hey nonny nonny

“So we’re floating in the pool, and my uncle said, ‘John, you can plan your whole life out, and it won’t turn out the way you planned. Look at me. I planned out everything perfectly, and it still wound up like shit. So I say, As long as you can make your monthly payments, go out and have fun.’ And all of his sons knocked up girls in high school and are living at home, and one of them just got out of prison.”

I smiled, cradling the phone to my ear and chugging another half-glass of water in the heat as John told me about his weekend in Pittsburgh. I like his uncle. I have fuzzy memories of visiting his house a few years ago, and when I learned that he’s a retired cop, I sat with him awhile swapping yarns of my dad’s with his own tales of life on patrol.

And John’s story got me thinking. I had Shakespeare’s timeless advice – “converting all your sounds of woe / into hey, nonny, nonny!” – looping through my head already, and this morning, on Over the Rhine’s The Trumpet Child album, Karin Bergquist sang gaily, “I can’t be bothered / I’m gonna roll.”

All of those thoughts converged as I toweled my hair. My mind started pulling from other sources, and finally selected a line from Blood and Chocolate (yes, I’m eclectically inspired), when Aiden, encouraging Vivian to live her life according to her own choice and not her family’s expectations, tells her, “You only get one life.”

We only get one. I only get one. And yes, there are a lot of things I want to do with it. Some kind of greatness has always called to me, from as far back as I can remember (and that’s a long way; my consciousness seems to have kicked in early), and I look forward to it with purpose and eagerness; in my strange ways I’ve been pursuing it all my life.

But over the last couple of years I’ve started to lose that single-mindedness, and listening to Josh Ritter’s “For the Dogs or Whoever” on the way home from work yesterday, having been reminded of it in a conversation with Hillori, jolted some of it back to me:

Joan never cared about the in-betweens
Combed her hair with a blade, did the Maid of Orleans.
Said, “Christ walked on water, we can wade to the war
You don’t need to tell me who the fire is for
Oh, bring me a love that can sweeten the sword
The boat that can love the rocks or the shore
The love of an iceberg reaching out for the wreck:
Can you love me like the crosses love the nape of the neck?”

That song is about driven women. Women called to something great, whose eyes are always drawn outward and upward, who go to meet their fates aggressively, single-mindedly.

Hill and I talked about how we have always known we are one of those women. The particulars might still be cloudy, but we know we're meant for more than a two-car garage and a picket fence, although we want those too, in whatever form they come. My difficulty has lain in reconciling the future then with the present now. And honestly, it’s hard not to feel stuck in the present when the future is calling so insistently. But I have always believed that everything is connected, and so, however disparate my now feels from my then, I can’t get to my then without going through my now.

It was easier when I was sort of floating on the breeze like a dandelion seed, the last five years in the Midwest. I had no clue what my future held long-term, and so I could more or less relax in the easygoingness of the present. As long as I could pay my bills, I had fun. (Once upon a time I did live Uncle J’s philosophy.) But now that my plans have been generally shot to shit and I still feel no closer to that elusive destiny that haunts my every momentary awareness, on top of the weight of depression, I’ve been pretty miserable.

But all of it has a purpose. Coming back home has a purpose. Making almost no money has a purpose (at least I have a job). Bouncing around from no-account job to no-account job has a purpose. And I chose my purpose.

It’s not going to suddenly turn everything into daffodils and sunshine. Some days I’m still going to be dragged under by depression; but I’ve returned to the point where I can fight back, and today my thoughts toward it are, So maybe some days the only thing I can enjoy is the sunset. Well then, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of that sunset. It’s like what Harry thought after one of his more amazing conversations with Dumbledore: It’s the difference between being dragged into the ring and walking into it with your head held high. And that’s a huge difference.

In the end it all boils down to two quotable phrases: “If you love something, give it away,” as Conor points out; and, infinitely better,

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. (2 Corinthians 4:9-12)

Death and life simultaneously at work. And I don't have any control over a lot of it, but I can make the call as to what I do with it. I wrote to Meg this morning, in discussing how I still don’t have many of the things I want, and still haven’t reached many of the places I want, “I don't have to be like, Oh goody, I got an onion when what I really wanted was a steak, hooray! but I can say, Okay, I've got an onion, what can I find to go with that?”

(And if all else fails, I can trick other people into helping me make Stone Soup.)

I might not always be happy, but I’m working toward content. I’m reading fiction again, writing again, getting along with my family, eating lunch with MD and her husband today, and soon I’m going to try my hand at turning this town on its head.

Somehow all of that will lead me where I need to go. And since the road curves away out of sight behind a ridge, instead of craning my neck with frustration at not being able to see over that ridge, I might as well take in the open sky and find pleasure in the road at my feet.

Yep. Tomorrow might be stormy and crappy again, but today is fine, and I'm gonna roll.