chilean red and hues of a blue heart

Nothing profound to report...

Decided that a bad day gave me permission to break my own rules, so I'm drinking red wine alone in my apartment while watching the Olympics. After much, much thought, I decided to contribute my own symbolic refusal to watch the Beijing ceremonies... but last night I got home feeling low despite having a lovely day of watching birthday partying friends celebrate sweet Meredith's 26th while drinking bourbon and eating cake and all the loveliness that comes with birthday parties... after tracking down our friend who never showed at the party and nearly having a heart attack when I thought he was *completely* missing (still as maternal and paranoid as ever, Jane the Wonder Freak), nothing sounded more necessary than watching swimming. I figured, as long as I cheated, I might as well just give in again tonight... because I'm the only who knows and/or cares if I watch the games, anyway.

The swimming was amazing both nights. Michael Phelps, who in the fresh hell are you? Where did you come from? Did robots construct your arms? Are your legs made out of jets?

I must admit that I was *completely* turned off by the men's relay team last night as they were interviewed (and who is this blonde reporter with her blue polo shirt, huge mic, and the world's WORST questions? Oh. She makes my soul hurt. Shouldn't there be some kind of decision making process that goes into interviewing first-place olympic athletes when you've got millions of viewers and thousands of cameras watching you?) Anyhoo. The men's relay team responded to questions about potential trash talking by saying something like, "those Frenchies were talking smack, but we knew we'd blow them out of the water..."... I'm sorry... but... Frenchies? You jocks. And whoever it was who said that was the one who looked all around the pool to see where the cameras were before making his "we just won first place by less than the length of a fingertip" face. GROSS.
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Hmm. Took a 20 minute break just now to watch gymnastics on mute while drinking a 2nd glass of red wine and talking to Lancer.
Feel much less snarky.
I take back everything I just said... and I raise my glass to you, gold-medal-winning swimmers. Just try not to prove all the American stereotypes right overseas, ok, boys?

Plans for star-watching tomorrow night because it's the peak of the Perseids meteor shower, and I'll be damned if a year ever goes by when I miss it... sigh... nature really needs to take over my entire night and make me forget all the snark and disappointment and sadness and frustration and other feelings-- good and bad-- that come with the privilege of being a thinking (and, currently, over-thinking) human bean. I just want to feel small and in awe of the bigger picture of the night sky and friendship and summer and the universe's great, unexplained expanse and motion.

I got out of work feeling really unlike myself. On the brink of tears and helpless to big feelings that surfaced yesterday while sitting on a stone wall watching kindred friends interact and absent-mindedly getting mustard out of my party dress that a sweet tiny baby left for me as a present (or a sacrifice to my cleavage-- either way, good aim, tiny baby). Stayed up late last night watching the thunderstorm, followed by dark nightmares about men with ponytails getting out of vans and chasing me around the neighborhood where I lived when I was really little. Woke up terrified and-- as always-- almost certain that the ponytailed man was actually in my apartment. Actually sat up in bed, sweaty and crazy-haired, to say, "is anyone here?" What kind of horror movies have I been watching that this particular plan seemed like a good idea?

So. Long day at work, too many thoughts, and then I found myself getting totally scammed at an Oil Can Henry's in Longmont (why?! Why did I go there?!? to get my money stolen by a couple of 15 year old punks in bow ties)... when my mom called to say that their next door neighbor passed away from cancer at her home this morning. Oh, I feel so sad. I showed up at my parents' house and my heart broke before I could even get out of the car. Sat in the car on the way home just watching the sunset and thinking thoughts without judging them... deep-down thoughts, like how wonderful and meaningful it is to be alive and capable of thinking, reason, judgment and love, but real loss and real suffering do make life almost not worth living sometimes. And what a profoundly complicated thing it is to be alive, and to lose someone or to be lost yourself. Literature and film keep feeding that part of us that answers and asks some of those scary questions, but tonight, I found a lot of dark and important questions in the salmon-colored, mushroom-shaped clouds that collided with the front range. I think I will remember today for a long, long time.

After cracking open my Chilean wine, I was watching swimming and just feeling numb. Maybe tired, maybe emotional, maybe just out of energy to feel things, but I was completely staring at the events... the women's backstroke, the men's backstroke, 100 meters, 200 meter, they kept coming and they were so appropriately brief. I realized that I was almost tolerating the majority of the race-- the bird's eye view where it's all splashing arms, heaving water, commentators yelling into the mics, the roar of the crowd. But then there's that agonizingly brief shot of the swimmers from the bottom of the pool-- and I realized that I was completely sinking into the back of the couch every time they switched to the shot from below. The motion of the bodies underwater is breathtaking... each swimmer's body has the most amazing muscles, and the streamlined suits silhouetted against the bright lights... the women looked like mermaids, or seals, or waves. I felt stoned each time-- my inner monologue just automatically tried to come up with the right adjective for how those amazing movements looked. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. It was such a word-less, natural, incredible motion and expression of being a living part of this world... part of physics, gravity, motion, buoyancy.
Mmm. I do sound stoned. But I'm not... it just really moved me. I wonder if I can watch any of the swimming events a second time, all from under water?

This wine is such a dark red color, and the pool through my glass looked so aquamarine. I was thinking about the red and blue bruises that form when something hits you hard... the red and blue qualities of blood, depending on whether you are looking at it from above the vein, or within the vein (are you watching them swim from above the pool, or below)... the purpley-red and blue chambers of the plastic hearts that they show you in science class. I hold the glass to my nose and smell deeply... the red wine plunges into my blue veins... red embers of peppery, tanic scents flood into my blue and red heart, bruised slightly, like a mis-shappen plum. The red and the blue of the pool, and the swim caps, and the French, American, Australian flags competing for first place in the women's 200m race.

Swimming in colors, I will finish my glass and head to bed.
Tomorrow is a new day. With shooting stars, open skies, new thoughts, deeper understandings.

I will watch the stars skip across the sky and feel grateful for a lot of things... remembering Carl Sagan, who illuminated this great universe to me at a young age, and to Mr. Rogers, who gave me permission to feel things other than being happy, as long as I learned to find peace with my emotions one way or the other before being tucked into bed for the night...