trunk dwelling.

I have taken to sitting on top of my car. I go there after I go for a walk, or when I’m talking on the phone, and sometimes just because I want to. I have a patio attached to my apartment, with two chairs, that would work for this purpose. There’s plenty of sittable grass around my building, too. But if the weather is kind, I’ll plop myself on the trunk of my car, just like this. I hop up and lean back at a 45-degree angle and look.

Up, at the trees, the clouds, the sky. I look ahead, and watch cute pups and their owners, or I follow the turkeys who — I swear to God — look at least one way before crossing the street. Or sometimes, I don’t look at all. I close my eyes and listen: to the trees swishing their leaves, or the whoosh of the cars as they drive past, or to the just-as-important but quieter wonderings of my heart. 

And I think. About everything important and nothing important. It’s kind of the opposite of meditating, where you’re supposed to let all thoughts out of your head and only focus on your breath. Instead, I focus on everything except my breath, welcoming every weird question and thought, seeing where it takes me. What kind of job will I have next? I wonder what Glennon Doyle is doing right now? Do I really believe that I can do hard things, like she says we can? Where are these seven police cars driving to so quickly on a Sunday morning? Where do turkeys sleep? How do turkeys sleep?

This new trunk-sitting habit of mine doesn’t make much sense. As previously mentioned, there are plenty of other, more sensible places for me to sit with my thoughts. I know that others think this new habit is weird, too, because sometimes, when my eyes are open, cars slow down and drivers look at me sitting on my trunk. Every once in a while, a pedestrian passes through the parking lot, notices me, and squints at me sitting on my trunk, too. 

But since the world doesn’t make much sense to me these days — both the big things (What did our president just say?, How many humans in the world haven’t had a hug since all this started?, etc.) and the smaller but still-important wonderings of my own life (What will I have for dinner?, What is it I plan to do next with my one wild and precious life?, etc.) — I thought, why does this have to make sense? And what does it even mean for something to make sense anyway? 

Maybe, instead, sitting on my trunk is what makes the most sense. The first time I sat here, I was on the phone. I didn’t want to keep walking, and I didn’t want to go inside yet, and I didn’t want to sit on the ground, so I perched on my car. And when the phone call was over, I just…stayed there. And it felt good, easy, natural. I plopped myself on top of my trunk again a few days later. And then again, and again.

The trunk of my car has become a bit of a buffer; it provides some quiet time before going back into my apartment, where my laundry needs folding or my plants need watering or my resume (which has been a Google Doc tab open for weeks) is taunting me to finally pay attention to it. The trunk of my car is my own scratched-up, metal-island oasis that I can plop myself on, where I can just…be. In times like these, what makes sense is to do what feels good, whenever and wherever we can.

And I’ll keep coming back to it, until my trunk dwelling stops feeling this way.

Maybe your created oasis is not on top of the trunk of your car, but inside a dark closet, or on a blanket thrown on the grass, or both depending on the day. Maybe it’s found on a 5-minute walk around the neighborhood or a 25-minute drive on the highway, where the destination is nowhere except deeper into your own heart/thoughts/life. Maybe it’s all of the above, or somewhere different, either a physical place or a moment — even just one — you can steal for yourself. However you can, I hope you find space to seek out what you need in these times — moments of comfort, rest, joy, relief, hilarity, stillness, clarity — even if they don’t make much sense to others. If it makes sense and feels good for you? Well, then, that’s all the reasoning you need.

And maybe, just maybe, if we stay here long enough, the trunk-sitting and the highway-driving and the closet-dwelling and the slowing down will help the rest of the world make a bit more sense, too.

heart-filling times.

A handful of weeks ago, in the midst of some heart turmoil times, I thought of an essay in “Tiny Beautiful Things.” I specifically thought of one particular line that I needed to read to have the courage to carry on through said heart turmoil times; the words I believed would grant me permission to do the thing I had to do.

When I went to pluck my copy off the shelf to locate these words, it was gone! Not totally surprising, since I think I have owned at least six copies of this book and have gleefully given each one of them away. So I did the thing anyway and survived without the line and ordered a new copy for myself.

And now I’ve been rereading. I haven’t read this book cover to cover since I was 22 and unemployed and sleeping in the trundle bed I lugged across the country to Portland. I am going slow, underlining words and folding in corners of pages and sitting for awhile with the ‘Yours, Sugar’ at the end of every piece.

The last few weeks, I’ve been sitting in some heart-filling times — a snap-of-the-fingers shift from the turmoil, just like that. Karaoke singing and nature walks and bookstore adventuring, big belly laughs and big questions and big conversations that get right to the good stuff. In one essay, Sugar writes, “The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see what made us.”

These heart-filling times have only been so because they’ve been filled with some of my heart-people, in Fargo and Minnesota and across the country: the ones who see me, all of me, when I’m at my fullest and when I’m at my turmoiliest. And who let me sit with them, too.

This wasn’t the line I was looking for when I started, but it was the reminder I needed all along.

sunrise.

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.
-Hafiz

I moved this summer, to an apartment within a residence hall in Downtown Portland. Not that my previous apartment — one within a residence hall in Northeast Portland — had me that much more connected to the Earth, but this move seemed to take me just a bit farther from nature. I’m in the middle of a 14-story building filled with college students, in the middle of Portland State University’s campus, in the middle of the concrete and tall buildings and mass transit systems that make up our city. I live on the most populated block in Portland; humans and human-made things surround me.

However, this shift back to the hustle-hustle-hustle pace of Downtown wasn’t much of a shock to me. I knew what living Downtown felt like, and I was excited about the chance to be so close to everything again, so connected to the pulse of this city, to have so few needs for my car on a regular basis. I was excited to be woken up in the early morning because of the garbage trucks, to hear the bells from the MAX as I fell asleep, to know any time there’s a fire or emergency because of the sirens. This kind of connectedness to the heart of things felt good to me. And still feels good.

I didn’t grow up in a traditionally outdoorsy family. It was my mom and me, in North Dakota, which is winter and well-below freezing most of the time. I didn’t like camping, or hiking, or ogle at and respect the landscape around me. It didn't seem like anything special to me; it just was. However, I did spend most of my childhood summers outdoors, at my grandparents’ house, and can still remember staying outside — running through my grandma’s huge flower garden, racing my cousins on our bikes up and down (and up and down, and up and down) the gravel driveway, lying on the grass after a water gun fight — until the sun set. Their Minnesota home was surrounded by fields that stretched for miles, crops sprouting out of the black earth, other homes and humans just specks in the distance. As the sky darkened, and my grandma or grandpa would call us in closer to the house, we’d look out over those fields and see this perfectly round, orange-yellow-red ball floating over the sky and down through the fields. And I remember being fascinated by how this sun thing worked, even as a kid who never had any interest in science other than making volcanoes out of baking soda and water.

“But where did it go?” I would think. ”You’re telling me that little ball lights up the whole sky? For EVERYONE on earth?”

Now, if I can time it right, I wake up with the sunrise. It’s getting harder as we move further into autumn and the sun comes up later while the time I have to be at work doesn’t, but even if I’m already awake, I make a conscious effort to move toward one of my two, five-foot by five-foot east-facing windows and pause. Take a deep breath. Look out. Sometimes I’ll stand with a cup of coffee, or with my hair halfway curled, or even when I’m already running a bit late for that early morning meeting. And from my 9th story apartment, I see the sun rise up over the hills. I can even see a corner of Mt. Hood defiantly peeking around the three tall buildings that block most of its view, with the sunshine behind it. The sky does all sorts of tricks within a five-to-ten-minute period of the sun stretching out over the landscape. Sometimes, it streaks yellows and oranges and pinks through strips of the remaining darkness. Sometimes, the whole sky turns bright pink. Sometimes, like on Wednesday morning, the sun rose through a thick layer of fog — fog so thick that I couldn’t see the bridges or traffic or river. But even when the clouds are heavy, hanging over the city without any glimmer of hope that Portland will see the actual sun that day, it still rises. It still shows up for the city, for us, for the world.

Watching the sun rise has been one of the most powerful experiences of my summer, one that has shaped my time in this new job, in this new apartment, and in some ways, in this new life. To begin each day being greeted by the sun — being grounded by this little orange-yellow-red ball that lights up the whole sky, for everyone in the world, no matter what — and to be reminded that I’m surrounded by nature, by earthiness, even though I live in an apartment within a residence hall in Downtown Portland. It reminds me that just by doing what it does, nature shows us that it loves us every single day. The sun rising, the rain falling, the plants growing, the leaves dropping, the clouds parting, even if just for a moment. And maybe — even if we’re planted in the middle of a bunch of concrete and human-made things — we can show it that we love it, too, by taking a moment to pause in reverence to whatever nature is around us.

bright spots.

Today was supposed to be the day I was going to move from this bed on the floor to a real bed. It was supposed to be the day I was going to become the owner of my first real couch, and real bookshelf, and real mustard-colored chair. It was going to be the day where I finally moved books from boxes, and decorations from bins, and made Apartment 909 feel like home. But today is, now, just another day because after two hours on the phone with IKEA, my furniture isn’t coming. They lost my couch. They can’t deliver an incomplete order. They’re sorry.

No one wants to hear this. No one wants to hear that the furniture they paid for and have waited for isn't coming. No one wants to hear that the delivery day for which they took off work is now wide open, and a day in the near future, where they have to work, will now be filled with furniture delivery. Even in the midst of much shittier, heartbreaking things happening in the world and our lives, no one wants to hear this.

Once I got a hold of a real-life human, I think I handled the situation okay-ish. I asked the right questions, and didn’t yell, and only frustrated-cried a little bit. As I was being transferred to another real-life human, I apologized to Ashley for crying and being frustrated and not using the friendliest tone, and told her that I know this isn’t her fault. She laughed and said, “Girl, don’t worry. I lost my shit at Chick-fil-A the other day because they were out of the salad I wanted. Things suck sometimes.”

Once I got a hold of the other real-life human, I think I handled the situation alright-ish. I confirmed things that had been promised in my contract, and still didn’t yell, and only frustrated-cried a little bit more. When Maddie was helping me set up my new delivery date, we discovered she used to live right across the street from my new apartment. And as we were wrapping up the call, she asked, “Do you like sushi? There’s a really great place just right down the road. It’s called Blue Fin.”

And I guess why all of this matters is that while listening to the looped phone muzak while on hold, and finally eating my oatmeal that’s been sitting in the microwave since 9:30 am, and calling my mom and saying the F-word to her too many times, and sitting in the middle of the floor in my apartment, surrounded by bins of extra blankets and bags of books and a half-opened box of new sheets, I’m saying a little prayer for Ashley and Maddie. Bless their souls for being at the end of the phone line — phone lines with hundreds of people calling with questions and frustrations and tears every single day. For listening to, and creating space for, and being present with their callers’ complaints and words and feelings. Even if they think that callers like me are annoying or wrong or awful humans, they're still there. They still answer the phone and, I have to believe, try their hardest to make things better. They offer bright spots — today, in the form of Chick-fil-A salads and sushi recommendations — in hard situations.

I wanted to make this home feel more like home today, and I’m still going to do that. Who declared you need furniture to feel at home in a space? Today is the day for making this floor-bed a little more comfortable, for adding some photos of my favorite faces to frames, and for figuring out how to work my new laundry machine down the hall. Today is the day for finding the bright spots.

(And today is also the day for Blue Fin sushi for dinner, because Maddie said so.)

i'm sleeping on the floor.

“I’m sleeping on the floor.”

It was the middle of the night in the middle of a 36-hour Amtrak ride from Portland to Fargo, and we were trying to figure out just how we were going to sleep. Falling asleep is hard when you’re squished into two seats that only recline 45 degrees. It’s even harder when your seat partner has five-foot femurs (Steph) and when you have never been able to fall asleep on a moving vehicle (you) and when you’ve already been on the train for 24ish hours (both of us, along with 14 other students returning from an intense alternative break trip where we slept on a church floor for seven nights). After shifting and cuddling and tangling our limbs, we decided that our best chance at success was to divide and conquer: one of us would lie across the seats. And the other would sleep on the floor.

This sparked the biggest “fight” in our almost-six year friendship. And by fight, I mean we spent the next 30-ish minutes discussing, debating, and arguing over why the other person should be the one to sleep on the train seats. Steph is the most stubborn human on this earth and explained all of the logical reasons why I should get the chairs: I had just worked so hard to coordinate all the logistics for the trip, and didn’t I have to work in the morning?, and she would actually have more room for those five-foot femurs if she could stretch out on the floor. I don’t have a persuasive bone in my body, so I’m sure I just said things like, “But, but...no! You take the seats!” or, “No, Steph, I really don’t want to sleep on the chairs. I like sleeping on floors!” We went back and forth, raising our voices ("NO! I am!") and making empty threats ("I won't talk to you for a week if you won't sleep on the floor!") and laughing ("This is ridiculous -- we could have been sleeping by now.”). We kept saying, "I'm sleeping on the floor," only to be met with, "No, I'm sleeping on the floor."

We've said this sentence hundreds of times to each other now. When I stay late to do the dishes after she’s invited me over for dinner, because I know she hates them and we’re far past the point of the typical “the hostess has to take care of everything from start to finish” relationship but she still argues with me: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When she gets in her car before I can protest and drives across town to pick me up because my car's fender is about to fall off, and then claims it gives us an extra 15 minutes of catch-up time before I can apologize: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When I stay long-after the end of a sold-out pizza and pie event to haul garbage and unload the uHaul and then drop off the uHaul with her, only to then be accompanied to my post-midnight housesitting and cleaning and laundry duties, even though she’s been pizza-ing and pie-ing for 17 hours: “I’m sleeping on the floor.”

“Me too."

I don’t remember who slept on the floor that night on the Amtrak. Honestly, I’m sure we both did at some point. But who slept where isn’t the point of this story. Keeping tabs on who slept on the floor, or who did the dishes twice in a row, or who paid for the last beers during happy hour — these things don’t have a place in this deep, true friendship. It’s an unspoken rule: we give when we can, whether that’s doing the dishes or taking the check or sleeping on the floor, and we take when we need to, whether that’s staying seated for an extra five minutes or pocketing that extra five dollars or curling up on two Amtrak chairs. Friendship is all about that give and take, push and pull, yin and yang, floor-sleeps and Amtrak-chair-sleeps. Sometimes you sleep on the floor, sometimes she does. Sometimes you join each other down there because you'd rather just be together, even if it means being squished next to her five foot femurs.

In Steph, I have found a soulfriend who laughs and cries and dreams and frets and rages and eats and shares and exists — so authentically, so compassionately, so truthfully — and meets me wherever I am in my brain or my day or the world. I hope that you, too, find a friend who will join you where you are, who will sleep on the floor for — or, better yet, with — you.

Before the Amtrak Debacle of 2013. (Portland, OR -- February 2013 -- Photo: Cathryn Erbele.)