Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

I recently read a novel written by Georgia author Terry Kay, entitled To Dance With The White Dog. It was a fascinating read for me on several levels--on the very surface because it was set in the lovely rural landscape of northeast Georgia of which I am so fond. But deeper than that, it was a lovely story which was at once moving, charming, simple, and universally relevant. I think the primary reason this story has stuck with me is that it spoke heavily to perhaps my deepest fear... aging.

I do not really fear my own death. In fact, I try to live in such a way that every moment becomes vital and sacred--so that if any given beat of my heart became the last one, then I could leave this world having lived a life that was not wasted, that was significant and lived to its fullest capacity. I need no reminder of my own mortality; I am well aware that life is immensely fragile, hanging from a silky strand of spider-thread. A life lived in fear of death is lived in futility, and I refuse to let my limited allotment of moments succumb to such fruitlessness.

What I do fear, however, is almost equally as inevitable as death--and that is growing older. Losing capacities I once had; the dulling of my senses; the slow degeneration of my physical being or, worse, of my mind; watching the world changing all around me and knowing that my time has come and gone; continuing to hold onto that fragile thread that suspends me in a state of vitality as it grows more and more ragged, as all around me I watch those threads snapping and my family and friends, one by one, falling into that which lies beyond life on earth. Being left alone here in the world, alone with the ghosts of my youth and my familiar world, which will have long since passed on. These are the thoughts that I cannot stand. These scenarios represent the reality I see in my elderly family members and acquaintances, who through the years have lost their mental faculties to an astonishing degree, who physically cannot get out and do the things that they once loved to do. These fears are called to the front of my mind when I imagine a collection of haggard old men sitting in rocking chairs on funeral home porches, being winnowed out through years and months until two, one, none remain.

As futile as it is to fear death, I am certain that it is equally as futile to fear aging--for unless death comes early, aging is just as inevitable a fact, just as unstoppable. Yet the knowledge that death could come at any moment is oddly comforting... whereas aging is a gradual process, striking constantly and unobtrusively, until one day you realize that you are not what you used to be. I cannot imagine being alive and yet being unable to do the things I do today--from going on a weekend mountain-hiking expedition, to driving my car two hours up the road, to having a conversation where I am fully cognizant of who I am, where I am, and with whom I am speaking. Someday I may not have those abilities, and yet my heart will still be pumping life through my rapidly degenerating body. Ça, c'est la vie? I wonder.

But for all my fretting, To Dance With The White Dog did not depress me. It reminded me of the fragility of life and challenged me to look at the world through the eyes of an elderly man who knows he is not long for this world, yet still fights to life deliberately until his last breath. And that is an encouraging thought. I guess we can only expect to make the most of what he have right at this moment. So right now I am young and I have an entire lifetime ahead of me, and I have all the strength and sharpness and freedom that I can ask for. So now is my time to make the most of those things. And then perhaps when I am much, much older, I will be content with what I still have remaining, not mournful of the things that have gradually slipped away. At any rate, it is worthless to worry about such things now--because my life could end tomorrow, and I will not want to have spent my last day on earth fretting over a day and age that would never come.

How beautiful the world can be...

Blackberries

Protruding from the wiry, spindly brush
with skin pulled tight like the head of a drum
encasing sweet, warm droplets of sun-ripe
ruddy juice--delicate and plump, teasing,
drawing a covetous gaze as velvet
tempts you to graze it with your hand or cheek.
Dark with soft, placating sheen collecting
all energy and light like small black holes
of deep summer, they ensnare and transfix
and you salivate and long for a taste
and the event horizon is traversed.
What could approach perfection so nearly
as a warm burst of tartness on your tongue
that stains your mouth, seeps into the creases
of your hands like hairline cracks in your skin
and just beneath, a reservoir of blood?
Oh, I remember blackberry-picking
and how the sting of nettles scrawling bloody
scratches on your arms was worth the reward--
pain for sweetness on your tongue, an exchange
some will never choose to make. But I hope
in my life to always pick blackberries.

Another fire has been put out

I think I know this person....

That looks kind of like a girl I knew once, not that long ago. I knew her five years ago; I think I even knew her one year ago. But I don't know where she is now--or if I will ever see her again. The woman in this photo looks... different. Weary, as if from a long voyage. Eroded, perhaps. A bit more polished, a bit more dull along the edges.

But there's something else. Look at her eyes. The girl I once knew had deep, dark eyes that sparked and crackled like dried leaves scattered over a campfire. They were electric and fully alive. And not only alive, but nearly able to bring the world to life all around her.

These eyes are missing that energy. These eyes look old. Beaten. A veil stands between them and the outside; can you see that veil? Whoever this woman is, I cannot see into her heart. I cannot see past the resignation behind which her heart hides itself.

I spent an evening with a friend of mine recently, visiting a college campus where he had been a student ten years earlier. There were not many students around, being summertime; but as a small group of students walked past us my friend remarked, looking at them, "They have that look in their eyes..."

"What look?" I asked him.

He turned to me. "Innocence. Excitement. They believe anything is possible... The world hasn't gotten to them yet." He sighed. "I wonder when I lost that spark. You never know when you lost it or how you lost it. You just look in the mirror one day and you realize that it's gone. Once you realize it's gone, it's too late. You'll never get it back."

The woman in the photo above--has she lost that spark? Does she still believe that anything is possible, or has the world twisted her so much that it has strangled her spirit? Has she ever looked in the mirror and realized that she is no longer the girl she used to be--and she never will be again?

I hope that doesn't happen to me.

Order/Chaos

Somehow I can find the poetry hidden in everything. I guess it's how I experience order and beauty in this chaotic world. From the mediocre to the extreme--the dreadful, the painful, the wholly uneventful--there's got to be something there to make it all make sense. In it all, something must make it worth all the while. And art is how I uncover it. Somehow, everyone has got to deal. Right?

The Road Not Taken

One of the most misinterpreted poems I can think of is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." People seem to want to read it as a poem about individualism, not following the crowd, making your own way in life even if it's not the culturally acceptable way. But I think this poem means something altogether different. Something which every single one of us can relate to. It is a poem about making a choice, and the doubt that inevitably follows; it is a poem about forever wondering what might have been. You notice that the poem's title does not emphasize the choice the narrator did make. Rather, it alludes to the foregone alternative, which is still a lingering thought in the narrator's mind. It is a poem about all the things that may have happened, all the happiness and all the tribulations that may have befallen the narrator, which now can only be guessed at--for the time to walk that path is gone forever.

I have certainly seen times where I had to make a life-changing decision, and I always torture myself with the question of whether I did the right thing... particularly when the choice I made seems to go awry. I find my head spinning with thoughts like, What if I had done it this way? What if I had chosen that instead? Would I have gotten hurt like this? Would my life have been better? Have I screwed everything up? I have had my share of those thoughts recently. And I feel the heaviness that overcomes the narrator of this poem when he says, "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence..." It's a deep, regretful sigh, in the face of having made what he (what I) may always fear was the wrong decision.

One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it tells me things about myself that I could never have put into words. I understand that this narrator feels a lingering pang of sadness at having left this crossroads behind, because I have felt that too. Why? I think it's partly because I fear the unknown. And I think I am not unique in that regard; I am sure that many of us step with trepidation when we find ourselves in a position of not knowing where we are headed. But I also think the sorrow stems in part from the knowledge that, for that one moment as I stood and looked down both paths, I held a piece of my fate in my own hands. And that is a grave matter, for if I chose wrongly, who is there to blame but myself?

Thoughts like that can drive you mad; or at least, they could certainly drive me mad. I don't want the responsibility of having to make a blind choice whose consequences will affect me forever. I don't want to stand here in the wake of the storm and know that it was nobody's fault but mine. That would surely defeat me. And in the end, who's to say that one path was better than another? The old adage says that hindsight is 20/20. But even hindsight only provides a one-angled view of anything, for I am simply looking back up the road I just traveled. I can never, never go back to that point in the road where I had to make the choice, and so I can never be sure what would have befallen me had I chosen differently. So I have to conclude, for my own sake, that there was no fault on my part or anyone else's. I am where I am today because of the choices I have made, and the only difference I can make now is choosing which way to go from here. It is very, very tempting to stand here in limbo and dwell on the road not taken. I do it all the time. But as long as I am doing that, then I am not making the most of my journey for what it is today.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by--
and that has made all the difference.

Yes. It has made all the difference, because it has shaped who I am. For better or worse, it is what it is. And I am alive and young and strong, and I still have miles to go before I sleep. And that is something for which I can be grateful.

Rest

Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.




~Sigmund Freud

It's not my fault.

This realization finally hit me this weekend. What's happened to me, what's turned my life into a nightmare... it's not my fault. I've tried to place the blame upon myself, just to have someone or something to blame--because if I could find an object of blame, then I had somewhere to direct my anger. Something to take it all out upon. I was happy to take it out upon myself. At least that way, I could get the anger out into the light. But I did not spare myself any harm by blaming myself. I didn't see it then, but now I do. For months now, I have torn myself to pieces over this situation--because I turned him away; I drove him mad enough to leave. And suddenly, I felt like my life was not worth the unbearable effort of being.

When I saw him last weekend, though, I began to understand that there must be something much deeper going on than him being simply unhappy with me. His discontent must be a product of his own demons, and I just happened to be standing on the bridge that he decided to burn. I have realized that I am not the only one he has decided to reject; rather, our marriage existed within an epoch of his life, the entirety of which he decided to reject. What else exists there with me? His whole life up to this point. His family... his faith... his entire past. What trauma can cause someone like him to reject everything he's ever known and fling himself headlong into one passion--himself?

That's what I see now when I look at him. I see an obscene fascination with himself. I see a gross disregard for any other human being. What I do not see, now, is the man I love. That person, I am afraid, does not exist anymore. What I fear even more is that he never existed--that this stranger, whom I loathe in so many ways, was always the "real" him. That his brief stint with me was something fabricated or imagined.

But at least, now, I can breathe a little easier, because I can see now that all along it was some madness within him that drove him to this. I did not drive him to this. I have to believe that. And I have to move on from there.

I am moving on. I have accepted this as simply the way things are. There is still sadness, but I know it will not linger forever. One of my friends told me, in an attempt to encourage me in the wake of all of this, that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I told my friend in response, feeling utterly barren, that I did not know which of those alternatives would prove to be the case for me.

Now I know. Perhaps it was silly and weak of me to despair so deeply over this, to the point where I detested myself. But today, I can say definitively that I am going to be OK. I finally believe that. I am still leaning upon those around me for support; I know the next couple of months are not going to be easy, as I am in the process of putting this all behind me. I don't know how to put it behind me. But I know I must... and so I will.

Implosion

Like a parade
my beating heart before me marched
with meticulous measured meter
and the pregnant palpitationis ruptured
the membrane of my heart
like an overripe tomato
made sick by too much sun.

And like buckets
dangling in the fabric of everything
I saw the sloshing stars
brimming with everything
my heart could not contain
and splashing it across unending lifetimes.

And a sigh
like a sword slit across my throat
and it slid across my lips
where the wind whirled it away
an ocean and a world away
to strike an unfurling tendril
where perched a crystal dew-drop
which slipped silently away

like a tear-drop
sliding cool across my skin
weightless, unladen with encumbrances
of sighs and pounding hearts which
(faced with wind and trembling leaves)
escapes empty and shatters
soundless, while the drumbeats inward turn
and slow to fainter rhythms
whose painful, poignant peals
could never spill a star.

Out of control

That's the way I feel right now, about everything. Everything in my life, everything in the world, seems to be spinning madly… and I am powerless against the forces of the world. There is so much I want to change, so much that is breaking me and tearing my insides apart. So many turns my life has taken in recent months. I feel like my soul has become a wasteland, a dumping ground for the refuse of my life and the lives of those around me. And every day, every moment is too much. It's all too heavy. Sometimes it all seems surreal, and I think the days and weeks have been nothing more than an elaborate daydream. But then, the tears really are moist upon my face; the burning in my gut really does make me ill with sadness and disgust; and the desolate expressions in the eyes all around me reminds me that they are in on it too. They know—they share in the familiar uncertainty and in the hunger for better days. But somehow, these burdens and these particular pains are uniquely mine. I am evermore dragging around the weight of the world like sandbags tied to my arms and legs. And it's so hard, so hard, because I can see how much better it all could be—and I want to fix it, so badly. Fix my own troubles, fix the troubles of the people whose burdens I am bound to help shoulder… But as I said, there is no fixing it, no changing it. All I can do is stand and watch as things turn inside out—stand and watch, and live within the sea of sadness and injustice rising all around me… and wish to God it wasn't so.

That's all I can say.

The complexity of nature

Sometimes... I just don't know what to say.

A novel idea

I have to say thank you to Allison for commenting here recently. I always enjoy meeting new commenters, so I clicked over to her blog to check it out. I'm glad I did; otherwise I might never have learned about National Novel Writing Month.

Maybe this is just the impetus I need. It really would do a world of good for me to have something to do in my spare time. And I've always wanted to write a novel--make no mistake. So I decided on a whim to take part in the challenge.

The rules? Starting November 1, and ending before midnight on November 30, participants have a month of time in which to write a novel of 50,000 words. Yes, the focus is primarily on the quantity rather than the quality of the work. But here's why I think it's a great thing: There are people like me out there who know they've always wanted to write a novel, and are just waiting for the right moment in their lives. The right inspiration, the perfect allotment of time, the right amount of knowledge or experience. Whatever. But with that kind of outlook on it, they will never write that novel--something will always stop them. Something will always get in the way. Throughout my life, possibly my greatest fear has been that I would not live my dream--I would not be a writer--because I would let "life" stand between me and the goal.

As I thought about all the thousands of people out there in the world who will be writing this month, doing what always sounded like such a vast undertaking, I realized that this was my chance to go for it--to really step out in the deep water, leaving the tide pools behind. Just write it, now, when I have nothing to lose. Will it be quality work? I don't know. Maybe it will be something I can continue to refine; I hope so. But that's not the point, right now. The point is, I'm writing a novel, just like so many other amateurs out there. And I'm going to finish it. And then next time, it will be easier to start writing a novel. I'll know I can do it, because I will have already done it before.

I'll keep you updated on the process. I'm having a great time with it so far--already it's coming along much better than I expected.

Anyone else out there doing this?

Of life, truth, and Robert Plant

Led Zeppelin, in case you didn't know, is my favorite band, hands down... and long has been. Though not currently my favorite of their albums, my first Zeppelin album, and the one that led me to fall in love with their music, was their "untitled" album--commonly referred to as Zoso, or simply IV. Everyone knows the classic "Stairway to Heaven"... but the song I want to mention here is slightly less known. Track 7, "Going to California." It's a beautiful acoustic ballad about a girl "...with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair." It's music. It's art. It's lovely. But what makes the song for me are not the lyrics, not Robert Plant's enchanting vocals, no. It's right there in the intro, about five seconds into the song, when you hear Plant take a little breath. There is something haunting in that breath. Isn't there?

Bob says it must be because I have a crush on Robert Plant. Well... Maybe I do--but that's beside the point. What that small breath does for me is hit me with the realization that these are people, real, living people, who created this song. People who express themselves gloriously through lyric and melody... but people who also need to breathe, and sleep, and be loved, just like I do. People who were born, people who will die, people whose lives are quite different than mine but whose needs and feelings are probably much the same.

The things that are most important to me--indeed, the things that keep me going--are those that allow me to feel connected to another human being. I've never been great at small talk; I have no patience for surfacy relationships; I passionately despise falseness. Such phenomena only make it easier for us to put up barriers between ourselves and our fellows, when what we should do is let others experience who we really are... and experience who they are in turn.

Why do I love to write so much? Because writing is the best way I know how to let others see what makes me me, and the best way I can hope to move other people in a way that really, really matters. What kept me going through tax season at work? I'm not a workaholic. But working for several weeks under great pressure around others who were doing the same allowed me to see the parts of my colleagues that are not so fastidiously put together. I saw them stressed, I saw them exhausted, I saw them lose their poise as that last-minute demand from a client caused the warped bough to break and the cradle to come toppling down. It has nothing to do with sadism; it has everything to do with the fact that humanity inevitably includes imperfection in our character, as well as a full spectrum of emotion. Seeing that side of the people with whom I share my life means more to me than every smile that has ever been faked and every cheery greeting that has ever been BSed. Because every single one of us is human, and I think we all sometimes need to feel like we're not the only one. And because honesty and transparency are the only way that any of us can ever hope to lighten the burden of someone else's life.

I'm not selfless, though I deeply wish I could say that I am. Sometimes I find myself trying to be the center of my own universe, marginalizing the desires and struggles of those whose paths cross mine. Usually, though, it does not take long for me to realize that I have become miserable, shutting people out, living inside of myself when I really should be living--for better or for worse--in an honest, uniquely human way. I believe that we all cross one another's paths for some reason--that we're all pilgrims who must help each other make this strange, painful, wonderful, fleeting journey. And that means that we have to learn to trust each other with our deepest selves, not fearing if we are caught in our shortcomings or in our basest weakness.

So I hope I get to cry at movies with you. I hope I get to walk with you through your deepest fears. I hope I get to feed you when you're hungry, dance with you when you're happy, hold you close when you're sad, and hurt for you when you're so broken you don't think you know how to hurt anymore.

...and I hope you will do the same for me.

Painted

A smile sits stark upon her cheeks,
ghastly-cold
as the beam of the moon--
smile-in-a-can,
a bastard, conniving,
masking and mocking
the true tale told
by the ice on her brow
and the sigh in her eyes;
chaos is her face,
a lie finely penned--
contentment, poise--
but the discerning eye
perceives the lie
in an un-beautiful smile,
her painted hiding place.

Learning to be alone

It's a strange thing... As much as I have considered myself sort of a loner throughout my life, I really hate to be alone. I bore quite easily, that's for certain; but even more than that, I just want a companion with whom I can share all the moments of my life. It's normal, after all, to want someone else beside you.

The problem is, I've never really learned how to be content with solitude. In college it was usually pretty easy--all of my friends lived, worked, and went to school within a five-mile radius; Bob worked within walking distance from both school and home, the two places where I spent all of my time; most of my classes were group-oriented, meaning most of the time when I wasn't in a classroom I was probably at a meeting or in my bed asleep.

Moving has really made it difficult, though. You know, most stress assessment analyses proclaim that the experience of moving is just about as stressful as having a death in the family... and now I'm learning why. Suddenly nearly all of my friends are more than an hour's drive away, and when I go to work I'm surrounded by people with whom I have not yet learned to be comfortable. Who knows if and when I will ever be fully comfortable with my colleagues at work--we share an interest in accounting, but sometimes I think that is about all that we share. Bob works a different schedule than I do and when he gets home, he really values time to himself. And that's something I have been reluctant to give him. I am beginning to realize how selfish it is for me to demand his every spare minute, when he needs time to be alone. It places an undue burden on him to entertain me, and in turn creates stress in our marriage.

One solution for me is to make other friends. I really need friends here in Atlanta, but it's hard, coming straight from a college town that was teeming with people with whom I could usually find some common ground. The world I'm in right now is not set up the same as the world I'm used to, and I'm having a hard time pursuing friendships. I've met a few people whom I really enjoy, but it's still in that awkward state where I'm afraid to make the first move toward spending real quality time together. So that's one thing I am aiming to work on, so that Bob is not the only person I go to when I need company.

But the other solution, which I think is equally important, is to learn how to be alone. Everyone should have time to themselves, and I need to learn what to do with that time when I have it. Most of my favorite activities are not multiple-person activities anyway--writing, cooking, singing, reading, praying and meditating. Often when I'm alone I'm too depressed at the prospect of being alone to actually engage myself in something I would really enjoy. That's the other thing I'm going to focus on doing for myself... and for Bob. And for us.

A brief history

...of me and writing.

I began this blog in January of 2006, but I had been writing for ages before that. Now, as this blog approaches its second birthday (wow, I never thought I would keep a blog going for so long), it occurs to me that I have never given an account of why I write--of what it means to me. Believe it or not, it's actually quite an interesting story.

I can still remember the first time it occurred to me to write a story. I was in the first grade, and I had a sheet of stationery that was decorated with a drawing of a fairy hovering over a strawberry patch. One day while I was at school, my imagination started brimming with ideas as I pictured a story centered around that simple drawing. So I wrote it, my first story. It was called "The Strawberry Princess," and its length was enough only to fill my one sheet of that stationery with my loopy first-grade penmanship. But I showed it to my teacher, and she seemed very impressed. So impressed, in fact, that when I got home from school that day my parents asked if they could read my story too. My teacher had called them to alert them of my budding talent.

Through elementary school I was always scribbling poetry about any topic imaginable, from friends to flowers to food. And frequently I would write outlandish stories about haunted lighthouses and talking animals and closet-monsters. Several times I was published in the local paper, and in third grade one of my poems was printed in The Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans. I loved having something I was good at--because I was never a great athlete or dancer or singer, but people recognized me as a good writer. In that was I was able to leave a lasting impression on people, and being noticed and remembered was always very important to me.

Once I started sixth grade, I began to feel dissatisfied with my place among my peers--and suddenly I began caring about shopping at the right stores, signing up for the right activities, sitting with the right people at lunch, and all sorts of junk that really had no value at all. I became a cheerleader (a terrible one, at that), I insisted on growing my bangs out, and I even neglected my homework from time to time just so I would not be the nerdy kid who always turned everything in on time and aced it. But none of those things seemed to change my image much among the other kids--I was still the one who got picked on at the school dances and the one who people would whisper about as soon as they thought I was out of earshot. I developed few close friendships, and sometimes I even hated my own friends because they were not "cool," and I could never be cool as long as I claimed their friendship. On top of repeated blows to my self-esteem, I also had to deal with death for the first time around the age of eleven--and it struck my family and even one of my own peers. I developed an intense anger towards people, and at the same time a fear of being alone.

As I withdrew from the world around me, my love of writing became a need for writing. I purchased a journal, and as an emulation of one of my role models, Anne Frank, I gave it a name. And for five or six years, life was about nothing except crying out to pen and paper, because there was not a person in the world whom I trusted... but I knew I could trust my journal, the only true friend I had. My poetry took a dark and lonesome turn; when I wrote stories, they were stories about tortured people doing maniacal things. But mostly I just wrote long discourses, trying to accurately convey my emotions onto paper so that for the rest of my life I could look back and remember how angry and hurt I was, and maybe even feel those things again if the world had so numbed me by then that I had forgotten how to feel.

Several years passed like this, and my need to write intensified and grew into an obsession. It was my ecstasy, my opium, the only way to ease the depression that gnawed away so ruthlessly at me. Then when I was fifteen, something changed. After months of attending church with one of my friends, I realized that there was someone who did love me, and whom I could trust as I had learned to trust no one--his name was Jesus, and I knew I needed him.

When Jesus walked the earth he told his followers that the cost of following him was great, and I soon learned the truth in this. For me, the cost was writing. I knew that my addiction to writing was unhealthy, that it had mastered me. Now I had a new master, and I knew I couldn't serve both. The day I packed my journal away and stowed it in the attic was a very sad day for me--I cried as I put up volume after volume of the best friend I had had for the past six years. But even as I cried, I felt right about it in my heart... I knew that a book could not be my best friend. I needed to learn how to live in the world around me.

During the last two years of high school and the first year or so of college, I wrote very little. I stopped keeping a journal of any kind, save a prayer journal. Occasionally I would write poems or short essays, but they didn't mean very much to me, and I eventually abandoned or misplaced them all. But I made friends, and I learned how to love life and to love myself. And I didn't miss writing, though in my heart I always knew I would come back to it someday. When the time was right.

Sophomore year of college, something else happened. I heard about a lecture that was to take place on campus--a lecture by one of our own professors, who was an accomplished author. He was to talk about his journey as a writer, and about overcoming struggles in his own life to finally publish his first novel. I knew that I had to go and hear him speak.

This was my time. As this writer spoke, I felt every ounce of myself start burning to write again--not in the needy, desperate way I had experienced before, but in such a way that it just felt right that I should be a writer again. I'm not sure if I slept at all that night after the lecture--I was full of ideas and excitement. I was strong and confident. I was a writer.

The next semester I had the opportunity to take a creative writing class. I enjoyed it but I struggled with it too, because it dared me to take my writing places I had never considered before. I dabbled in some microfiction; I tried my hand at science fiction; I explored the theme of dystopia; I warmed up to modern free-form poetry, which to that point I had always poo-pooed as not "real" poetry. That class proved to be very experimental for me, and an experience I appreciated... though ultimately my purpose lay elsewhere.

I soon found that purpose. My senior year, I had the chance to take another creative writing class--this time, taught by the same professor whose lecture had so inspired me two years earlier. In that class I discovered the nature writing genre, which I maintain still today is where my calling lies. As far as my own personal development, there can be no doubt that my nature writing class was the most rewarding, enriching, life-changing class I ever took. In fact, it was during that class that I began this blog.

Each of us has a special ability, I believe, which we are meant to share with the world. For years I've known that writing was mine, but it's been a long, strange journey. I am confident, though, that my history with writing has enabled me to appreciate these things all the more. I write not because I can, but because I must. There is something every person must say in their lives, and I have to say mine by putting pen to paper. What a privilege--what a joy.

Unremembered

As I wrote this, I was thinking of a homeless woman I met in Whiteclay, Nebraska. May God be with her...

She spoke; I leapt with a start. Her soft-spoken plea shattered the lonesome night. "M-my coat… l-lost my coat… cold t-tonight..."

Why did I turn to face her, this night? Every other evening I passed her by, where she stood in the shadows only blocks from my apartment. And I never heeded her prayers, never even looked back. But this night, that thin voice crept into my soul, and I turned.

And met despair. As her searching eyes bore into mine, I glimpsed the shadow of misery too keen and monstrous to grasp, housed within her twisted body. In that gaze she shared with me a lifetime of pain--it tore my gut, and yet it locked onto my mind, and I had no will to turn away. I saw no shame, no fear--those feelings were mine alone, and my cheeks flushed as my awareness of her hopelessness deepened. As she gripped my mind she seized my hand (or did I take hers?) and placed it against her scarlet neck; she burned with fever.

Feeling suddenly as if an iron block had descended upon me, I reeled and backed away. I shook my coat off and thrust it into her arms, and fled toward home. I lingered not even long enough to know if she thanked me.

I never saw her again, after that excruciating night. Days later, over breakfast, a small blurb in the newspaper caught my eye: Homeless woman found dead last night, corner of 33rd and Young.

A human life begins and ends, and its vastness is encapsulated in a sentence fragment buried in the daily news. I cried. The despair was captivating.

The show so far...

I've been working a little over a month now; I've settled into my daily routines; I've survived my first tax season; I've got a couple of paychecks under my belt. So how do I feel about it all so far?

I don't know why this still comes as such a surprise to me, but I can say with complete confidence that I really love my job. Really. I mean, it is a job, not my life's passion--but in the context of it being a job, I love it. Shouldn't I? Isn't it wonderful to finally know, after all the hard work and all the doubt, after the frustration and tears, that I really did make the right decision--indeed, that I really did hear God correctly when I believed He was leading me this way?

Yes. It is wonderful. For the first time since I can remember, I feel very little stress--because I can leave work at work. During my final two years of college, I was always Laura the student--I rarely had time to play any other role. Now, while I am at work I can be Laura the accountant... and then when I come home, I can be whatever Laura I'd like: The writer? The cook? The trivia night aficionado? Sure, why not?

Best of all, I can be Laura the joyful again. Over the past eighteen months or so, up until we moved from Athens into our new place, I feared that I was slipping back into old habits--the cycle of depression that I struggled with for about a decade and then, finally, broke free from when I was nineteen. Long hours of grinding away at the Tax Code, at mergers and acquisitions, at risk management and effective interest amortization, made me withdraw from my friends and spend many, many hours feeling unhappy and lonely. I came out of college with a master's degree, a husband, and some lifelong friends... but I also came out shouldering a burden that I should have left forever buried after I finally cast it off six years ago. In a new city, at a new juncture along the path of my life, I think I have finally let those days go once and for all, and learned how to be secure and content with myself.

I will never know if all the gruelling work I put into my college days will have been worth it in the end. For in trying to excel, I lost sight of some important things--my faith, my security, my joy, my passions--at the risk of losing them forever. I could have done something else, and perhaps breathed a little easier during my college days; and perhaps I'd be just as content as I am now... or perhaps not. Like the pondering traveller in Frost's poem, I could not travel both paths at once; so I chose one, knowing that travelling one way meant forfeiting the chance to ever see what lay down the other road. And now, I tell it with a sigh--for I'll always wonder, somewhere deep inside, what would have happened if I'd chosen differently... But it serves no real purpose to look back and regret. The fact is, I am where I am now, and all that I can do from here is go forward from where I have already come.

My baby sister

Ashton... My little sister and one of the best friends I have ever had. I guess since she's almost 21 she's not a baby anymore.

Still, I could not believe my ears when she called to tell me that she's ENGAGED!!! I was not prepared for this to happen for another several years--after all, she and Trey have only been dating for six years now!


Ashton and Trey. I love these two kids and I'm sure they'll have a beautiful life together. I just hope we can still be best friends!