Instants/Eternity/Intrusions/Beauty

Sitting on  your childhood bed is a strange thing. It's been a day since I got home from my penultimate semester at University, and even though I once used to sleep in this very bedroom every night for years and years, it feels completely alien to me--a guest room, empty and cold, the linens are too fresh, the bathroom is too clean, there are creases in the quilt and dust (barely, my mother is meticulous) blowing around in the streams of daylight that beam through the blinds. No one has really lived here for a while, now. 

I read something the other day--a week ago to be exact--and I haven't been able to get it out of my head:

"I'm ALIVE. Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don't watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you're doing and it's the first time, really."

 --Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

I'm alive. 

And I have the perpetual sense--as I look out at my childhood bedroom, at framed photos on dusty shelves that tell you that I'm still just eleven or twelve, at dusty mahogany dressers full of long-empty drawers, a dent in the wall from where I kicked it once--of being frozen in time, of being far away, far, far away in some other time and place, in some other version of myself, in a strange purgatory of loneliness and stasis; I have always thought that being alive is very dangerous if you think too hard about what it really is....

And it's dangerous because what it really is is an instant in an eternity. It's a tiny, negligible, forgettable speck, and everything I am doing and saying and feeling and being is even smaller than that speck of a life, and for the first time I'm thinking about it, and noticing it. The way my fingers can type this out and how I can lift my arm and how I am breathing and there is blood pumping through my body and air in my lungs and thoughts in my brain and memories of the past 22 (my god, 22?!) years in my mind and my heart. I'm looking at how the corners of the walls and ceilings meet and thinking about how I am sitting on a bed in a room in a house in a neighborhood in a city in a state in a country in a world in a universe that has existed for 14 billion years and will keep existing long after I'm dust. 

Dust. Like the tiny flecks floating around in the beam of light coming from my blinds, like every little fleck of a moment that makes up my life, every interaction, every person, every feeling, every tiny piece, that, no matter how short or silly or perfect or beautiful made me who I am right now and brought me here. Each moment is an unexpected intrusion of beauty. That's what life is. Unexpected intrusions of beauty that make up an instant in an eternity, and that instant is an unexpected intrusion of beauty itself. 

And this perpetual sense that I live in a museum of moments, of people and things and ideas and events intruding unexpectedly and beautifully--of people exactly how I remember them--how I choose to remember them--not as they exactly are or were or anything, but specific moments when I loved them most--Katiana showing me her cat on the first day of college, in the first class each of us ever had there, Ellen eating pancakes for lunch at O-house, Malhar with no one to sit by in Calculus, Matt rolling around our chemistry class in the teacher's chair, Kevin yelling and swearing when we scared him, Daniel dangling his string cheese in my face, Andrea and her cats and her dogs and her mom, her clam chowder on fire in the microwave, stinky tofu at Chinese New Year, Zach waking up and smiling in my lap on the way to the Everglades before we knew each other at all, Burgess's Irish accents and Christmas-tasting gin, Anna screaming in delight when I got the Seek job, Nadine for hours in the car after The Grit, Alyson in the ocean at Tybee, Xanna in the garden, Nick and the hand sanitizer at Lincoln, my mother singing me "You Are My Sunshine," when I was three and I cried because it moved me and that was the first time crying could mean happy, too, my baby brother trying to grab his toy car as I cackle and hold it out of his reach, my baby brother running onto the stage to sit by me when my elementary school principle announced my name for making all A's, my baby brother on the phone with his voice three octaves lower, a foot taller than me, getting ready for college...all of these instants in my own eternity, exactly the way I love to remember them most. 

It's strange. I always hated endings. Until very recently, and I don't know what changed exactly. Maybe before the "endings" weren't quite as definite as the ones I'll be facing next May--the first time I leave Georgia, the first time I pay my own rent, the first time "good-byes" could truly mean forever and not "See you next semester" or "We'll catch up next break"-- for the first time I am very much leaving, and save a visit or two to Mama and Daddy on Christmas or Thanksgiving (maybe if I can afford it), I won't be coming back this time. Being a twenty-something in the city, with a salary, off of the family phone plan, with a car in my own name and insurance to match--I'll have finally, as they say, left the nest.

But anyway, I've always hated endings, goodbyes, falling out of touch with a person, falling out of love, falling out of friendship, distance, all of those things I hated. But, that's what life is, like I said. Unexpected intrusions of beauty can't last forever, they wouldn't be half as beautiful if they did. So why not hold those moments exactly the way they are, and remember those people, even the ones that hurt you or forget you, or the ones you've said good-bye to, or have lost, why not remember them the way they were when they were beautiful? 

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfalmadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All the moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfalmadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion that we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."  --Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

It's never over if it happened at all, if it made you happy, if it changed you, made you grow. The moments are there forever and no one has to die or leave or grow old.

As I've grown older (and, yes, 22 is old and if not in years, definitely in struggles), different parts of Desiderata, which has always been so important to me, have meant more depending on where I am in my life. Right now it's this: 

"Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth."

And right now, for me in my room, on this creaky old  bed with the creased sheets that I mussed up in a fit of anxiety, that graceful surrender means surrendering sadness. 

In order to move on from anything, you must first understand why you felt what you did and then understand why you no longer need to feel it. 

I don't need to be afraid of leaving this place, of leaving my family, of losing friends, of people forgetting me, of me forgetting people because gracefully surrendering these things means accepting I have the good moments forever. Even when goodbyes are sad, it's because things were wonderful once, things weren't over yet, and things can be wonderful again and start again with new people in new places, too. 

I'm scared of leaving Athens, I'm scared of leaving everyone I love, and I'm scared of losing the person Athens made me. I like that person. I'm scared of letting down the little girl that used to live in this room--she used to think everything was possible, she wanted to save the world, she wanted to own a unicorn, she wanted to read every day and be incredible. But I don't have to be scared, right? Because I have her still, somewhere, I have everything and everyone because all of those moments existed and will always exist. I'm still afraid though. Everything is changing. I'm afraid of what that may mean.

Who is that little girl in there? What are you thinking? Are you happy with what you've become? 

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again." --Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

Trayvon.

"Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced." -Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

One of the things that bothers me most, almost as much as the death of an innocent, unarmed, 17-year old boy, almost as much as his racial-profiling killer who walked free, is the token reaction of "Justice is a process, not an outcome."

Yet if an outcome is unjust, justice has not been served. How much of our justice system, like Zusak wonders about his life, is convinced? The system is okay, we say, it's alright. But if Tyrone the black man killed Billy the white kid, we'd have a far different situation on our hands. Is that okay? Is that alright? 

Is it okay that the prison system is mostly young, black men? Are young, black men, as a species, more criminal? Is there something in their blood, their very structure, their DNA that makes them more apt to be murderers? No. Undeniably, the answer is no. The truth has arrived and it is not an answer--it's a question. How do we fix this? 

Trayvon Martin is dead. His mother lost her son in the terrible way that no mother ever expects to when they first hold their baby; when they first imagine a beautiful life for this brand-new human. He was unarmed. He was a minor. He was black. They say "the reality that this not about race," but if a million-person movement think it is about race, then the reality is that it is. If Trayvon was white and George was black, it would be about race. 

Justice has not been served. The process may have been implemented, but the system is inherently broken. A murderer walks free and a child is dead. Yet, the grief of a nation, though dark, glimmers with some small hope--and it's getting bigger. People care. People are angry. In a world where apathy is an infectious disease, justice for George Zimmerman, on behalf of Trayvon Martin is something people desperately want and will fight for--and are fighting for...

 

The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.

Matt. Evan. Milk.

Mid-afternoon on a Wednesday is usually right about when I have my first existential crisis of the week. Probably because I’m desperate for the weekend by that point and no established, socially acceptable meals occur at/near 3:03 P.M. (Mental note: move to England because teatime).

Today’s hangry (hungry that leads to angry) fixation had to do with (god, please don’t laugh at me)…love. And what it means, and what it is, and if it’s real, and the weird extent to which we never seem to be able to (in our early-twenties anyway) find it, or get enough of any one person. This escalation of thought resulted from:

1)      A discussion with my old friend Matt about love. Somehow we always end up talking about this? I think it’s because (I’m sure he’ll disagree) but I always have thought that he’s desperately romantic. With a hard, cynical shell, and a soft, chewy center.

2)      A discussion with my new friend Evan about love. We’ve never talked about this, but he recently had his heart broken. Evan is so different from Matt. He’s openly romantic, in every way. He loves trees, and flowers, and gardens, and baking, and life, and music. He wears his heart on his sleeve. But, inside, he’s got a dash of cynicism.

3)      Harvey Milk: And this quote—“You're going to meet the most extraordinary men, the sexiest, brightest, funniest men, and you're going to fall in love with so many of them, and you won't know until the end of your life who your greatest friends were or your greatest love was.”

a.       Okay. So this quote is scary. Absolutely terrifying. It’s saying you can never know, you will never know, until the very end of your life who “your greatest love was.” And of course that makes so much sense. But you know, and then you die.

b.      Or maybe it’s liberating? Because you are free. Because you can’t know. And you won’t know, and because of this, you can live? This is problematic though, because it seems like it would be a rationale to jump from lover to lover, devil-may-care, when anything goes wrong. But then again, maybe it’s not saying that at all.

I feel like we’re all so…insatiable? We’re always demanding so of super-perfect everything that we don’t even know what “relationship” means anymore. Or what it could be. If the slightest little thing doesn’t line up to what we expect (which it won’t because you’re dealing with a whole other breathing, living human being here) we scrap it all as a bad job and start the doomed and damned process all over again. Because if something is wrong and we stick around then we’re “settling”. And you know that is just so fucked up. It’s just not wanting to make things work anymore because it’s too hard.

For some reason we think trying and effort means it’s like….like it’s never going to work?

Society tells us sex is only good if two beautiful people do it, that relationships only work if it’s love at first sight, that if Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams fall in love, grow old together, and die together in 122 minutes, so should we, except hold on, bitches, your real life is not 122 minutes. It’s like weeks. Months. Years. It’s your whole life. This means two things: 1) So yeah. You need effort. 2) Relationships are as different as the 6.9 billion people on this planet who fall in and out of love every day. Evan said this, “There is no definition of a relationship. It’s what you make it with the other person.” Being in a relationship doesn’t mean anything to anyone besides the people in it, or shouldn’t. Being in a relationship is singularly personal and private, or should be. Maybe it’s something else in our society, maybe being in love has become some sort of badge that someone in this world is willing to put up with your shit or that you’re getting laid or congratulations you have a plus one to weddings. It’s something else where no one else matters. It’s not a life sentence. So that’s when I told Evan the Harvey Milk quote, which he found to be appropriate and profound.

So Harvey Milk, you are terrifying because you are telling us you won’t know. But you are liberating. Because if you know you won’t know, you stop being scared, stop giving up, and so you just live.

Which is the answer to everything isn’t it?

Living means you’re happy when you’re happy, even when sometimes you’re not. Because my mom always says “You can’t stop the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair.”

Living means that everything is a choice. It means “thou mayest.” It means timshel.

Eat this sweetish segment or do not. You are free.

So maybe the problem is that it’s a problem at all—maybe instead of pining, we should—I don’t know—be living? Because that’s all we have: time and our beating hearts while we still have those things. And each other.

But then, even if you know you don’t know who is right or perfect, or who won’t hurt you or who will stick around, for better or worse, how do you stick around for better or worse? How do you…decide?

Matt says, “Once you accept that you don't know and can't know, you just make the most informed decision and hope it's the right one. And of course you can grow to love someone. And of course I think a lot of love is effort. So if you make a good guess and put the effort in, everything will end up fine.”

So this is what it takes, based on my friends Matt, Evan, and Milk:

1)      Acceptance that you can’t know and an ability to live and be happy despite that.

2)      Effort.

So go. Love. Live. It might end and it might hurt, but probably a lot less if you know you did your best and tried your hardest. Live in the moment. There is no remedy for heartbreak--or birth or death--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.