DSC01924.JPG, originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I have been feeling incredibly anxious over the past three days with no real reason. And when I say no real reason I don’t mean that there are a number of small reasons that seem stupid to me. I mean that there is nothing causing my anxiety that I can put my finger on. I sit down and try to think about what is stressing me out and I deal with each problem as it arises and the anxiety remains.

Someone suggested to me that many people find it helpful to create a “safe place” in their mind, where they can go and envision the way that all five senses will react to the surroundings, where they can be in control, and slowly bring that feeling back into the rest of their mind… calming heart rate and breathing.

I new instantly where my safe place was. At the end of high school I suffered from insomnia and one of the only ways I could think of to fall asleep was to go snowboarding in my head. I could envision every aspect so clearly in my head, from the numbness of my cheeks to the unique sound of the sub-freezing snow against the sharp edge of my board.

My safe place is perched above timberline at Copper Mountain on Christmas Day, when barely anyone else is on the slopes. There has been an uncommon amount of early season snow and the powder is deep and fresh. My boots are just tight enough that they don’t quite cut off my circulation, I can feel my bindings through the thick leather and inches of padding, and I know that once I face my board downhill I will not be a conscious being anymore, I will be air and water and speed.

Snowboarding is the only time I can recall in my life when I am not thinking. I exist solely in my body.

I came into work yesterday morning to find this lovely gnome perched in my peace lily. These are the quiet things that simply make my day. Things for which people expect no thanks, or even acknowledgment. And thinking back on it, life is a little bit like that commercial where people see others doing kind things and pass the intention onwards.

I find that tendency most frequently in getting and receiving mail. It takes just a little tiny bit more effort than an e mail, but it feels infinitely more special.

It’s amazing how little effort, how little money, it takes to truly make someone’s day.

PS- This is what my peace lily looked like when I returned to work on Monday after being out all of the Thanksgiving week… Good thing they are hardy plants.

Far too early this morning I was assaulted by commercial radio in the flexcar my roommate was returning to Dupont Circle. Excuse me if I don’t think that Sean Taylor’s death is any more tragic and saddening than any of the other murders this year. And for the record, DC has the highest HIV infection rate in the country, and has had more homicides by mid-November than in the year of 2006. But no, the person who called into the morning show said it was a “tragic day” and that “whoever did this should be FRIED”.

I knew there was a reason I only listen to NPR in the morning.

Then I come in and am conscientiously reading my blogs, which include a smattering of, well, actual *news*, and see this story. I think I’m going back to bed, because I don’t even know where to start. Do I start with the fact that these parents are not being charged with MURDER? Do I start with the fact that they kept her body in the garage FOR TWO MONTHS?

I’d like to think that this feeling, this barely contained rage is new. But it has taken on the quiet resignation of an unwanted family member who comes by and crashes on the couch of a week or a month. You always hope she won’t show up, but inevitably there’s that knock in the middle of the night, when you’re bleary eyed and sleepy and don’t know how to say “No”.

Last year I reconnected with an old acquaintance and mentioned how almost nothing surprises me after the most horrifying story ever. He said “Oh, the one about the woman who threw her babies down the airshaft?” and I said “Of all of the horrifying news stories EVER, how is it that you know that that particular story was the one I was talking about?” he replied “I just thought back to the most horrifying thing I had read in the New York Times EVER”.

And that about sums it up.

I don’t really know how I feel about living in a world where a 19 and 24 year old torture a toddler to death (let alone ADMIT to it). And when I say I don’t really know how I feel about it, what I really mean is that I know how I feel about it and don’t really want to think about it because I don’t want to live in that world, but since bad people don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon what does that mean for me?

(For the record, when I searched for The Most Horrifying Story Ever it took an inordinate amount of strength to make my fingers type the search terms (airshaft, murder), and even more strength to read the summary to make sure I found the right story. Let’s not get me started on the fact that those search terms on www.nyt.com returned more than one result).

It’s amazing that the time really does feel like it passes faster… I feel like I barely turned around and 2007 was almost over.

Thanksgiving has given me a lot of pause this year. It has not been an easy year for me. Work was downright harrowing for about 6 months, the energy it took me to get out of bed in the morning to go to work was greater than the energy I used the entire rest of the day.

I moved, twice. Both were good moves, but moving is always stressful (and often full of minor physical injury).

I think that the thing which has been hardest of all, and which I am still coming to grips with, is how close I came to losing my best friend. Leia was very sick in June, and it was a series of dumb luck circumstances that prevented her from dying. My heart skips a beat even thinking it, let alone writing it.

Leia is like half of my soul. She has rescued me more times than I should really think about, and I’d like to think that I’ve given that back almost as good as I’ve gotten it. People talk about soulmates like a fairy tale romance, but Leia is my soulmate in a different kind of way. We can not talk for months at a time, and pick back up where we left off. We can be totally, brutally honest with one another when necessary, but we rarely let it get to that point.

I cannot imagine my life without Leia in it. Not for a single moment.

Last night I saw Leia for the first time one on one since she was in the hospital, and there was a moment when I realized that she has accepted how close she came to dying, and that was a truly sobering moment for me.

This year has been full of tragedy, and some hope. I find myself listening to Low Strung again. I saw my brother for the first time since HBC, and it is awesome to see how the experience has changed him, physically, emotionally, and in his maturity level. He is an amazing young man, and I am so proud of him, I don’t think that I can say it enough. Recently I’ve spent some time thinking about what it must have been like for him to come up on his friend after the accident, before the ambulance arrived. As scared as I was the first night I saw Leia in the hospital, I knew she was out of the woods. How must he have felt, seeing his friend in the road, with only miles and miles of pavement and fields (it happened in Kansas)?

The more I think about these things, the more I think about the Nine Inch Nails song The Becoming. I cycle through these feelings, and I am a little bit different each time I encounter them.

Ok, so I fell off of the NaBloPoMo wagon. As much as I would have liked to finish it, with two days missing I’m pretty much done. Still, I got more than halfway through the month, which is pretty awesome.

Tonight I saw They Might Be Giants with my brother at the 930 Club (recently voted the top music club in the country… though I couldn’t tell you why, and I’ve been to my share of venues). The show was awesome. I often disregard They Might Be Giants when I think about my musical development, but the fact is that they were the first band that I liked independently of my parents’ taste, and they continue to entertain me. Their live show ranks with the Dresden Dolls and the Eels for sheer energy, creativity and presence.

Though I have seen fewer live shows in 2007 than I did in 2006, I retain the ability to tell a truly awesome show from an eh mediocre show. And I know that it has very little to do with how much I actually love the band. Case in point? The Mountain Goats. I have seen them twice live, and for as much as they are definitely one of my top ten bands of all time, I don’t know that I would go out of my way to see them on their next tour. There is minimal interaction with the audience (though more than the Pixies when I saw them a couple of years ago) and it feels like they tour because they have to tour, and not out of any desire to interact with fans, let alone gain energy and inspiration from them. I think that the Dresden Dolls, Eels and They Might Be Giants truly enjoy being in a room with their fans, drawing on their energy, and feeding the energy back. There is a symbiotic relationship which develops in a good live show, and those three bands really have it.

In other news, it’s late, I still have some indigestion from yesterday, and I have two awesome kitties sleeping on my bed, so I’m gonna turn in.