There Never Was Just One

This morning I stumbled upon a random Tumbler (it's like Blogger's cousin that drinks PBR or craft cocktails) that takes screen grabs of Google's autofill function.
Most of the time, the autofill feature is useful and accurate, yet there are these rare times when it's strangely poignant. For example:

I've been mesmerized by them all day. They are all typically four or five lines, but somehow speak to a quiet, hidden, universal truth. I tried to find a few of my own. Here are some I discovered. 

A short four lines, but strangely powerful. 

Depression. 

A western told in four lines. 

I liked the subversiveness of this one. 

This one broke my heart a little bit. It's four lines we've all asked. 

I never knew you. I never told you. 

Guilt. Jealousy. Lust. Regret. 

Brit Knows

Dating life in Asheville, as illustrated by Britany Spears' X-factor faces.

First: hitting on someone in Asheville:

You get excited because well...

 Then you talk for a bit.

You have a few drinks, you chat some more.

He likes you. He asks you out.

A few weeks/days later the magic is gone....

You try to let him down easy.

Finally you admit the truth:

Happy Friday.

Spirit Animals

The presidential political season is like being single and still buying food in bulk: sure that giant bag of chicken nuggets was exciting at first, but after a few too many days of it you just want to scream, “I’M DONE WITH YOU, NUGGETS!” Not that this has ever happened. This is hypothetical.*

In light of the dirty side of politics, where every icon is beaten into something less respectable/human, I’ve decided to hoard spirit animals like people with money hoard things that cost money (I don’t know what people with money actually hoard).

I’m going super fluffy here.

What is a spirit animal? Who the heck cares.

I like to imagine them like as my patronus, only instead of an otter coming out of my magic wand when I yell, “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” an actual likeness of Hermione Granger would emerge. 

I HAVE A STICK!

Of course I never yell EXPECTO PATRONUM when holding things like pens, or sticks, or rulers, or dog treats. Never. I am an adult and we don’t do things like that.**

My spirit animals are not people I actually know. Several aren’t even real people. That’s not even the point. Instead, they are ever-present examples of some specific and desired trait.

My spirit animal of ambition is Dolly Parton.  The youngest of 12 children from a dirt-poor family, she has been inducted the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame and has a National Metal of the Arts (and 8 Grammys). She’s released 41 studio albums over her career. She's credited with having written over 3,000 songs. She retained the rights to all of her songs when it was a risky decision (earning her the nickname “the Iron Butterfly”) and continues to write, perform, act and produce well into her 60s. Some days I don’t even put on pants until 3pm. Help me, Dolly.

That's rhinestones & a Kennedy Center Metal, MFers. 

For the beauty of brutal honesty, my spirit animal is Anne Lamott. It takes enormous courage to be honest about you. It takes more to tell others about this honesty with wit and charm and incredible skill. In Lamott’s books she faces honesty head on, and paints herself as this whole person, full of incredible brokenness, hurts, scars, loves, addictions, humor, fear, grace, talent, compassion, anger, and sarcasm. I hope to one day write one sentence as true as any of hers. One of my all-time favorites: “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” 

No photo needed. You just need to picture Jesus drinking gin. Out of a cat dish. 

CJ Cregg is my spirit animal of idealism. It helps that she is birthed out of the mind of a coked-up Aaron Sorkin (before he had an Oscar and hated the Internet) and thus doesn’t suffer the imperfections of reality. She is my spirit animal because Claudia Jean never wavered in her convictions. She believed in the American form of government, even while neck-deep in its worst moments. She still believed that one person could change the world. At the end of the series she’s asked what single issue in the world she would focus on, given $10 billion to solve it. Her immediate response was, “Highways in Africa. It isn’t sexy but it’s necessary. Then maybe get started on plumbing.” That’s idealism. I wish I had it.

No shut up maybe ok fine maybe shut up. 

Tami Taylor brings compassion. Mrs. Coach is new on this list. I’ve only just begun to watch FNL on Netflix, but I was immediately struck by the way that Tami Taylor listens. She focuses on the speaker with an intensity and a love that brings tears to my eyes almost every time she is on screen.  She is present in the conversation. Also Connie Britton has hair that was birthed from the loins of Tre-Semme, the Goddess of Full Locks.***  I feel like her hair is where she stores all the compassion, because it seems too large to exist in a single person. I am a terrible listener, terrible with emotional people (so please try not to cry on my shoulder), terrible about not giving unsolicited advice or creating selfish tangents.

Even her hair is listening to Coach.

My bookworm self likes it when Rory Gilmore pops up beside me. Have you seen this list compiled of the books she read on the show? I’ve read 67 of them, and I thought that was good. I love her love of books. There are far too many people who don’t love to read the way I do; I like having a fictional BFF to read along. When I walk in to Malaprops I feel like Rory appears next to me.  Later I walk out with a book that is challenging and thought provoking.

Books look sad when you read US Weekly.

Hermione Granger is my spirit animal of unceasing commitment to lifelong learning. Ms. Granger-Weasley (let’s be honest, she probably kept her maiden name) is a character unashamed about her intellect but also one never content to rest on her laurels. She’s the type who will probably take classes for life; who lives to learn because she loves it. She learns important things, she doesn’t fill up on gossip magazines or pop culture drivel. Becoming a better-informed person was part of her identity. Me too, except I also really like the drivel.  Also she’s British so that makes her sound about 10 IQ points higher.

Smart people blow shit up!

Michelle Obama is grace & poise. She is well-spoken, extremely well-educated, well-dressed and well-liked. She is Princeton-educated lawyer with an organic garden and an affinity for J. Crew, with two beautiful & well-behaved children and a husband who clearly adores her. I know a few people who have had personal interactions with her, and they universally say that she is as warm in person as she appears, but in that warmth is a clear sense that she is also not one to cross. There is steel under her kind exterior.  Additionally, Mrs. O. has helped to usher in this idea of the female athlete’s body as something beautiful and desirable; that a fit woman is a sexy woman.  I feel like her arms are another subgenre of spirit animal entirely. As someone who is nowhere near fit, I’m challenged by her rockin’ guns.

No photo does justice to the wonder of Michelle arms. 

I like to imagine that my spirit animals combine to make my most awesome self, so in that way I’m like Captain Planet without the green mullet.  Anne Lamott (Honesty Animal) said, “My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.” Turns out the neighborhood isn’t so scary with so many imaginary luminaries.

*I really am done with you, nuggets.

**Total lie. I do it all the time.

*** The Goddess of Full Locks has an unknown origin. She requires regular sacrifices of split ends and VO5 treatments. You will never reach her luscious mountain top, you limp-coifed loser.

Ponderosa

• Discovered that one of my favorite Iron & Wine songs was used in what I understand to be a pivotal scene in one of the sparkly vampire movies. This annoys me to no end. Way to ruin “Flightless Bird, American Mouth”, Bobby Pattison.

• Living alone I’ve come to realize that easily ¾ of my conversations occur in my head. I’m pretty good company. I get less motivated to go actually see people though, which probably isn’t healthy in the long run. There’s more of me behind my eyes.
  
• I’ve just passed my six year anniversary here in WNC and the friendships I’ve made have begun to take on the richness that comes with the passage of time. I’m thankful for the people who’ve been with me for years, through the darkness of the valley of death. Those friendships just get better. I don’t know if I express enough how grateful I am.
  
• I talked to my nearly 19-year old sister on the phone for over two hours. Easily our longest phone conversation ever. I moved out when she was 3; we had a lot of history to cover. It’s an adjustment realizing she’s an adult now. The girl peed on my face as an infant and now she has an apartment? Something is off. I love her and worry about her and pray for her and am proud of her and am hopeful for her and all other good things. It’s a weird balance; trying to protect her from mistakes I’ve made all while encouraging her to live her life. I’m not particularly close to my other siblings; I hope she remains the exception.

• Learned how to play Damien Rice’s “9 Crimes” on guitar last week. That song SLAYS me.

• We recently had the annual church camping trip. I need camping. It is such a relief to be free from technology, to be a book and a breeze in a hammock, in repose. The smell of campfire is life. I think I may take some of my vacation to stay out in the woods more often, to spend hours staring at a creek.
  
• I’m thankful for my dog. I’ve learned so much about love from having her around. I still have much to learn.


• My novel is plodding along, in that I’ll work on it for a week straight, then not touch it for a few days, then obsess over it. The smallest things feel like such an accomplishment—some little bit of backstory, an opening line; a realization about a specific relationship. The creation of a historical timeline for the characters took days and, though crucial, it will never appear in the actual story. The process of writing a novel is intimidating, and if I think about it too much I freeze. What if it’s terrible? Boring? Makes no sense? No one wants to read it? What if I can’t finish it? Does any of that even matter? In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott wrote, “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” I’m consciously trying to embrace the shitty first draft mentality, consciously focusing on the small steps in front of me and not the behemoth of the whole.
  
• I’ve been reading “A Circle of Quiet” by Madeline L’Engle, and there is such comfort in the freedom to create that she professes.
  
• My grandmother died yesterday. She was 92. 

...For our Lives to Be Over

So about six weeks ago I had the misfortune to discover that all six seasons of Dawson’s Creek are now available on Netflix streaming.

Do you hear Paula Cole in your head? I do. Do do do do do do do do do do… 

(Incidentally, the streaming license didn’t get “I Don’t Wanna Wait” and so they used a random Jann Arden song as the theme music. This angered me for 126 straight episodes. Those last two redeemed it. Mostly.)

I never really watched “The Creek” when it was on. I was in college for most of the series, and programming the VHS to record was a complicated process, so I didn’t watch any shows during my uni years. I had enough teen angst of my own, thank you very much. I’d seen maybe two or three episodes, so I decided to take the plunge and Netflix binge it. 

The Beek is proud of me. 

In the nine years since it went off the air, I'd picked up a few spoilers here and there. I knew the jist, knew the big plot points. I figured this was a nice "it's too hot outside" distraction for the dog days of summer. 

Aside from realizing that 95% of the story lines from the first three seasons are made moot by the advent of cell phones, and that the ridiculously verbose scripts don't mean well-written dialogue (no 16-year old uses "maudlin" in everyday speak), it did bring me back to a less complicated, less technological time. 

It made me miss some of my high school friends, and aspects of my high school self. Not much of my high school self, but rather the possibilities that I so strongly believed in at the time. I miss thinking that the future was so wide open, that we'd all be friends forever, that we'd make it through everything together. Those aren't the sorts of friendships that come in adulthood. I haven't kept a close friendship with many people from my LVHS days. I was born and raised in the same town, the people I met at 5 were the people I graduated with, but I'm not close with any of them. Melancholy.
I don't think I realized I miss being 19. I love being in my 30s, but the year I miss most is 19, the first summer home from college, the old friendships that were still running on habit, the new ones that were still shiny and off somewhere else. 

Other Notes:

• I'm now really sympathetic to Joey Potter Katie Holmes. I feel for her and all the circus surrounding her life. Poor Joey. Plus her daughter's burn book is a favorite website. 
• Jen Lindley Michelle Williams is a multi-Oscar nominated actress? Who saw that coming?
• I'd make out with Pacey Pacey in a heartbeat. Exhibit Awesome----->
• I love watching day players on old shows who are big stars now. You go, Jane Lynch/Pacey's mom. 
• Every drama made between 1997 and 2001 was required to have an episode featuring Sarah McLachlan's "Angel". I'm convinced of this. 
• They were much more sloppy with details when they didn't think pausing TV was possible. I'm looking at you, NC vehicle inspection stickers in car windows that are supposed to be in Massachusetts. 
• First two seasons were brought to you by J.Crew sweaters, 3-5 by American Eagle. Season 6 was open season in the attire department. 

It took a while to find a photo where Dawson's hair didn't make me want to vomit

Upon 21st century viewing by a 30-something, I give it a 3.0. Chunky dialoge, nonsensical relationship arcs ("I love you! Now I'm totally over you and we have no lingering issues!") and predictable plot lines. But Joey Potter was a great character to watch change and grow. I get you, Joey freakin' Potter. 

The Linger

I’m rapidly approaching the two-year mark since the death of Natalie. I wish I could say that time has made it easier, and I guess in a way it has, but I still find moments when the loss of her feels shockingly fresh. She still shows up in my dreams and I bolt awake with a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes. The other night I woke up crying because I dreamed of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase in her house, the one just at the top of the stairs. I dreamed of the smell of the books.

I miss her voice. I miss it every day. I have this list in my head of all the things I want to talk to her about, as if we haven’t spoken because we’ve just been busy. I know this isn’t true, but in those brief moments when I forget she’s dead, I exuberantly anticipate her thoughts and opinions.

I miss the way she’d say my name.

I know she’s dead. I do. She’s gone. There are the parts of me where her absence hasn’t yet settled. Two years later, those places are smaller now. And I hate them for shrinking. I hate the places that have come to grips with her loss; hate how my life has kept on going at a steady clip without her in it. I hate every holiday, every occasion for a hug or a call, every big moment where the weight of her presence isn’t. Those moments propel me forward and she’s stays in the same place.

 I hate having to let go.

 But I am letting go.

 I’m resigned to do it. I hate it.   

Shining with Every Movement

The rehearsal dinner had the haphazard quality of an event organized in the tropics, where both cell phones and responsibilities have spotty service. A three-walled restaurant with insufficient waiters hosted us and dinner took almost three hours to serve and sort and share the English-language menus.

In the midst of the ordering and waiting, an after-dinner dance party was deemed necessary, as only these sorts of things can be. It was hasty and half-hearted in the planning stages, but once implemented went on as most dance parties do. Nineteen friends, found in different stages of drunk and sweaty and committed, dancing in a large pagoda in the backyard of a rental house to “Seven Nation Army”.  I most feel comfortable as DJ in those situations. I can’t live outside my head when dancing is involved; I need a task.

The dance party wound down at 12:30. Everything was sticky; the temperature was still a humid 90 degrees. A moonless sky served to accentuate the overwhelming stars.

 Someone suggested we go to the beach. A narrow path cut from the rental house through the jungle and out onto a wide and white private beach. I was one of the last to arrive, and the beach was littered with piles of my friends’ clothing, as if they had disappeared out of their outfits as soon as they touched the sand. Skinny-dipping sounds emanated from the ocean—laughter, chatter, splashing and reckless abandon—but as I stepped closer I realized I could see from where the sounds came. The ocean was teeming with bioluminescent phytoplankton. My friends shone with every movement.

Not our beach, but very similar to what I saw. 

I was hesitant to join them. I was feeling much older on this trip, and thought that maybe I’d passed the age of group skinny dipping. But my friends were glowing in the sea and I was jealous. I wanted to shine. I stripped down and ran in.

It was as if I were swimming in sparklers. Every movement lit up my whole body, each kick left a trail of light. I couldn’t stop laughing. The bride floated by me, doing the backstroke through the teeming sea, her face glowing from the moment, her eyes reflecting the endless galaxy above and below.

It was much too much.
And I’m grateful.

(I was in Costa Rica in September/October 2011; I'm just getting around to writing about it)

Climbing Out of the Panoply

The humidity of Costa Rica isn’t subtle; it doesn’t creep upon you, doesn’t belly up to the bar beside you as you sit. It hits; it has fists that punch the moment one steps outside. It is as subtle as a stripper.  I walked out of the San Jose airport towing my bright orange backpack and was forced to stop a moment to collect my breath, the air thick with city and heat and sweat and noise. My prearranged taxi driver mumbled to me in broken English how to get to his beat-up Mitsubishi and I blindly followed.

20 minutes later my driver dropped me at the inner-city bus station, where I was to meet my charter out to the coast. He told me that the brightly-painted castle next to the station used to be a prison. It’s now a children’s museum. He said this like this shift was symbolic of the whole country. 

I ordered a lunch at the bus station mostly through pointing and nodding; it was carne and rice but I’ve no details apart from that. My Spanish was slow to come back to me after sitting dusty since high school. I felt dumb; I’m no good at staying mute. To use the restroom at the bus station cost 50 coloń, or about ten cents. The bored looking woman at the table took my coin and handed me a few small squares of single-ply. I was traveling alone and the floor of the bathroom was slick, and so I found myself squatting over a dirty toilet, wearing my 30lb backpack and trying not to laugh out loud while my thighs shook.

The bus wasn’t air conditioned. It was half-full and I took my pre-assigned seat by an open window, my sweaty back made hotter by the rough fabric of the seat. We climbed out of the panoply of the city without a word passing between any of us. The roads narrowed and traffic shifted without signs or signals. Buses blindly passed each other. Banana farms and endless jungle lined the two-lane road and everything was verdant and hummed of wings and lust and sweat and arrogant fertility. I didn’t know where I was and my heartbeat thumped loudly in my head.

I caught my first glimpse of a road sign three hours later, after I’d resigned myself to the possibility that I’d missed my stop and my future included being murdered in the jungle near Panama, and after my fellow travelers had departed and been replaced by new strangers, one carrying a live chicken. The lone road sign was bent and dirty and hard to see but provided the modicum of comfort that I needed. It was such a relief to know I wasn’t lost, I just wasn’t there yet. 

Intermodal

I’m back in the season of traveling for work, distilling my life to what can fit in my suitcase/the overhead bin or the under the seat in front of me. Everything is on wheels; everything is modal. Everything is reimbursable, as if it never actually happened. I wake in a room that looks essentially the same as the last and look out at a cityscape eerily similar to the one the week before. The skies and walls and floors and counters are unoffending shades of brown or gray. I drink a lot of bottled water. The water needs to be uniform and modal too. I speak in short, direct sentences with immigrants from countries I can’t spell about trivial things, like table placements or just how many cookies need to be displayed. I don’t get to laugh much. I long for depth, for familiarity, for home cooking, for sinks that aren’t sensor activated.  Then I get home and I’m simply tired. 

Most of the time, I like the travel. It’s harder now having a dog (all you moms out there just rolled your eyes, but it really is. The dog is my kid and I unhealthily project all of my hormonal neediness onto her) but I need the feeling of movement, of some little microburst of new beginning.  I sleep better on planes than I do in some beds, the newest issue of Vanity Fair cuddled against my chest, my head resting on the window shade covering Ohio or Nebraska or Colorado or Alberta 30,000 feet below. 

In the midst of my travel I got news that a person who was in my immediate family has cancer. The news always looks bad at the onset. With the prognosis flared the latent emotions that family brings. Pain. Guilt. Anger. Love. Fear. There the bests and the worsts crashing together, two cymbals resonating in that relational crescendo again and again and again, narrating that flip book of stills from 15+ years. 

I have another ridiculous month of movement before July brings the summer quiet. I will want the quiet then.

Hold These Truths

I can’t fully express how genuinely sad I am that Amendment One passed. I knew it would; it wasn’t a surprise and yet my heart aches and I can’t stop thinking about it.  I love Jesus. I don’t think that is a surprise to anyone who reads this. I love Jesus passionately and I like to believe this love translates over all the areas of my life, whether it is immediately evident or not (I’m looking at you, cursing problem). My relationship with Jesus is the most important personal relationship I have. 

And so it is physically painful to see the God I know to be unceasing in love and grace and mercy affixed to a battering ram of hate and judgment and condemnation. The truth gets high jacked and comes back a funhouse mirror version of itself. I think of all those who are turned away from the love that I so personally need and I want to weep. I wouldn’t want to know a God who acts like that. 

And so I speak these truths, to anyone who is listening:

•  You are so dearly loved, exactly where you are.
• You are beautifully and wonderfully made.  You were knit together in love and you matter.
• Mercy casts out judgment.
• Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not the past or the present, not the right or the left, not your orientation or your family, not your highest highs or your lowest lows, not popularity contests, not shame, not Facebook statuses, not Christians, not your best day or your worst night, not your secrets, not addictions, not failure; not fear. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.

Love.
Joy.
Peace.
Patience.
Kindness.
Goodness.
Gentleness.
 Faithfulness.
Self-control.

The writer of Galatians calls these the fruits of the Spirit. These are the traits of someone with in whom God resides, because they are the traits of God. Hold fast to this truth. Please.

I've written about this before here and here and probably elsewhere I just don't have time to look it up.

Be Thou My Vision

I woke with Ecclesiastes 3:11 in my head this morning.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my brain hummed as I boiled the water for my coffee.
“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart sang as I padded around in my bathrobe, my hair still wet from the shower.

“God makes everything beautiful in his time,” my heart hoped as I tied my shoes and grabbed the leash.

It's a big day in NC. The state is voting on Amendment One, a proposed addition to our Constitution that would give a very rigid definition of marriage and the benefits associated with it. Not to get too detailed, but the amendment would harm the medical and end of life rights of both straight and gay unmarried couples and their children, along with several other benefits we currently hold as self-evident. It's a shameful bit of legislation, and most polls show it passing.

And so it's a sad day too.

A clear sense of right and wrong is in the midst of the issue, but just as it is clear—obvious—it's clear—transparent. I'm learning that issues of right and wrong aren't what we see, they are what we see through, saying as much about us as they do about the topic at hand. They are lenses. Lenses change our vision. Lenses can bring clarity or they can make us blind. It's our choice.

“Without vision, the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18 says.

And so I pray to keep my vision. I keep looking, lift my eyes to the hills with the confident expectation that my own lenses will change, but that my vision will remain.

Today, I believe my vote is right. Right in the context of history, right in the context of scripture, right in the context of who I know God to be, right for the people of North Carolina.

And I believe, no matter the outcome, that all things will be made beautiful in God's time. 

Unfriending

A Facebook 'friend' (I always use that term loosely, for I have several people on Facebook that I've only met once or twice in real life) posted this article the other day, and since then I haven't stopped thinking about it.

Female Friendship: Ack, My Friend Dumped Me

It's about being dumped by a friend, something I think most people have experienced at least once in their life. I know I've been dumped before, and I've done the dumping. 

I don't suppose it's ever easy, fun or clear cut. I don't think I've had a friendship break up over a specific fight, or one that ended with a conversation about why it should end. It's been the quiet distancing that does it. The unreturned calls or emails, the invitations that go unanswered, the life that gets in the way of a friendship. Resentments that start as itches and become deep wounds. 

And sometimes I wish there was an exit interview for friendships, a way to find out what I did wrong so I won't do it again, or I can work to repair it. But there never is an exit interview, is there? Things just end. 

In the age of social media, we have the 'unfriending' process, as if disconnecting with someone online is the same as it happening in real life, like those bonds don't still continue even if we no longer care to acknowledge them. What a strange idea, to unfriend. It makes the process of disconnection sound so clear cut. It rarely is.