writing – Page 8 – Another Adventure

THAT Demographic

It’s a hard thing, trying to decide what to do with my life, when at the age of twenty I feel exhausted and want to retire.

I don’t know when I got so cynical, but looking at colleges, again, makes me dread the thought of living in a two by four, eating iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing five days a week. Been there, done that, and no, as much as people romanticize dorm life, a shoebox is still a shoebox.

Not that I live in a palace, or anywhere close, but honestly, what’s the point?

If we commit ourselves to four years under the umbrella of “learned knowledge” then shouldn’t there be something better on the other side? Not 80,000 dollars in student loans and unemployment, hanging out on Wall Street hoping for somebody to take pity on us.

It’s just not fair.

Changing the world sounds great, but you only get one shot at life, and if I go through this again, I fear that I will end up right back to where I started, where most people end up right around the time the mid life crisis comes calling: married to a planner, a desk job, a task list. Endless meetings, eating meals in the car, accurately calculated gym time, penciled in cocktail hours, regardless if it’s one, two, three, or four people in my life. Why does job success mean sacrificing joie de vivre?

If I don’t care about money, which I really don’t, then why would I do it? If I love something, I do it, regardless of whether or not I get recognition for it. I do it because it makes me happy. If I have to brown nose my way through life, then honestly, there are better things I could be doing with my time, like reading and baking almond cakes. Really.

Of course, now I really am starting to sound like a 1950s housewife, waiting for prince charming to come and sweep me off my feet, kiss me on the forehead and hand me my minivan. Honestly, as of now, it doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

Where does that put me in the feminist movement? Equality and quality of life are two very different things. I’d rather some stranger think less of me and live a fulfilled life than waste the one I have trying to get him to notice me. There are lots of other people, and there always will be, who will value me based on the person I am and the interactions we have. To the people that matter, we are not statistics or social groups. We are lives.

So why do it? Why go to college, why try for a dream job, a dream career, a dream car? Honestly, I want to go back to school for the simple reason that I enjoy it. I love learning and I love reading and I love debating. But with college applications and admissions essays come the questions, the planner theories, the “what do you want to major in” and “what do you plan to do with that major” questions. Ugh. I’ve been through this already and it didn’t work! Can’t I just say that I want to know who we are and how we got here?

Nope. You have to know where we’re going. And no matter how advanced we become, we will just never know.

So maybe in the midst of all the planners and appointments, faith comes in to play. Faith that, if we miss that appointment or lose our planner, our lives are not lost, and somehow, some way, we will continue to put one foot in front of another. I have to tell myself this because I have no idea where I will be four months from now. I may not ever make it to Nice, but if I don’t, it will be because something much better or much more important took precedence. I can’t quantify my life based on number of circumstances or interactions or essays. Those things are man made, like technology and media, and things like that come and go with human evolution. So I can’t keep guessing. I can dream, oh man do I ever, but I can’t expect dreams to come true simply because I dream them. Honestly, right now, I just want a good nights sleep.

I know I should be more ambitious. I am young, and part of the generation that will supposedly take over the world. But I’ve seen the dangerous repercussions of ambition for self, and honestly, I just don’t know if I’m willing to put myself through it again. I want a guarantee, which I know I cannot, and will never get.

The Big Dipper

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”
-CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Sometimes when I pray, or I’m in Church, I close my eyes and see tiny specks of light all around me. That’s how I know God is real. Even though I’m so stunted, and such a sinner, God still gives me tiny glimpses of his wonder.
I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Wow.
Thank you.”

“I can’t believe you and I are talking like this.”
“Neither can I.”
“I didn’t think it would ever happen.”
Inhale.
“Do you think…
Do you think God gave me this time because, because he knew I was broken?”
Exhale.
“He gave me this time to come back to him.”
Inhale.
“He knew…he knows…how broken I was. That I needed to fix myself. That I needed to fix us.”
Exhale.
“Sweety…”
“I’m crying because I’m so happy. I don’t deserve any of this, but I’m…I’m here.”
Exhale. Inhale, exhale, sniff, wipe.

“When did you get to be so wise?”
“I went through a lot of crap at a really young age.”

Sniff, wipe.

“It’s so beautiful out here, Mama.”
“What do you see?”
“Stars. Tons and tons of ’em. And trees, lots of trees, all silhouetted against the sky.”
“Do you see the moon?”
Stare.
“Yes! Yes! It’s right there! It’s…huge! It’s in my face! It’s so bright!”
“Wait! Let me see it. If we’re looking at the same moon, then we’re not so far away, right?”
“You can’t miss it. It’s right THERE.”
“Oh…where? All I can see are trees.”
“Do you see the big dipper?”
“The one with the handle?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait a minute.
One…two…three…
Yes! I see the big dipper!”
Inhale. Exhale.
“There. We’re both looking at the same big dipper.
See? We’re not that far away.”

Gaze.

Gaze.

“It’s so big. A million times bigger than us.”
“And think, then, if this is just what we see, imagine how big God is.”

“Do you think he looks like a man?”
“Oh, no. I don’t even think He’s a He. But what humans conceive is so limited; we draw pictures of him with a white beard and a staff, but it’s all limited.
It’s an intelligence. A persona. Omnipotent, omnipresent…you’re never alone. Even alone, you’re never truly alone.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Yeah…”

“I’d like to be a star….a great ball of gas that just exists, burning and burning, energetic, aware.”
“A light to the world.”
“Maybe?
Just light. Nothing but light.”
“Salt and light, like Father says. We’re supposed to be salt and light to the world.”

Sniff, wipe.
Exhale.

“Yeah.”

As My Feet Move…

Written September 25

As my feet move, I am discernible. As my feet move, I shake my head. I’d forgotten what it felt to be barefoot. I’d forgotten how to move.
“Where ya going?” asks neighbor sir with the gardening hat and wheelbarrow in tow.
“To the lake,” I reply, a bit taken aback by his forward, defenseless bonhomie. I’ve been a resident of the south for twelve years now, and it still surprises me when people tip their hats and say ‘hello.’
“I thought you was going to town,” he chuckles.
Town? What town? We live in a subdivision off Highway 302 and I am barefoot with my jeans rolled up, carrying a journal and a book on Confession. Town?
It’s a nice thought. Oddly enough, the last real “town” I had been in was Lambertville, New Jersey, where everyone knew everyone by name and shouted their conversations across the street, which was about six feet wide or less.
Memphis was a place of hostility for me, void of the picture book Southern gentility I had come to expect from shows like Paula Deen’s Home Cooking. Looking back on it now, I suppose it was my own family’s problems, their and my inability to be satisfied with the now, that made life so exhausting.
I used to blame my problems on a self-diagnosed case of Seasonal Affect Disorder, but as I lay here in the ripe green grass under the shade of trees budding with acorns and a sky like the Caribbean sea, I know it’s not that. It’s me. It’s my head. I see things, all possible outcomes, the good, the horrible, the imagined and the impossible. They come and go too fast for me to even get them down on paper.
Even as I close my eyes and feel the breath of God on my cheek, I want to yell: at myself, for not being better. At my parents for not pushing me harder. At God, for not giving me a clearer reason to live.
There are lilac bushes planted on the base of my friend the tree, and they take me back to my first home, on the outskirts of Boston, where lilacs and morning glories bloomed along our fence, and buttercups roamed like fairies. I miss those days. I had my imagination back them.

I see four kids, I’d guess ten, playing in the basin by the lake. I wonder if they’ve been taught to worry yet, or if their parents guarded them against fruitless thought. Do they have a self conscious? If they are just “being kids” what will happen when the time comes to apply to colleges and they have nothing to write on a piece of paper that, whether they like it or not, will make an irreparable impact on their life? Do they know fear?

I’d forgotten what the feel of grass was against my skin. I’d forgotten how the sky looked from down here–vast and blue, like a soft blanket. The sky is always here. Can I spend all my time with the sky and the trees and the grass? I bet they get a lot of wayward wanderers appealing to them for help, or at the very least, comfort. I wish so badly that I lived in a time where people still made “house calls” and borrowed cups of sugar. Now the only thing that sees me more than my own mirror is my car on the way to SuperTarget.

I live a pitiful existence. And yet the grace and the ants disagree. The ants, perfectly content spending the days climbing up and down blades of grass, seem to really get it. Or maybe there’s just not even that much to get. Maybe there just is. Just blades of grass and acorn trees and blanket sky and clouds. Isn’t that nice?

Recipe for Enjoying a Weekday Afternoon, September Style

September is a fickle month in the Mid-South. Mother Nature can’t quite make up her mind whether the season is summer or fall. The air is crisp and clean and definitely open widow friendly, and yet the sun is still hot enough to make you yearn for a swim in your newly closed pool after a short jog.
In the midst of worrying my face off that I’ll never be accepted back in to school, I am learning to read again–for pleasure, for fun, for “staycation” sake.

Afternoon Coffee:

Serves one

One cup (a real cup, not the American oversized bathtub mugs that give you digestion problems) freshly brewed strong coffee (I use Seattle’s Best, level 5)

One or two splashes half and half

One peppermint candy

Combine ingredients in your reasonably sized mug. Serve with a book and a Grannamae cookie. Use as fuel for your newly rediscovered passion for writing:

Always, Always…

Always, always, bliss on paper. A book and a warm mint coffee? Nothing better. It used to be I could not read, I would not read. Reading merely passed time when I was not consciously doing something we like to call “productive.” My eyes would merely skim the words while my brain ran laps, thinking volatility of the tasks I had not yet completed, the people I had not yet impressed, the weight I had not yet lost. Now on temporary leave from school, after an hour of computer time I feel my energy drain away, so I quickly stand up to shake myself. What to do now? My “tasks” can only go so far in one day, so I decide to read for a few hours–outside I go, with my new friend Frances Mayes:

“How to quantify happiness? Any loved house you’ve personally slaved over feels like an extension of yourself. Many people have told me that when they arrived in Italy, they’ve surprised themselves by thinking, I’m home. I, too, had that sensation when I first came here. By now, that feeling has magnified. And, as for a loved one, I have that scarier feeling, I can’t be without you. Meanwhile, the house just stands here, indifferent, facing the changing light and weather.”

I smile, and I can’t stop smiling, because I love reading stories of triumph over self, of succumbing to the natural order of time and space. I love that I know that I am enough to be happy–to exist within the close confines of happiness. I close my eyes and drink in the clear sky above me, the sky I feel was made just for me today. I want to stay with it forever, under the Tuscan sun like Frances. I wish I could. I know I can’t, at least not yet–I am too young. I am ripe, and my duties in this world are numerous. I face years of overcoming challenges, meeting people, moving forward. I have degrees to earn, pictures to take, many tears to shed, cuts to bleed, God willing. And children to foster. That is just fine with me.

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”