?
7. What advice would you give parents who have strong convictions concerning their personal beliefs?
8. What could your parents have done differently in your upbringing that would have made them better parents?

I'm not "on a mission" to change you, bridge relationships in your family, or anything else like that and no-one but you will know I've asked you these questions. I haven't spoken to your parents in years. I'm just very perplexed about the huge number of teens/young adults who are making the same choices you are making and I'm very confused by it. If you are wiling to answer these questions, then I'll probably have more for you to answer (depending on your answers).

If you think there are other questions I should be asking in order to better understand you, feel free to share whatever you'd like. I'm hoping that my understanding you will, in turn, make me a better parent.

I'm half way expecting a "What? Are you nuts? Mind your own business." response -- but I hope that's not what I get.

~~~~~~~~~~
geez. I give up

So she wants me to be brutally honest....

This is why I don't put my last name on the internet. Because people like this find me and feel they have every right to my life.

It's mine people. NOT yours.

thank you very much,
Hana

"Hana,

I'm wondering if you would be willing to answer some questions for me -- being brutally honest with me. I am a first generation Christian. I did not become a Christian until I was 17. Before that I was a hippie who partied big time. I was a self proclaimed atheist in high school. As a Christian parent, wanting to raise children who have a close relationship with God, I have observed that many children abandon the faith in which they were raised, once they are out on their own. I'm well aware of many mistakes Don and I have made in our years of parenting, and, as with everyone else, we are still a work in process.

My questions would be directed towards the personal choices you are now making and you may not want to respond to them. I conduct and teach worldview seminars and I see many different types of families, all trying to raise their children to love God. Although I trust the sincerity of the parent's hearts ... myself included ... I see children choosing much different paths. Obviously you have chosen a different path than what your parents have laid out for you. If you choose to answer these questions I will not share your answers with anyone without your permission and only in a general (no names mentioned) sense. Why, you might ask, am I doing this? Because I am really disturbed and confused and I want to understand how it happens that children raised by parents such as yours end up with children choosing such a different path.

I'll send the questions in the next email. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Pat"

There are pros and cons to living alone. Since I love making lists, and this one has been brewing for several days I will lay it all out here. Enjoy.

Pros
Milk/Toothpaste/OJ/TP/Cereal/Everything lasts longer. Seriously, when Hope was living with me we NEVER had milk. Without her I'm still working on the gallon we started while she was here.

I can come and go as I please without feeling guilty for leaving her alone, or having to drag her around to places she really didn't want to go.

Work is my refuge again. I don't have to entertain her AND work, I can just sit and peacefully sew.

I get the mail every day :) sue, me that is one of my small and favorite pleasures.

My bathroom stays neater! I mean, she has lived with 8 brothers for yeaaaaaaaaaaars. But I did too...and there are some things that are simply NOT done hahahaha

I can walk around naked again. Without shame. She never really got this practice.

Sleep! I can stay up all night and do homework, listen to music or try to walk on the ceiling. Not a problem.

Sleep! part two. I am not losing any hearing her get it on with her boyfriend while I huddled in bed, woefully celibate.

Sleep! part three. I can bring guys home now without feeling like a bad example. True, now there is only one guy I want to bring home, but options are now there that weren't before.

The electric bill is MUCH lower. Because I lived with nanny so long I don't turn on every light in the house. I even prefer candles. So my $60-$90 dollar electric bill (ouch!!!) has shrunk back down to its accustomed $25ish bill. Hurrah!!!!!


Cons

Coming home to an empty house.
That says just about everything. Not to mention having no convenient and familiar shoulder to cry on, person to give advice about outfits, the cryptic things some guy is saying, complain about work, brag about work, watch the new Gossip Girl with, borrow hair bands from, fight with over the little things (like the oj, tp, electric bill etc.)

I miss her.

I had just become used to being alone. Now I am all over again, and its worse than the first time.
I just found someone. Or he found me. Or we found each other at the same moment. And I'm trying not to ruin this. And I'm trying to be myself. And I'm trying not to jump to the conclusions my mind always does.

But I go home to an empty apartment that I can't afford.
And my heart breaks more than I can afford.

And most of the time I'm happy. But a lot of the time I am like this.

Enough.
Love.
your
Hana

Mornings

I used to be a morning person. Living alone and having a more flexible schedule changed that, but with my classes and jobs this semester I am gradually reclaiming that territory.

The world is so new and untouched in the morning. I can put my fingerprints all over it, and call it mine.

Still, my days seem so alike the one before.

and I must just tell myself, life goes on.

Love to you all,
Hana

So much on my mind...

...but no words to share it.

Unless they are others:


since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
ee cummings

Death no parenthesis. I like that.
Something else I have been thinking, my Nanny says this a lot "I will sleep in my grave"

so yeah.
yours,
Hana

The way that they were....

My grandma loooooved my grandfather. aww!

My parents at the church they were married in...

you can see just how much taller my dad is than

my mother

My mother made my father this birthday cake before they

were married...more toothpicks holding it together

than cake according to Grandma haha.

This is my amazing Nanny! and my Grandmother too

haha, wearing matching dresses on Easter. I love how

my Nanny smiles with her whole being!

This is my absolutely breathtaking Grandmother

at age sixteen. Now you see where I get it from hahaha.

Too much coffee, not enough Radiohead

I am sitting in the downtown Chatty Panera, drinking that cup of coffee that means I have the right to stay here for hours. I have felt jangly all week, and the coffee is not helping.

My little sister left this week. I know she has only lived with me for four months, but I somehow thought we would be in it forever. I respect her wanting to find her own way, but I miss her so so much. Selfishly probably. I think that's one of the reasons for the jangly-ness. Another is school and work. I want to give it my all, and right now I am. When I start at Convergys though...I have no idea how my days will align themselves. The thing is I tend to think all that I can do for something is...everything. I pour so much into it that when I manage to step back all I feel is empty. I know the things that are supposed to fill this emptiness: faith, knowledge, family, self appreciation. But as so many things in my life show me, knowing something is absolutely no help to me at all.

Then another cause of janglitude is my new boyfriend. I forgot how much fun the beginning of these things are, the getting to know the other person, the blush that rises when you think about them, the exquisite first touches. But I keep comparing him to Hank, and mentally "haha"-ing when he passes the Hank check points. He wants to meet my friends, he isn't ashamed to call me his girl friend, he communicates, he isn't just in it for sex. And this isn't about Hank. It is about something new and wonderful completely past whatever I thought we had. Still.

Since we last talked I have been going to the school appointed therapist. I freak her out a little I think, but she is very sweet. I started to cry the other day, and she supplied the obvious tissues and gave the obvious advice, but when I was about to leave she hugged me. It was so like a Nanny hug that I was instantly comforted. I told my adopted mom about some of the stuff that has come out in the past few months (like winter frosts push new stones to the top of the garden) and she freaked out a little bit. I made her promise not to talk to daddy about it, because I really don't want to have that talk with him. I still can't believe that I told Hank. That will haunt me forever. I talked about it with Faith too, and she was wonderful. She has so been there for me lately, she illustrates true friendship in a million ways.

I want to be there for someone.

School is ok so far this semester, I have the most incredible Shakespeare prof, and my American Novel Prof (senior level class!!!) is a great lecturer. The other two...eh, not challenging, not worth mentioning, not worth taking.

So I just realized I have mentioned Hank by name a zillion times and not introduced you to my awesome beau. His name is Tanner, he is an English major and writes in a way that makes my geeky knees quiver hehe. We went to RCHS together and follow each other on Twitter... a while ago he wrote on my facebook wall "I'm bored, your pretty. Let's party" I was not immediately taken lol. But a flat tire, lots of coffee and a perfect first kiss later and I must admit to being smitten. He sings too! And plays the guitar! AND he's tall! (very very cute) We are supposed to hang out tomorrow and I have been looking forward to seeing him so much. The first time we hung out we were headed back to his place after all the flat tire dealio and everything that had happened, and my hands were cold. He held it in his coat pocket. Now you know how much I looooooooove that! If someone ever wrote a romantic movie about my life (riiiiiiiiight) the romantic moments would have to include the whole pocket thing. It just seems to comforting, endearing and (yes) sexy. My heart melted right then...

Anyway. This is long... I will have to update more often to flow the rambling :)

Coming back to you soon with less drama and jangle, better rested and maybe a little richer :)
Hana

The Muggabears

http://www.3hive.com/2007/04/the_muggabears.php
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Muggabears
http://poptartssucktoasted.blogspot.com/2007/01/early-listen-muggabears.html

"you shouldn't have children
you shouldn't read books.
you shouldn't have a mouth my friend
and no more wounded looks..."

Go listen.

Back again...

I have been presenting this excuse to myself lately (I am my best audience haha), the excuse that I am too busy to write. I have been through writers block before, but this is something more. I dont really blog here, I'm more set in my ways on Myspace's blog, but I thought maybe a change of scenery and a change of heart would help me out.

These things I know. I can't control even my "small" universe. I can only really concentrate on my life, and try to love and care for those important to me without giving up all I have and am. All of this sounds far more dramatic than it rezally is, but it is enough to dry up one of the things I love most and want, my writing.

All the rest will fall in line.
Wish me luck and love,
hana