The Word Tropical Does Not Only Refer to the Region Between 23 Degrees North and South of the Equator

There are unmistakable patterns in my life, events and ideas and feelings that crop up again and again, no matter how uncanny or incongruous it may seem. I suppose everyone's life is like this--repetitions of various minute details or overarching life "themes" (much as I hate applying that terms to anything but fiction). Or perhaps I shouldn't assume as much, and perhaps the rest of the world is beset by constant spontaneity and NEW THINGS! Everyday!

It has taken me a while to come to terms with them, but I have identified two tropes in my life, two ideas or events or acts or situations I have observed time and time again. No, I don't tend to crave eggs on Tuesdays. I am not beset by missed buses or constantly find places that I have been pictured in films. I think it is safe to say that my tropes are far more bizarre--and also more illegal--than your average, run-of-the-mill repeated details in life.

I see drug deals. And always manage to be around the weird sexual behavior of strangers.

Witnessing drug deals began back in Bellingam. I suppose, however, that it is fair to say that those witnessed in Bellingham do not make this a trope in my life--one would be hard-pressed to find a solitary soul in the city who has not seen a drug deal take place. I mean, we've all been on the corner of Railroad and Holly, haven't we? But this pattern repeated as I moved to France--a sneaky hand reaching through the schoolyard fence to a car waiting outside--and continued in New Hampshire as well--a swift touch of hands between classes in front of Thompson Hall, two men quickly moving apart in a parking lot at 4 in the morning as my headlights illuminate their evil doings.

Perhaps odder still is the amount of times I've been around the sexual behavior of total strangers. There was the wanker on the beach, and who could forget the loving Polish couple who wanted everyone to know just how truly, madly, and deeply their feelings went? It all began, however, with the man who mistook the Washington State Tourism hotline for a 900 number on my second week at VGP, and who was curiously turned on by the digits in a Seattle hotel's telephone number.

While I do think it is energy misplaced to divine the meaning of these tropes, I do find myself wondering about their connection to me, specifically. What is it about me that invites such behavior in those around me? What is this weird magnetism that draws drug-dealing and sex-crazed strangers to my door? At the risk of betraying a bit too much of my current existential crisis (and of my secret identity as a wandering Beat poet), these questions seem far more pertinent in determining who this person named Ashley is.

And though I may have identified these patterns, these tropes, their recurrence in my life is by no means predictable, and knowing that they will inevitably happen again (and probably soon, too!) does not take the spontaneity out of life. Where will I see a drug deal next?! Will I be forever scarred or oddly amused by the next couple I see having sex on the beach--and not the chilled kind that comes in glasses?!

Along Came 27 Dresses, or Ashley Meets No one, or You've Got a Greek Wedding, or Sweet Home Seattle. Or something.

The other night, as I was sitting on my love seat, alone in my apartment, eating french fries and drinking milk for dinner, wearing my snuggie, and watching America's Next Top Model, I realized something.

I am in a movie.

This has to be it. Girl, splits with boyfriend after long relationship. Lives alone with cat. Enjoys reading, cooking, dancing in her underwear, coffee, and watching French films. Works way too much, spends her evenings home alone, cooking for one, cleaning apartment, watching reruns of SVU, going to bed early. Has awkward accidents in which she drops pieces of cake frosting side down on her light-colored skirt, or trips while walking down stairs and breaks her favorite shoe.

Enter Tall Dark & Handsome?

Or not. I am in a romantic comedy without the actual romance part, in a love story without the impending love interest, without the guy who comes along to sweep the beautiful-underneath-her-glasses girl off her feet. As Kili pointed out, that is exactly how rom-coms work, though. The dorky girl in the ill-fitting skirt (or the banging hot one who just hasn't met Mr. Right yet) never actually knows that the impending love interest is about to enter her story, never suspects that the man in the next office loves French films and is an excellent hand in the kitchen.

Somehow, though, I don't think I'm quite as magnetic as Melanie Smooter or Sally Albright (yes I had to imdb those names. Hilarious/amazing if you didn't have to, too). This particular romantic comedy will most likely remain a plain comedy of the Liz Lemon variety. I'll keep my headscarf and snuggie on, thank you very much, and that 10:00 bedtime would look pretty damn good to you, too, if you had to get up before 6:00am. Besides, it is a favorite past-time of mine to step back and observe the ways in which my life presents situations that make people laugh and cringe when depicted on the big screen.

Springing

You know when the cherry and apple trees are in bloom, and it's windy, and the petals fly off, caught in air currents, and float around your head and you feel like you're in a movie? Probably some sticky, gooey, love movie? That's been happening to me a lot lately.

It is spring here, and it has come late. Apparently this is normal. I'm used to rains bringing flowers and leaves as early as March, but it seems like it has only been in the past two weeks that the trees have gone almost immediately from bare branches to canopies of green. This state is beautiful when it is green, almost as lush in the spring and summer seasons as it is stark in the winter.

I spent yesterday outside, barbecuing and swimming (in my dress) in a lake, in a setting that looked like it was pulled directly out of a 19th century novel. This image was irrevocably shattered when one of the guys answered their cell phone.

On the last day of April, at the end of national poetry month, I got onto the bus heading in to campus, and it was sunny and beautiful and I was wearing my heart-shaped sunglasses and feeling warm, and an older man handed me a poem, ripped out from a book he had in his hands. The poem is called "Into the Land of Youth" by Killarney Clary, and I don't know if it's good by MFA standards, but it was a nice thing to be handed on a spring day.

Into the land of youth, westward, to the place of starting again, cities of gold, on the coast of promise--mysterious cure--a mirror's thrown down, and so without luck, without reflection we stop.

We have come to the beginning, the finish of the country, itinerary worn out, facing the surf--what sailors smell as land. We ask detailed questions. None of us can tell, so we tug on each other, "Come. Look."

In this lull, one at the tide line stoops to pick at foam and weeds; another builds a fire. The intended didn't arrive and there is no new plan. As the sun lowers, we face the mountains, consider what we have passed, and fall to dreaming, to scrounging.

I want to traipse into the land of youth, where there is swimming and sun and bbq everyday. Unfortunately, I have 30 blank pages of paper staring at me, judging me. I've got the end of the semester blues.