Like It Means Something

That song. Do you have that song “You can’t go home again?” She asked me with the crystal wine glass in her hand. She was drawing eyes and fire and a flower like the one on a broken wrist, and across it she had scribbled the word “POWER”. We were chewing on the words I spit out with the sounds of Our Endless Numbered Days soundtracking the moment (except without your song because it wasn’t my time), and we switched to a little DJ Shadow. “Do you want Blood on the Motorway with it?” I asked. Of course you do.

The four of us sat there, letting it wash over us like those lights bathed me in the tunnel over a year ago. “You were in the back seat with the two boys in the front… I listen when you speak” she said with a smile. What conversation there was had stopped until she with the locks that hang far down her chest mentioned the sampling of Simon and Garfunkle in the midst of this song. We smiled, breathed a little deeper. When it ended, we said somehing I don’t remember now, and I changed back to the song I’d been avoiding before.

I was trying to explain this to someone else over road-trip fettuccine the other night. I’ve gotten too old for a lot of things in these endless numbered days, and one of them seems to be this insatiabile ability to talk about mundane things with romantic excitement, and at my ripe old age of (almost) 21, I’ve all but given up on roses.  Still, I said as I took my glance briefly from the odometer, Its like a tiny blue flame – nothing you would ever rally the campus around on homecoming weekend, but something you find with a little digging, something glowing white-hot (that’s what my mother used to say about me when I was little – I was full of white-hot intensity. I’m sure at the age of 4 I had a less than complete appreciation of this concept.) It makes me cry, I laughed, like that nonchalant answer meant something meant more than flowers and babies and God’s love I (and all of that). I had this urge to flip the hour glass, my mother’s unknowingly epic gift to 501 Michigan Avenue, as I found it and pressed play.

One reached for her bag – notebooks it seemed – and the other two lay on the floor cuddling with their heads on a pink fleece pillow; I polished my silver. Like it meant something. I’d intended to take it from it from its robin’s egg blue pouch for quite some time, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until this moment where I felt the insatiable need. It was neurotic and I was well aware – I’ve know enough photographers to know when I am being noticed, but with the same sentiment I’ve begun to ignore it. The smelly pink liquid went on smoothly and took off more dirt than I could have imagined. I marveled to one with curls how black with tarnish the polishing cloth had become and she just laughed. So did I. “Oh the metaphor” she remarked, and I refused to touch it with a ten foot pole. Ask me to get back to that in ten years, I said, and I’ll have something brilliant for you.

It faded to a song of another, and each of us was in our own Sodom, South Georgia. Sleeping like buckets of snow or awake like a tree full of bees, or maybe both at once while white tongues sing God is Good. I noticed a heavier beat, rhythmic knocking, and I had the worldly thought to answer the door. Her eyes were tired but bright and young, and in waltzed visitors fresh for our entertaining. So I played the hand I know best – I smiled. We chatted about a lot of things while she held her wineglass and newly chewed monologues as a shield for them, while sheer stature served as adequate for the other. I think we’re going to make it to the weekend I said, probably laughing louder than was necessary to make my point.

And here I am. She’s asleep, they all are.  And I am alone.  There’s something about Black Sheep, and I’m looking at the clock counting the hours until tour guide training later in the morning. Like it means something.

Ask me about it in ten years.

“The only thing worse than growing up is never quite learning how.” (From a sticky-note I found unexpectedly while unpacking)

yours.Rachel

Forkful by Forkful

My newly-named GPS Juliette directed me to the park where I met her – beautiful and wearing orange.  A lot has changed in the six months since I’ve last seen her – I’ve played blue when I should have played red and she’s played her share of unexpected cards too – but after speaking to her about commutes wet with more than the rain I knew we’d meet with me in a dress and her in orange.

The waitress had to come back three times before we were ready to order.  I apologized – “we’re catching up: it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other.”  When lunch came we ignored ettiquite and dug in – we were both famished.   We remarked about the weather, wondering together if it’s ever rained this much around here.  Neither of us – well, none of us actually – are quite sure what to make of it, but I suppose in situations like these there’s nothing to be done but laugh, grab an umbrella, and wait it out.

My mother told me the other day that leaving a good tip is a sign of a viable marriage prospect, and she left a great one – our soulmate theory once again confirmed.  We headed to the car as large drops began to fall, sitting and listening to a song that meant the world, waiting together for the short but violent storm to end.  We met then with another, newly pedicured and tattooed.  She kept making remarks and laughing at herself – “I’ve changed a lot” she said as we nodded silent and introspective dittos.

The lady in orange left, and she the newly painted and I were left.  The “P” in her took us to Albion, and we socwered the place for sisters or something we knew.

We found three – They were bright as the setting sun and we were weathered as the pavement that had seen an unseasonable amount of rain.  She and I could watch them in the rear-view mirror of her suburban SUV, but as we drove the back-roads of the Albion “suburbs” we declined commenting on the irony.

We ate dinner at La Casa, a surprisingly delicious Mexican restaurant and one of the few multi-cultural treasures that Albion can boast.  (The loss of New China was unexpected and devastating.)  The music was peppy and as vibrant as shades on the walls.  Her recommendation of the famed vegetarian quesidillas was an excellent one, but one a little too large to take in one sitting.  We asked for boxes.

She looked over at me, moving my fork between my plate and a white styrofoam container, rearranging small piles of rice from one to the other – She laughed as I spilled a few spicy grains each time.  “I’m glad I’m not the only one doing this bit by bit with my fork.”  I looked her; for a moment I was completely unable to comprehend that any other way to sort through these leftovers might exist.

She held a fork in her hand as well, but one across from us had thought to pick up the plate, dumping everything leftover with one quick and efficient swipe of the fork.  I furrowed my brow and thought for a moment – and we laughed together through it.

I’m with you one hundred percent. I said as I returned to my slow and somewhat messy process.  Bit by bit – forkful by forkful.

I think someone made a joke while a few others laughed, but we didn’t seem to notice – we just kept on going until we were done.

“You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

yours.Rachel

Out of Body Experience

This afternoon it came to me.

For quite some time I had been trying to remember her name. I knew her first name – remembered it fortunately as we met coincidentally at Starbucks some months ago – but I couldn’t call to mind her last name. Clearly, I’ve had other concerns since the time I saw her grabbing coffee in the epicenter of our small town last summer, and so recalling her title was continually pushed back to make way for more pressing life issues. But sitting in my room today (in a spot that seems to be suited well for revelations) it came to me.

I looked her up on Facebook. 24 mutual friends, that’s gotta be her, right? I remembered her mentioning CMU and I saw FHS class of 08, so I clicked the “request friend” button and awaited my confirmation. Upon returning home from dinner, I found an email in my inbox notifying me I had been accepted as a non-preditor, and from there I did what any self-respecting non-preditorial individual would do – I stalked her from a respectful distance.

I read through her activities, interests, and other vitals first. As she cited writing and scrapbooking, and embraced a healthy love for Sex and the City, I found myself smiling. I remembered, I thought, that she was the president of the Student Council, and her mega-watt smile staring back at me seemed to silently confirm. Undying devotion to her darling rebel – her sweetheart with a healthy dose of defiance – seeped out of the page from wall posts and her relationship status.

I recall her most vividly as a Freshman, and from the moment I met her, I adored her. She sparkled with a natural energy, and her mind was as quick and sharp as her smile was charming. She wore a lot of black then as she was tying up the loose ends of a pubescent punk stage, but unlike the other punks she embraced the Stu-Co (student council, yes we thought we were that cool) culture of clean-cut WASPy fun. Still, unlike some of our fair-skinned friends, you could see the depth of her still waters shining brighter than any Tiffany that may have adorned her neck.

I decided then to flip through the photos of her, and as I did I found myself experiencing the strangest feelings of surrealism. She was sandwiched in between groups of girls, or holding signs displaying undying High School pride, or making funny faces in all the local restaurants. The one that really got me was of her in Charlie’s basement. He was a friend of mine – through my own darling rebel – and I would recognize those maroon walls anywhere. His sister, whose elfin figure was a constant source of teasing in my day, was in the picture (playing host) and four other fresh-faced girls held pool cues and were captioned by the words “Its weird to think about what your life would be like if you never met the people who changed it.”

There she was, with her bumper-stickers about love and girls standing on their tiptoes, hair straigh and make-up thick, smile shining with such a beautiful innocence. I’d always liked her partially because I saw so much potential in her youthful self and partially because I saw so much of myself there too. It became even more poignant today as I felt as though I was looking at my former self in pictures of her. Remembering that girl who loved a boy with everything she had because she had everything to give. The girl whose smile sparkled with childish innocence and lit up a room with genuine energy. Whose eyes were bright and hair was blonde and figure was slim and clothes were smart but young.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the past – burying things that have been long gone, and realizing how much, in aging, I need the things that I knew when I was young. Learning the difference between irreconcilable and irrevocable, and how important both of those words are to my existence. Redefining the place of things and people in my life, and realizing how my past life and self fits into the person I am now. Learning to look back at that girl – with the fresh face and bright eyes – and to see how she is, even then, the woman she will someday become.

“Growing up is never easy.  You hold on to things that were.  You wonder what’s to come.  But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be.  Other Days. New Days.  Days to come.  The thing is, we didn’t have to hate eachother for getting older.  We just had to forgive ourselves…for growing up.”  – The Wonder Years

yours.Rachel

We are All Innocent

Come with me.

Run with me down the stony path at Capri, our faces shaded from the bright sun by a blanket of purple flowers climbing overhead as our hair and the folds of our dresses flow behind us. Roll with me down the sled hill at Heritage, and let me laugh and do it again as you sit at the bottom sick to your stomach and waiting. Put on your prettiest sundress, hold my hands, and we’ll spin ourselves round in circles. Be my captain and I’ll be your crew, wind blowing through our hair as we watch the expanse of water stretching out far ahead of us.

Come to my home and I’ll show you, once again. We’ll run through the wet grass to the swing-set behind the yard and let the wind hit our faces hard. Sit with me, smoke with me, share with me in the grass when we’ve had our fill of the sandbox. Look up at the stars with me, tell me what you see. Lay with me, laugh with me, breathe deeply as you let life fall from your shoulders for a beautiful instant.

Because I don’t care about the pills crushed on your desk. I don’t care about your salary, your benefits, or your retirement package. I don’t even care about the world you’re saving or the futures we’re making – not for now – because we have our present to make first.

For I am not one and twenty, and you are not much farther afield. yes, we have our stories. We have our scars and holes and our hurts and our fears. We have seen demons – some are black and others glittering gold. We have bargained with them, we have prayed to them, we have laid with them and felt ourselves torn between ecstasy and excruciating emptiness. Each of us has our own tales to tell, and our own illusions we’ve spun that are beginning to come unwound. We have left pieces of ourselves in people and places, and some of these pieces will never be ours again.

but yet – We are All Innocent. for I am not one and twenty, and you are not much farther afield. Caught between the sandbox and the stock-market we are but children playing with grown-ups toys, trying to build castles in the sandy desert that stretches farther than we ever could have imagined.

Let us cross the desert to find an oasis. and let me meet you again. Introduce yourself and I will do the same, for these months have been longer than the days that compose them, and the distance has been farther than the miles between us.

And yes, We have our roads, paved with asphalt or gold or simply scratched out in the dirt. They lead off into the distance, winding and obstructed from our view, and as surely as the sun will set our feet will follow them soon. Then I’ll let you go. To Venice or to New Orleans. To Ghana or to Grayling. To Midland or The ‘Nasty or New York.

But before you go… lay with me in the grass. When we’ve jumped from the swings and slid down the slides and held ourselves above the sand on the monkey-bars… Lay with me and let the moments feel like sublime centuries. Don’t say a word. Just breathe with me under a blanket of stars. Silently, let us say ‘goodnight moon’ and watch the sun creep colorfully to her place in the new day.

love.Rachel

something slightly resembling gumption

(this is going to be one of those entries I try to avoid)

she’d spent all night trying to shove the crooked pieces of this jigsaw together, but until dawn she’d had no luck. Then, as the morning sun shone through the window, she began to see how the pieces fit together…

If I had to pinpoint the moment it began, I would say it was watching the Holiday with my favorite Manhattan lady on Saturday night. It could be argued that it was more of an ending, but it could also be argued that said ending began any time between last Saturday and a phone conversation we had while I was curled up on a countertop in my bathroom three years ago.

Drinking a peculiarly sweet merlot and eating strawberries covered in chocolate, we opted to pass on the activity that would seem to naturally accompany our feast of sorts (the kind of activity that got her raised eyebrows at the supermarket when she was buying the supplies for the evening.) We were watching Cameron Diaz act poorly and noticing that scenes with Jude Law always have accents of blue – plates, clothing, building, etc. – to set off his beautiful eyes. And, I was showing her a side of Jack Black she’d never seen – we were both in love.

I love the Holiday because it’s the quintessential chick-flick but better. The characters are my favorite part, and out of all of them is Kate Winslet. She is one of the few actresses I actually know, and I love her in the variety of films she’s done (everything from Titanic to Eternal Sunshine to Sense and Sensibility). But even more in this movie… because I love her character. A young British woman, not terribly skinny, who earns a living announcing weddings in a London newspaper. She has a pseudo-lover whom she leaves behind in an exciting journey to LA where she befriends an old endearing filmmaker and falls in love with the surprisingly adorable Jack Black.

It ought to be fairly obvious why I appreciate her character, and I can’t help but get warm fuzzy feelings in the last scene of the movie (spoiler alert – I know it’s a big surprise) when she is dancing around in a beautiful dress with Jack Black on New Years Eve. Even the next day, my Manhattanite and I were sharing salads (told you) and recalling the finer points of the movie.

the thing is, a lot has come into focus in the last 24 hours. Material things have been settled: summer job, housing for next year, and classes for the fall. All of these are stresses lifted, freeing me to focus on the stresses of the present like term papers and finals. These have eased some of the burdens of the last few months, and the present certainly feels less bleak when the future is something to be dreamed about.

More immaterial things have come to light as well. My appetite is back in full force, and I can fall asleep in half the time it used to take. And the dreams are much less ominous, although they are equally cryptic. I’ve been able to exorcise some of the fear and anxiety, but it’s taken with it other feelings I didn’t expect to leave. This afternoon, I was sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap – like I do more that I care to admit – I was suddenly struck by a revelation. A thought that I remember being planted long ago, but that has been unearthed and re-buried repeatedly. A revelation not unlike the one Kate Winslet discovered as she traveled across to globe and ate fettuccine and remembered what it was like to feel crazy weather blowing hair into lovestruck eyes.

Just then, a song came on, and I laughed out loud. “Well, loving is as loving does…” Ahhh the old “love is a verb” concept. Love should be a verb, and sometimes verbs are active. The worthwhile ones at least – who in their right mind would want to be a passive one? or be with a passive one? As the words went on I listened carefully, hoping for more poignant tidbits. But I found that I didn’t like the rest of the song – it was sad in a way I identified with entirely too much. And I am tired of not being in the right place. or not being young enough. or old enough. or red enough.

There, alone in my room in the calm Roman sunlight, I declared myself finished. I felt light, free, and utterly alive!   and I believe it was something slightly resembling gumption.

the third-person piece above was an away message I’ve had up all day. She IMed me from Toulouse, saying she liked it, but asking what it was about. I explained, subtly and metaphorically, and I could hear her chuckling across timezones and the invisible network that continually amazes me.

“You sound like you.” she said.

That may be the most comforting thing I’ve ever heard.

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.’ – Louis L’Amour

yours.Rachel

ellipsis within an ellipsis? Or just more of that “Life” thing

Rome FCO to CDG: the short beginning to a short trip, and a classically French airport. Terribly organized, but the food was delicious and the airline attendants were dressed impeccably.

CDG to DTW: surprisingly, the flight passed quickly, or as quickly as 9 hours strapped in between a metal armrest and a concave plastic wall and mounted atop a cushion that doubles as a liferaft can. She met me at baggage claim – tall as ever – and I was convinced I must be shrinking. maybe it’s just the weight on my shoulders… that weight carried over my shoulder was all I’d brought home with me, so we headed to the car. We caught up, and mused together about why exactly this supposed-to-be uneventful semester had gone up in flames. Was the timber really that dry when I left?

…something between a week and a weekend – caught between jetlag and a holiday – this little ellipses in the middle of my semester was a welcome one. At first I feared I might be doing nothing more than running, expensively and across time zones, but as coffee and hookah and mongolian bbq and coldstone and tears and tissues and music and memories were shared, I found myself “whelmed”. No underly or overly so, just enough to be what was needed and to warrant the creation of a word. Another day in the life…

DTW to AMS: The stewardess who demonstrated how to save myself in the event of a tragic plane crash had not come by yet to pick up my trash, so I continued to pick (not “eat”) at the container of muck masquerading itself as “Beef Stew.” Still, the cookies were good, my video screen allowed me to make my own play list and choose my own movies, and oh-yeah-that’s-right-I’m-going-to-Rome so I can’t complain. I looked out the window to see a few lights on a coast-line. Referring to my jack-of-all-trades video monitor, I concluded we were in Canada, B.F.E approximately.

Ahead of me the mist was impenetrable and I could see nothing more than a haze. But behind me, the horizon was aflame. Dusk with her rose-red fingers lit up the sharp edge, a warm spectrum of vibrant color. It looked like the edge of the world, and as my eyes traced the hard line of color, I realized that in a sense, it was the edge of the world. Of a world. The world I was leaving, again. A world on fire with confusion, with discovery, with death, with love. Filled with relationships, ethnic food, saturated fats, sketchy drug deals, traffic, and poignant memories. Slowly, the vivid reds and oranges began to give way to sherbety shades and then finally to the darkness of night. I almost said “I love you. Goodbye” aloud…

AMS to FCO: the flight was short and nearly empty, so I comendired an entire row of seats and streched out with George in my arms. Under the watchful eye of a friendly Dutch stewardess, I slept like a baby.

When I arrived at my apartment, I found my bed missing. It was in another room, as it had hosted a weekend visitor, and I dragged it back where it belonged. My daze was so heavy even the squeaking of the metal frame against the door could not break my trance. I lay down, tossing and turning with feverish and frightening dreams at first, but finally I settled into the sort of black-hole sleep that only exhaustion can produce.

and it continues. Paris tomorrow, London to follow. Then Capri, Spain, and Morocco. Just under 2 months left. Here Dusk with her rose-red fingers fades quickly too…

“Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us all through its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.” – Charles Caleb Colton

yours.Rachel

Dylan Lindgren

usually, I refuse to use names on my blog. It’s a matter of principle, really. I have no fears about sharing my introspective reflections with anyone who chooses to read my blog, and as someone who defines their life in large part by their relationships, my friendships are an important part of what needs to be written in this space. But, as they are individuals – trekking through self-discovery just like me – I don’t feel it is my place to tell you their stories. Their lives are my life, and so I have to share the experiences that are had, but its up to them to revel themselves to you in personhood if they so choose.

But I’d like to make an exception to this rule. in this case, Dylan can’t tell you his story, but I believe it’s one that deserves to be heard.

Dylan grew up in a tough situation – one of those suburban households that made people like me with a dad, mom, sister, and bichone-frise Poco in a nice house with nice cars and nice photo albums from nice trips bite my lip in with self-conscious awareness of privilege. He spent his life in the Salem Church family, and that’s how we became friends.

For years we spent our weekends in Sunday school and singing in the choir. As a boy not afraid to sing (in a small congregation) he was a star, and he held many important musical (and Vacation Bible School) roles – including but not limited to Shadrack (I was Meschah, and another little blonde boy was Abednego, and we played it “cool” wearing sunglasses and drinking pop in the furnace while we were saved from the fire by an angel), several old testament prophets, and various animals and heavenly hosts. He ascended the ranks of Christmas-pageantry, climbing from angel #3 to shepherd to king to Joseph to the king himself. When we performed Jesus Christ Superstar he was Jesus – it took several rehearsals until he and Judas could sing about my “profession” as Mary Magdalene without all three of us laughing hysterically – and when it all came together better than we ever expected and he was crucified brutally on the cross, the congregation and audience sat too awed to cry and we knew that the Holy Spirit or something must have been moving in the place that night.

He was the the first in a line of youths appointed to the church governing board, and even when he drank the communion wine with another debautcherous kid everyone forgave him and went on loving him because in a family that’s what you do. He played piano for the children’s choir once he was old enough to sing with the adults, and he was always a ringleader in the plot of mischievous hand-motions to Jacob’s Ladder that only our director could see but we all knew were going on because we could hear the entire tenors section laughing.

He was a defining presence on many mission trips – making words like “corn!”, “where’s Laura?”, and “BOOM!” come alive, and he painted/repaired houses, changing lives of residents while simultaneously attracting a group of admiring Jesus-centric girls we affectionately referred to as Dylan-hoes. Together, we found humor in religious fundamentalism, and we nodded our heads and smiled at Bible “scholars” and people who told us that people with hairy-legs are rapists and that “pornography kills”.

Every person in the congregation adored him. Every child loved to be carried or chased by him, every middle-aged person loved to be helped by him in the running of the church, and every elderly person loved to watch his life go by because they could see what it meant to the life of the church and all the individuals within it.

He graduated and went on to Hillsdale, and that’s a story I can’t tell because I don’t know it well enough.

You’d be hard pressed to find a picture of him where he isn’t wearing something absurd, attacking someone with love, or making a ridiculous face. He spent his life making people laugh, making people think, and making an influence with everything he did.

On March 8th at 4:30am, Dylan Lindgren passed away surrounded by his family and friends. Just weeks shy of 23 years old, Dylan lost his exhausting battle with Lymphoma. He passed without fear I believe, and basking in the love of his family, friends, and our God, leaving behind changed lives and a legacy that will never be forgotten.
In the years that I’ve know him – almost all my life – the most influential thing he has ever said to me occurred within the last year. The Lymphoma had been raging for a year, and we were sitting at Starbucks one August Sunday before I returned to school. We couldn’t share drinks or too much physical proximity because we didn’t want him to get sicker than he already was, so we shared stories instead.

We were talking about the cancer, and he said something amazing. “I’m not really afraid to die”, he said. “More than anything, I just don’t want to look back on my youth – this time when we should all be out having fun and doing stupid things – and realize that I missed my chance to do it. Really, that’s all I’m afraid of.”

So what does that mean for those of us who are lucky enough to have our youth?

If we are alive, let us go about our business.

yours.Rachel

the year in review

after our initial plan was thwarted by familiar video store clerks, our revised plan was to hit the liquor store and spend the evening toasting to nothing and laughing through suburban boredom. Not surprisingly, our attempt to be normal was a failure, and we ended up sick to our stomachs and discussing the things we rarely tell anyone else. not pretty things, but realities. the type of things that we tell each other not so much for the benefit of explanation to the other but for the benefit of ownership by ourselves.

two nights before, after having taken a friend home, I drove around Farmington Hills for a solid 2 hours. I took the same 10 mile loop over and over and over and over; for the first time in weeks it was just me alone with myself. Honestly it’s been something I was avoiding because I’ve felt like there’s so little of myself to be with; needless to say, in the last year of my life self-actualization has been lacking. This dissatisfaction with my own abandonment of purpose (the drive for a better self, life, and world) lead me to wonder what purpose this seemingly devoid year has served in my life.

don’t get me wrong. if you’ve been a part of my life this year it’s not that I don’t value you; it’s simply that the year 2007 has been the ultimate in in-betweens. Slid nicely between the most visible sink into sophomore slump and the soon to be epic voyage to Rome, this year floated in a stage between emotions – to calm to be either a bad or a good year – and in its conclusion I found no immediate and overwhelming feeling to the year other than that it is lacking in one.

I couldn’t believe that I, Rachel Elizabeth Tripp, had spend a year with monotone emotions, so I set off through archived entries, music, and scrapbooks to revisit what appeared a collection of seemingly unconnected moments.

And as I expected, I found more than I had first suspected.

One of the most striking things I found was the influence of people in my life. in 2007, elections, sunrises, departures, living arrangements and more ushered in new relationships with friends and strangers. And as each of us lit lighters and candles and fuses that exploded into into life-shattering forces, we waded through the debris that was the glorious inbetween. Much of the debris settled, leaving some relationships strong and defined, others as gloriously complex as always, and still others puzzlingly absent or surprisingly influential.

what do I remember most from looking back?

It began with tremendous promise. A new year – a shovel with which to bury the past and cover it with fresh soil in which to plant campaign promises, seeds of affection, and friendships. our council. Our first recruitment from the other side. word songs. pink champagne and heart-shaped-cupcakes. 48 hours. card games, sunrises, 4am snowfalls, bizarrely epic airport music. taco bell. numbness. the loss of spiritual virginity. our own blog epidemic. counting down. Yellobeats. too much luggage. buying skinny jeans. Camden town. getting miserably lost alone in Paris. wet Russian men doing push-ups in their boxer-briefs in my room. Notting Hill. the “Red Book” and life in the British scene. Amsterdam. trying to convince British airport security that a stuffed monkey is not an additional carry-on. a three-hour trip from the airport – listening to DJ Shadow driving through a tunnel in the back of the Jeep. trifectas. Massachusetts. the ugly wall. shrek sludge milkshakes. fasting. finishing the race. handmade cards. surprise birthdays – red velvet cake. lying on the floor of my room eating cheese and crackers on a crab-shaped-plate by candle-light. monologuing. strange timing. lip-biting. brownies. Arthur. swimming in a sea of soul. roomate adventures and parallel journeys. Ernst and Young. epic fights. complicated and fluid resolutions. the loss of Arthur. reunion dinner parties. perpetuation of in betweens. falling asleep and getting woken up by a phone call at 6am from my father saying “where are you?” navigating taboos.

When I think about this year I think about love.

in all its many complicated.romantic.innocent.familial.turbulent.internal.spoken.

friendly.miserable.undefined.euphoric.epic.resilient (noun, verb, and otherwise)

forms.

The older I get, the more I begin to see that’s what it’s all about. It’s been said that love is all you need – I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s all there is.

“Life in abundance comes only through great love.” – Elbert Hubbard

Happy New Year. Cheers.

yours.Rachel

10 days and counting/musings

This entry started off in draft form as “13 days and counting”

We’re down to ten now.

The spirit of the holidays, albeit hesitant and confused this(last) year, wanes as I watch my mother “take down Christmas.” As she is my mother, she has rituals for these things; Christmas comes up the Saturday after Thanksgiving with candlelight fanfare and “White Christmas” turned up so loud our neighbors can hear, and it when comes down, it does so hurriedly and with little more glory than the clang-clang of the Law and Order soundtrack. This past Christmas itself seemed to lack a build-up; life seemed to get in the way as I found myself scurrying for last minute gifts (very out of character) and on the couch having confused arguments the night I should have been sleeping sweetly under the roof where reindeer trod. On the third day of Christmas, a little soirée I threw went off well, but without the extensive advance planning and anal-retentive detailing that usually characterizes such events. The new year approached and as it happened, I rang in 2008 with my parents; we enjoyed fondue and a very subdued countdown of the last few seconds of an epic year. The anti-surrealism was almost surreal in itself.

even scrapbooking became a chore. This loss of catharsis had me somewhat concerned about the condition of the jagged line that seems to represent my spiritual state. But only for a few seconds, at which point I became frustrated with my own introspection – I went and made a sandwich.

My life maintains a dreamlike state, as I am not yet emotionally cognizant of the future that lays ahead. In some fleeting moments I am just beginning to realize how much I will miss some of the people by whom I used to be surrounded. In others, we try not to think or feel (myers-briggs can explain that one) more than 30 seconds into the future because in 10 days, more than just an ocean and some land masses will appear between us.

on the eve of the new year, it snowed. Looking outside I see a postcard of trees covered in thick white powder, sparkling in the rare January sunshine. I watched it yesterday while cleaning my room; my closet door is yet to be opened. For as I said once before, picking up the clothes on the floor is a necessary first step before cleaning out the closet. And, though the impeding clutter of the floor only allows me to sneak a peak through a sliver between the door and the wall, I can see this closet is a bit more like a wardrobe than anything I’ve ever seen.

precipitation yields prose.

“If you walk on snow, you can not hide your own footprints.” – George Herbert

yours.Rachel

no time for brilliance

… sometimes life gets in the way.

As of late, a lot of things have been hitting me. On several occasions, I found myself sitting across from a sister going “now that’s blogworthy.” And then it never appears. In the last week I’ve had some profoundly wonderful experiences, some profoundly painfully realizations, and some utterly mundane moments. or hours. or days.

I’m finding myself caught between the extraordinary and the acutely ordinary. Lately I’ve come to realize the truly irreplacable nature of my friends; late nights and shared trials are teaching me the divine value of conversation and shared stories. of love – real love. like the elder in the robe preached to a young man and woman in white in front of the rolling New York mountains. not selfish, rude, childish, one-sided. not infatuation, and not vanity. the kind of love that love deserves. (and sometimes is lucky enough to recieve)

And as other things empower me to an almost unsettling point of power, they, and and other things, grab me and pull me back to a postion of utter unabashed humility. The seemingly moment by moment change between these two is startling and jolting – to say the least.

And then there’s all those truths. Is it funny because it’s true, or true because it’s funny? and what about when it’s not funny? Quickly, I’m realizing what I’m anxiously waiting for and what I’m nowhere near ready for. and those words; Words like forever. and death. And when realities begin to melt faster than dreams it gets really chilling.

…and right now I should be writing an astronomy lab…

the powerful – the poignant – stands pushed aside by pragmatism.

Today was health and saftey inspections. In a rush before class and meetings, I had no choice but to sweep Arthur (my new camera), my copy of the Qur’an, and the pieces of would-be cards I never got to make underneath my bed with the dustbunnies.

And then they confiscated my candles.

I opened up my Franklin-Covey to make my to do list and hour-by-hour schedule for the day. Just above my daily notes sections I read

“I think one of the problems of our culture is our obsession with ‘getting things done.’ People are much more concerned about doing than about being.” -Myra Jennyson

I spent the next 10 minutes pondering whether I should laugh or throw the damn pink thing against the wall.

yours.Rachel