Body of Lies, Moments of Truth

It’s called Body of Lies, he said.  I’ve never heard of it, but our choice was that or High School Musical, so it wasn’t difficult to make.  We met like we always do, walking together inside, saying hello to the faces behind the counter we know longer recognize.  When did they get so old? He asked.  When did we? The catch up was minimal, the special effects budget was high; we were underimpressed to say the least.  But now that we’re getting older, we figured we should probably do the thing that people our age do – move to the bar.  One mocked me for ordering a glass of white wine at a pub, while the other debated ordering a pina colada just to get the funny looks.  (they’re nothing if not comics, both of them). I ignored the looks directed at me, and they did the same.  We were all used to it.  This is a game we’ve played many times before.

We meet between semesters, the same way we used to when were were drum majors and homecoming kings and smokers.  We catch up on the important details – the love, the sex, the secrets, the self-discovery.  And the dirty jokes.

Would you call this a double date or a threesome? one asked.  That question has remained unanswered for 5 years, and it seems almost criminal to answer it now. Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can’t even begin to describe.

We drank and laughed and returned to our favorite conversation – secrets.  We make a good confessional, and as they took turns pulling the skeletons from their closets, I listened and let them make their peace with one and other.  It made me wonder if this is what men look like when they’re together on their own.  Fumbling for words and making jokes but poking away at free flowing emotions, or if I am yet again a catalyst for feelings unspoken.  Then it was my turn.  Forgive me father for I have sinned.  Resentment.  Idolitry. Boredom.  Not quite what it used to be, they agreed, but we are all growing up.

This is totally off topic, he interjected, but why the hell was it called Body of Lies? We had no idea.

He gave up cigarettes – very impressive - but I still came home smelling like smoke.  And secrets.  They told me the names they’ll remember when they’re old, and I told them the ones I won’t.  We could say anything, which is a feeling wonderful and forgotten to me as of late, and we knew it would stay between the three of us.  Sure, they had their “moment” that changed it all that they refuse to share (mostly because it makes great teasing material), and I won’t give them a number of knotches on my lipstick case, but everything else is open season.  In a room full of people there are private moments of truth, somehow floating between a football charmer, an irreverent commedian, a sweet little girl with bright eyes.  A settling soul, a Seattle-bound body, and a feisty little girl looking to answer to no one but herself.  A double date, or a threesome.  Call it whatever you want honey, but the words can even begin to describe.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.”

Yours.Rachel

Every new Beginning comes from some other Beginning’s End

Last January, after a bittersweet Christmas season, I did what every self-respecting “NFJ” (the I/E conflict rages on, but is unimportant in this instance) would do – I tried to create an umbrella of emotion and proper nouns under which to include all the experiences I’d had in the last year.  I struggled, grabbing and missing and stretching and squeezing until finally I found something – Love.  I decided 2007 was the year of love.  I acknowledged its many forms – some quietly beautiful, others quietly malignant, and still others aflame with passion.

Tis the season again.  The season to jump through introspective hoops, looking for something that unifies the experiences of the last 12 months.  This year, I settled on the theme of Endings.

Sounds kind of like a cop out, doesn’t it.  Hardly a proper noun until I capitalized it, and seemingly obvious as the calendar year draws to a close.

48 hours.  “What changed in 48 hours?”  he asked me in the dark wee hours of the morning.  2 days. 2 years. It wasn’t until last night that I could answer.

In 2007, we were in the thick of it.  Relationships began, strengthened, and started to fall apart.  I embarked on a period of travel – 8 months abroad and some awkward minutes inbetween.   The sophomore slump came on strong but fooled all of us when it continued into the first semester of senior year.    2007 was saturated, so full of life changing experiences that they spilled over to the first few months of 2008.   But by February, things began to unwind.

Daughter of a funeral-home family, I can’t help but notice empirically the numbers of deaths I’ve seen firsthand this year.  Grandma Buse.  Dylan.  Doris. Greg.  Two of a close friend’s grandparents.  Evie.  Young and old, merciful and unexpected, the end of their years drew a close not only to their own stories but pieces of ours.  I watched them begin in February and continue on throughout the year up to the bitter end.

Relationships ended.  Some were intentionally destroyed with the lucky ones being rebuilt, brick by brick.  Others have simply faded into the miles of inevitable truth that separates those involved.  We’ve all realized what we need, and what we don’t.  We adjusted accordingly.

The days of wine and roses ended.  America is in a recession (to put it mildly) and the days when Detroit automakers took bonuses and good benefits home to their middle class families are fading fast.

And as much as I hate to say it, College is ending.  This place that we know, that we know how to live in, that we know how to thrive in, this place that we call our home will not be ours for much longer.

But our depression is ending.  The economy may be reeling, but we are not. anymore.  Each of us letting go of our demons. Slowly. Carefully. Sometimes Painfully, sometimes Gracefully.  Each of us is an entirely different person than we were, and we are burring the lost souls we were in the soil of the past, fertilizing the parts of ourselves that now grow stronger by the day.

Tonight’s the night the world begins again.  A Christmas song of sorts that sounds a lot like all the other songs by that artist which sound a lot like a lot of other artists.  It played (blared) in the airport at 4:30 in the morning almost two years ago, and it came on the the radio last night.  I laughed out loud, and realized it was true.  This year has brought the end for many things.  Beginnings that ended here, with champagne, tears, and the soft glow of candles.  And new beginnings are springing up from where the others left off.

This New Year’s Eve, let’s toast to endings.  And Beginnings.

“So take these words, and sing out loud.  Cuz everyone is forgiven now.  Cuz tonight’s the night the world begins again.”

yours.Rachel

this one’s for me, not you (any of you). And a rather embarassing confession…

… but you can come in anyway.  Close the door (you know I have a thing about that) and stay a while.  Pull up a pillow or a piece of soft white blanket stained with a Cabernet of some persuasion, close your eyes for a minute and breathe it in.

1:27am. December 22.  Candles flickering softly and Sufjan whispering in the background.  This, my new nighttime ritual, smacks of aspiring introspection – my favorite poetic synonym for insomnia.  There’s not much left for me here in the suburbs, and with the blissful complacency and prosperity of the region gone by the hands of free-market capitalism, the only safe place left is this one.  With the walls painted seven shades of sherbet, and countless artifacts from the rose-colored days of old.

Every night, I give myself a task.  To revisit all the scrapbooks from my time at Albion.  To re-read the entries in my blog.  To re-read the words I wrote about what I saw and read and reflect on it further.  To read other peoples’ words to glean further perspective about the truth of what it is that’s happened these last few years.

That last one was tonight’s task.  But I got stuck on the first blog in my list of bookmarked wordpresses.  And it wasn’t the blog itself that got me, but the owner of some of its comments.  A name/presence/another compartmentalized life I’ve know about for some time, but today it occurred to me to follow the path to her thoughts.  I spent quite some time reading through the life of someone I’ve never met.  At times, I felt like a stalker or an intruder, barging in on a world where I didn’t belong, but then I remembered the first rule of internet journaling.  They are public. If you don’t want it seen, write it in the book you keep under your mattress.

I remembered the time I was found surprisingly, and in a similar circumstance.  An old flame of a one time lover commented on a post I made, referencing what I found to be a rather amusing nickname she had coined for me in a moment of weakness.   In the end, she and I exchanged warm sentiments and found common ground I had never expected.  Fear not my stone-faced one, I have no intention of making the same connection, in any public capacity.  I am, after all, in my selfish phase of life, so I will merely reap what I can from this in the privacy of my own oasis.

But I digress…

You wanted to read about me stalking.  I read and read and read, and as I re-read, things became clearer.  I cross referenced your words, and my notes about timelines, and we all began to fit together like sections of the same newspaper.  Why hello Section D, I’m Section B.  Nice to meet you.  I wondered what all the fuss was about back there.  Once I figured out how we all fit together, I began to listen.  You, little lady, say you’re pretty good at that, and I would believe it.  I read the way you’d changed in a year, and I read in between the lines.  squeezed myself between your lines, and squeezed you between mine.

I came to two conclusions.  First, that I have been given a great gift.  Not only did God bless me with the internet (so I can learn all about your life all the way from little old Detroit) but with an angel Clarence of sorts.  I got to see what I expect my life would have looked like if I were in your place.  Physically, and otherwise.  Your frustrations and your bliss, your unrivaled communication skills, and your inconsistent perfection.  Your words sound eerily like mine, and I suspect we have at least one pronoun in common. Most of us don’t get a chance to see the “what if”, and I consider myself lucky (to have seen it, and frankly, to have the “what if” that I got).  I’d always suspected that even if we did yoga, made breakfast and listened to Teeth in the Grass, and lay beneath shooting stars every night, it wouldn’t look quite the way I paint it in my dreams.  I’m glad I’m not alone, I guess, and I’m happy I get to leave those shortcomings at the entrance to the security line with my half-drunk bottle of water and other assorted liquids over 100ml.

Conclusion #2?  I’ve done all I can to make a story out of the fragments I’ve been collecting in my life over the last 2 years, but what interests me now is the lives of others.  I know where you fit in my life.  (most/all of you.)  But where do I fit in yours?  Here I am, reading your friends accounts of you, putting them together with what I know and have believe, trying to figure out what your life means.  Who are you my friend, and what have these past 2 years meant to you?  I know what you meant to me now, but I wonder what I meant to you.

You see, I’m getting better about putting the pieces in my own life together.  I’m beginning to assemble prose in my head, and I’m starting to craft metaphors that mean something, not just ones that grasp the air desperately looking.  I’m beginning to figure out where everything and everyone in my life these last two years fits, and how to move forward given the pieces I have, had, and hope to hold in the future.

But that’s as far as I can get on my own.  My mother has taken to trying to convince me that I may be an extrovert, and I’m beginning to believe she’s right.  At the very least, I’m incredibly curious.

I know of no more encouraging fact that the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.  -Henry David Thoreau

yours.Rachel