But no goodbyes you'll always be Miss America: the neverending of an era

Sunrise/set

Did you notice? I pushed writing anything with a hint of finality on here to the bottom of a crumpled sticky note. I don't do goodbyes. Because I don't want to believe anything ever fully ends. What has been taken, given, shaped and splintered, softened, memorialized, forgotten, cherished &etc clings, cloud to mountain, when the rain comes down. I am only in response to what I have been.
 [I feel the he necessity to parenthesize a little homage to the empty, once twice thrice refilled, tumbler sitting next to me . Alcohol has always let me out of me]

So why was I compelled back here? Now? On new years eve? Rerouted to the Norfolk countryside 4848.924 miles away from Portland?
 [yes. from this rug to Mount Hood. I'm that lamelamelame]

Every year, before I begin to shape how I hope the new year might turn out, I list all of the amazing and terrible things that happened to me in the year about to shift. And, for the first time since I began doing this when I was 11, I hang so much light on the digits 2,0,1.4. As cautious and indecisive as I am, I have no hesitation in feeling the weight of moving further forward, of the roots of nostalgia digging toes into clock. I feel nothing but sure in cliche-ing this year as 'the best'. Wait. No. Let's be a lit kid for a sec and find some better descriptors. This year I felt the heat of time, the moving upwards, the slowing and waiting, thespeedandrush, the pull of heartstomachehead, more moments of clarity, of unmolested joy. This year is more than mind can possibly hold. Especially coming out of the absolute obliteration that was the year before.

whatadifferenceayearmakes.

And as unsure as the galaxy, I turn,
my life filled itself with nothing I could've ever hoped for. Wild horses couldn't have dragged this year from my mind, my books, my conception, my pastpresent and have it handed it to me, as something orbiting mynamemyself.  This really was your year. I have no hesitation in glutting nostalgia. To say, yeah man, 2014, the year I began to feel what good living could feel like. To launch a comet in its name. Trailblaze.

To carry this year as me is a privilege I hope to never feel entitled to. To relive this year in a bullet pointed list intimidates 2,0,1,5. And that's after having boxed it into something that can't ever comprehend the whole. But it excites the possibilities regardless. The on. The on because of before, the on in spite of it.

I don't do new year's resolutions. Not like how new year's resolutions are generally conceptualized anywho. If for no other reason than I can't bear to fail so I never set myself anything too meaningful and direct. I like vague ambiguous resolutions. Actually that is definitely a lie. 2013 - my Grandma taught me to change a fuse. 2014 - I learnt how to build a fire. I had my first kiss on a new year's eve. Yet, even as I began to note down the abstract and the concrete as usual, three burn beacon-like in my empty poundland notepad meant for next semester study.

Make shit happen - stop waiting.
Travel the fuck out of you and the world.
Stop trying to find yourself, lost is where you will know yourself. Revel in the not knowing. Be

[why is James Blunt playing? ]
Flying like a kite and doused in liquor, I exhausted the meaning of the word 'happy' (I apologize Reed friends) and 'I love you' this year. And not even barely enough.

I am fucking ready for you 2015. For graduating and continuing to get lost, to be lost. For being fucking terrified and confused and excited and all the freedom/shit that comes with being a twentysomething, to not knowing and knowing everything, to thinking, to thinking of knowing everything, and being a fuck up from eyes up to eyes down, to being fucking fantastic from rise to fall to rise, to being a homage to my past self and a hopeless newborn to my current.

Here's to saying yes, to letting go, to picking up, to fighting, to falling, to carry on anyway. To being passionately in love with, anything everything,
 YOU.
To letting you in. To keeping me out of my way.

To all of those unbelievable humans that have touched my life this year - I am because of you.
You matter. to me. always.

To 2014. To beautiful 2014. Thank you.

Melissa Schlachtmeyer

Peppered through blog posts from last semester are little inferences to my amazing history of clothing class with the wonderful Melissa Schlachtmeyer. It seemed only fitting then, to dedicate this blog post to her, as a thank you for all her patience and aid she gave me with my terrible stick men drawing skills and overambitious Alexander McQueen research project plans, after receiving the shocking news of her death last week. From jokes about my gender neutral utopian society where kids run amok with flowered hair, to her taking the time to show me through Reed's costume department's stash of patterns to photocopy, to the supplies of starbucks coffee and pastries she shared in our last conference after having us drape fabric over each other in our first, Melissa was always an enthusiastic source of knowledge and kindness that absolutely fed my passion for studying the anthropolgy/psychology/sociology/economics/everything of fashion. I regret the half assed draft now useless dust in my email box, of tales of the Fashion Museum in Bath, knowing that I wouldn't have been pointing out watteau backs and explaining to mum how dress panniers had to concertina to let women sit in the French court had it not been for her. My thoughts especially fly to the desktop image so frequently accidentally projected in class, of her little daughter, and the dark veil that will wreathe her now. To be 'sorry for her daughter's loss' seems insubstantial, so instead I am thankful for Melissa's being. And for the privilege to be part of her last class. So thank you Melissa. And as cruelly too soon as it is, rest in peace.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/portland/article/Costume-Designer-Melissa-Schlachtmeyer-Passes-Away-at-41-20140811#.U-uU2IBdVeZ

http://www.reed.edu/reed_magazine/sallyportal/posts/2014/death-of-melissa-schlachtmeyer.html

In my wallet there's English change nestling with Krona, Canadian dollars, US dimes, and apparently they're all mine somehow. I'm spent.

There's nothing English about roses (9 hours in Iceland)

Blue Lagoon, Grindavík, Iceland

And with skin lightly licked by North American rays I feel less. atypical. but still. I don't quite rub beige as maybe I did. once.
People with bad teeth smile less here.
And talk less under starched mustache.
But a jovial man with crooked mouth bumbles me through 'security'.
The words 'pip pip' hang unsaid from the corner of his English breath.

Keflavík, Iceland

I've been back three days.

Slipped like soap through a land of absolute barren beauty.
There's just something. about Iceland.
the tumble of solitary bird song through branchless woven wind
there were no trees in this ash soil
but heath like Cathy's
a blanket
moss - the warp
lilac nootka - the weft
how did you know my favourite flowers were lupins?
braided wild to roadside
you planted volcano crags, a devonshire moor fished from overseas
for me
and so
silica and sulpha laced I clothe my hard feet
lava flown spring water pools between toe and nail
lapping soft the cracking rhino weathered balls, the elephant skin heels
sucking solid ankle edge to supple curve
slip
    tuck
                     nudge
                             lift
car
    ess

the rain lost in my waterfallen hair
dancing through already lagoon lacquered eyelashes
my body slick with volcanic saliva
bones soothed.

Alone
at 8am
this is the only way to lay
over
and take
stock
before edging out with the tide

Blue Lagoon, Grindavík, Iceland

my 9 hours in Iceland were not nearly enough.
but bleached me ready
There's nothing roses about English

(There will be breath left for The Mission, The Capitol Building, The Desert, The City, The Final Call, The Falls. I promise. If anyone is still herear)

I'll always remember you the same

So much. So little time. It's too much to hold with tiny human fingers. Flying through coast line boundaries, Seattle, Portland, Redwood barks, California arks, San Franciscan hills, deserts, canyons, Arizonan phoenix cries, crayola creeks, Austin heat, New York City subway stops, and I don't. Stop. Utah Conneticut Beating first east, upwards, north, Canada you called? Toronto. Niagra. Iceland soon and lagoon lapping at electric toes. Exchanging faces at each airport, the new ones already beautifully aged, already distant friends reunited. Grace. Naima. The old ones grown. Tash. with higher heads held proudly. Olivia. And the everyday ones who have never been everyday but seem so always there, it's impossible to unpaint them from everyday frame. Rich. Anais. Where are we now? What have we done? Who did we become? Where did you come from? Where did you go? The tales my soles could dance for you. My boots encrusted with America, those little magpies sucking at each new wild terrain. I made wild these quivering feet. Scared girls don't bend the way the wind blows. It is my mouth that slicks go in whispers to onced rusted ankles now. Shivering heels stilled. And set. In motion

They're playing Ben Howard. So of course I'm introspective.
It's an unfortunate side effect of feeling.

Pacific coast ghost

OreGone - Western Meadowlarking

Staying in different motels with varying success of 'free WiFi' has reeked havoc on my determination to blog less erratically this summer! Car and parents abandoned in SF after an eye feast of Pacific coast, this really is the first chance I've had to catch my breath. With Vietnamese iced coffee and pumpkin cream cheese muffin in hand, I appear to have found the Portland of San Francisco in a little cafe on Dolores in the Mission - just with less macs. And beards. And bikes. And rain. Yes. You can take the girl out of pdx but you can never take the pdx out of the girl (plus after an hour and a half walking girl needs a caffeine fix fo'sure!). I've been debating for the last ten minutes how creepy it would be to take a casual snap of this SF does pdx place!

Anyway, I digress! Our road trip turned into a beach/brewery tour of the coast and, as someone new to the wondrous world of microbreweries, Dad can take point on saying we sampled some seriously blinding beer. My liver will defs need a detox at some point. (Insert yolo here if, y'know, you buy into that kind of great shit).

I have to apologise for the lack of photos from now on. A) I'm trying to leave my camera in the bottom of my rucksuck and shutter with my mind instead and B) I gave the parentals my laptop and full photo uploading paraphernalia.

Crossing the Golden Gate bridge, we left our gold dusted tires and tried to relocate limbs that had become too used to being folded into themselves, (I'm sure they were legs once), to face the joys of a toilet Vesuvius and running around underwearless like hysterical kids in the Holiday Inn at 10pm. And of course, San Francisco take II. Swathed in this glorious Californian blue. And the touch of whisked sea foam that fogs golden gate grey.

I can't believe Renn Fayre was nearly a month and 672 miles (if we trust Google maps...) away. Not that I've not had a lush time along the 101, and am insanely excited to brunch it up with Tash across the bay tomorrow or get my Stetson on in Austin with Rich and Anais on Tuesday, it's just that Reed has already become hazed with dream shake. Did it happen? Was it real? The 4.0 GPA my transcript is telling me happened would definitely suggest otherwise!! (cheeky brag. I know I know I know). And trying to remember it all at once is like slicking water on hot tarmac. So I haven't been able to help, tucked under polyester folded sheets, the sound of Dad's snoring (chiming in occasionally with crashing wavesd, but more frequently garbage trucks) thinking about where the people I spent pretty much every day grabbing breakfast in commons or having a cheeky midweek beer with, surliving this surreal year with, are now - Naima  back home in Toronto, Anais LA, Rich NYC, Neil Boise, PL back in France, Sam Santa Fe.  I hope their adventures are magic.

Again, I digress. Butterfly fingers.
My $12 boots from redlight on Hawthorne are now caked with Seattle troll dust, sand shorn from trillium lake shores, Washington Park mud, flecked with sea lion cave crumbles, cannon beach caverns, bandon's sunset licked beach crumbs, redwood bark chipped from forest hue, sunglasses sloshed with more things that empty beautiful of it's inadequate meaning. These feet have wandered far. These eyes have shuttered much. Glutting on this Western gold soil. I'm banked for good. And I've only just begun.