A Mile

"This is it."
"This is what?" 
"If I take one more step, it will be the farthest away from home I've ever been."

I thought about these lines from The Fellowship of the Ring this morning, while at the pool. I was at the wall and it was 12:17p. I know that because I watch the clock carefully when I swim, so I can keep track of my pace. I had just finished my 35th lap and was staring down the length of the pool before my last lap. It would be lap 36, my 72nd length along a 25 yard pool: a mile.

I started swimming at the end of April. My first day I did ten laps in 30 min and felt like I was going to pass out. I almost got hit by a car crossing the street, I was so disoriented. After that I tried to add a lap every time I went to the pool. Sometimes I couldn't, but most days I did. I started to stay longer at the pool. I lowered my lap time to two minutes, then a minute and a half. Now I'm working on an average time of 1:15/lap.

I've been on the edge of 36 laps for a while now. I took some time off last week because I was sick - I missed the day after my birthday because I was hungover. But today I looked down the pool, down my empty lane, and took that "last step further than I've ever been." I swam a mile today. A mile! And I swam it in 51 min. That makes my average time 1:25/lap. Not 1:15 yet, but getting there.

Just to put a mile in perspective - a mile looks like this in Santa Cruz: from the bottom of Hihn to a bit past the stables.

And like this in Portland: from the Jesus compound to Holgate.

I swam that far today. This lady, who has never used her body for anything other than moving her mind from place to place, swam a mile. 

Sometimes, you have to celebrate the little victories just to celebrate.

This Morning

I woke up this morning, went swimming, took a shower, made a big pot of pasta and veggies and chicken, and now I am sitting in my living room, eating food I made, watching Game of Thrones, feeling my hair dry on the back of my neck and smiling. 

Good morning, Monday. Good morning, rainy days. Good morning, me, myself, and I.

Shirt dress?

I got three compliments on my "dress" the last time I wore it. To each I said, "it used to be a shirt."

Now I'm not sure which it was originally intended to be - a shirt or a dress. 

I remember buying this shirt/dress at a little clothing boutique right off Hwy 9 in Ben Lomond. Tessie and I went shopping the summer before I left for college and she made me try it on. Again, another item I would never pick out for myself; again, another item I adore. (Tessie is good like that.) I wore this shirt/dress to countless Bennington dance parties, to plays, to work, to summer bbbqs. I've mended it more than once, which is true about a lot of my clothing. I just now realized: I've worn this for six years. 

I am having an interesting time with my clothing right now, precisely because so much of it has been with me for so long. Two days ago I wore a skirt I bought my junior year of high school. HIGH SCHOOL. No one should keep cheap clothing this long, but I do. I used these clothes to feel safe and protected and, well, cradled. I hated myself naked, but I could look at myself in these clothes. These clothes were my daily armor against the world and against myself. And now? Now I am having to let each of them go. 

It's not happening all at once but it is happening. Three weeks ago I threw away the black dress I wore to senior prom: right into the trash can. After that was the tunic shirt I bought at Jenna's senior sale, gray with little purple flowers on it. Last week I bought a new bathing suit. All of these clothes have memories woven into them, alongside the stitches I've clumsily added to make them last. Most I'm throwing out but I'm also putting the best ones away. I want to be clear about this: I am not saving them because I am going back. I won't. I absolutely will not wear those items again.

Instead, I am going to give them to my mother. My mom has offered to cut them up and make me quilt from all my old clothes, all my rusted armor. At first I just went with her idea but now I can't wait for that day. I can't wait until my mom hands me the craziest (probably ugliest) quilt you've ever seen and I wrap it around my normal sized shoulders and use it to keep myself warm, and not to hide.

Vs

Taken the night of my 23rd and 24th birthdays.

Clarity

When I work on a show I usually have a moment in the first week when a piece of the text reaches out and grabs me, snags a part of me, and the play begins to burrow itself into me. It commonly happens during the first read - the first time I hear the text aloud. My current show hasn't had our first read yet, because the director is trying out a new technique. But the snag happened to me nonetheless, last night.

I am working on The Taming of a Shrew and we were doing table work on the scene before the wedding. Petruchio is drunk and dressed horribly and Kate's father is berating him for his lack of respect. 

TRANIO: See not your bride in these unreverent robes

Go to my chamber; put on clothes of mine.

PETRUCHIO: Not I, believe me; thus I'll visit her.

BAPTISTA: But thus, I trust, you will not marry her.

PETRUCHIO: Good sooth, even thus; therefore ha' done with words.

To me she's married, no unto my clothes.

Could I repair what she will wear in me

As I can change these poor accoutrements,

Twere well for Kate and better for myself.

James read those lines aloud after a scene of yelling and drunken staggering. In his first go at it he lowered his voice a little and seemed to look inward. He spoke them to himself and I could see all the fear of letting someone in play across his face.

It reminded me of the moment when Leonard Whiting stops outside the Capulet ball and has the premonition of his death. You can also see him look inward as he says: 

I fear too early: for my mind misgives 

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 

With this night's revels...

But he that hath the steerage of my course,

Direct my sail.
 

Watching James do that, have that moment of painful realization, and to be sitting across the table from him while he did it, broke a little bit of me inside. Because we've all felt that, haven't we? The fear and then, sometimes, the grief that comes with letting someone in and being unable to "repair what [they] wear in [you]."