on living not alone

A little melancholy today. Church lifted my spirits for awhile, but now I'm back home and I have work to do and I'd rather take a long, long nap.

I think I've identified the problem, though. It was a hypothesis I hadn't thought to test out last year; I was in my stubborn I-do-it-mySELF mode (I think I've been in that mode since I was about nine) and had determined to see things through MY way. Until impending psychological annihilation forced my hand, I planned never, ever to live with another human being until I married.

Impending psychological annihilation did force my hand -- I believe in free will; I could certainly have chosen to stay, and I definitely chose to return home; but God most certainly stacks the deck to guide us when we're too hardheaded to listen -- and I returned home consumed with the bitterness of resumed dependence. I meant always to live alone. I meant to be fine alone. I failed.

But instead of drudgery I found freedom, and the hypothesis I had found interesting -- that depression is worst when a person is alone -- proved itself true. Since I took up residence once again with my parents, the void has retreated considerably. Now, lest you, dear readers, think that because of this I plan to live with Mommy and Daddy forever, I will qualify by saying that I don't think it's just my parents that have helped; it's the companionship, period. And not even constant being in each other's presence; it helps simply knowing there's someone else in the house, even if I'm up in my room grading essays.

I read a study once a few years back that showed that married people who suffer from clinical depression, even if the marriage is a bad one, suffer less than single people with clinical depression. The rates of alcoholism, substance abuse and suicide were much higher among depressives who lived alone. Since I firmly believe that depression is fundamentally centered around disconnect and isolation, it stands to reason, to me, that not only marriage, but any kind of living arrangement that involves more than one person under the same roof is helpful.

Which means that, when I leave my parents' place, I'd better have a roommate wherever I'm going. Because company is such a relief. Looking back, I notice that my depression became completely unmanageable only in The State of Denmark, where, for the first time in my life, I lived utterly and totally alone. Granted, in the Ivory Tower I had no actual roommate, but I saw a good deal of my neighbors, several times a day, and I knew that every day I would talk to someone who wasn't me (another reason for smoking, back then; I always saw my neighbors on the porch). And even when I wasn't interacting with them, their presences filled the house, sometimes irritatingly so; all the same, life and vitality and otherness was at work all around me, and the void was much, much less potent, almost nonexistant.

Meg said last weekend that she wished she and Phillip had an extra room in their house, so that I could have gone to live with them for awhile after everything became too much. And I would have loved that. Memorial Day weekend was such a wonderful time because I was somewhere where I completely belonged. Whether dressed to the nines, bleary-eyed and bed-headed and jammified, or taking forever to cross over from the latter to the former, I was perfectly at home. Helping out around the house, doing a little bit with the cooking, participating in watching Josie (who's so BIG and CUTE -- I'm going to be the Cool Aunt who always gives her awesome and annoying toys, I've decided, starting with my next visit) was all just as satisfying as lounging around in the backyard tanning and talking with Meg. I remember thinking, as I scrubbed the dishes, This must be what extended family used to be, with multiple generations living in the same house. And in some ways it was a lot more peaceful, in all its crowdedness and differing temperaments, than it ever was in The State of Denmark, alone.

All of this stems from my parents' absence on a camping trip this weekend. Yesterday was wonderful, even luxuriant, as I rose in an empty house and prepared my coffee and drifted around from room to room doing exactly as I pleased. Working alone in the garage, journaling, talking to myself -- everything was peaceful and delightful, because I love my solitude. Until about five o'clock, when I thought of the long evening stretching ahead of me and felt a roll of dread twist in my stomach.

Evenings are the worst. They always were. I will happily go the day without conversing with a single soul, but come eventide, I want company. Nothing really makes it better, and I didn't feel like going anywhere (and I received a last-minute party invite which I declined, so in stark honesty I did have options; but it wasn't the kind of crowd I wanted, and I would have had a hard time focusing on the present and on the people), so I did last night what I have done for a year and a half, and switched on the television while I graded essays.

And I don't think it was a coincidence that yesterday afternoon was the first time in a long, long while that I suddenly wanted a cigarette. It was only a fleeting thought, easily dismissed; but it was there. (I haven't attempted or desired to attempt to smoke in well over a month. I officially quit in October when I moved back to PA, though I had about one every month until the night I QUIT quit several months ago. I am delighted to say that I believe this habit is kicked. The last one I attempted tasted so horrible that I only made it through a couple of drags before the nausea hit and I put it out. I quit reluctantly, but baby, I quit.) Isolation fosters a whole slew of bad habits in a depressive person.

I'm glad my folks are coming back sometime this afternoon. I plan to listen to my music loudly while I arrange bookshelves until they return, and to enjoy my daytime alone. But I'm glad I won't be by myself in the evening. The time wasn't torturous or anything, and I didn't find myself slipping suddenly back into a bad state; it couldn't even qualify as a rough patch. It was more like the little ripples of water in the cup on the dashboard from Jurassic Park: a little signifier of worse things to come, given time and an unchanged state of affairs.

A good part of me is resentful: Isn't there some way to beat this thing on my own? Another part of me is laughing at my resentful self and saying, Of course not, silly; what did you expect? God designed us to live in community. The practical part of me is shrugging and saying, This is how it goes. Run with it. No point in resisting what's true, even if it does strike a blow to your pride. Life, and life to the fullest, is more important than keeping your pride intact. And anyway, it's not like you're depending on other people to make you better; just having them around gives you the buffer you need to deal with the devilfish on your own. They don't even need to do anything. So you're not being needy and you don't need to be ashamed of needing companionship. That's how you're built, after all.

And I have to say, it's nice not to have the void yawning at my heels all the time. Living with other people is the way life is supposed to be, and since I'm single, I must -- and get to -- be a little more creative in how I achieve that communal living. We'll see what the future has in store.

Still, a little melancholy today.

porch blogging on Saturday

I love Saturdays.

So does Simon. As long as Mommy is home and sprawled out in bed, he asks nothing more from life. Well, he asks Mommy to feed him at quite early hours, but as soon as that's done and I've burrowed back under the covers, he will curl up next to me for hours, radiating feline contentment. (I call him Saturday Simon in those moments.)

This morning it's some brief blogging and journaling on the porch, sipping my outrageously strong coffee (Meg and Phillip, non-coffee drinkers -- what is it with most of my most beloved people shunning coffee and hating cats? -- spent a lot of time last weekend wrinkling their noses at the strength of the scent wafting out of my travel French press, which seemed to eat like acid at the air), and then it's time to roll up my sleeves and attack the mess of my possessions in the garage.

The majority of my books have been stored there since I returned to PA in October, and with the spring rains the garage has become horribly damp -- not a good condition for my bound and printed friends. Thursday night, having decided to dig around for one of my favorite Robin McKinley books, I slopped my way out to the garage -- it had poured so much rain all that afternoon that a lot of Erie's roads washed out and I soaked the brakelines of my car surging through puddles up to the axles -- to find wet boxes and sodden books. Thankfully, since I have been cultivating over the past few years an attitude of, "It's only stuff," I wasn't totally devastated, although seeing some of my nearest and dearest in their pitiable waterlogged condition tore at my insides. I rescued the ones most in need of it, stacked the rest where the water couldn't reach them, and decided to take care of things once and for all on Saturday.

I decided this will be yet another good opportunity to weed through my possessions and rid myself of the ones I don't really want. I have plenty of books that I don't ever see myself reading, and which I only bought because either they were cheap and I thought maybe I'd read them someday, or I felt obligated to own them because they were "classics." I plead guilty to the latter reason more in my undergrad years than since; after progressing through the English program and realizing that, aside from truly ancient literature, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Mark Twain, I don't really care for anything written before 1900, I stopped plaguing my conscience with unnecessary purchases of books like Bleak House.

But I never threw any Bleak House-type books away, so leftover guilt haunts my shelves and I think the time has come to pare down my collection. It's all well and good to boast of an 800-strong library, but if that's the only reason I have 800 books, it's kind of a waste. Further, books are expensive to ship overseas, and I would like to be able to cart only the ones I love best across whatever ocean stands between Erie and my future "home" (I have a growing concept of "home" that mostly means I don't believe I'll ever really be home in this life, because home is so many people and places to me, none of which can ever in this present really converge, though instant communication helps) without breaking the bank.

Interspersed with my Operation Rescue or Remove efforts will be more essay grading for my second job. (I have quit the bookstore, so no more absurdly late hours unless I choose to keep them. Expansive sigh of relief.) So, all in all, Saturday promises to be a pretty full one; but solitary and restful nonetheless. I like to reserve Saturday as my weekly day of rest; my definition of day of rest centers around the concept of having no obligation to leave the house or even shower unless I want to. In summers this usually means I do leave the house after a shower in order to pursue fun days at the beach or, probably, pick fruit with Mom and learn how to can and make preserves; but the key is that I don't have to.

I have no problems with making commitments to various causes and people, because they are freely chosen; but I tend to hate pure obligations, which come without choice, and I bristle when they rear their demanding heads. Of course this doesn't mean that I don't fulfill my obligations. I go to work, pay my taxes, pay my bills, honor my parents, attend church, keep my promises. That's just being responsible and honorable. But I have set apart one day where I don't have to do most of these things (well, aside from honoring my parents. Not only is that part of my duty as a Christian, and not only is it something beneficial to all concerned, and not only is it rarely a difficult task, but it really helps keep the peace in the house). Where anything I do, I do because I have chosen to do it, and not because I "have to" or "should." Which means that if I do opt for something laborious, like my garage-hoeing-out, it comes without burden, because I'm under no constraint. And that's a sacred freedom to me.

Yes -- I enjoy commitments; I find satisfaction in responsibilities; I don't even mind duties all that much. But I hate obligations. They imply a certain mindlessness, where everything to me is mindful. When someone implies that I am under obligation to do something, my immediate, resentful response is, Why? Usually followed with, But that's stupid. The concept of liking all your relatives, for example. I don't like all of mine. Some of them are really unlikeable. I might love them, but I don't like them, and I don't have to like them. Love is a duty; liking is not. Liking is earned; it has to do with who a person is, not how I know him. And I certainly don't have to spend time with family members I don't like for no other reason than spending time with them. (This is why I never attend family reunions. Up till now I've made full use of the excuse that I live too far away; now that that excuse has evaporated, my family will just find out that I don't attend because I don't want to.) The upside of this appearance of being undutiful is that when I do spend time with my relatives, it means more because all of us want to be around each other.

So there you have it, folks. A little more rambling than usual today. I blame the weather and the porch. Something about the indolent heat of almost-June sunshine, the easy coolness of the lake-chilled breeze, the snarl and whine of mowers and buzz saws as the neighborhood gets its lawns and trees and porches ready for summer, birdsong and the sporadic hum of passing cars lends itself to a certain stream-of-consciousness that this contented girl can't deny.

Ahhhh, I love Terminator.

Salvation wasn't what I expected, but it did not disappoint. I loved the trippiness of a prequel that happens in the future. Predictability doesn't make it any less awesome.

Plus the franchise grasps the fundamental nature of what it means to be human: to love. The grittiest, most real kind of love. In sacrifice.

The Hell's Angels are meeting in the office. About a dozen of them got into a barfight and one of the office lawyers knows a couple of them. This morning they trooped in, huge, strangely bearded and pierced, half of them in their fifties, followed by their women who all sported barbed wire armband tattooes and looked somewhat the worse for wear.

I have already been called "darlin'" and "honey," hovered over protectively, and solicited for my email address.

At least they're moving with the times.

hear us roar

You know what I hate about advanced technology? With everything becoming smaller and increasingly virtual? There's nothing to kick. Right now, for example, I want to kick the internet, because it's not working properly at the office. But I can't kick the internet. And I can't kick my computer, because it will break.

Back in the day if the tractor didn't work, you kicked it until either it worked or you felt better. But ours is a world of sitting out the malfunction until it corrects itself, which closely resembles the waiting in cattle lines we face at the grocery store or in traffic; ours is a world of calling tech support and biting our knuckles and sitting on hold for hours when the computer doesn't do what we think we're telling it to do; ours is a world of gritting our teeth in the effort not to damage the expensive flatscreen TV when the digital signal gets all screwed up and we no longer even have the option of adjusting the antenna to get a better picture. Ours is a world of helpless immobility in the face of ungovernable and infinitely breakable components of an entirely technological civilization. We can't fix anything ourselves, and we can't yield to our anger at the things we can't fix.

This is why people snap into murderous road rages and go postal for no good reason. Our world is becoming so orderly and fragile and intricate and out of our control in even the simplest matters that the aggression which comes naturally to humanity has no safe or socially acceptable outlet except for the exercise most of us don't bother with. We can't even yell at each other in person because we're dealing with people over the phone or the internet, and without personal resolution to conflicts we stew and simmer for hours after a frustrating business call and take it out on our coworkers, friends and family. The danger of all that bottled rage -- we are physical beings, we can never breed aggression out of ourselves -- is that when it does erupt, there's no controlling it. When we deny these inborn aggressive tendencies their law, their rule for acceptable expression, such as kicking the tractor when it doesn't work, then the expression of what we have made no law to accommodate is utterly lawless and beyond the reach of reason. And the results are usually horrifying.

Rahr. I still want to kick the internet. I think every office and every home should have a punching bag.

for His name's sake

Today my heart is beautifully full. Some combination of the open highway ("there's nothing that the road cannot heal"), a luxuriant weekend with my chosen family (why isn't there a wormhole between Meg & Phillip's backyard and wherever I am?), a word from God that stole my breath away and steeled me to a renewed purpose, deeper tenacity, expansive peace and truer love (fortunately my body continued to function and do important things like pay attention to the road since my consciousness was suddenly engaged elsewhere midway through Cleveland), and an evening of unexpected joy brought me to an almost-summer of the soul, and, tired though I am (sometimes sleep seems like salvation; lately it seems like an inexcusable waste of time), my soul at present is a quiet glade in the early morning. Wildflowers shoot like colored stars from the grass, leaves and the trumpet blast of gold-shot sky breathe shivers on the water and all is expectant and hushed, the stillness charged with a quivering deep in the atoms: a held motion on the brink of eruption, a kinesis reverberating joy.

And that doesn't mean that my trepidations don't trouble me, or that my uncertainties don't wear me out in my constant internal war against them. But my confidence is growing that God will "repay me for the years the locusts have eaten," and that "I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." God is with me through all of this, and He is that He is, and therefore I can trust in His love and in His goodness, and in the destiny He has prepared for me, whatever that is. It's going to be incredible, and every bit worth the cost.

Leaving Meg and Phillip was no easier the second time around.

An FYI of admittedly nasty snobbery made all the nastier for having been leashed so long

Seriously. Don’t pick a song to replace the good old-fashioned sound of a telephone ringing when I call your cell phone. I never “enjoy the music while [my] party is being located.” In fact, there’s only one person I know whose selections I would like*, so by the time you pick up the call, or let it go to voicemail, I’m deeply annoyed with your bad taste and wondering, if you’re my friend, why you’re my friend, and if you’re a client, what excuse you have for living. Don’t foist that inane mainstream pop offal that you like to think of as music on me. I don’t foist my amazing yet largely underappreciated and misunderstood works of musical brilliance on you. I respect your inability to comprehend it. And I don’t want to annoy you because I already know you won’t like it. Your self-advertisement, your hilarious and ironic demonstration of individuality through your choice of some Top 40 hit song, throws me into a raging inner conflict of fury, despair, contempt and pity, which is just damn uncomfortable. I only wanted to call you, not find myself immersed in a painful internal inquiry as to what went wrong with our culture and when, that art as a rule has died from the public consciousness, of which you are, to my dismay, an oblivious and tragically amusing part.

I want to think the best of you. So have a heart and stick with a simple ring-a-ling-ling. Consider it a contribution to world peace.

____________________________
*There are, of course, friends whose tastes I respect, even if I do not share them. But in the interest of common courtesy people should probably save mutual broadening of musical appreciation for get-togethers. Further, hearing the same song every time I call brings me less toward a broadening and more toward a narrowing of the mind. Basically I wind up hating the song through its mindless repetition, and the song-selecter's attempt to convert me to a new genre self-destructs in a serious backfiery way. I appreciate your individuality through your conversation, not your ring tone. Hm, and none of this applies to my respected friends anyway because they already possess the common decency not to commit the disastrous act of rudeness that has so irritated me this morning, for which I thank them.

A humorous realization brought home to me by Star Trek

Yesterday I went to see the new movie. I'm kind of in love with the origin stories that many of the franchises have been producing over the past ten or so years (with the significant exception of Star Wars, although I tip my hat to it for generating the trend); origin myths have always held me in thrall; and the new Star Trek proved itself, wonderfully, no exception.

I grew up on Star Trek, mostly The Next Generation, though interspersed, of course, with the original series and the first movies, so I'm a Trekkie born and bred. I retain enough dignity not to deck myself out in costumery of any kind -- not my scene -- but I love the characters, love the stories, love the imagination and the smidgets of science. Every week with my parents and my sister I sat on the couch balancing a plate on my lap, thrilling to Patrick Stewart's voice intoning, "Space: the final frontier." My childhood onscreen crush was Wil Wheaton, I wore my 80s headbands over my eyes to mimick Jordie's visor, and I rewrote most of the storylines in my head to incorporate myself into the scripts.

So of course I've been uncontainably excited for the release of the new film, and last night, watching Kirk and Spok and McCoy and Scottie yell at each other through moments of epic action, I sat up and started laughing. Because I realized that, as swaggering and boyish and incorrigible and charming as Kirk is, I've never been all that interested in him. Nope, my teenaged girl heart surged for Spok -- ten years later, still does. And, as I outgrew Wesley Crusher, for Data.

Yes, I know; I've revealed my shameless and hopeless inner geek to the blogosphere, and you may laugh at my expense, dear readers. I remain, however, sheepishly unapologetic. Evidently I'm overwhelmingly attracted to highly intelligent, ethical (and, in Spok's case, sardonic), rational, relatively unemotive men whose emotions run deep but generally undetected. In my girlhood dreams of these characters I didn't want to make them more emotive; I just wanted them to know that I understood them, so that they could freely be themselves. In return they provided me with a calm and mental orderliness that more emotive people usually can't give, and they let me be emotional.

Pointy ears and slanty brows, and dead white skin and yellow eyes, are in short supply among the human race. But the impulse to understand, and to be tolerated, drives my closest friendships. With Hillori, my sister and John (all Rationals...and I rather think that Meg is one, too), there's a deep symbiosis that mutually sustains, and, in my case anyway, delights. Fortunately the benefit of interacting with humans (as opposed to half-aliens and androids) is a liberal dose of humor and lightheartedness, in addition to the reciprocal love-and-let-live.

The realization made me happy. With my Rational friends I feel safe. Even in the moments when they're overwhelmed by unfamiliar surges of emotion, I don't feel overtaxed; on the contrary, I come into my element, which I know they appreciate (I love fostering understanding, whether or the self or of other people or of abstract concepts); I also know that when the dust settles they'll feel themselves again -- in other words, they won't become a drain on my resources, because it's not in their natures. And in the moments when I'm overwhelmed by emotions which I understand perfectly well but cannot order, the grounding they give me offers inexpressible relief to my buffeted soul -- and, because I'm a reasonable person myself, they know I'm not always insane, and take me in their stride. So the give-and-take of a healthy relationship moves almost effortlessly between my Idealist self and my Rational friends.

Understanding, balance, appreciation and respect: an ideal combination that proves that sometimes, life functions exactly as it ought to.

Yay for loving and being loved. Yay for introspection born of Star Trek. And yay for Spok.

Today, if I could do anything I wanted, I would...

1. Wander the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian for hours and hours and hours. Today's Google logo made me really want to look at dinosaur bones.

2. Climb all over Panama Rocks in Panama, New York, pretending I'm in Fangorn Forest. That's best for rainy days, though. When I was small my parents and sister and I took a day trip there. The weather was misty and damp; the rocks loomed in random-seeming piles, taller than several men; little clefts and pathways and crevices and caves twisted everywhere; the tree roots snaked down over the faces of the rocks; it was ferny-smelling and silent and old; a feeling of power emanated from the ground and from the low-bending trees; and my little-girl self stared around her in shivery awe, never wanting to leave. It was just before I knew about Ents, but if I'd seen one, I would have known right away what he was, and I would have clapped my hands and flitted into Middle-Earth without a backward glance.

spring and thoughts of past and future present

I. Spring

For the second Saturday this year, the temperature has provided enough warmth for a girl to sit on the back deck in her bare feet enjoying the spring fragrances spicy on the breeze. The apple blossoms have fallen off the old orchard trees across the street (our old rule of thumb for the time to put away shoes and run around barefoot), everything that bears foliage has exploded with green, and the overcast sky and the rising purpose in the wind speak of thunderstorms to come.

But for now it's mild, on the edgy side of restful, the kind of weather that makes you glad to be awake and in the present, and I am profoundly enjoying the new possibility of sipping coffee and blogging on the deck.

This week seemed at the same time impossibly good and impossibly long. Every day brings unlooked-for blessings, sudden ambushes of joy, and yet the time moves at so slow a pace as to stretch the days out in slow muscularity like bread dough under the rolling pin. My whole being waits for something, and, like the building intensity in the lakeborn breeze, events are moving toward some kind of arrival.

While I wait I have plenty of occupations. My favorite at the moment is my new laptop. The last time I had one I sported a freshman ID at Grove City. That laptop came to me from the college as included in my tuition, which was great, except that it was a Compaq and widely recognized even at the time as barely worth the effort of maintaining it. Its battery died and it eventually reached the point where it would shut down without warning even plugged in, but it held the bulk of the terrible writings of my youth, and I kept it for the nostalgic value.

As we discussed my returning to the parental nest a couple of months ago, Dad wanted to borrow it for his IT buddy to restore. We have wireless at the house, and Dad has his own laptop, and Mom has the PC, and, being a rather territorial bunch ("Hey -- why did you drink out of my mug? This one is yours") we thought it would be a good idea for me to have my own computer. Reluctantly I handed over the old Compaq, telling Dad, "It's in reeeeally sad shape, Pop, I don't know what he can do with it." "We'll figure something out," he said.

Money being what it is in our family (it turns out that everyone benefits from my temporary return home; Mom's getting fewer hours at work and the money I bring in that doesn't go toward my debt can help with the household groceries, which salves my wounded pride a bit), I didn't pick up on the catch phrase. "We'll figure something out" always means "I'll find a way to get you the best thing possible and damn the cost because you need this and I love you." So I shouldn't have been surprised on Thursday night when Dad handed me a computer-shaped box and said, "We got it back."

"Sweet!" I pulled it open, and stopped. A shiny blue thing gleamed under a thin veil of styrofoam. "Wait...this isn't my computer," I said. I looked at the box cover and then lifted the styrofoam. "Dad, this isn't...it's not my brand." I looked at him. He looked confused. I looked even more confused. As I lifted the oh-so-light little laptop out of the box, I suddenly got it and asked, "What did you do?" He started grinning, Mom was lighting up her end of the living room with her smile, and suddenly I was like a little kid at Christmas, opening the cover and squealing over everything. "Dad...is that Webcam? I HAVE WEBCAM! I can Skype!!!"

I thought his cheeks would split. Hugs were given all around, and then I curled up on the couch clutching my new goody.

My parents are the best. They got all vague when I asked them what I owe them, so I guess I'll have to work it off with acts of indentured servitude, if only to make myself feel better. I can't get over the luxury of checking my email in bed, or blogging on the deck, or looking up "Alsatian" at the dining room table (which breed Mom knew and I didn't). From sheer force of habit I keep finding myself gravitating toward Mom's PC in the corner of the living room, and then laughing at how confusedly anchorless I feel when I can carry my laptop all over the house, as if I weren't really online unless the computer is too large to go anywhere.

So that was the highlight of my list of good things this week. I also had plenty of phone calls and emails from old friends, and yesterday a really fabulous conversation with my boss about politics and the church. The weather has been splendid, I'm trying out a new fun brand of makeup in preparation for the browns and bronzes of summer, and my grading job starts paying at the beginning of June. And next week I will be at Meg and Phillip's! Road trip, good music with the windows rolled down, the familiar interminability of the Ohio turnpike, and time spent at last with my chosen family. (I can't wait to see my niece. I told Meg the other week, "Ohhh, Meg, I have so many words to teach her!" "No you don't," she said. "Oh, but they're really memorable and short," I said. "Well, she already thinks that 'sit' is 'shit,'" Meg said, "so I don't know how much damage you can do.")

Ahh...everything is so beautiful here in early summer. It's supposed to be all rainy and cold the rest of the weekend (harumph harumph), but yesterday and today have been simply enchanting. I've taken to driving home from work along Route 5, which parallels the lake, instead of the more straightforward routes that would get me home faster but don't bear Route 5's scenic charm. It's the prettiest highway drive around here, with the blue of sky and lake and the browns and greens of earth -- but at this time of the year, mostly greens. And the smells. Makes you glad to be alive.

II. Thoughts of Past and Future Present

Mixed in with all my gladnesses and gratitudes (oo, a little sunshine!) are reflections on my current state of affairs and what I'm going to do with my future. Mom helped me with the ongoing ordeal of cleaning the rest of my crap out of the trailer last night, and I mentioned how much better it's been for me not living alone -- really, people prone to clinical depression who are in recovery from prolonged trauma shouldn't live alone; it gives the darkness too much sway -- and how sometimes I lapse into troll living because I just don't care. She pointed out what I remembered even as she said it -- that I kept a beautiful home in my apartment in South Bend. "The difference is that you were happy there," she said, threading my grandmother's awful lace curtains back onto the curtain rods. "You liked your whole life." "Yeah, it's been awhile since that," I said from where I leaned against the doorjamb.

So I've been turning that over in my mind, trying to be gentle with myself as I am generally not wont to do and view myself reasonably, and I journaled this morning about the various factors then that contributed to my general happiness with life back then, which manifested itself in a happily clean home. Because, being me, I have been worrying that perhaps I'm just a shitty housekeeper and doomed to clutter -- in that grand sweep wiping out two and a half years of cleanliness that clearly contradicts my self-deprecation and in fact comprises the majority of my adulthood spent living alone. The past eighteen months have resembled rather how I lived in college during my sister's illness, when various family traumas took up most of my mental and emotional space, leaving no attention to devote to a sparkling dorm room unless I was utterly bored or feeling dutiful toward my poor roommates.

Which only means that I will again be able to live the way I did in the Ivory Tower on Leland Avenue. Pondering how, I watched my pen sprawl across the pages of my little wood-covered diary this morning while I numbered in my head my many happinesses while I lived in that idyllic space and time.

First, I loved the apartment itself. If Romeo had been an apartment, I was Juliet stepping onto its balcony. The moment I walked through those doors for the first time, my pudgy, sweating, creepy potential landlord didn't matter; my exhaustion from viewing terrible apartment after terrible apartment all that day didn't matter; my worries about affording life on my own didn't matter. I felt an unaccustomed peace wash through me, and I felt like I could breathe. The high ceilings, the many long windows, the clean brightness of the light that made the walls glow said, Welcome home.

It brings me to tears even now to remember how much I loved that space, and the bitterness of my leaving it. I was happy there. I fled there for refuge after stressful days. I lounged there all weekend, reveling in the joy that apartment afforded me. Place has always meant a great deal to me, and that place was home. That place was my home. No matter what new enormous monstrosity of furniture I carted in (or wheedled friends' visiting cousins to cart in for me), the apartment accommodated it with gracious ease. The house loved me, and I loved it right back. I adored the little cement porch opening onto the side yard where I could sit in my pajamas without being seen from the street. I loved the half-threatening, half-charming alleyway out back. I loved the neighbors and the old-towney feel of the neighborhood, the dignified historic houses, the warped brick streets. I loved the walk leading down to the sulphur-smelling river, and I loved coming home.

During those years I also had a full roster of social activities. I spent time with the grad students I'd met through MP; MP and I shared whirlwind insane adventures every other day; I made friends at work; I got Simon. I learned to cook, and learned that I was amazing at it. I hosted dinner parties. I befriended the neighbors. I discovered that I was likeable, and that introverted does not mean shy. My intellect received daily stimulation, and my conversation became an art. I treasured my solitude because I didn't have much of it, and emotionally I felt rosy and glowing, perfectly balanced.

I also loved my job. Working with homeless infants and toddlers was draining, and wore me out before a year was out, but I loved working at the Center. I believed in what I did. I was helping others. I was working with like-minded people to make a difference. I was providing a safe space for humanity's most vulnerable, and I loved (most of) those kids. My ideas mattered; I got to put them to use. I met and interacted with frightening people and came to know them as everyday human beings, and more like to myself than I in my former shelteredness would have thought possible. I witnessed the entire spectrum of human capabilities -- the capacity for great things as well as terrible things, which often lived side-by-side in the same person. My work was rewarding, it was interesting, it meant something, it was adventurous.

Even spiritually I was happy enough. I gave up on finding a church, but I read my Bible and prayed and was aware of God intensely most of the time. I had surprising conversations with surprising people that taught me more of the omnipresence of God's love. I burned with purpose. I was ready for anything. Every day unfolded before me with hints of the unexpected, the joyouse eternal, like a slowly opening flower, and it was all mine to discover. I was a pioneer.

I haven't really had those things, and certainly not all at once, since that time. Even back then I knew I wouldn't stay in those circumstances forever; but I could only think of bigger and better things to follow. And for the first time in my life, I was happy in the present, and not merely with dreams of the future. I've struggled to recover that certainty ever since. I moved on to more practical avenues when necessity forced it, but that was the last time I was freely happy in all facets of my life.

Adventure. A space in surroundings I love. Humanitarian work alongside like-minded people to make a palpable difference in others' lives. Companionship and intellectual stimulation and the daily awareness of grace. My own definition of success. Even relative poverty -- money doesn't matter much to me if I have what I need and enough extra for little things I like, if I love what I'm doing. These are the things I want most, the things for which I yearn, the things which I had in shadow form back in 2005. Of course love and good food would be the ideal additions to this, my blueprint of the perfect life, but love will happen in its own time however I feel about it (and however frequently I'm convinced that I will burst into flame if I don't get to this whole marriage bed thing before my ovaries turn into raisins and my boobs start holding neighborly conversations with my navel and my face collapses into spiderlines like a cracked window) and good food I can scare up pretty much anywhere.

With those factors in mind, I have begun for the last month to consider seriously, and with serious prayer, some kind of overseas mission work. Short-term to start with, I think -- a year-long trip. As important as literacy is to me, I'm thinking if I can't find work in the mission field, I can always look for ways to teach. And I'm not thinking city work either; my heart has always lain with the more rural settings of the world. Perhaps I can even find a combination of the two as a missionary teacher somewhere remote. And when I think of the writing that would come out of those kinds of experiences, my skin ripples out in goosebumps.*

There's an overwhelming amount of research to be done, and I have little idea where to start (I'm an ideas person before I'm a details person, but hey, intelligent people adapt, right?). God might shut this idea down before I can bring it to fruition, or it could lose its appeal (which would probably relieve Mom -- though if God calls me to do anything, I know my parents will support it). Or perhaps it will instead be fine-tuned as His will becomes clearer to me, and take me somewhere unexpected where all of those things will be perfectly fulfilled in ways I hadn't imagined. That's usually the case. But regardless, that angle is the one I'll be working in the immediate future. I would never have seen myself saying, "Here I am. Send me!" Not in a million years. I was too afraid, and too attached to the soft and easy life. I'm still scared and fond of comfort, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there's more to life than the line of aimless subsistence I've drifted along the past couple of years, and increasingly convinced that it's in sacrificing many of the things I find comfortable that I come closer to discovering life's real meaning, which is far outside myself, or, perhaps more accurately, in the power of God working through the community of people (of which I am a part) drawing near to Christ and laboring in a gritty, front-lines way for a better world.

However that must happen, I want it. I still don't know the particulars, but until I receive a better word, that's the path I'll be preparing to follow, if only for a year. We'll see where God takes it. It seems, as I pray and prepare and give up a lot of my pride and independence and learn a different kind of interdependence than the one I'm used to, that I'm closer to the right direction than I've been in years, and that all of the choices I've made have been leading toward this. I was right not to go to grad school. I was right not to take the fast-track to money-making success. I was right to go when God said, Go. I was right to come back home to get my affairs in order and to meditate on what really matters. I was right to choose the friends I've chosen and to love as I love and have loved. I was right to wait, and now I'm right to prepare. Something is coming, and it's time to get ready. And it will be stunningly, powerfully, humblingly great.

Ack! Now where do I start?


_______________________________
* Why goosebumps? Why not chickenbumps, or duckbumps, or swanbumps, or pigeonbumps? Doesn't the skin of all plucked birds look the same? Were geese more widely eaten at some point in the history of England than other domestic fowl? Personally, I think "Duckbumps" would have been a better title for R. L. Stine's stupid pseudo-horror series pandering to the young and illiterate. "Goosebumps" is totally wasted on that concept.

a mini manifesto

A week ago at Subway I ran into a high school classmate.

I hate running into high school classmates. I hated high school. I didn't realize how much until a few days ago as my evening walk took me past the building where I spent the majority of the years between 1996 and 2000. As soon as I saw the particular set of double doors through which Hillori, my sister and I walked to go to homeroom, something rolled over me like a wave, leaving me feeling panicked and a little sick. In a flash I remembered with a clarity I suppressed at the time how much I dreaded walking through those doors every day. I almost stopped walking for a moment as a condensed version of all the shame I suffered at the hands of my peers exploded in my memory; and then I shut it off and kept going.

Whenever I run into people who knew me in high school, I see them still viewing me as the shy, awkward, brilliant, sensitive loser skulking through the halls to the refuge of class structure, where I shone because I couldn't help shining, even though it meant more social punishment between classes. It's actually easier to run into the people who used to pick on me, because they always knew I would grow up to be different from my high school persona. We may not exchange BFF bracelets, but whatever I'm doing, they look at me with a certain amount of respect -- at least respect that I've grown up. (Possibly because they have never left Erie. I'd have to test this hypothesis, but I'm not motivated enough for the ten-year reunion next year to try it.) The people I really hate meeting unexpectedly are the ones who existed on the margins of social acceptability like I did -- the ones who weren't in the hodgepodge circle of unapologetically geeky friends I had accumulated by senior year.

Sometimes survivors of a traumatic experience bond over their shared trauma. Sometimes they hate each other for having witnessed each other's humiliation. The classmate I saw last week fell more into the latter category than the former. Because we both elected the Honors track, we shared a lot of classes, and our interactions were civil but never chummy. So when I thanked the girl behind the counter at Subway and glanced into my purse for my wallet, and heard a hesitant, "...Sarah?" and turned to see L. next to me at the register, I was a little surprised by the eagerness on her face.

We started that superficial we-weren't-friends-but-we-knew-each-other-so-let's-pretend-to-catch-up conversation, and again I was surprised by the earnestness in her voice when she asked, "So what are you doing with your life?" I told her I was working at a law firm and had a couple other jobs, making ends meet; I shrugged and said I wasn't going to be in Erie for long but had returned home temporarily and it was nice to be back. After a few more pleasantries, she said, "So-and-so saw you working at Borders." "Oh, yeah," I said, "that's one of my other jobs. So-and-so was there?"

"Well," she said, "the context was like this. I was telling him last week how much I ruined my life, getting married so young and not even having my Bachelor's degree finished yet, and I said, 'I should have done something different with my life. I should have been like Sarah Peters. I'll bet she's doing something amazing right now.' And he said, 'Um, she's working at Borders.'"

Then she laughed. "I thought you'd be a famous writer by now, or...something," she said, smiling.

The delight in her eyes caught me entirely off guard. I don't remember what I said in response, but it certainly wasn't some crushing retort; I'm sure I said it in a dazed way, shocked, only able to see clearly her glee. As we said goodbye and she sat at her table looking glowingly satisfied, I returned to my car feeling shock wearing off into shame. Great, I thought. I've become a byword of comfort to those whose lives look like failures.

The sick feeling festered all day, but I wiped away a few tears that night and put it behind me. I told myself that she only knew one little thing about my life; I told myself that I wouldn't be here forever; I told myself that I was going on to great things; I told myself that it only hurt because I don't like where I am, either; if I loved everything I'm doing with the passion of having found my destiny, it wouldn't matter what other people said. All of that was true, of course; but it wasn't everything.

"Peter Pan Syndrome" refers generally to men who refuse to embrace the responsibilities of adulthood; but I dislike that interpretation, because anyone who has read the book knows that Peter Pan took his responsibilities to others seriously. Rather than an immature little boy, Peter Pan is "the eternal spirit of childhood," as it's put in Finding Neverland. And as such, as James Barrie writes, he is always shocked afresh by betrayal. One scene in the book has always stood out to me clearly where the others fade into fond fuzzy memories: In a battle with Captain Hook in the middle of the story, on a cliff in a cave by the sea (I believe), Hook nearly falls to his death, and Peter, out of honor, reaches out a hand to help him. Hook accepts Peter's aid, and then as soon as he reaches firmer footing, he rakes his hook across the arm that saved him. Some kind of chance saves Peter in that moment, because in his shock at the treachery, he can only stare at his bleeding wound, unable to comprehend the cruelty or lift his sword to defend himself.

L.'s malice hurt. If she had told me how she felt like a failure, I would have encouraged her. I do not comprehend destroying other people's self-integrity to assuage one's own wounded pride (or to compensate for one's own well-earned regret). And while I refused to dwell on it and told myself that it didn't matter, it's been shading my self-regard with shame for the past week.

Until this morning, when an unexpected email arrived from Hillori. I had told her about the incident when we talked a few days ago, and she wrote expressly to tell me that the more she thought about it, the angrier she was with L. (Hill used the term "Schadenfreude," which I was delighted to look up -- I don't get thrown a word I don't know very often.) "I certainly hope L.'s prod didn't make you question your decisions or where you are now!" she wrote. "You've been LIVING."

She also wrote that my experiences will deepen my writing, and that I may not know what exactly I will do in the future, but whatever it is, it will bear the mark of greatness.

In that moment this morning, with the corners of my eyes aching, I learned in a brand new way the redemptive power of friendship.

It's difficult for me to reach the point where that kind of power is possible. I learned long ago to keep my hurts and disappointments to myself. At first I stopped talking about painful events because other priorities, other people, were more important; later I stopped talking in order to reduce my vulnerability, to shrink the odds that anyone could hurt me with indifference or rejection (or Schadenfreude). I nobilized it over time. I claimed to myself that I didn't speak because I'm independent, because I don't like to burden others when they can't help, because I'm above average and therefore more capable of handling life on my own, because it's more important that I help others, since their suffering is greater or since they are less able to go it alone.

But the truth is more that I don't speak because I'm afraid, because I don't think anyone will value me or care about the effect of the things that hurt me, because I'm proud, and because while I have highly developed skills in loving others, I am uncomfortable with them loving me. I don't like the dependence. I don't like talking through my feelings. I don't like anyone seeing me upset. I am only able to cry in front of my parents, my sister, Hillori, Meg and John, and only able to cry freely in front of Hillori, Meg and John. And that happens so infrequently as to be nearly theoretical. I don't even cry much in private; I don't allow myself to be completely open in my emotions even to myself.

My habit has largely calcified. Mom reads my blog to find out how I'm really doing, because while I carry on pleasant conversations and smile and laugh about unrelated topics, if my day was bad I'll only shrug it off when asked. The power of deflection is one I wield with prodigious alacrity, and most of the time I feel a little trapped within myself, because it's so difficult to share. Don't get me wrong; I talk a good deal, and I talk about myself in such a way that most people think they know me well, when nothing could be further from the truth. I never lie, I'm never anyone who isn't me, I'm honestly Sarah all of the time; but I know the art of intimacy without vulnerability (which isn't actually intimacy, but a simulacrum) to screen my own sanctum sanctorum from detection. It's a system of smoke and mirrors that sometimes infuriates me with its effectiveness: Isn't there anyone who sees through my bullshit? Isn't there anyone who sees me?

There are a few who do, or who come very, very close -- and they number more than the few I mention here. There are a few who ask to whom I will give an open response. But still I minimalize almost everything. I have a horror of sounding whiny, and, strangely, any form of complaint or lament that I could voice, which would elicit, were I to hear it from others, an empathetic response, coming from my own mouth sounds shamefully whiny. So I rely on my own resources and try not to demand anything from anyone.

And it only depletes me. Like a starving body digesting its own muscle tissue to survive, my resources diminish. Maybe not as quickly as it would without my giftedness, my faith and my somewhat mystical relationship with God; but I have always believed strongly that we experience a great deal of God's love practically, through other people. It's not enough to be a two-way radio. Love needs connectivity, and I don't appear to believe that I am worth that.

Whatever has motivated me over the course of the past week to be a little less self-protective, both here on the blog (writing about bad days again -- and even what I write here isn't everything, dear readers; I am more than my blog) and in my conversations with my loved ones, has shown me a little of what I've been missing. If I don't talk, people can't pray for me; if they don't know what's wrong, they can't love me through it. And I miss an enormous facet of the Christian life, and of the healing and protective love of God, and of the experience of the power of prayer. Missing out on mutuality is missing out on real love, and since I believe that love (literally) holds the world together (God is the covalent bond), missing out on love is missing out on life. Loving one way is not a living love; it's a half-love, and a half-life.

Hillori's email restored my integrity to myself. She believes in me, sees me, is angry on my behalf and reminds me who I am. I know that's the case all the time, but experiencing it in the specific, in the stated, made it really, truly true. It erased my inward-eating shame and returned me to confidence and hope. It filled me with immense gratitude that I can call this person my friend.

And, most interestingly, though perhaps not at all surprisingly, the love I have received this week has strengthened my ability to give love. I love best when I'm loved. I'm accustomed to taking no risks when it comes to letting others see behind the screen; but I'm willing to change that. ("If you are willing, you can make me clean..." "I am willing. Be clean!") Kierkegaard's leap applies as much to love as to faith -- and yes, absolutely, there will be times when the ledge I choose to believe is there isn't, and I find myself badly broken by the fall; but I'd rather have the scars than pace the cliff's edge shivering in the dark until I freeze to death. I already know I can survive.

Easier said than done, of course. But entirely possible. It will be scary to be more open, but I'd rather love with risk than suffer it to wilt within me because I wouldn't give it sunlight. God is love; God is the covalent bond; love is the covalent bond; the covalent bond turns highly flammable gases into fire-quenching and life-giving water; we are 72% water; love holds us together; we are to be as God; we are to love each other; we are to rescue and tend to each other; and we are to be rescued and tended by each other.

I can't, and won't, trust everyone; that's stupid. But I can, and must, trust a few. Love without risk, love only in one direction, is a different form of stupidity, and a kind of martyred self-hatred, a terrible fear. But love drives out fear. Love is fear's opposite. And the only thing that matters, from beginning to end, alpha to omega, is love.

Wow. (Again.) This morning it was gray and sheeting rain -- which I didn't mind, actually, because I love rain and the temperature was in the 60s instead of the 40s, pleasant and fragrant though sadly devoid of sonic booms -- and then shortly after my last post, the sun came out, a breeze swept all the clouds out of the sky like a broom in a roomful of cobwebs, the temperature rose, everything smelled beautiful, and the day was just...lovely.

Also I heard from a few of my friends all at once this afternoon, and the things that seemed pooish earlier turned around with hidden benefits, and all in all the day has gone contentingly well.

Of course I'm loopy with tired because I've been sleeping no better, so my sentence fluency suffers, but it's a happy loopy and I bear no complaints.

Besides...twenty minutes till Bones.

duck

Ack! Anti-Midas! Anti-Midas! Everything I'm touching turns to shit!

It's one of those days I haven't had in awhile, where unwitting past oversights in various work-related spheres blossom into real mistakes, and, scattered and flustered by their flowering, I'm too distracted to pay close attention to anything else, and so I screw up whatever I'm working on in the moment too.

Fortunately I'm viewing it with a sense of humor -- a slightly wide-eyed, manic sense of humor, it is true, but humor is humor and it's a remarkable improvement on yesterday, and, like I said, I haven't had one of these days in awhile, which is good; and every day ends, and tomorrow is new, and God redeems the time. Also, in the grand scheme of things, none of these little piles of poo are actually a big deal.

Still, this is one of those days which short of a flaming pillar of divine intervention resembles a fast-paced, mean game of dodgeball in a muddy field where I can't find any cover, and so my best bet is to crouch down with my arms over my head and wait till the universe grows bored of the barrage and moves on to torment someone else. Then I can slowly stand up, take stock of the bruises, and laugh at all the mud on my face, in my hair, and in my clothes.

In the meantime (somebody hide me!) I am taking deep breaths and repeating my beautiful new mantra:

Nada te turbe;
Nada te espante;
todo se pasa;
Dios no se muda,
la paciencia
todo lo alcanza.
Quién a Dios tiene
nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.

~Teresa de Ávila

[Let nothing trouble you;
Let nothing make you afraid;
Everything passes;
God does not change,
patience accomplishes everything.
Who has God
lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.]

Lovely, isn't it? Peaceful. Soothing. True.

And one of my old, old favorites:

The Lord your God is with you;
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.

~Zephaniah 3:17

Even when I'm muddy and puzzled and my hands are covered in poo.

a post-it note of thanks

Wow. Somebody prayed. I have never experienced a night at the bookstore that was this...tranquil. Not a single thing happened to push me to the point of tears -- which, believe me, would have been as easy as blowing on a feather. Not a single thing happened to aggravate, frustrate, overwhelm, or irritate. It was...quiet. For no reason I didn't feel tired. I felt palpably wrapped in peace -- guarded. It was really, really, really nice.

Thank you, my prayer warrior(s). From the depths of my tired soul, I am grateful. And I can close my eyes on Wednesday smiling.

When I denigrated medication below, I was not. talking about aspirin.

a vindication of the value of women

Woke up tired again. I don't think I've slept well in at least three weeks; I fall asleep immediately every night but foul dreams creep through my sleep like wisps of mustard gas, destroying my rest. I wake with them still poisonous at the backs of my eyes but I can't remember them, and I wake tired, as though I spent the night crawling away from something. This morning, however strategically I applied cover-up to my eyes, the sockets look sunken in and I feel hideous and scary, something small children would hide from behind their mothers' knees.

Then the monthly hormone crash has struck, leaving me blearily irrational, irritable, prone to tears. Fortunately this will only last a day or two, but ugh, they're not going to be pleasant days this go-around. My parents are both brittle this week and I hope I'm not unbearable; maybe I'll shut myself up in my room so I don't bother anyone. If our house had a tower I'd hunch my way to the top and lurk around ringing bells. And not with cute talking gargoyles, either.

But I can't hide in towers swinging from bell ropes; I have to earn my bread by moving in society, and it's probably better that way. I just hope no one notices when my eyes overflow without provocation; it's embarrassing.

I also hope fervently that I can be present today. I tend to get all lost in my head on days such as this and even more absentminded than usual, to the point where even my body has trouble with its autopilot and I bang my hand on doorknobs, my legs on doorjambs and my elbows on the edges of counter- and desktops. (Maybe I'll start claiming an inner ear problem. That sounds a lot more respectable than clumsy.)

Not an auspicious night to work at the bookstore. (Next to last shift. Next to last shift. Next to last shift.)

On the other hand, if I'm all lost in my head, I don't care about things as much; foggy awareness buffers the instances that would ordinarily bug the hell out of me.

MP and I were discussing womanhood on Sunday. Both of us have (I believe), at one time or another, for medical purposes, been on the Pill; neither of us is now, and we prefer it that way. However much the ebb and flow of hormones drags our moods around like the tides after the moon, it's cyclical, it's natural, and it teaches us to deal with life in its rawness. Blunting that, relegating a woman's monthly hormone crashes to female craziness, labeling it negatively and medicating it away makes us sterile in more ways than one. I don't like the focus on sterility anyway; the potential, the ability, to bear a child is the one thing that only women can do, and it's a beautiful aspect of femininity, something to be respected if not treasured, and not scorned or stifled.

Our bodies give life. In our death-driven culture (and I'm not only talking abortion here, and even if I were, I wouldn't be holding the tired old argument nobody listens to anymore; I'm also talking about the sedentariness, the overwork, the obesity, the redefinition of beauty as skeletal to kill the people who don't weigh too much, the drug use, the meaningless sex, the disease, the godlessness, the isolation, the overwhelming emptiness that everyone can feel gnawing at the backs of their minds so that they live even more frantically attempting to ignore it) women have fallen prey to a horrible ideology. Our wombs are an object of horror, a potential threat to autonomy and wealth, and only acceptable if fallow, like a field sown with salt. Our breasts have been divested of their nourishing purpose and exist to sate only the appetite of the eyes, so that even we have grown uncomfortable with the idea of nursing children, viewing it as strange, painful, a little bit repulsive, and, ironically, unnatural.* We are not supposed to be fertile anymore, as a general rule. And sexuality stripped of the facet of fertility turns inward, eats away at the human spirit.

If it weren't enough to warp social views of giving birth to and sustaining children, even our monthly cycles have fallen under widespread criticism, from no one more than ourselves. We stem the flow of blood at the source (I know it's sanitary that way, but I'm looking at this from a symbolic, as opposed to medical perspective) or try to eliminate it altogether (one more recent version of the Pill allows a woman to menstruate only once every three months). The effects of hormone fluxes are seen as detrimental to our relationships, our days of premenstrual irrationality something to be suppressed in order to maintain order -- when, if approached more gently, it might come to be recognized as a time of rare fragility when a couple can come even closer together, because for the rest of the month, strong women in particular keep themselves together for everyone else, refrain from voicing objection to various hurts, and for these few days they can't hide those hurts, and for these few days these caretakers need someone to take care of them. Gentleness does a lot more good than Midol, let me tell you.

This isn't me being all fanatically Catholic; I'm not going to launch into a rant about birth control, because I don't think that birth control is always a problem, even (or perhaps especially) within marriage, and I don't think the Church's heavy-handed emphasis on ways to be "open to life" is doing much good. But think of the design of sex, think of the purpose of female fertility: Love was made to give life, and not just to the couple. Yes, it's supposed to be recreational (which is why human women, unlike, for example, lionesses, do not conceive every time they have sex); yes, it's supposed to be the highlight, the pinnacle of human love; it's also supposed to be joy. And joy does not come from self-interest.

But in a culture that sees children as a financial burden and sex as stringless, female fertility is a social evil. Instead of living in and celebrating a cycle of give and take, of caring and being cared for, of unconditional love, we creep around swallowing tablets that take away the effects of womanhood. As a result, we're tired, brittle, bitter and bleak; our skin looks dry and peeled; our eyes are hollow; and we apologize for what we are, ashamed of ourselves, of our hormones, of the way our bodies and our minds are inextricably linked, of our internal messiness that defies, for a little while, the prized traits of order and reason (doesn't our society sound a little like a morgue? Surgical, sterile, steel tables, no room for a pulse).

I realize this is all generalization. (Remember, I'm not too rational myself at the moment. But, as I've been saying, that doesn't invalidate any of this.) People are excited to have children, people love their babies, celebrate their births. But there's something weird about a lot of it. Something clinical in how we raise our children -- consulting the books, withholding discipline, regulating meals, counting calories (or not paying attention at all), scheduling days around how children are supposed to develop, lavishing them with toys and goodies like they were puppies, trotting them out to play groups and failing to give them moral grounding -- smacks of a continuation of the same sterility, the same focus on cleanliness and order that does not allow for the beautiful burgeoning messiness that defines life at its most basic level. And often it seems that the adults, men as well as women, aren't allowed to live, either.

A society reveals its health by its view and treatment of its women, and, by extension, its children. We may have the power of the vote (not that many of us use it), the power of equal opportunity employment, the power of political independence, the power of choice; but underneath all of that power, lauded a little too loudly, we are kept as statuesque machines -- lifeless creatures of usefulness and objects of lust, whose true womanhood must be kept quiet, hidden or obliterated altogether.

We're supposed to be so much more than that. Life is supposed to be so much more than this. Love is supposed to be so much freer, so much more sacrificial, so much more life-giving than we allow it to be. And everyone suffers; notice I'm neither blaming nor attacking men: I love men, and men are as badly hurt as women by woman's current social conditions. When women are not allowed to be women, men cannot be men, and children cannot be children. Women are supposed to be sustainers, and if we can't embrace the ebb and flow of the cycle that symbolizes a sustainer's role, we can't sustain; we're divorced from our own natures. Men suffer from that lack of sustaining love, children suffer from the absence of their mothers' nourishing presence, women suffer for want of all that manhood is supposed to be, and no one is quite fully human.

So we're all in this bind together. It's a significant problem, and the love of Christ is the only answer. I think a lot of times Christians, for all their indignation at the way "things are going," have not really realized that this is a post-Christian era. We follow the dictates of the times because for so long those dictates coincided with Christian values. They don't any longer. We need to start putting our heads together to identify how the values we're raised with -- education, finances, marriage, children, home buying, retirement, friendship, sex -- differ from the guidelines of the Scriptures, and then plan ways to live counter to those differences.

I'm not saying we all need to be weird home-schoolers; but our kids absorb as many secular ideas from their Christian parents as they do in their secular schools. It's reached the point where we have to choose, consciously, the ways laid out for us by Jesus -- our society will not guide us in those ways by default like it did a hundred years ago. Examining, and revolutionizing, the way we view, treat and cherish people as human beings, starting with eliminating the shame of womanhood (because the treatment of women defines and prefigures the treatment of everyone in a society, not because I want to be first in line; and I recognize fully that a lot of that starts with us, with an openness to who and what we are, with learning to be who and what we are), seems like the best place to start.



*BIG CAVEAT: I am NOT saying that women's breasts are only for nourishing children, nor that the appetite of men's eyes is of itself a bad thing. Quite the contrary. It's the imbalance that breeds problems, which, by the way, is exactly the problem I have with how the Vatican tends to deal with sex -- by swinging too far in the opposite direction for the sake of being reactionary instead of progressive. You can't emphasize one element of sexuality to the detriment of the others. The sexuality of women's breasts is as beautiful as their function in nursing babies. Think Song of Songs, here. The soul and body "dripping with myrrh." There's a powerful description of physical desire. The intensity, the physicality, the beauty of sex are to be as much a part of sexuality as its potential for creating life. When you really look at it, and examine it through a lot of history and many cultures, it would strongly appear that we don't have sex in order to have babies; we have babies because we have sex. Which says a lot of good things for sex. The whole thing is to be enjoyed in all of its ripeness and richness, the whole thing is natural and good, or was created to be.

psalmishness

Ungh. I only dragged myself out of bed this morning because I couldn't sleep through Simon pummeling my shoulder with one clawless paw. (How do those little paws pack such a punch? He hits hard. I told him that battering your mother isn't very nice and we may have to go to counseling. He just started using both paws.) Once I finally fed him, he followed me around the house looking more than usually self-satisfied. I had slept too ill, was too tired and had too bad of a headache to be annoyed with him; rather, I was annoyed with the poor sleep, tiredness and headache. I didn't do anything fun last night deserving of such fuzzy wakefulness; on the contrary, I tamely graded essays all evening with mellow reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation murmuring in the background, read a quiet chapter of a book, and snuggled down peaceably among the pillows of my bed. I mean, come on. Headache? Sleeplessness? Why? (Sometimes virtue being its own reward is sort of a grim compensation, like angel food cake on your birthday. Yeah, I guess there's sugar in it, but really?)

So I hunched my shoulders and clutched my coffee mug like a sippy cup and channeled the spirit of one of the toddlers from my days at the Center. Raziel was two: adorable, very smart and articulate, petrifyingly shy, particular, sensitive and stubborn, and not in the least bit a morning person. If The Meg Formerly Known as Boss or I greeted him too cheerfully when his mother brought him to the classroom at 8:00 a.m., his round-cheeked little face would contort itself into a Picassonian expression of pure sourness which, had it only been published, would have elicited the awe of every Grinch and every Grouch the world over; he would draw his body together like a turtle and emit, under powerfully downturned eyebrows, one staccato grunt that contained a world of communication: "Ngh."

We had a rough time of it not bursting out laughing at him, of course, and frequently we'd keep wishing him a good morning for the instant replay of his dour reaction. You could just see in his face, before he turned his head away, the prototype of the thought wishing us warmly to hell.

So when Dad wished me a good morning, I screwed up my face, closed my eyes against the mean sunlight and muttered, "Ngh."

And of course, his reaction to me mirrored mine to Raziel. Which drew a laugh from me, I will admit. (Self-irony is a salvific gift for which I dearly thank God.)

The day has only improved from there. Traffic intensified my headache as I drove to work; assistants in the Erie Court systems have beautifully reinforced the trademark Erie rudeness; and, while I love that Conor has shared the spotlight of lead vocals with other members of The Mystic Valley Band, I'm disgruntled (if "disgruntled" is negative, I don't see how "gruntled" could be positive; the word sounds as cheerful as my good morning) because not all of the tracks on Outer South bear his voice. I love his voice. And yes, the other band members are talented; but their songs lack the strength and soul of Conor's. Harumph. It's still a great album, perfect for driving on a sunny summer day, overarchingly lighthearted, fast-paced and fun, an enjoyable listen. It's just not all Conor, which is like reading a collection of Joyce Carol Oates stories and finding them sporadically interrupted by stories by O. Henry.

Oh well; enough with the grump. At least the sun shines, brightly if coolly, the leaves have almost reached their full maturity, everything has grown vibrant with green, the morning smelled of all the newness the world ever remembered, I don't have to work at the bookstore tonight, not living alone has done wonders for my wellbeing even with the occasional domestic tension, I am possessed of the most charming, intelligent, sweet and inscrutable cat God ever graced with golden owl eyes and an inky light-absorptive coat, love suffuses everything, life is lovely and pregnant with a multitude of adventures, God is good and it's almost summer.

Hallelu Yah.

polished glass on the beach of Monday

Verdict on Outer South (in a word): Fabulous. Perfect for rocking out to on a road trip, or enlivening a Monday morning. (Also for remaining cheerful in situations that would ordinarily ignite firestorms of road rage. The traffic on the way to Grove City consisted mainly of assholes who drove barely over the speed limit in the passing lane, boxing me behind them. One considerate gent gave me just the slightest opportunity to gap him on the right, and I blew through that hole like the Black Stallion. Pissed, he accelerated to try to prevent me from getting around him in time to avoid smashing into the back of the eighteen-wheeler ahead of me, but he underestimated my Toyota, my spacial relationship skills and my temper. He then proceeded angrily to ride my tail for the next few miles, although at that point I was doing a brisk eighty-five and he had only been going seventy. I didn't take any delight at all in boxing him in.)

The visit with MP and David was delightful, and a good time was had by all. They have the most adorable house in a picturesque little neighborhood. My favorite part of the house is the finished efficiency apartment on the third floor which they have adopted as the master bedroom. A tower-type bedroom is the coolest thing ever.

Today the migraine persists, as the colder weather persists, and, although it's sunny, I'm just about screamingly ready for some sultry June haze and sticky heat. (And I swear it will be at least a week after it hits before I start complaining about the sticky heat. At least it will be seasonal.)

Maybe warmer weather is good for my pain-prone head. I'll have to keep tabs this summer and see how often the migraines come and go and compare to winter. Since Cindy passed along the invaluable cure (cup of black coffee and two Excedrin tablets -- a kill-by-caffeine method to which this caffeinatic has no objection) they have been significantly more manageable, but I hope the warmer weather keeps them away altogether. I would like that.

Also this morning, having worn a flouncy skirt and strappy sandals to work with the thermometer kissing fifty, I am freezing. But it's springtime, dammit, and I'm dressing for spring.

Further along office lines are speculative stories we tell about the backyard next door. The old building was long ago turned into apartments, and the most interesting conglomeration of crap has accumulated over the years in that fenced-in yard, of which our second-floor kitchen window affords a perfect balcony view. Broken-down metal playground equipment from the 80s, broken-down plastic playground equipment from the 90s, a collapsed pool, a sand pit (once the location for the pool and at that time covered with a giant braided rug which has disappeared; the pool has inexplicably been moved, still collapsed, to a different part of the yard. Crop circles?), a sporadic clutter of chairs, an overturned patio table, a park bench: These are the backdrop to a daily different scene.

Today’s stage featured a badly failed attempt on someone’s part to prop a twenty-yard clothesline using dismembered pieces of the fence, which were not pounded into the soil but simply leaned at angles into one another and wound around and around with clothesline. An enormous, solid, very present tree at a convenient angle to the fence would not suffice, apparently. Predictably, at some point over the course of the blustery weekend, the whole thing collapsed “like a flan in a cupboard,” and now a colorful parade of drowned laundry trails across the lawn like a torn-down circus banner. Off to the side, this aftermath of tragedy is quietly witnessed by a red pair of grandpa slippers resting in comfortable solitude on the park bench.

The funny part of these bizarre tableaux is that you never see anyone back there. I have yet to witness a human being arranging any of this junk. It’s very much a work of chaotic art, a stop-motion film featuring the completed efforts of absent hands. Every time I look from my vantage point to the oddness below, I am overwhelmed by the ultimate question: Why? The flotsam and jetsam give no answer except to convey a sort of resigned restfulness, a waiting for eventual decay disturbed by the unfathomable proddings of humanity, which cannot leave entropy to itself but assists in its own strange and whimsical way.

I don’t know why, but it comforts at the same time that it amuses. There’s something loveable about the weird scenarios which engender our unanswerable speculations, something precious in the stubborn refusal to give up the ghost against all reason. And you never know what it's going to bring tomorrow.

reminiscence born of green things (I had no idea where this was going until it went there)

Migrainey today; probably because the temperature dropped again and the thermometer hovers at a chilly 47 degrees.

I've felt suspended in a weird state lately -- caught between an extreme reclusiveness and intense desire for conversation. Mostly the reclusiveness has won out, and it happened on a good weekend, with Mom visiting her relatives and Dad having to work, so I lounged around the house yesterday reading, watching Arrested Development and grading essays.

I really like my new job, by the way. As the first one I've held that directly relates to my degree, it provides a certain satisfaction; also I can work while sitting in my jammies and watching TV. As soon as my ancient-yet-hopefully-adequately-renovated laptop returns from the computer dotor's, I'll be able to grade while sitting on my bed in my jammies watching TV in my room. (For the first time in my life, I'm going to commit the unspeakable and allow a television in my bedroom. It won't connect to any channels, but I can watch DVDs on it and listen to music. I would much rather have a state-of-the-art stereo system, the better to appreciate my beloved music, but that will have to wait until I have earned considerably more money. As a quick fix, this will do; my taste in music differs vastly from my parents' and it seems best not to torment each other.)

On the practical side, the luxury of working from home eliminates travel time and fuel costs, so with great satisfaction I turned in my two-weeks' notice at the bookstore on Thursday. I got a snide remark from the manager, who, I think, takes it personally when people leave; but I just laughed. My heart holds no more love for retail than it ever did, and the casual attitude that characterized the bookstore and made it a comfortable working and shopping environment for everyone has vanished with the economic crisis, and most of the time I feel like a used car salesman, pushing books of which nobody's heard and nobody cares on people who suddenly hate me because I'm not allowed to go away. I enjoy customer service; I hate sales. So, now that I have a side job which pays better, gives me more (and much more flexible) hours, is astronomically more comfortable in both physical environment and nature of work, and requires no time or money lost in travel, I made sure I would always have at least four hours' work in the grading job and eliminated the bookstore job.

(I also, parenthetically, won't miss being hit on and leered at every damn shift by some guy who is either wearing dentures or diapers. One elderly gentleman wanted to take me out to Ponderosa after my shift; this last week featured a couple of -- I kid you not -- twelve-year-olds who were adorable in their geeky awkward way as they attempted to flirt, but were seriously twelve. Then this week too there was the seventeen-year-old who was laughing and talking easily with me as I rang up his purchase, and suddenly a skinny plain girl was standing at his elbow with her arms folded tightly across her flat T-shirted chest glaring at him. When I smiled at her and said hello, she turned her narrowed eyes on me and hissed, "Hi." I grinned more broadly as I realized to my astonishment that she was jealous. I felt sorry for her, because he hadn't even been flirting and she was clearly extremely insecure, so I continued to laugh and talk with the boyfriend, but I was easygoing and nice to her too, and won a tight little smile from her when I bid her a good evening instead of the blank-faced nonacknowledgment I know she was contemplating. Ridiculous. I wasn't even wearing makeup.)

So with the day job at the office, and the grading job on the side, I'm now only doubly employed again, and I heave a great sigh of relief.

I only have a couple more shifts at the bookstore, and then I can bid a not-so-fond farewell to rolling into the driveway at 11:15 on a work night, hungry and exhausted and drained from straightening an enormous store by myself and managing, solo, dozens of customer inquiries and phone calls. Most of the time by the end of my shift I can barely see straight to alphabetize, and if my eyes work, my brain doesn't. (One of the goals of this year's financial management is to save up for new glasses. My prescription has changed over the past two years.)

Today holds a morning of grading, and an afternoon/evening of traveling down to Grove City, my alma mater, to visit MP and David. It's a short road trip, only an hour and a half, and, in addition to seeing good friends, it will be marvelous to have that uninterrupted time to dedicate to the listening of Outer South. My favorite aspect of road trips is the intimacy of devoting a good length of time in such close quarters to music, which I view more as a discipline, like reading, than background noise to fill silence. This is part of what makes my car a sanctuary, and I love when the acquisition of new music and a road trip occur almost simultaneously. The commute to work is short enough that I haven't had a chance to listen to Outer South all the way through yet, and, especially in the beginning days of acquaintanceship with an album, a listen-to from start to finish is essential. Good artists have arranged their works deliberately, and it's sacrilege to dishonor their artistry by listening in bits and pieces. The progression from song to song, the cycle from beginning to end, makes the album. Pulling out singles for oneself is fine, of course; but I only feel comfortable doing that when I know the song's context within the album; understanding enriches the listening experience.

Reflecting on this brings a few things to mind. I've always taken music seriously, which I recognized particularly in college, when, if a person came into my dorm room to talk while I had an album in, I would have to turn it off so that I could pay attention to the conversation. In high school classical music held my heart, especially Debussy, because even then I wasn't crazy about the contemporary Christian music (with the exceptions of Michael Card and John Michael Talbot) which was the only "music with words" really allowed in our household. I bought a two-disc collection of Debussy's works on a chorus trip to Canada for four dollars, and listened to it as nonstop as possible; it was, in fact, the only music I could play while working or studying that didn't distract me, but sank right to my subconscious and enlivened me there.

I might always have restricted myself to the old dead dudes, and quite happily. But then, senior year, Hillori introduced me to a group and thereby changed my life forever: the debut album of a young newgrass trio who called themselves Nickel Creek. The fiddle, the banjo, the guitar, and, oh, rapture, the mandolin; the clear piercing blend of harmonies: I was captivated. And because when I like an author or an artist I follow everything they've ever created, as Nickel Creek progressed in their expression, I kept up with them, loved the changes they made to their sound, their artistic growth, loved the members' solo albums (mostly Chris Thile's -- genius), and when they crossed over into an indie sound which no one I knew really liked, I crossed with them.

But, not hanging out with many music heads in college, I stayed where I was, musically, listening to Nickel Creek and classical and Cowboy Bebop soundtracks (also introduced to me by Hillori), until I worked at the Center and met a couple of guys who bore a distinct stamp of intellectual snobbery in the creases on their brows, and who listened to fantastic music. They were "cool" in that bored, disinterested way of intellectual snobs, and we liked each other's sardonic wry humor, and we thought much too highly of ourselves for being young and broke and working in nonprofits for the betterment of humanity.

(Of course, I never lost an opportunity to rub it in that I had a better education than they did, and was smarter than they were. They had graduated from the Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame, which was supposed to be even more Englishy than the English major, the crème de la crème of all inclinations literary, and I, hailing from a humble backwoods cowfield ant-sized liberal arts college with a boring old English degree, knew all sorts of things they didn't think anyone knew. They would roughly quote from a book or a great poem, paraphrase the title, and shrug and guess about the author as the book related to their discussion, and I would toss in the exact text of the quote, the complete title of the work it belonged to, the author, the approximate year of publication and the surrounding sociopolitical and literary contexts that influenced the work, and the influence the work had on following additions to the canon. The guys would then stare at me, all but open-mouthed, and say, "How do you know all this stuff? No one remembers this stuff. We can't remember this stuff," and I would say, smugly, "I went to a better school." I usually refrained from saying, And paid a hell of a lot less money, too.)

Part of our egocentrism about our place in changing the world was going in to work extremely early every morning, and I stocked my office with coffee, a hot pot and a French press and offered them some of my java to get us going (the office coffee claimed a level of terrible reserved for things like hand-dug latrines and infanticide). One day when Andrew brought his wryly textuated mug for a top-off, he heard Chris Thile's Not All Who Wander are Lost blitzing out of my computer speakers.

"What's that?" he asked. I could almost see his ears perk up.

"Chris Thile," I said. "Nobody's ever heard of him, but I like him."

"I've heard of him," Andrew said. "But I haven't listened to him much. This stuff is cool."

"I'll lend you their latest album," I said happily.

Andrew proceeded to ask me if I had ever heard of a dozen unfamiliar artists, and I said, with chagrin, "No. My range is sadly limited."

"Oh, I'll have to hook you up. I'm a total music head," he said.

That was the summer I spent riding around in his silver Golf while we listened to all sorts of deep and lifechanging songs (I say that only partially tongue-in-cheek), and I started memorizing the names of new and soul-thrilling artists: Sufjan Stevens, Bright Eyes, Colin Meloy, Beck, Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter. I went on a Music Spree. Andrew played a lot of the songs on his guitar at friends' campfires and sang while I harmonized. Sharing music with someone was thrilling in ways I had never regularly experienced before, and in many ways I was completely happy.

But todo se pasa, says Teresa de Ávila, and that time came to its necessary end, and I took another big stride on the road to growing up, but I took with me, gathered to my heart like an armful of treasure, all the music to which he had introduced me, and that was my springboard. Music for every mood, bluegrass- and country-influenced indie artists, strange and compelling sounds, offbeat voices, mind-splitting lyrics -- a journey which I didn't start alone, but which I can now continue more or less independently.

Funny. I haven't thought about that time in awhile. Must be the leaves on the trees that take me back to the shaded brick-lined streets in South Bend's historic district where he and I lived a couple streets apart and spent a number of evening smoking cloves and singing on his screened-in porch. The good thing about the passage of time is that the years slowly leech away the bitterness like nutrients from slash-and-burned riverbank soil, and wash out to the sea of Jung's collective unconscious. I'm glad that things turned out the way they did; glad, too, now, that I had that time. I don't believe that I'd want it back -- I know that I don't want it back with the same person in the same circumstances; I've learned that much, at least -- but I can look fondly now on the simplicity of everything that seemed at the time so complicated, and appreciate the innocence. Even its anguish was idyllic, and the time was necessary for a part of the shaping of my soul, a part of my learning about love and non-love, action and inaction, speaking and silence, and carrying on. I look at who I was then, and who I am now, and I'm a little nostalgic, and at the same time deeply thankful. It is so obvious Who has directed my paths, turned my feet in the direction they needed to go, and strengthened my ankles for the journey.

And I'm glad for the memories, too.

anything you want to do

Yesterday’s perfect moment happened just after dinner. I had to run to the local pharmacy for allergy meds, and on the way I reverently slid Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band’s brand-new release, Outer South, into the player. I had listened to the first eight tracks on the way home from Borders where I went to pick it up, so I skipped to the ninth, and as I waved to my mother and pulled off the curb, “White Shoes” started playing and the rest of the world ceased its own meaning and became instead a simple, achingly lovely backdrop to the song.

I pulled into the pharmacy and finished listening to the first run-through with my eyes fixed on the trees across the street. It had rained all afternoon, and the air held a watery shimmer whose clarity blurred in my eyes with their buildup of tears. A washed scent rolled in through the car window – the smell of wet flowers, wet grass, wet leaves, the freshness of a lushness renewed. I put the song on repeat when I returned to the car after my errand, and instead of turning down Main Street to go home, I took North Mill Street and drove down through Paper Mill Hollow where the wild turkeys hide like fey folk and the denseness of the close-twined trees lend the grass glades a secretive sense of almost-unveiled mystery. I let my car climb the far end of the hollow slowly, breathing in the early fern spice, and took Route 5 the last quarter mile to Freeport Beach, listening.

As far as beaches go, Freeport isn’t much to speak of. You wouldn’t put it on postcards to sting far-off relatives with jealousy. Visibly as ancient as the lake itself, the beach crowds the water, its rough sand littered with driftwood, smooth brown rocks, fish carcasses and shattered shale. Farther to the west, the cliffs push the broken stretch of land into the shallow waves, their ribs hazy with the distance. It’s easier to imagine an Eriez woman pounding clothes clean than to envision frolicking summer swimmers, even when the swimmers shriek and splash right in front of you. Something about that particular place holds the past more closely than the present, strips your awareness down to the bare elements of rock, water and sky, and makes time disappear.

For those reasons, at least in part, when some big emotion overtakes me and I need to shroud myself in isolation to process it, I long more than anywhere else for Freeport. As I pulled up to the end of the small parking lot and parked my car facing the water, I let out my first free breath all day, silenced the engine and left a window partially down, “White Shoes” still playing. While Conor whispered, “Anything you want to do,” his guitar and his voice creating an intimate simplicity that bore the same quality as the rainwashed air, I leaned my head back against the seat and watched the sun lay a shivering path on the water. The haze swallowed the ricochet of light, and the clouds folded blue over the beach. Nothing moved but a few gulls; the water lay all but quiet; the only sound was the music; and my soul was still.

I reflected on that moment this morning en route to the office. While I thought of the peace, and noted that my car is my greatest sanctuary, the only place where I can listen to my music, think, breathe, cry or yell without restraint, I decided that Conor’s love songs appeal to me as strongly as they do because they express a way of loving that is like to mine. Simultaneously my brain reprocessed a conversation I held the other night with my sister. I heard my question, and her answer, in an echo of remembered sound: “Does having Keith help?” “No. They’re different things. He understands me better than anyone else, but there’s a part of me that’s always alone.” “I thought maybe that was the case,” I said; “I’m sorry. Being alone all the time sucks.” “Well, it bothers you more than it bothers me,” she said.

Her statement brought me up short. Till that moment, I’d always assumed that everyone’s loneliness was alike, that mine was no different from the next person’s; there were only varying degrees of coping. But what she said made me wonder if I was wrong, at least partly. She’s a Rational on the Myers-Briggs scale, a thinker, not a feeler. Other friends who seem less pained by their aloneness are also Rationals (my friends all tend to be Rationals and Idealists), while those whose hurt matches mine are fellow Idealists.

As “White Shoes” cycled into its third stanza, I synthesized my trains of thought and realized, “Oh. Conor is a feeler. I love the way his songs express love because that’s how I love.” For me, love is absolute. It has its moments of waxing and waning in intensity, its moments of hardship, but hardships are for working on, for strengthening the relationship, for deepening the love. Love also, to me, is synonymous with union -- mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. Through love, the two disparate selves become, not dissolute, but semi-permeable to each other: distinct but fluid, understood and assailable uniquely by the other.

In a nonerotic sense, I have this kind of union with all of my close friends, most of whom, again, don't share my personality types. Perhaps I'm not quite as semi-permeable to them, but I find these friendships profoundly satisfying, because the love is deep and mutual, organic, living, thrilling and yet safe. These friendships are what hold me together most of the time, what keep at bay the darkness I rarely discuss, what stave off The Nothing. I tend to view everything in terms of oneness, and so I see in the mutual love of my friends the love of God, and that mutual love preserves, protects, heals, encourages, redeems and gives life.

Yet, even with such good friendships, I always feel the absence of the one significant Other. Since my personality types (I’m equal parts INFJ and INFP) are designed for unity, aloneness causes a deep existential anguish because a huge part of who I am involves loving – involves not being alone in a metaphysical sense. However much I need a private space to decompress, and however much I value my personal independence and that of others, without that sense of deep communion unbound by time and space, life is not only frustrating and flat, but a source of inexpressible and intolerable pain. Trapped within my self, beauty and truth lose their savor, because experiencing them without the ability to share them brings no joy -- and because the experience of truth and beauty often comes from the being of the Other. Age and maturity bring better degrees of coping, a greater calm, a more responsible way of getting through life and living in society (listen to the progression of Conor's music from Letting off the Happiness to Outer South), but the agony never diminishes.

It’s a nice touch of irony that these personality types, which long so strongly for human love, have the hardest time finding it. As easily as I love people, I'm really damn picky, apparently, when it comes to that one other person. It's nothing over which I have any control -- breaking up with Dustin marked the end of a three-year attempt, through my various dating endeavors in the Midwest, to create spark ex nihilo. I thought it would behoove me to be practical (I was oblivious to the arrogance); but practicality, in the end, isn't that important to me. What I treasure most are harmony, mutuality and understanding, the joy I take in the other, and the freedom to be myself -- in all of my idiosyncracies, passions, flaws, strengths, intensity and the strange combination of egocentrism and selflessness that I haven't yet catalogued -- to give of myself, and to receive of the other, both of us simply to be.

I love listening to Conor because I get that same sense of longing in his music. "White Shoes" expresses the unspoken absolute focus upon the other, the unconditional regard, the contraction of all the universe to the other person's smile, the other person's heartbeat, the other person's being, an awareness which informs and describes my own way of loving -- loving all people, but especially that particular person. Absorbing this beautiful, wrenching song, I felt worlds better even as I cried, because, somewhere out there, someone else gets it; and, weirdly, the shared unfulfilled yearning gives me hope. The methods of searching may differ, but the quest is the same as the anguish is the same, and I still believe that the quest will be fulfilled, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.

I'm grateful, though, that I've decided to stop killing my dreams in favor of practicality. A life alone, even with the pain of it, is better than a life lived with someone with whom the kind of love I give, and the kind of love I want, isn't possible. I'm not desperate for marriage itself; with a not-quite-right person the loss isn't worth the gain; and I'm not willing to settle. So I have opted to keep dreaming, and to keep holding out for the dream; and I find a great deal of peace in knowing that the pain of aloneness, as cosmic as my awareness of another, is part of the circumstances in which my temperament finds itself, which makes it easier (today, anyway) to address -- because I don't have to feel the need to get rid of it or apologize for it; I only need to manage it, and I can stop feeling guilty for never being able to root it out. It's a constant in my reality, like the gray of the Erie skies, like the lapping of the waves on Freeport Beach, and some days it will ebb nearly altogether, and some days it will swamp me; but it will pass, and pass again, and I can still know different kinds of love, and I can still know joy, and hurting doesn't mean that my faith is weaker or that I trust God less. Sorrow isn't a sin, and I am learning how to live with it instead of in it.

All in all, very good things. Even on the days when my soul twists and I want to curl up and weep, at least I know why, and I know the strength of the dream, and I'll still look forward to the day I can say, or hear, "Anything you want to do -- lover, anything you want to do."