Sprout

I haven't written anything since I've gotten here. I've thought a lot of things, but none of them have been focused into anything productive or meaningful.

The truth is that, since I have been in college, I consider it an accomplishment to get out of bed. I'm proud of myself for getting through class. After a late night of work, I reward myself with a weekend full of sleep. If I can hold one conversation with a floormate, I consider myself socially adequate. It's like I've been sent back to square one.

It's such a reversal from high school. There, I was in control of my social world. I knew everyone and had many good friends. I could strike up a conversation with practically anyone and feel at least some comfort of history and understanding. I had been in the same school for 13 years, and I had become accustomed to the academic expectations. I was good at school. I was a leader in theatre and mock trial. I had a huge network of supportive friends and family in my life, available by car at any time. I've been living in a small world of known quantities for the last 18 years.

And in that environment, where pretty much everything was safe, I ventured out on artistic and spiritual adventures on my own time. I had a safety net. I knew which spaces in my life were for creating and branching out. But now, I don't have that. It seems like I expend all my energy on sustaining the fragile sprout of my new life.

Which, practically, means getting out of bed. Taking showers. Doing homework. Slowly, slowly making friends.

Still, ridiculously, I feel some weight of responsibility. I have never been able to shake the feeling that I ought to be doing something great and important. People have given me lots of advice about this through the years, along the lines of either "Yes, do great things! Go for it!" or "Stop thinking the world revolves around you."

So, basically, I've been living in my usual limbo between laziness and high aspirations. But the condition is hugely aggravated when everything around me is so foreign. The world is conspiring to keep me in my room. This is the first big change of my life, and I am definitely feeling stagnant.

But, ultimately, it's not about me. It's not about making something of myself. Maybe it's okay if it takes me months to get my feet on the ground. I'm not the team captain anymore. I'm not the "most likely to succeed." I'm just one lonely girl trying to carve out a place for herself. And I think that's an experience I need to have. I need to know that God sees me as valuable, even if I am just a lonely girl in the cafeteria with no accomplishments to her name.

Still, it hurts an awful lot sometimes. I miss everyone.

Luke 12:24

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

Ceinture Noir

I’ve been cleaning out my closet in preparation for leaving. Of course, one anticipates poring over old photo albums and diaries. But one doesn’t necessarily expect to find an item as curious as a black belt in Taekwondo. I got it in eighth grade. Of course, it’s exactly the kind of thing that doesn’t mean anything in eighth grade. But I got it, all right.

If people ever ask me how long it took to get it, I usually say two years. It was really more like a year and a half, but what are you supposed to say to people who are expecting a story of six years’ devoted practice, maybe ten? Their face falls the slightest bit, but they recover quickly, and, hoping to move onto something more fun, ask a question like “So can you do like backflips or anything?” And, with a grimace, it is “No, we didn’t really get into any fancy tricks like that, it was more like getting really good at the basics.”

“Oh, ok. Right. But if I went to attack you, you could injure me, right? I mean, could you, like, kill me?”

I smile to myself. “Well, maybe when I was more in practice.” As in eighth grade.

Then they ask me if I can do a trick, but unfortunately my skirt prevents me from showing off my killer jumping round kick. And then the subject is never broached again.

It’s a silly little scenario, but it leaves a strange taste in my mouth. It’s a joke now, but that’s just it. It wasn’t a trifle at the time. It may have been just eighteen months, but they were hard won. My body doesn’t listen very well, and it was one of the most trying experiences of my life. I have always been a perfectionist, and it killed me when I couldn’t break the board or get the move right. I wept through my sweat, and I learned to love my instructors even more than my beloved schoolteachers. And for all that, I was good, by fragile eighth grade girl standards. It meant the world to me when my instructors would hand me those belts—that I, a girl so easily conquered by feelings and circumstance, had become a conqueror.

And I never went back after they handed me that black belt. The thought brings a tear to my eye even now. I was done with it. I let it all slide down the tube of my memory. The moves and forms that came so easily to me have all melted out of my mind. The instructors haven’t. They remain crystallized, forever associated with certain mannerisms, sayings, kindnesses—the impressions left on the heart of a growing girl. If I saw any of them tomorrow at the grocery store, I wouldn’t know what do say. They wouldn’t remember me.

How many achievements in our lives slip away from us the moment we earn them? How many communities do we abandon, never to see those faces again? How many of us are merely nomads, migrating from place to place, putting all our energies into phases remembered only by mementoes found in moving boxes? Does everybody have a black belt gathering dust?

Sometimes I wonder if human actions are really just like taking photographs to put in a shoe box, where not everything is in order and a lot of things get lost.

Love and Motion

Why does love seem to squelch ambition?

Anyone who knows me knows that I am the first one to run after something, obsess over it, grasp at it. I spend more time dreaming of the future than I spend in the present. Get me started, and I will tell you of all the careers I could aim for, all the things I could study, all the places I could live, all the people I could meet. I sometimes feel as if I am trying to punch my way out of my own skin to get somewhere bigger to contain me.

And then I spend an afternoon in love. The fight in me deflates, pleasantly, until there is enough room inside me for something more than striving. Too much room, perhaps. I often feel dumb and airy in the presence of too much affection. Nevertheless, I feel somehow home. There is simply inertia-- lovely inertia-- so sweet that it is likely dangerous to dwell in. I think that God might have invented being in love to take people out of their plans and outlines and into the bursting present. For there is nowhere else to go-- why leave joy?

Of course, one cannot support this kind of thing. The feelings fade and life cuts in. And then you want somewhere to go. But what I wonder is if the place we are all trying to go is just that lovely inertia, where we don't want to go anymore. I have a feeling that this is not a proper way to look at life, and that striving is a rewarding and essential part of the human experience. But perhaps many people do not feel the same way. Perhaps most people spend their days and their sweat in hopes of a day that they will not sweat, or want anything more than what they have. Perhaps all people want is to be in love forever.

How happy am I to belong to a faith based upon an eternal romance! However, it is not a faith based upon inertia. It moves forward forever. But I believe there is a place for moments of happy paralysis. It is there that we understand the incommunicable. Maybe life is supposed to be moments of paralysis-- happy, sad, angry, confused-- followed by action and choice. There is rest and motion.

Medieval people thought that God was unmoving at the center of the universe. The most real and complete thing in the world didn't need to be moving toward anything. But I believe that God moves toward us to bring us to rest. There is a place for both.

L'Heureuse Ecrivaine?

I used to think I wasn’t built for happiness. I was a melancholy junior higher of the highest order, and whenever I happened to wake up happy, a shiver of disconcert came over me. What is this feeling? It feels excessive, silly, girlish. I was under the impression that, for serious artists, happiness was more of a bother than it was worth. Good thing, too—it never stayed for long. And so I kept churning out my dark poems and diary entries with the melancholic energy of youth.

And then, around fifteen, happiness began to trickle into my life like a blood transfusion, until my veins were full of something wholly different. And I didn’t write so much anymore, because, for the first time, life itself was more exciting than commenting on it or manipulating it with words. This is best exemplified in the lazy summers spent by Lindsay’s side at the park. What words could make those experiences seem deep or illuminating? They are what they are: blissful, but best kept alive in memory, which can convey their beauty far better than grasping words. Nobody wants to read a love story about two perfectly happy lovers. (Perhaps this is why I fail so miserably at love letters. Rather than tokens of affection, I view them as literature that fails to provide “tension on every page”. How ridiculous!)

Sometimes I will feel that my intellectual energy is spent in discussion. I get such a high from the exchange of ideas that I feel writing about them is like a one-sided conversation, more illuminating for me than anyone else. I would rather keep my head buzzing with idea-bugs than go to the trouble to catch one and examine it and write down my findings. This is why I love school so much. The buzzing. It makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere.

But the writing is coming back to me. At least I talk like it is. And I want to keep it that way. So, I’m going to have to find the place for writing in the life of an un-tortured artist. But I suppose if I can find something to cry about every day (and you know I can), then I can find something to write about as well.

Soundtrack

When I was little, I used to think that my mother's Walkman was absolutely magical. I could just put in a tape, wear the headphones, and be transported to Hollywood. The best was to walk or bike around with a song playing in my ear. If I just imagined the headphones away, the song came from the sky, lighting up the world with a melody wherever I chose to walk. It was a giddy feeling, with some power to it. The movie, of course, was about me, and my bike ride, which was of course headed toward someplace thrilling. But listening to that Walkman, I owned those movie moments.

Today I took another walk (think), and decided to bring my iPod along. The first song to come on the shuffle was a beautiful trickling song with a heartbeat that was exactly the right walking pace. And I was in a movie again, just like when I was five. The whole bit-- smiling at the neighbors, smelling the flowers, looking up at the sky and laughing. It was like I had just had a moment of conviction, or something grand had happened to me, or I had let go of a long-guarded fear. But I hadn't. I had simply woken up and taken a walk.

Films and plays can show music as integrated into life. Not only is the soundtrack integrated into the action of a film-- it can illuminate, even elevate, the action. Why is this grace afforded only to the lives that we invent in scripts? Why can't we hear the ominous cello under our darkest decisions or the swell of strings at our first kiss?

Perhaps it is because we only understand what is really happening when we view it from above. It is then that we can pick the perfect song to bring the moment its truth. Maybe music is a necessarily reflective activity; we make music to express something we have experienced, not something we are experiencing. Maybe the music will come with the moment when all things are new.

This is one reason why I love the movies.

Ces Francaises Ne Grossissent Pas

I just got back from a walk. I knew that one is supposed to think on walks, but didn't know what to think about, so my mind automatically began counting my steps. Naturally, that got boring, and I began thinking. Presto!

I think, in order to trick myself, I am going to start referring to it as "going for a think". I want to begin walking because I detest aerobic exercise, but still want a way to get myself up and out. Aerobic exercise is not thoughtful by its very nature. It takes the mind from the mind and onto the body. One's thoughts are caught up in pure muscle movement. I do not begrudge anyone this experience. It is likely healthy to become completely preoccupied with one's physicality every so often. However, so far, I have not found myself built for such exertion.

You see, exercise happens in my life every few weeks; furious, fitful exercise. It comes from the moments when I look in the mirror one too many times and realize that I am not comfortable in my own skin, and not satisfied with the hollow disregard I have for my body. Thus begins the obsession (the project). I chronicle my calories, reducing them ever lower, and crunch my way into tears, all for a matter of days, until I let the project screw itself while I eat my Kettle Chips. It's not about a healthy lifestyle change. It's about pure vanity and envy, which dissolves into anger, frustration and name-calling that I heap on myself. See how sinful and negative a matter of a few pounds can be! It is such a trap for women.

I am reading French Women Don't Get Fat. I know-- trendy diet book, right? And, like, 7 years past the trend. But I think-- hope?-- it might change my life. It actually has somewhat of a spiritual significance, or at least reasonably drawn parallels. Most diet books are "plans", with direct instructions on what and how much to eat on which certain days before reaching this or that level, eliminating some food groups altogether. Then there is the exercise plan, where one must plough away for pledged hours at the gym. These plans are easy to see as legalism. Spiritually, legalism kills-- try to stick to the letter of the law, and you will find yourself either cheating it, becoming self-righteous, or falling off the wagon entirely. No one can thrive under it.

So, Mireille Guiliano's book does away with plans. In fact, it does away with lots of things. There are no diagrams, prescriptions, or pictures. Just stories, principles, and wisdom. Much like the way that Christ did not teach his followers exactly how to behave with rules for situations x, y, and z. He simply gave them parables and principles to live by.

It is a small miracle that I simply do not want to refer to myself with stinging epithets about my looks. Normally, that's how I motivate myself. Fatass. But this is a whole new world. A positive world. A world where I want to eat good food because it is good, and savor it in a smaller portion-- not scarf down fries and cry about it when it's over. Where I can go on a long walk and enjoy it for its own sake, not pound away my guilt on a machine. I can look at this "diet" as a new way of living, not a way to justify or escape from a guilt-ridden state-- just as a life in Christ is a way of living for His joy, and not of achieving self-righteousness.

No, I'm not saying that French Women Don't Get Fat is the gospel of diets. There are probably better plans, and maybe things won't work out for me. But I'm having a happy revelation for now. And now it's time to make some dinner.

Projects

Having just finished watching "Julie and Julia," I have been thinking about life in terms of projects. In the film, both Julie and Julia find themselves feeling restless and stifled by their lives, with loving husbands by their sides but no personally fulfilling goals. So, naturally, they get some, and a movie takes place. The plot follows the course of each of their projects-- the excitement at the start, the strain that sets in, wondering what was so important about the thing in the first place. The motivating undercurrent of purpose. The thrill of successes small and large. The film ends as their projects culminate in recognition and joy.

But what happens when the project is over? What do you do when you spend years working on something, and then it ends? There aren't a lot of "projects" that I've followed up to satisfying conclusion, but if you consider the culmination of a project as the ending of a a phase of life, then I can speak from some experience.

Rehearsing Les Miserables, for instance. That show (like nearly any) was made out of the tears, sweat, and blood of the cast. Initially thrilled to be cast as Fantine and to have a chance to bring the material to life, I was dismayed when rehearsals began to grow more and more stressful. But on opening night, when we sang the final notes of the show and the audience leapt to their feet, I was stunned with the sharp happiness I felt. It came again on closing night-- the hot, sweet tears of culmination, achievement, and finality. Both were moments that I will take with me forever.

But, as such, they probably constituted a few hours of euphoria amidst months of ups and downs. And the day after closing, I was listless and airy as a ghost. The project was over. The moments had passed. I would have to find something new to occupy myself.

And so I have. I have rediscovered the desire that I have within me to create. I have begun work on my musical. There is another project. There will always be another project.

My life can be positively measured in projects that I obsess over. Determining my religious denomination. Writing this or that novel. Getting the perfect college scholarship. There is no time when I am not engaged in some kind of quest.

There is a moment in Julie and Julia where Julia's husband is about to finish his last assignment for work. He sighs, "Then what do I do?" What do we do? What do any of us do? Is life just one project after another? And if it is, is it about that joyful terminus, or is it about being immersed in a goal? Is it about the goal or the journey? If it isn't about the goal, then what is the point?

I'm not really despairing of questing. There's nothing that's going to stop me from it. But it just intrigues me to think that we are all hard-wired to be striving to finish a project-- but the projects never end. It is not as if, once we finish one particular goal, we will be able to put everything down and relax. We won't. We can't. It isn't that whoever dies with the most toys wins. If we could live forever, we would keep finding new tasks.

All of this leads me to the joyful conclusion that we were made to seek and to be satisfied-- eternally. What a joy it is, to know that our God supplies both for us. He is gracious enough to grant us joy and peace in the end, but he is big enough that we may run after him and plumb the depths of his truth and wisdom for all eternity. It is as C. S. Lewis wrote of the new kingdom in "The Last Battle"-- once they got there, they all had a great desire to run. But they never got tired.

P.S. --

I do recommend the film. It was refreshing to see a movie that espoused finding your own interests and what gives you a joie de vivre, and not giving up on those things. Most chick flicks will tell you that the solution to your problems is to find a man. This story showed that, even after finding a wonderful mate, there is more of life to be plumbed.