Keep Them Somewhere

In college I got involved in the outing club (Called, originally enough, the SU Outing Club, or SUOC). I got involved because I wanted to learn new skills and challenge myself outdoors, I wanted to get over fears.

I learned to cave, because I was fearful of small spaces.
I learned to kayak, because water frightens me. Being underwater frightens me more.
I learned to climb, because I am so acrophobic that I get nervous just seeing heights in movies.

It was a way of controlling the fears I could control, to conquer those few things in life I could conquer. I can’t even count how many times, deep into some very small, wet, rocky, cold cave, squeezing through spaces that just aren’t rational, I’d think, “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!?” but then I’d come to see things that I knew very few would ever get to see. Massive underground waterfalls. Cave formations that were 50 feet long, others 3 stories high and white and gleaming. Rooms bigger than football fields. Hibernating bats covered in crystallized dew. I saw wonders.

I've done this several times. This is my friend Benji, but it might as well be me.

As I’ve aged, my terrors and fears have become more specific and less physical. They aren’t fears of the dark, or spaces, or tangible things. My terrors aren’t boogey men; they are internal. They are fears of breaking, of disappointment; fears of loneliness and unwanted isolation, fears of rejection and of love. They are as much fears of the past as they are fears of the present. I try not to think about my fears, keep them somewhere I don’t have to see or address them.

Leslie said something today that forced me to think them.
“The best things in life are terrifying,” she said. “But I imagine the first 30 seconds will be terrifying then you find your voice. And solace. Don’t let fear and exhaustion win your heart. You always have a say in the matter. Always.”

I used to be so keen to face my fears in the most direct way possible. No longer.

Two Months Out

I make no illusions about grief. It has now been almost two months to the day of Natalie's death, and I can't say I've begun to learn this language at all. If anything I'm discovering more words I didn't know I didn't know. Grief comes in such tiny splinters that I don't expect them until they are in me—under my fingernails come tiny shards of a life I so dearly miss and they do their best to double me over in pain. The other week I cried for an hour about an AOL email address. Seriously. I realize it sounds ridiculous but that is the thing with splinters: outside of us they are so tiny, but when they are where they are they are monumental. The night I got back to Virginia from a very hard trip to Canada I went over to Nat and Mike's to try on some of her old clothes (yeah nothing emotional about that endeavor) and in all my mental fortitudes I wasn't prepared for the coats to smell like her.
They smelled like her. Her hands were in the pockets.
I felt them there.
I can't touch those coats now because they feel like a hug and I lose it. They are on a chair.

The trip to Canada was agonizing because I was with men who didn't seem too keen on the business of living. All of them had gone through divorces or rough marriages or wars or other losses, all of them exhibited no signs of zest. At times it felt like I spent the trip trying to convince them to keep living. Maybe I am more sensitive to it right now because of Natalie, but to them life was more a chore to be endured than a gift to be enjoyed. I just watched a woman with a love of life lose it and then to spend 10 days with men who have life and seem so keen to trash it was, in a way, utterly profane. It was offensive. I wanted to scream at them for being so careless with something I know others have fought so hard to keep. I didn't.

There is much to say about the trip to Canada but I don't think this is the place to do it. Coming back I felt like my heart was sunburned, rough, raw, flaking and peeling, hot and sore to the touch. I felt like I left pieces of my heart strewn along the highway, on the shoulders of those I hugged, on pillows where I slept. I picked at it in moments of quiet and regretted it in moments of movement. It was never comfortable.

I realize that living can be unsexy; it is by its very nature., because living is sustained and sexy isn't. Living isn't some big constant adventure, it isn't one high after another, because living is real, and to be real, it needs to be rooted and there is nothing sexy about rooting. Roots aren't pretty. They are dirty, they are unseen, they get no glory. But they endure.
And lord, when roots are true, do they produce some beautiful flowers.

Bird in a Storm

It's a rainy Saturday, which means any motivation that would normally come to the surface is staying underground. It's good to have a rainy September 11th. The weather distances itself from the gorgeous sunniness of that day nine years ago.

The rain has been steady all morning, and I looked out the window to see half a dozen robins hopping around the front yard. It gave me pause; I'm not used to seeing birds voluntarily getting soaked like that. At first it was odd, but then I realized why. When there is a steady rain, the water seeps into the ground and floods the tunnels that worms live in, causing them to come to the surface for air (which is why you see so many worms on the surface after rainstorms). Robins, being worm eaters, have prime opportunity to find easy food before their long flights to warmer climes.

I don't know why it struck me today as so beautiful--that sense of provision, of God being in the rain, of delicate and specific care—I don't think it has to do with the date. Maybe it does.
But in that moment I said a little prayer to ask that I learn to see the worms in the rainstorms.

Scribe or Scribble

I started a blog post. It was very, very serious, as they have tended to be lately.

Then I saw a link to the new Google Labs program, Google Scribe. It is designed to finish sentences for you. It isn’t very good at the task.
Here are some examples of Scribe's genius. I started with a famous sentence/lyric and then just saw what happened.

Ain't nuthing but a G Thang baby bodysuits come with a bit of anxiety about their own lives.

Somewhere over the rainbow so high that they are not therefore to be understood that these embodiments are provided.

There once was a man from Nantucket town of the same name as their own controls and were not included in the study of these two types of information.

Every good boy deserves fine and then it was allowed to warm to room temperature and then washed with PBS and incubated with the indicated concentrations of these compounds in their sweaty hands.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to use anything else to do it in their own right and do not want to be related to their particular field or industry in which they are attached to their respective owners.

Shall I compare thee to a winters day in Cape Town and then phoned me to say that they are not therefore to be understood that these embodiments are provided solely by this site are property of their respective owners and are strictly for viewing and printing of these books?

You are out of your element, Donny Osmond and Kym Johnson win Season 9 of American Idol and Reality TV fansite for the shower and then I'll bet your life on the road today and they are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients.

Here's the story of a man named Brady who was also analyzed by the method of the present invention.

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name Iron Maiden Rarely does anyone got any ideas on how to use them in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the Site?

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind with the two other groups of people who have been involved in these processes.

And the token Lady Gaga lyric:
He ate my heart, he ate and drank and drank until they were used to determine their own future.

Commodious

I haven’t done a post about a weekend in a while, and this past one was one that deserves to be recorded for posterity.

It started with a dive-in movie on Friday night at Dan and Haydin’s. A dive-in movie is much like a drive-in movie, in that it involves a movie projected outside on a screen, but that is the extent of the similarities. A dive-in movie is set up around a swimming pool. The event was to start at 7 but due to disorganization, shirking of responsibilities and general technical difficulties, it didn’t actually start until closer to 10:30. Ugh. Annoying. But “The Big Lebowski” is a favorite and it was fun to sit around a pool and watch it on a big screen. It started to drizzle half-way through and I took that as my cue to leave. Ena’s birthday party was early on Saturday and I wanted to get some sleep.

Ena loves cowboys, trains, horses and being naked. She’s two, so all of those things are quite splendid. I dressed up as cowgirl, partially for the fun of it and partially because I thought she’d like it. When I saw Nathan at the Dive-in on Friday night I told him my plan and he announced he’d dress up as well, so Saturday morning it was just the two of us in costumes (we were also some of the only ones who didn’t have small children with them). Ena and her friends were in their birthday suits for most of the party and it was a beautiful day for a birthday party. I love that little girl so much it hurts.

Saturday evening there was discussion of a roller skating adventure that got nixed at the last minute, so Betsy and I headed downtown to go to the last Shindig on the Green of the year. I forget how amazing those things are. We ended up in the entrance of City Hall, listening to a bluegrass band; one man was so old he had a wheelchair/walker combo and would stand up to smile and sing along. I loved him immediately.

Sunday I met up with Betsy and Emily downtown for the Kovacs and the Polar Bear show (see above) that kicked off the Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Festival, the hands-down best people watching event in a city full of people-watching opportunities. The day was bright (and HOT), and someone had plastered mustaches all over the festival area. Everywhere. Parking meters, shop windows, newspaper boxes; once one was spotted the sheer volume of them appeared. I found out from one friend that it was part of “Mustacheville” a quirky sort of prank on a city that loves pranks. Emily, Betsy and I found mustaches to our liking and stuck them to our faces. We wore them the rest of the afternoon. No one looked at us strangely.

Labor day was chores around the house, until around 330 when I got a text from my old friend Ammons. “Sunny afternoon cocktails?” it read. I responded, “I could be convinced.” He replied, “I don’t know what else to say: Sunny. Afternoon. Cocktails.” So I went and sat outside with Ammons, catching up and drinking the amazing cocktails that Sazarac makes (before the ache of the bill arrives!). We then wandered up to Packs Square to catch part of the free show by the Asheville Symphony. The sky was the blue that only comes in early fall, the sun was just enough set to leave a crisp in the air and I was warm with company, sound, place and spirit.

In ten days I’ll attend Tegan and Sara, live jamming bluegrass, the Symphony and Erin McKeown. I love this town.