I Always Get Back To The Oatmeal.

Have you ever let oatmeal, or a cream of wheat sort of hot cereal cool down in the container you had it in, then you shake it, give it a good, hard wiggle and it has the shape of that container, now sitting, moving not unlike Jello, in the palm of your freshly gloved hand? Where it shivers and shakes, a little cool to the touch, and you know its moist, even through the thin veil of latex or vinyl you've slid over your skin to protect it from the alien-like, once-hot breakfast cereal. You toss it into the garbage can, where it partially splatters against the far side of the can, the remaining mass still bobbing in place, almost cheerful. You hate that stupid little blob, so you pick up the next small round maroon colored bowl, flip it upside down so that the cooled cereal dangles over the vast, filling pit of life and sure destruction that is the garbage can. You wiggle it, give it a few nice, firm shakes, whack the bottom of the bowl with the palm of your free hand, and with a shilik! and the snapping of a few long, wet strings of cold cream of wheat let go and fall, spiraling, laughing through the air, landing on an empty All Bran box and jiggles there, solid, channeling the spirit of the strawberry Jello you had to serve for the second time in four days as it settles into stillness.

This makes a lot more sense with a little bit of background. I've worked for the last six years in an adult retirement and rehabilitation facility. I've run the gambit between baby-puke colored, pureed green beans, unidentified substances long hidden behind removable silver panels, suffered the agony of rapidly melting frosting on a once-frozen cake, and the ever un-enjoyable task of working a major winter holiday. I've seen residents come into the rehab center for a fall and bounce back into independent living in a matter of weeks. I've seen the same type of injury take a toll they can't pay. A woman lives there now, given something around 73 hours to live. That was over three months ago. I've seen people survive on vanilla milkshakes, and a man who looked pretty good yesterday gone by the end of the day. I've seen families visiting, and I've seen, or should I say, I have not seen, the families of other residents only show up to clean out the rooms of the recently passed. I've seen families not even show up to do that.

For three of these long years I've worked, I attended a college eight hours away, nestled snug in the Roanoke Valley. I'd come home at school breaks, and I'd be given hours, and I'd work my ass off, then go back to the place I was rapidly considering my true "home." I made an amazing group of friends (many later blogs, I am sure, will involve them, including a large explanation of our inter-workings). I had a wonderful job, challenging classes, interesting (and occasionally dull) professors, and some pretty damn incredible adventures. I found, and lost loves, I knew fear and sadness during the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I knew intense joy and freedom in the light of the sun through the trees, in the cool, well-tended grass under my feet. I felt magic. Roanoke was my faerie home, my sanctuary. The way the red and gray bricks warmed in the sun, how the snow glinted outside my toasty warm room. I can remember my first party, my last night out, my first impressions, and last words. I remember crying because I never wanted to leave.

That brings me back to the oatmeal. The maroon bowl seemed suddenly symbolic once I went back to work after my graduation. (Six months, I told myself, I'd have a real job back in Roanoke, near where my heart wanted to settle for a couple more years, and yet, over a year later, here I sit). The cereal felt like it was laughing at me. Here I was, pulled away from where I had settled, in the form of one thing, like a bowl, and sent to a doom in the pit of All Bran boxes, and garbage cans. This was the real world? Send me back. It's the sound of it that gets me. The shilik! It's a moist noise, and I just think about a soul, sucked out though the tiniest hole in the body with a super vacuum. Shilik!

Now I have to admit I shamelessly stole the idea for this first entry's title. While I can't remember who wrote it (says the now-graduated, super proud diploma-displaying English major, with a slight blush, voice full of sorrow and shame), there was this poem a visiting writer read to us. I had hated it when I read it. I found it dull, and useless, like most poetry, to be 100% honest with you, I'm very partial to what I like, and little else. But when the author read it to us, it was full of emotion and energy, and about things coming around full circle to me. I remember I gave her my email address, hoping she'd get back to me and share her thoughts (meanwhile, I'd later reveal what I thought was my best poem of the year An Ode To Cheese, which may end up posted here later, because I still think it's pretty damn awesome, even if no one else thinks so, but anyways, I read a poem about cheese in front of her and she even mentioned it, so I felt memorable, at least). The last line of the poem was, and do pardon me if I got this wrong. "But I always get back to that toaster, how you held it like you knew how to love something."

Do I know how to love something? I don't even love myself most of the time. I don't know who I am, or where I am going, so I stick to the round maroon bowl I let myself meld into. I have my heart and soul wrapped around this life I built for myself down in Roanoke, but reality decided to flip the bowl over, wiggle it, give it a few nice, firm shakes, whack the bottom of the bowl with the palm of it's giant cosmic hand, and let me fall into the vast garbage pit I've let my life become. What is this? What did I do in this life or the last ones to let me have this life I hate to lead? Where I get up in the morning, just wanting to go back to my nice, safe, perfectly working maroon bowl, and with my simply glorious sort of luck, end up on the All Bran.

I've tried thinking positive. I have tried writing, reading, laughing, working out, dancing, drinking, sleeping, gaming, drawing, dreaming, screaming, and scheming. I haven't been able to find my way out. I haven't found my true release. I thought that finding my telos, my ultimate life goal, was set in stone. I was wrong, I was so wrong, to the point where I'm hoping when I look over this after I've gotten some sleep, I don't weep like a child at finding Santa doesn't exist (I work two jobs, often back to back with less than 4 hours between sleeps, for up to 20 hours before I get sleep from the time I wake up to the time I get to sleep. Like tonight, it's quarter after 4 in the morning, and I'm half dead sitting in this chair with the overwhelming need for sleep and the restroom). All I know is this:

Over a year later, and I still get back to the oatmeal. Shilik!