A Lie Don’t Mean Nothin’ If Nobody Knows When You’re Lyin’

In case you don’t know, my hair isn’t really red.

Every six weeks or so I go to the salon where a real redhead wearing 5inch heels and not much else applies copious amounts of peculiar smelling goop to my head.   She sets a timer and I move to another chair where I have 35 minutes to thumb through a glossy magazine, pretending I care about whoever the hell Kim Kardashian is and secretly listening to the other women at the salon spill their deepest secrets.  I like knowing the secrets of strangers – their affairs, their fears, and how they think their sons are marrying the wrong girl.  Then my turn comes in the chair again.  First a good scrubdown to remove the residual goop and as she trims my bangs and ends I take my turn sharing secrets.   A few minutes of aggressive blowdrying later and Voila!  I am yours truly, Rachel the Redhead.

It’s funny to think that many of my closest acquaintances don’t know of me as anything but a redhead.  Save the few who remember me in my pre-pubescent bowl cut days or those so-close-to-blonde-it’s-not-even-funny-years, most everyone now knows me as Red Rachel.  The people who have met me traveling in New York, London, Paris, or Rome have no reason to suspect I have ever been anything but a redhead, everyone in my last three places of employment knows me as one – and I’m fairly certain that most of them think it’s natural.  Believe it or not, it’s actually been a beneficial professional decision (which I remind myself every time I sign the check to pay for it).  People remember that sharp redheaded intern or that cute little redhead who was so helpful.  Bosses ask my bosses about “their redhead” and and it’s a great mnemonic way to remember my name (I liked that girl we spoke with – the redhead – what was her name?  Rachel – that’s right – redheaded Rachel).  I even introduce myself as such for the ease of others (it’s easy: just remember Redhaired Rachel).

Being Red has become a tremendous part of my identity.  I actually had to go through the photo files on my hard drive to figure out when it happened – it was the fall of sophomore year.  (appropriately)  Sometime in the four months between my birthday and Christmas I dyed my hair, sat in smokey rooms and articulated the color of my soul, and began to become the woman I am today.  Once I left LBN the reactionary self was removed and what was left was the Red.

It got me to wondering… have I always been Red?  In theory I would think the color of one’s soul is not something that should change, and listening to the stories of my childhood intensity (beginning with the 36 hours my mother spent in labor with me), I suspect there has always been a Red part of me.  How is it then that dying my hair to match me did not happen until a mere three years ago?  Secondly, how honest is it to consider myself Red?  I feel reasonably confident in seeing myself Red in a spiritual sense, but what about my hair?  I supposed I dyed it, and keep it, as a way of painting my outside with my inside – baring my soul to the world in a way I never used to have the confidence to do.  So many things I own and wear or carry or use now are red, and I love being able to apply my personality in a paste.

But something that happened the other day thew me off.  People stop me periodically, usually middle-aged women, and compliment me on my beautiful red hair.  Some are bold enough to ask if it is natural while others are too shy, and still others simply assume it is natural.    I have no qualms telling people my hair is not naturally red if they ask, and in fact I am more uncomfortable with people assuming it is.  At work the other day a customer – middle-aged, female, blonde and wealthy – stopped dead in her tracks looking me in the face.  She exclaimed something about the beauty of my hair and continued to comment on the matter for six minutes (a co-worker counted).  She asked me to turn so she could look at the layering, she complimented the cut and texture of my hair, and she asked me to write down the name of my hair dresser.   All of which I did, cheerfully recieving the attention until she told me how lucky I was to be a redhead.  She said so many girls don’t want their red hair while others pay lots of money to get it (she laughed like she thought I must laugh at those silly women).  Many women say things like this and I shrug and smile, usually all the response they need.  But she continued.  She began expounding on what rare a genetic feat natural red hair is and how people like me are coming close to extinction. You’re a pretty special lady she told me, and I thanked her politely, handing her her receipt and telling her to have a wonderful day.

It made me feel guilty.  I never fibbed – never said “yes of course it’s real” or “All the kids used to tease me when I was little but now I love it.” I never told a lie, but by standing there in front of her I had committed one.  I had hoped wearing red on my head was a sign of progress, the modern girl’s way to wear her heart on her sleeve, but in fact it may be yet another one of my perfectly painted masks.

“The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.”

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

yours.Rachel

That Touch of Mink (or Our Life as Chicken-Shits)

The other day I found myself in rare form, lazing around the house, scanning the on demand movies for something to keep my yoga-panted self from having to do anything resembling physical activity.  I stumbled across an old Doris Day movie titled That Touch of Mink.  A sucker for that 1950-60s brand of Should-she or Shouldn’t-she? plot and  someone who takes great pleasure in laughing at the sexual politics of the “chick-flicks” of those days, I figured this movie was for me.  The main storyline follows an off-kilter Cinderella story where an independent (for the time), kooky, and very blonde woman (Cathy) is splashed by a passing car on the way to a job interview.  In the car is of course Prince Charming (Cary Grant) who falls in love with her and whisks her to Bermuda (after buying her a whole new wardrobe for the trip for course.)  They share a wonderful day – the best of my life she says – and then comes the night.  So nervous about being propositioned, Cathy breaks out into a rash all over her body.  The doctor is called and Cary Grant is forced to spend the night playing cards with another man whose wife has a headache.  It goes on in a comedic and predictable way, and in the end they get married and on the wedding night he gets a rash.  ha ha.

Striking some particular chord with me at the time, I filed it away in my memory and went on with the day and the week.  It didn’t much enter my mind again until a friend and I were driving together, playing the great catch-up-game that is our lives these days.  We reviewed the weeks since we’d sat around my table in satin and lace wearing paper crowns and telling our fortunes with plastic fish, and even from only two we had much to tell.

She was talking about a crush.  A spark, a little flame, glowing softly and mysteriously, growing brighter in the right time and the right place.  She fed it some kindling, enjoying its light and warmth until suddenly it grew into a blaze.   Suddenly and quickly it was more than she knew what to do with – so she dodged the kiss.  Ooopsies I missed! I could see her saying, reaching for the closest glass, giggling and heading to the other room to find someone female.  She laughed at herself, remarking that she used to be the kind of person who would rip her heart out and hand it to someone.  Here you go, she might say with the strong muscle pumping in her hands, I love you!  I laughed too, understanding her perfectly.  I recounted the tale of Doris Day and Cary Grant, and we lamented together – first that our tumultuous love affairs never included in new wardrobes and luxurious tropical vacations, and second, that we had become chickenshits.

How does this happen?  There you are, just the two of you.  Things are going well; Bermuda is beautiful.   The stars are out and the drinks are strong and you’re singing or you’re  laughing together about something or nothing and everything is peachy-keen.  It goes on in the way you expect it will, and like these things usually do, and suddenly there’s that touch of mink.  They come in for the kiss and you move to the bedroom and suddenly your heart is pounding so loudly you’re sure the people next door and downstairs can hear it.  From somewhere comes a voice, Relax, and you pray its your own and your head is filled with very loud things.  But the funny thing is those loud things aren’t disapproval or the beginnings of regret – they’re the fear of what might come next and what if you don’t do everything just the way they like and what if it won’t all come together and why did you eat that piece of cake earlier because you can feel every calorie resting on your hips…  And there’s the rash.

We used to be the brave ones.  The ones I know have always been the ones to love with abandon, throwing caution (and sometimes rationality) to the wind. I used to be, even in those cornfield days, the kind of girl who thew myself headfirst into love, coming out the other side beaten and bloody.   And even with every tear I shed I never regretted anything because I believed that the best things had to have their balance in the universe.   When did we become the kind of girls who dodge kisses and talk about the weather?

“Most people have a harder time letting themselves love than finding someone to love them.” – Bill Russell

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

yours.Rachel

I’ve Only Got the Sunny Hours

After a nearly two month hiatus, it seemed only appropriate to begin the new year’s writing with a reflection on my recent trip out East.  I drafted several several chunks of pretty prose, painting pictures and preening over perfect plans and perfect places.  5 drafted, none published.  Re-reading each of them sounded tinny, hollow, lacking the luster deserved. I’ve found myself two nights in a row now sitting without words to craft.  Even over the phone to my closest friends, I’m not sure what to say without laundry-listing, and even my staple outline-rundown-of-the-spiritual-and-soulful-status-of-self seems impossible.

It’s not that the laundry list isn’t fantastic – it is.  Sleepless nights and contacts kept in shot glasses, saunas and jazz hot enough to melt anything and everything, latenight roomservice chicken fingers and pillowtop mattresses, mummies, Monet and a magnum of champagne, ashes hung from the ceiling and needles falling from trees and onto the grooves of some fabulous vinyl, chocolate and cherries and games played again and again, one round farther every time.

Every trip like this has its list, scribbled somewhere secret and without eloquence – so unusual to me and so usual to this.  So too is the comedown a usual event.  Affectionately referred to as the seven days grace, I have a scheduled routine for the seven days following my epic Eastern adventures, detailed partially for my own masochism/amusement and the aid of other individuals who may be subjected to my sorry self in said time frame. Euphoria comes first and is followed immediately by disconnectedness.  From there comes lethargy, self-pity, and complete and aggressive rejection of everything rational and conventional.  In the end I burn myself out with my own fire, spend the final day as ashes, and return to my normal smiling self on the eighth day.   But not this time.  Save one night spent burrowed beneath the brown bear embroidered with my name, one hand holding heart in chest and the other resting on a bone white hip, I’ve been fairly contented.  Day three, today, should be despondence and the general inability to do much more than slouch pathetically, wallowing in my own dramatis personae.

But on the contrary, if anything I’ve felt energized.  I’ve been sitting up straight, singing loudly, and carrying myself with confidence and charisma.  The mundane nuisances of class and work seem to have little effect on my mood, and I even find myself considering how what I am doing may be useful in the future.  And for once my plans are coming out of calm, not out of fear.  Normally, I plan as a means of control – a compulsion.   Plans are power and escape routes and the assurance that one day I will be happy no matter how miserable I am today.  But though my plans now are big, I’m not afraid of what’s in store for tomorrow.  I’m planning because I can’t wait to create a new life for myself and it’s so close I can taste it.  And maybe it will look like one of the pretty pictures I painted on this voyage or another, or maybe it won’t.  But knowing I’ve got good things (and more importantly, good people) in my life now, and that very soon I’ll be living a life a life that’s completely my own is enough to make me glow.

I’ve only got the sunny hours, brightest hours of day

I never count the gloomy hours, I let them slip away

And I realize I’m away

Let the lovin’, let the lovin’ come back to me   -LBDAS

yours.Rachel

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

The other day I had a revelation.  I was standing in my bedroom wearing an adorably mismatched set of underwear, rifling through the closet to pick yet another perfect outfit for work  (the posters in our break-room suggest that fasionistas like use must “wear the brand well”).  I selected to a jacket with interesting seams and colorful bangles with idioms engraved on the inside (my favorites – dive in and a place in the sun), and as I set all the pieces out on the bed I stopped, noticing the reflection in the mirror on the wall.

My reflection.

It’s not that this morning looked any different than any other.  I have a steady routine now: usually working the same day-time shift I rise at the same time, eat the same breakfast, and go through the same wardrobe selection process.  And the mirror certainly isn’t new.  I use it every day to decide if the shoes I’m wearing compliment the outfit I’ve assembled and which pieces of jeweley sit just right.  It’s just that this morning I happened to notice my body, my self.  First, I leaned my head close into the glass, dismissing the few tiny eyebrow hairs growing back where they don’t belong and observing my face.  Its roundness, now covered by faceframes and bangs and the decisive chin.  I followed the few freckles down my face and neck and stepped back to observe them and the rest of my body.  White polkadots on black hugged my chest and below that purple elephants paraded across my hips.  I looked, like always, at the space in between.  Turning to the side and forward again, putting my hands over my hips like a camera-trick, the same one I have always used.  I turned to the back, rising to my tiptoes and looked behind me, readjusting the elephants and smiling.  Turning back to the front I stood, hands on hips and burrowing my toes into the carpet, staring at myself for a moment longer.

For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I recognized my body.  I’ve never been one with much feeling for my own body.  I wasn’t an athlete (though I’ve always been told I’m built for it), and unlike many of the interesting people I know, I’ve never had an eating disorder.  In fact, my body never seemed to react to much of anything; for a solid six years I was exactly the same weight regardless of what I did or didn’t.   I’ve never seen my body as a sacred temple or considered myself such a bombshell beauty that my frame demanded more than a glance here and there.

In college I grew so gradually into a different body and a person that I hardly noticed it until it was done.  Frequently I’d look in the mirror or say on some green-carpet night I don’t even recognize myself anymore, but I was never quite sure what that meant.  I gained some weight and hardened in a hundred other ways that made me into a person I honestly didn’t even understand. When I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t say a single thing about the person who was staring back at me; I didn’t know her and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

A sister said it best the other night when she referred to that girl as Reactionary Rachel.  She said they knew exactly why I did all the things I was doing and loved me in spite of it, knowing that it was all some kind of Newtonian law at work in our cornfield of a universe.

Looking in the mirror that mundane morning, I saw the girl I used to know.  Not just the college self who shed five or ten pounds, but the girl I once was.  Sure there were bangs (for the first time since the third grade) and a few more lines, but the eyes I saw were my own – just a little deeper.

I can’t even put my finger on what once was lost and now is found, but I know I was blind and now I see myself.  And that, my friends, might be the most incredible feeling in the world.

“When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves.” – Dogen

yours.Rachel

Gonna Slap That Look Off Your Face Like Life Don’t Hold You No More Mystery

Friday night.  Rain sheeting horizontally for the second Friday in a row, and we were watching it pound the glass and drinking our martinis dirty. When the third arrived, sweeter than us, she ordered sangria.

There was a sportscaster in a box mounted on the wall, his bushy beard bouncing as he gesticulated about something we couldn’t hear over the happy hour din.  A couple next to us crossed their legs towards each other as she drank something pink, delicately.  The woman behind us was turning 50 – her friends brought her a fuzzy tiara and the only man with her shoved his way to the bar for the finest liquor his Bloomfield money could buy.  The the bartender, in half as much makeup as the hostesses, was twice as beautiful.  A man in his 30s sat alone at the bar.

We were seated, the waiter was cute.  Each of us smiled extra wide and batted our eyelashes a little as we ordered.  Brushed metal and wood surrounded us, minimalist in spirit – fresh enough to feel like we might be somewhere far from here without being a mockery of itself  (a la the Rainforest Cafe or Margaritaville) .  The topics of “work” and “school” were dismissed quickly, and my pinot grigio arrived.

The sweetest of us had asked for directions to the restrooms, and we the other two looked in our own directions in the kind of blissful silence that only best friends can enjoy. I smiled, grabbed my glass authoritatively, and issued a proclamation.   Let’s make a pact. I said, raising my glass and eyebrows.  That we’ll never get old and boring.  That we won’t give up.  That we won’t turn into those shells of people who play by all the rules and who do the same thing day-in and day-out, only to be disrupted by heavy drinking and talking about the good old days.

We agreed we’d stay interesting.  That we’d keep learning and growing and believing in changing ourselves everyday.  And whether we move in together in Boston and take on the town or write letters and meet in fabulous cities with our sisters, we won’t get old. And boring.  The third returned, dittoed.

Dinner arrived.  Interesting, fresh, classic yet unique.  We finished and embarked on a roadtrip to surprise one more for dessert.  At the time it didn’t occur to me to ask her to join in on the pact,  but I suspect she made hers long before ours.

Who’s with us?

“That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”  -Walt Disney

yours.Rachel

Leaves, redux.

The problem with growing up is you don’t have time to update these things anymore. And simultaniously, you don’t see the people you love everyday (every minute of every day), so updating these things becomes increasingly important. Moral of the story – this is accurate, but not always up to date. Once I finish my midterm of death I plan to be back here (read: after Thursday) so stay tuned.

But a status update: I Love Fall. I love the leaves turning vibrant colors everywhere – no matter where you’re going and how much you don’t want to be there (or even how much you do), there’s something powerful about feeling like the world is on fire around you. On a bad day it feels like one big bird being thrown to the suburbs (Look at me – I’m alive! I’m not boring yet!), and on a good day it’s like the world is burning with the same flame that’s inside me.

things are fine. The leaves are burning and so am I, so everything’s alright.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” – Jack Kerouac

yours.Rachel

25428 Revolutionary Road

Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.  Actually it’s more like most of the time.

Some of it is the schedule.  I’m working 30 hours a week as a wage slave to the fashion industry. And though I like talking to women about heels and the “vintage vibe”, ass kissing and customer service are surprisingly exhausting.  Add onto that my three classes, and the monumentous amounts of work I’m getting from one of my classes specifically (there’s a blog post to come psychoanalyzing my professor, I assure you).  Plus I agreed to help coordinate an event for our church and community kids – I expected an attendance of 50-100, but the estimate we’re currently working with is 400.   Many of these are firsts – it’s the first time I’ve worked this much and gone to school, the first time I’ve planned an event this large, and the first time my pseudo-intellectualism just isn’t enough.

But I don’t think that’s what really disturbs me.  For a girl whose motto is I’m fine – I’m always fine, survival isn’t really an option – it’s an assumption.  Of course I will keep it together.   I’ll apply lots of concealer and smile at work, I’ll prostrate myself for the academy, and my adreneline will keep me focused on the finite details of my event.  And more than likely, I’ll pull a 3.5, earn praise from my church peers, and customers will continue to ask me how I manage to be so perky at X time of day.

What scares me is the feeling that even though I’ve changed scenery, I’m in exactly the same place.  Granted, my life here includes high-end (window)shopping plazas  and ethnic food, but it’s empty.  I did the math last night, between presentation preperation and hot-dog dinner number crunching, and concluded that I’m spending 60 hours a week doing things I really don’t care about.

And what makes my stomach fall farther than my toes is how easy it is for me to do it.  How disgustingly well trained I am.  How good I am at playing by the rules and how used to being chipped away at my soul is.  It hardly even phases me when I feel like my heart is dying inside of me because the feeling is nothing more than deja-vu.  Since infancy I have been taught the practicallity of dilligence, like we all are.  My family has bosted that brand of liberalism that values literature, art, and passion, but we want to put it back on our bookshelf when we’re finished with it.  Things like adventure, ignorant pursuit of ideals, misery and love on fire have no place in a world of pracical conventions.

I’ve reverted to my old vices of calculating plane and train tickets in my spare time, and I’m realizing that the purpose of travel in my life was twofold.  Part of me was running, both from something and to something.  I was escaping a world where I disliked not only what lived around me but what lived in me, and I was also running to places that made me stand pidgeon-toed with my hands behind my back – places and people that made me feel like life means something.  I’ve known this for some time.  What what I have been less forthcoming in acknowleding is the balance I sought in the people I fled to.  One of my favorite things about my favorite hosts is their ability – in ignorance or courage – to fuck up.

I’m developing an unbelieveble respect (and irrational jealousy) for the people I know who have had the balls to take their own life into their hands.  People who left places when they could see they were destroying them – because I stayed.  People who got involved in incredibly stupid things, got burried, and had to dig themselves out the hard way – because I’ve always been too smart to do something like that.  People who have pulled people into their lives and dragged them down – because all I’ve done is push them away.

I feel like I’ve spent the last four years becoming something I hated and then un-becoming it.  And it all happened inside my head.  I’ve got scars but no stories.

And here I am.  It’s a Saturday night in the suburbs, and between work on a paper topic and assembling a flyer, I’m shreiking at the top of my lungs but not a sound is coming out.  And the pragmatist in me is shreiking too.  What can I do to stop this, change this, make it so my life isn’t just an exercise in endurance.

And the most frightening thing to me yet – I don’t have a damn clue.

“Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.” - Revolutionary Road

yours.Rachel

I Wear My Heart on My Bag

For my birthday I got the perfect present.  So perfect that only I could have picked it out for myself (and talked the sales woman into giving me a 20% discount because it was the floor sample).  A tote, candy-apple red patent leather so shiny it almost glows, from Kate Spade.  If I was Holly Golightly, Kate would be my Tiffany’s.  The best part (aside from the snappy purple lining) is the words imprinted on the front; “Don’t kiss me now, I’m busy.”

I like Kate Spade not only esthetically, but because I appreciate her sense of humor.  Sandals with lobsters, owl coin purses, and Christmas cards with neon colored jungle animals wearing reindeer antlers.  She tends to produce elegant witty and sometimes quirky pieces that I adore, and sometimes she takes the words right out of my lips.  It got me to thinking what other words I might find her taking from me and printing on fine papers or handbags in the future.  They might include:

Don’t kiss me now, you bore me.

It’s true.  I do have a trunk filled with shoes.

Sod off,  I’m dancing.

Sugar-coated sarcasm is the new black.

That which doesn’t kill you makes you interesting.

Don’t lie.  You like that your parents like me.

I only do epic on days that end with “y.”

Speak softly and wear 4 inch stilettos.

Save yourself, then we’ll get dinner.

not that I’m as witty as KS.  But I’m honest?

“The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities; consequently, her presence and her ways are unembarrassing.”  – Mark Twain

yours. Rachel

Because Color for the Black Bear is a Synonym for Age

In the ‘burbs by the fire is a good place to begin a song about a brown bear and her other brown bear friends.  Doing all the kinds of things that sisters just might do, hoping in their next life times they could be like black bears too.

There they are now, speaking without claws or tooth – each of those were left in the days behind, of youth.  There they were just sitting around the burning fire sharing stories of their times – the brush spots, the brambles, and how they made their dimes.

The wine was spiced, the laughter loud, stars shone above without a cloud.  Marshmallows burnt, the wine was spilled, and knees pulled in as the night air chilled.

Toasts were made, cake was cut, we laughed about all our ruts.  And though we never painted cardboard we know it’s not too late to start, learning that night that apologies are another form of art.

The simplicity of solitude is a hard thing to perfect; stealing happiness from loneliness is not a simple theft.  But each of us are learning, searching far and high and low -  happy this will be here always, in our hearts it’s true we know.

And yes, it is lovely to have a sister thinking of me.   Because when they think, they are thoughtful, when the love they are love-filled, and when they run they run the fastest and spin the Earth right on its axis.

Color for the black bear is a synonym for age; if I were one then I’d be in my cinnamon phase.  And here I am at 22, the decades weigh a ton, but evenings just like this one are a little burst of sun.

yours.Rachel

LEAVES!

Last week I came home from work and walked into the bathroom, eager to wash the smell of money and cardboard crumbs off my hands.  Half of my mind was engaged in planning recipes and the other half was caught by the exclamatory title on the bottle of hand soap.  Minimalist in design, this bottle was an opaque rectangle with a small picture printed at the top and, in all caps and bold print “LEAVES”.   I chuckled to myself, picturing the marketing team who probably branded this: 4 people sitting in a room with the walls covered with colored paper mapping ideas and consumer traits.  Samples of the soap scents sit in the center of the table and Sample A is passed around the circle.  A stern but stunning woman in stilettos keeps the meeting running while two designers in tight jeans and shirts screen printed by their friends doodle furiously in their notebooks and another man wearing a button down unbuttoned at the top without a shirt underneath exclaims “what if we called it – LEAVES!”.  Brilliance was agreed upon, and the Bath and Body Works scent LEAVES was born.

For the next few hours, I couldn’t stop laughing about the LEAVES in the bathroom.   It might have been the unusually simple title; compared to Warm Vanilla Sugar, Sensual Amber, and PS. I Love You (what do you think PS. I Love You smells like anyway?) LEAVES stands on its own.  But, more likely, I suspect what curled my lips into a smile was the surprisingly exclamatory tone; my house is decorated almost entirely in cream, and nothing really exclaims much of anything except lack of exclamation.

That’s kind of the feeling I’ve had about this summer.  I’ve enjoyed it I guess, but it’s been relaxing more than epic.  I’ve gotten some much needed rest and sun and time to get my ducks in a row, but I’m finding there isn’t much to write to any of you about. And frankly, I keep forgetting things like A) I’m going to start grad school in a week and B) 15 months from now (if not sooner) I’ll be shaking the dust of this town off my feet and starting a totally new life in some yet undetermined place intentionally far from here.  The complacent relative-contentment of here is rolling along, creamily, like the green lawns roll into one and other.

But in a few places there are leaves beginning to change.  Fire reds and golden yellows crowning a few small trees and a handful of leaves fallen at the base of some of the larger trees.  And when I spot these little colorful patches on walks with my dog or driving to and from work, I shout LEAVES!  to myself, remembering that though the thermometer says 75degrees and the manmade subdivision hills are the same manicured green they’ve been all summer, autumn is just around the corner.

Today my text books arrived.  LEAVES!  And my boss asked how my classes where going and I answered that they started next week.  LEAVES!  And my other boss told the new hires she’s not going to let me go and that I’m headed for corporate.  LEAVES! And I’ve got contacts I need to catch up with from my jobs past, and I need to catch up on what’s happening in the field.  LEAVES!

“Just like autumn leaves we’re in for change.” – TV on the Radio

yours.Rachel