Tag Archives: love

Challenge, Letting Go

Letting Go Challenge: Week Six

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I apologize for the low quality picture. I took it at night because I wanted to make sure I got the stuff that was going to be dropped off at work out the next day, and the other two weren’t taken under the best photographic conditions, either.

28 Things:

  • 1. Storage container for my medicine
  • 2. Magic Wand
  • 3. “I am loved” button
  • 4. Downy packet
  • 5. Bag of cat food
  • 6. Button
  • 7. Arthritis patches
  • 8. Phone Charger
  • 9. Single Knee Hi
  • 10. Mini shampoo
  • 11. Mini conditioner
  • 12. Big bottle of conditioner
  • 13. Book (look, i’ve started!) Zach’s lie
  • 14. Top of a candle
  • 15, 16, and 17: Three broken and/or empty pens
  • 18.  Alarm company security sign
  • 19. Laptop box
  • 20. Purple scarf
  • 21. Alcohol bottle
  • 22. Empty hair conditioner tube — found in a drawer
  • 23. Black pants
  • 24. Blue pants
  • 25. Bra that has never fit
  • 26 and 27. Two pairs of shoes
  • 28. Writer’s Market 2013

One of the things I’ve discovered this week is the joy of seeing reaction of someone when I pass something on. I had the chance to see it twice.

The magic wand was given to me by an incredible lady when I was having a rough time.  She is my purple fairy godmother. I’ve had it for a few years, and, as I was cleaning up, I discovered an old pin that said “I am loved.”  I’m not sure where I got that from.

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Someone I have known for over ten years–one of my first friends when I came to work for my employer–was in the hospital.  We have had a tumultuous history, most of the tumult resulting from the fact that I really, really hated myself and had no idea who I was. Well, I knew what I was: I was venomous, but I couldn’t do anything to stem the flow. It just poured out of me, infecting everything I touched.

I was the opposite of Midas: Instead of turning things to gold, I turned them to shit.

Except for her. The thing was, she kept reaching out again and again and again when I really, really didn’t deserve it.

We would hang out, then not hang out, then hang out again, mostly going our separate ways when I got a transfer and she started attending church.  We would see each other or text once in a while, but mostly it was space.  A lot of it, I think, was because I couldn’t look her in the eye.

But then I found out, quite by accident, that she was in the hospital, in isolation because her condition was so dire.  I waited a few days before contacting her, hoping she’d be out of isolation.  It was within this span that I found my magic wand and the pin.

And so I contacted her and found that she was able to receive company.  The first thing I did after giving her a hug made awkward by her hospital bed, and only a little bit by tension, was to give her the magic wand with the pin stuck in it.

I told her a little about the wand, but I don’t know if I told her that I didn’t need it any more. I guess the assumption is there since I was passing it down.

That was a bright moment: when I found it, I realized that, no matter what circumstances look like, I really didn’t need a magic wand.  Now, the joke is that there is no magic wand that makes everything better; it’s just a representation of good wishes from a lady who wished she could make everything better for me. But the thing is, I really don’t need a magic wand. That wand became my wish I could make everything better for my hospital-bound friend.

I don’t remember what we talked about, mostly catching up, with my attempting to apologize for how shitty I was to her. Back in the day, my “personal space bubble” was nearly infinite, and I didn’t tolerate anyone invading it very well, and made sure everyone knew it.

At the end, she said, “That what’s you do when you love someone. Give them space and hope they come back.”

Anger, I’ve found, doesn’t have to be a way of life.  It’s much better when it isn’t.  And it’s not that I’ve changed–I haven’t changed. I just lost a lot of the garbage that wasn’t me.

Life is really, really good.

Also, the “ice chest” that my Enbrel came in served another purpose. My nephew received a bike for his birthday with a platform on the back.  With a little bungee-cording, it fit perfectly.

So this:

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Became this:

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And life is really, really good.

Language, love

Loving Language

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NYT.language

(Image Source: http://www.posttypography.com/illustration/language-changed-by-the-internet/ with original credit due the New York Times)

I love this picture, the fingerprints erasing and expanding, reshaping and redefining, demonstrating that the very act of engaging with language changes the very shape of language.

I love language.

I love the bumps and curves of it as it scrolls across the page, the letters forming symbols like stones, piling one upon another, creating a castle, brick by beautiful brick, that is so much larger than the sum of its parts.  Whether it’s great writing or great oratory (a product, I may add, of great writing), language, in all its various symbols, is something to be celebrated, encouraged, and discussed.

I love language.

I love its ambiguity and its specificity, as vast a distance as between Pluto and the Sun, the reach between the two containing worlds, moons, and stars of nuance. I love that some words are more solid than others, more fixed in the sky–to the naked eye–at any rate–while some are more fluid, freezing or flowing based on outside forces, like societal pressure, or internal forces, like impassioned beliefs. I love that the same words, the same symbols, can depict the rise and fall of resounding success and bewildering defeat. I love that common words, with simpler meaning in one language, can hold depths of nuance in another, containing, within a tiny sphere, both sameness and difference. I love that the gap between specificity and ambiguity creates a space for interpretation, for debate, for the free exchange of ideas–all of which are formed by words.

One of my favorite sayings is one attributed to Mark Twain. “The difference between the right word and the almost- right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

I love language. I love its cadence, its alliteration, its dual meaning.  And I really, really love puns. Especially when they’re groaners.

I love language.

As I sift through the Supreme Court’s decision on Obergefell v. Hodges, (the decision which can be read here) I find myself wondering: why haven’t I done this before?  Why have I not read legal decisions before, especially those handed down by the highest court in the United States of America? It’s fascinating stuff, filled with all the beauty of language I so love. I haven’t finished all of the dissents yet.  My habit of taking notes, googling definitions, and reading peripheral information (i.e., cited cases)–a holdover from my undergrad years–is making it a bit slow. I probably should have read the judgment in its entirety first: I’ve heard I’m in for a joy-ride of gobbly-gook in Justice Scalia’s dissent. I especially love gobbly-gook. From Whedonesque language (i.e., the “Buffy Years,” which were preceded by the “Firefly months”) e.g., the manipulation of nouns into adjectives and adverbs, verbs into nouns, etc. to the sheer linguistic acrobatics of Tom Robbins, I love gobbly-gook.

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acceptance, addiction, love, mental illness

Relapse and Resurrection: The Fall and Rise of the Addicted and Mentally Ill

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How perfect for Easter Sunday: Please–if you have addiction or mental illness, if you have a friend or family member who suffers from addiction or mental illness, if you work in mental health or are just open to seeing the world through new eyes–READ THIS.

There is hope. Recovery is possible. Some of the most brilliant people I know have addictions and mental illness. It doesn’t change the fact that they are awesome people. Their behavior may be terrible; I am not discounting the distance that may be needed in loving them from afar, but they are people, and fall within the category of “one another” whom Christ commanded His followers to love.

“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” John 13:34

writing

One Task Down …

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So it’s Sunday, and I’ve finally, finally finished my short story that was due at 6:00 on Friday.

It’s now almost 3:00 pm on Sunday.

It was pointed out in class that no one had written about sex yet, and after that, every one after that (so far) had some sexual element in it.

I tried to do something different, although with that sort of invitation, it was kind of hard to resist writing some sort of straight-up sex scene.

Mary Gaitskill has this way of writing about the ugly and the sordid and making it something sweet an intimate. At least some times, I think. I doubt I was as successful as she, but that was what I was going for. It’s only version 1.5 (and very, very late), but I’m rather proud of it, actually.

Of course, it hasn’t been torn apart yet. That might make a huge difference.

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Journey, love

Memory Lane

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His eyes did funny things when they were pointed in my direction. They squinted, then widened, his almost indiscernible irises flashing. I had never before, or have been since, looked at in such a way.

It made me nervous and I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets, fidgeting out of sight.

And then he smiled, and everything I had ever been afraid of just fell away.

He wrapped his arms around me, and the women laughed in the background. “Now, there’s a greeting!” one said, an older lady in an Ohio State sweatshirt.

We went to the bookstore, and enjoyed coffee while he mocked me. “The end of the world could be happening, and you’d be right there, writing in your journal,” he said. “It is the end of the world and I’m here, drinking coffee with you,” I countered. My hands were back to shaking, and I spilled a bit of the coffee. Without my notice, I had been clenching the cup just a bit too tightly.

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musing

New Orleans

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The French Quarter, beautiful and resplendent, perfect. St Louis Cathedral and an informal historical tour of New Orleans. There is something so amazingly lovely about that cathedral, the big sprawling lawn before it, the heresy of tarot readers and street performers framing its boundaries. The street musicians and the caricature artists.They are the ones that hold the secrets of New Orleans, these people around the boundaries of St. Louis’ Cathedral. Their gift to the city is not their art, although that would be gift enough. Their gift is that they release the secrets.

The secrets spill into the French Market, pause in the gaping hole where the Famer’s Market used to be. No more alligator-on-a-stick or raw sugar cane. These secrets, both glorious and gory, continue on, hungry, spreading through the Market, around the corner, past Elysian Fields and ’round to Bourbon Street.

They cross themselves like good Catholics, bending and swirling and genuflecting all over the city.

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Journey

The Impotence of Words

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I’m feeling all post-moderny right now, as opposed to writerly as I was before.

I still have papers, papers, and more papers to do, and three weeks left in the semester before finals. Which is bad, bad. Because I feel post-moderny, and not at all writerly.

Mostly I’m feeling helpless.

This is the death of something older than I am.

This is me, sitting in class, listening to literary applications of the Kubler-Ross model for grieving, as it pertains to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This is me, pretending to listen, trying to keep from bursting into tears while some girl presents her article on the stages of grief.

This is the sound of The Bear talking about “capping Massa So-and-So.”

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